shady dealings

No 'roid rage, though, and nothing else to speak of, except *maybe* a slightly higher energy level. I'll be more sure of that if I have more than one data point.

In the meantime, I had two medical anxiety dreams about taking T, once about my doctor calling to say T was off the market and that avenue was closed to me (but in real life, later that day she in fact called to say it was available very very cheap!), and the day of the first shot, when I dreamed that I had missed my appointment and would have to wait a long time for another one. I was in some unpleasant institution in that dream, either military or prison (I've been in both in real life and can't recall which sort of unpleasantness it was).

I *never* have medical anxiety dreams. I didn't have them when I couldn't eat for three months; I didn't have them when I had limited mobility for three years because of my foot; but I had them about (not) taking T. Funny how the subconscious can let you know what's really going on.

Then a couple days ago I went to bed ruminating about how, or rather why, some of us have so much privilege to choose to change our bodies, and about adding muscle mass and short cuts and all that sort of second-guessing stuff, and I awoke from a dream of happily doing leg lunges with dumbbells to get stronger. Once again, the subconscious telling me to quit worrying and get on with it.

Guess I will :-)

How much useful information can you get from someone after you've tortured them off and on for four years[1], anyhow?

What happens if you wait for the Democrats to act, and they don't get a bill past Bush's veto?

Why do so many folks hope that the courts will fix it (including Senator Specter!), when the courts "fixed" the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII by... upholding it in the Korematsu decision?

While we wait for someone in power to do something, what is happening to the folks in detention now?

Here is one very small thing you can do: go read Senator Dodd's bill that undoes some of the worst parts of the MCA^H^H^HIndefinite Detention and Torture Act, call his office, call your representatives' offices, write them, and get them on board. Ask them about extraordinary rendition too. Find out what they are doing to get the bill past Bush. Odds are they'll tell you they... can't tell you. Enough of us call 'em, they gotta get the message....

[1] Average length of stay of Guantanamo detainees

This is what democracy sounds like.

Then and now. Think about it.

...you'll wake up to the sounds of tear gas from the present. More of that story today at Athens Indymedia, and tomorrow in the papers...

(*) In case the link disappears, find the lyrics here (Η Επιστολή, στίχοι του Μάνου Ελευθερίου, μουσική του Θεοδωράκη).

Bye, Bye, Rummy. Have a nice trip into the great unknown.

For the rest of us, we can contemplate Rummy's collected wisdom on a number of web sites. Here's one to get you started.

The folks over at NPR have got to be pretty happy right about now. They just replayed an excerpt from this interview where Rove browbeats Robert Siegel for suggesting that the Republicans might lose. Transcript available at Raw Story.

Gloat while you got 'em. :-)

Here's a transcription of that excerpt (done by me, so any mistakes are mine):

Melissa Block

When voter Mindy Lawrence thinks about homeland security, she sees an erosion of civil rights, and she brings up this issue, the suspension of the right of habeas corpus for terrorism suspects.

Mindy Lawrence

"The problem with that is, that's going to start leeching down to who do they think is a terrorist, who do they suspect is a terrorist. It's a really nasty little problem that's about to happen if they suspend habeas corpus for anybody. You're [We're?] losing the rights that our Constitution and our Bill of Rights gave us, in the name of fighting terrorism. There's gotta be a fine balance in there, and I don't think we've reached that balance at all. In fact I think we're losing that balance."

Faye Adams

"I don't really believe that the terrorists should be looked at in the same way that an American citizen should be looked at. I don't think that the freedoms that I enjoy should be applied to a terrorist who wants to kill me, who has sworn to kill me, who would even give up his life to kill me, simply because I'm a Christian. That's nuts."

Dorry Pease

"We've lived in fear since 9/11. It's constantly right there in front of us, terrorists. Our government makes us constantly focus on this type of thing. Personally I don't think we will ever totally eradicate terrorism, and I, I'm not saying we should stop fighting them, I'm not saying that at all. But I am saying that what our government is doing is not solving the problem. In fact it's making it worse. I would like to see us working towards, towards getting at the root of the fanaticism and the Islamic radicalism that's occurring. We're not doing that, we're just we're putting bandaids over a wound. I don't see us healing the wound at all, or even working towards it. I don't see where we're going at all. I feel less secure now, not necessary for myself and my husband, but I feel less secure for my children and my grandchildren, because I think they're going to be living in a much more dangerous world than what we have lived in, and that's what my concern is."

How many of us are like Mindy, or like Dorry? How many are like Faye?

A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly discusses the Lodi terrorism case in the context of religious awareness and identity. Umer and Hamid Hayat were charged with lying to FBI agents, and Hamid was further charged with providing material support to terrorists by attending a terrorist training camp. Hamid was convicted, and Umer's jury could not reach a verdict.

The Atlantic article, though long, is well worth the read. But I want to highlight one portion of it here, a discussion with the foreman of the jury, ex-military retired salesman Joseph Cote. The government's strategy in that case was to prosecute in order to prevent acts of terrorism from being committed; this means that the jury had to find that the government had proven that Hayat had provided material support or resources “knowing or intending that such material support and/or resources were to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, terrorism that transcends national boundaries”.

But Hayat hadn't taken any concrete steps apart from providing the "material support" (attending a training camp--if even that were true). So the jury was left trying to discern whether Hamid had the intent to carry out a terrorist act, or not. Here's what the article says about how they made that decision.

This was their conundrum: Do you send a man to prison—ostensibly for training and lying—when the real question is whether he is a threat, and most of you don’t think he is? "That’s what made the verdict so tough," Cote said. "Because we thought in the gut, 'Maybe he may not do it.'" But what Cote called the "literal world," defined by the boundaries of law and evidence, did not allow for shades of gray.

During our interview, Cote said several times that the jurors were not asked to decide whether Hayat was capable of engaging in terrorism. "Believe it or not, that’s the only way I can sleep nights," he said. And yet they did decide it, Cote said, concluding that the evidence suggesting that Hayat would act—the scrapbook, the prayer, and so on—was stronger than the evidence that he would not. In essence, the prosecution’s strategy had paid off: there were no details of a plan, but Hayat’s purported predisposition—his words, more than his deeds—had become decisive. >

There you have it: there is no longer room for reasonable doubt, but only for "more likely than not". The risk, it seemed, was just too high to let a possible terrorist go free, even if he might be innocent after all.

I close here with the final words of the Atlantic article's author.

[Cote] argued that it was "absolutely" better to run the risk of convicting an innocent man than to let a guilty one go. "Too many lives are changed" by terrorism, he said. "So shall one man pay to save fifty? It’s not a debatable question."

I left his house and started back to Sacramento, passing the grounds of Folsom State Prison along the way. In the aggregate, at least, Cote’s instinct seemed to offer an appealing surety. Only when I was back on the highway did I see its practical flaw: prosecuting and imprisoning one innocent man would do nothing, in fact, to save the fifty at risk.

First things first: the bill defines what the term "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) means. Any person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the U.S., *or* any person so designated by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) or a competent tribunal designated by the President or Secretary of Defense. Here's the text:

     (1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—(A) The term ‘unlaw-
>ful enemy combatant’ means—
           (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who
     has purposefully and materially supported hostilities
     against the United States or its co-belligerents who is
     not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who
     is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);
     or
           (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of
     the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
     has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant
     by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another com-
     petent tribunal established under the authority of the
     President or the Secretary of Defense.

That second part of the definition does seem pretty broad, doesn't it? It doesn't set forth any requirements upon how a CSRT or other tribunal makes that determination; it seems to say that the act of designating someone as a UEC makes them one, for the purposes of this Act.

I expect that folks will make the legal argument that this cannot be what was intended when the bill was passed. However, given that, in the past, the current Administration has claimed the power to designate any person of its choosing as a UEC, to hold that persosn indefinitely, and to hold that person without any judicial review of the person's status or conditions of confinement, including U.S. citizens, perhaps this broad definition may well be intentional. (The claim of unchecked power of the executive in a war context has been labelled the theory of theunitary executive.)

Part 1 of the definition is troubling in and of itself; "purposefully and materially supporting hostilities', I suppose, means "purposefully and materially supporting" terrorists, if we are talking about the War on Terror. This sounds pretty reasonable, but the problem is that supporting terror seems to be used these days to depict folks who don't agree with or support the current Administration's agenda. Here are some representative examples from the press:

During Kerry's campaign for president, Bush, Orrin Hatch, Dennis Haster, and various others all charged that Kerry and his backers were giving comfort to terrorists. In March of this year, Sen. Wayne Allard argued that Feingold has time and time again taken on the side of the terrorists when Feingold introduced a resolution to censure Bush. Most recently, the National Republican Senate Committee said that two Repbulican Senators who voted for Specter's amendment to the MCA to put habeas corpus back into the bill had "sided with trial lawyers and terrorists, even though they voted for the final version of the bill.

But lest you think these sort of remarks are simple grandstanding, I direct your attention to a collection of documents obtained by the ACLU about Pentagon and Homeland Security surveillance of various anti-war or other student groups. The documents date from 2001 through 2006, and include coverage of such groups as Students Against War from UC Santa Cruz, and an antiwar group that protested at the Oakland Docks in 2003, where police opened fire with so-called "less-than-lethal" weapons, resulting in worldwide coverage and subsequent inclusion of the incident in that year's UN Human Rights report.

That's all for today. Part two coming soon...

Now I'm discontent because, after an hour of sweeping up leaves in the front yard and pulling up ivy, even though I was moving very slowly and carefully, my foot hurt enough that I had to stop and elevate it for an hour. There's no pleasing some people--namely, me.

Because on November 20, if nothing goes wrong, I'll be getting my first shot of testosterone. Woo hoo!

So here's the deal. My insurance company will not cover hormone therapy for cases of gender reassignment (or half-assignment, as the case may be, for us genderqueer folks). This means that I can use the local pharmacy at the clinic I attend, which has no contract with the insurance company. The local pharmacy has very cheap rates. So cheap, that, without insurance, I can actually afford the treatments, and with it, I probably couldn't. Go figure!

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs ---65

Alexander (R-TN)   Ensign (R-NV)      Murkowski (R-AK)
Allard (R-CO)      Enzi (R-WY)        Nelson (D-FL)
Allen (R-VA)       Frist (R-TN)       Nelson (D-NE)
Bennett (R-UT)     Graham (R-SC)      Pryor (D-AR)
Bond (R-MO)        Grassley (R-IA)    Roberts (R-KS)
Brownback (R-KS)   Gregg (R-NH)       Rockefeller (D-WV)
Bunning (R-KY)     Hagel (R-NE)       Salazar (D-CO)
Burns (R-MT)       Hatch (R-UT)       Santorum (R-PA)
Burr (R-NC)        Hutchison (R-TX)   Sessions (R-AL)
Carper (D-DE)      Inhofe (R-OK)      Shelby (R-AL)
Chambliss (R-GA)   Isakson (R-GA)     Smith (R-OR)
Coburn (R-OK)      Johnson (D-SD)     Specter (R-PA)
Cochran (R-MS)     Kyl (R-AZ)         Stabenow (D-MI)
Coleman (R-MN)     Landrieu (D-LA)    Stevens (R-AK)
Collins (R-ME)     Lautenberg (D-NJ)  Sununu (R-NH)
Cornyn (R-TX)      Lieberman (D-CT)   Talent (R-MO)
Craig (R-ID)       Lott (R-MS)        Thomas (R-WY)
Crapo (R-ID)       Lugar (R-IN)       Thune (R-SD)
DeMint (R-SC)      Martinez (R-FL)    Vitter (R-LA)
DeWine (R-OH)      McCain (R-AZ)      Voinovich (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC)        McConnell (R-KY)   Warner (R-VA)
Domenici (R-NM)    Menendez (D-NJ)

NAYs ---34

Akaka (D-HI)       Dodd (D-CT)        Levin (D-MI)
Baucus (D-MT)      Dorgan (D-ND)      Lincoln (D-AR)
Bayh (D-IN)        Durbin (D-IL)      Mikulski (D-MD)
Biden (D-DE)       Feingold (D-WI)    Murray (D-WA)
Bingaman (D-NM)    Feinstein (D-CA)   Obama (D-IL)
Boxer (D-CA)       Harkin (D-IA)      Reed (D-RI)
Byrd (D-WV)        Inouye (D-HI)      Reid (D-NV)
Cantwell (D-WA)    Jeffords (I-VT)    Sarbanes (D-MD)
Chafee (R-RI)      Kennedy (D-MA)     Schumer (D-NY)
Clinton (D-NY)     Kerry (D-MA)       Wyden (D-OR)
Conrad (D-ND)      Kohl (D-WI)
Dayton (D-MN)      Leahy (D-VT)

Not Voting - 1

Snowe (R-ME)

I'm writing to you about the Military Commissions Act (S 3930) currently being debated on the floor of the Senate. I'm out of time to print this and send it via U.S. mail, so here it is in email form. Nonetheless, I hope you or your staff persons will read this and consider it.

I was going to list the things that are problematic about this bill, but that would imply that if we just pass a series of amendments, the bill will be acceptable. At this point, I believe that we are not going to get those amendments through (having just seen the Specter amendment on habeas corpus defeated), and the only responsible and moral stand left to us, I believe, is to oppose this bill in the short term and to introduce a bill that works in the long term.

Here is what I want to see in such a bill:

Specific standards are set forth to determine who is an unlawful enemy combatant. Any competent tribunal (as per the Geneva Conventions) that makes such a determination must do so in accordance with those standards.

(The current bill allows the executive branch to make this determination unilaterally, with no specified standards. See section 948(a)(i)(2) for the specific language.)

Citizens and non-citizens alike shall have the power to challenge their detention via habeas corpus.

(The current bill denies noncitizens this ability, which in practical terms means that a noncitizen may be seized, determined by fiat to be an enemy combatant, and the held infinitely, without hope of release.)

Citizens and noncitizens alike shall have the ability to challenge the conditions of their confinement; in particular, Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions shall provide a basis for these challenges.

(The current bill denies everyone this ability, which means that someone can be subjected to various abuses and tortures with no recourse. I can't believe I'm actually writing this. How can we be about to legalize torture and inhuman or degrading treatment by employees of the American government? How?)

Persons who are tried before these military commissions shall have the right to examine and respond to the evidence against them. Classified or not.

(The current draft of the bill, as widely reported in the press, allows defendants to "respond to" the evidence but not to examine it. An earlier draft included the word "examine", and that or its equivalent needs to go back in.)

Specific guidance shall be given to the executive branch as to the interpretation of which sorts of interrogation techniques are in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, particularly Common Article III.

(The current bill allows the executive branch to make that determination for an entire class of techniques, including arguably all of the techniques used by the CIA secret prison interrogation program, and there is no judicial oversight possible, in effect making that determination final.)

And finally, members of the Congress shall have enough information about programs such as extraordinary rendition, detention in secret prisons, and interrogation techniques, that the Congress can exercise genuine oversight. I don't ever want to read about horrors like those at Abu Ghraib again, and I don't ever want to see another press report about another innocent person picked up on some unreliable informant's say-so, sent off to another country to be tortured, and then eventually released when it became apparent that the person was in fact not connected to terrorism in any way. (Example: Maher Arar, Canadian citizen, cleared by his own government, sent to Syria for a year over Canadian government objections.)

As I understand it, if the press reports are to be believed, there are some 14,000 people held under exactly these conditions right now, most of them in Iraq. The case of one of them has been recently brought to light, an AP photographer named Bilal Hussein. From that report: "Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom." We cannot let these people languish indefinitely under such conditions. In a war that is expected to last generations, we need more oversight, not less.

Now, I've been listening to the same rhetoric as you about how terrorists have been given a "boatload of rights" (Representative Duncan Hunter, Armed Services Committee Chairman), or how opposition to this bill is the equivalent of "coddling" terrorists (House Speaker Dennis Hastert). We need to remember, though, that we afford these basic rights (and more) to the meanest, most despicable mass murderers; we afforded these basic rights (and more) to Timothy McVeigh! And no one charged us then with "coddling" McVeigh or being soft on domestic terrorism. Rather, the fact that we insisted on following fair and just procedures was something that we were and are proud of. It sets us apart from other governments and other societies; it provides an example to the rest of the world.

There is an implication I hear in these debates -- I am listening even now to C-SPAN2 via the Internet -- that we must use any means necessary to defeat the terrorists, because the threat is so grave. But we all know better than this. We know that some means are not acceptable, no matter the ends; for this reason, we prohibit some actions in all circumstances. We prohibit rape, murder of noncombatants, and various other evils, with no exceptions. Some means are not acceptable, and I strongly believe that the legal framework that would be legalized in this bill, including the legalization of torture or "almost torture", is among them.

The alternative, if the current bill is passed instead, is that thousands of people will be held in secret locations, without oversight, without access to the courts, unable to effectively challenge the evidence against them (if indeed they are ever tried), interrogated using who knows what methods, whether they be terrorists or innocents.

We won't know the details, We won't know who's innocent or guilty. But we will know enough to be ashamed.

Thanks for reading, and good luck.

Seriously, though, he looked at the X-rays, said it all was healing well, and told me I could start getting around for up to 2 hours a day this week and 3-4 hours a day next week. This meant my first trip to the living room in a week! It was very exciting.

I haven't needed pain meds in a couple of days, so now I just have to have patience with the recovery process. Or rather, my friends have to have patience with it. It's been nice, getting all my meals in bed and all, but I"m sure we'll all be happier when that's over.

Cast off date: October 13.

“I need members of Congress who understand that you can’t negotiate with these folks,” Bush said recently at a fundraising dinner. The implication, which Democrats were quick to react to, is, of course, that the Democrats are all about negotiating with terrorists, which, as we all know, is a no-no.

Or there's the interview where Bush recently said that in Iraq, "Most people want us to win." The implication is that the Dems are losers. They didn't take too kindly to that either.

I figure that there's plenty of room for other players in that arena, though. Here's a sample: "Most people thing the Iraqis should have the final say about how their country is run." Okay, it's not quite as as short, but someone can clean it up, maybe use the buzzword "democracy" in there and nail it. Then, when an Administration official says that, why, the U.S. is there to ensure this very thing, we can point to the Washington Post article, aptly titled: "Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout, Polls Show". Who conducted these polls? The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. And, oh yeah. The State Department. Whoops!

Here's some other kick-'em-while-they're-down soundbites you can try on your friends: "Most people want *de*-escalation of the violence in Iraq." (After that, cite the BBC overview of just how bad things are getting over there.)

Or "We need a foreign policy that doesn't breed new terrorists." Seen the NIE report lately?

p.s. Yes, I know that it's damn quaint of me to use * instead of actual HTML markup for emphasis. Shut up and go micromanage your own damn blog :-P

Anyways, the foot doesn't hurt at all. It just feels funny, a bit numb I guess. They had to cut the whole first metatarsal bone off and slide it over, so you'd think it would actually be uncomfortable. But not so far.

Fun fact: when you're shivering to death after coming out of general anesthetic, they give you Demerol. Who knew?

Time to shift positions again. At the end of this convalescence I'll be able to tell you all hundred and one different positions you can sit in and still have your foot elevated above your heart. I figure I've done about 5 of them so far. Only 95 + 1 to go.

To celebrate, I took the quiz: Which pirate are you?

My pirate name is:

Iron Roger Rackham

As taken from the Raw Story, choose one.

1. The terrorist threat to this country is real. We need to do everything possible to make our nation safe, and we need to it in a way that preserves our civil liberties. [Hmmm... that might be an argument *against* the wiretap program. Let's see about the next one.]

2. As a member of an intelligence committee of Congress, I am fully committed to that goal. We are the watchdogs of the Intelligence Community, including the National Security Agency that is carrying out the Terrorist Surveillance Program. [Err... I thought it was the Wiretapping Ordinary Americans Program, my mistake! But in any case this talking point isn't any good unless you're a committee member, a lapdog^H^H^H^H^H^Hwatchdog of the intelligence community. How about the next one?]

3. I have been briefed on the Program and stood on the operations floor at NSA to see first-hand how vital it is to the security of our country and how carefully it is being run. [Ok, so you've read articles in the press instead. But that's probably as good as the Congressional briefings. And if you're in the Bay Area, you've probably stood in the street outside the building on Folsom Street to see first-hand how secure it is... n't.

4. It would be irresponsible to reveal details because that would give our adversaries an advantage. My colleagues and I are very serious about protecting our nation's secrets. [Good thing, since Libby and Rove don't seem to be! But, seriously, folks, the only people who don't know these details by now are the... American people. Can't you let us in on the secret?]

All right, I just can't do any more of these with a straight face. But I do notice that the NSA puts in a plug for technology neutrality there at the end of its list. I wonder if we can use that to argue for Net neutrality legislation, maybe piggyback it somehow? No? Shucks, I was hoping to get *something* good out of this.

All the complications are probably due to walking on the foot for two and a half years while it's been f*cked up. And much of that is due to having no health insurance for a good chunk of that time.

It's a good thing that we have the finest health care system in the world. Imagine if it was a really *crappy* system. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

Five years ago, I'd been gone from New York for six months, living in Montreal. I'd just passed through NYC the night before on my way back from California, and the next morning I crawled out of bed to read the bad news on Slashdot. For the next two weeks I kept my head down and my profile low, avoiding email and anxious about every phone call. In the end, I was lucky; all my friends were untouched.

That's what I did yesterday too: head down, low profile. I don't need media replays to bring back the horror, and I don't want politicians telling me the policies they are promoting and that I should support if I want to honor the people who died. Political opportunism could take just one day off, dammit.

The best thing I can figure, if we want to honor the folks who were killed, is for NYC to give folks the day off, and for govt officials to promise that there will be no political speeches, and no public ceremonies. Give people the space to have their own ceremonies if they want, and let them own their grief, and live their lives. Or is that too much to ask?

And now, having said that, here's the disclaimer: my opinion shouldn't count for much. The opinions that should count are those of folks who lost family members and friends. And if there are ordinary folks speaking up instead of celebrities, so much the better.

That almost guarantees that nothing good will come out of it. Consider: Nixon was re-elected on my birthday. Bush Jr defeated Al Gore (or not, depending on your view of things) on my birthday.

With a track record like that, I feel fully justified in continuing the tradition of the Election-Day Drunk, a bash which will be held at my place around a TV in our living room. If youre reading this and you know where I live, you're invited. Party-o'clock until we know the results, or until we have to kick everyone out so we can sleep before going to work the next day. Bring: booze of your choice, nostalgia for Dan Rather's election night commentary, ("If a frog had a side pocket he'd carry a handgun"), and MST3K-style barbs to sling at the pundits while we watch the results roll in.

In the meantime you can keep yourself entertained with Electoral Vote.com, the best voting map ever. Based on polls as they come in, it shows which states are red, blue, or some in-between shade in as close to real-time as you're gonna get.

If you live in California, this is also a fine time to dig out your old downloads^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdvds of South Park and look for Season 10, episode 8: Douche and Turd. Any resemblance to Schwarzenegger or Angelides is purely coincidental...