Our Actions in Guantanamo

The Red Cross contends that we are engaged in conduct tantamount to torture in Guantanamo Bay. Of course, this is no surprise to those who have actually concerned themselves with our conduct there. Fact of the matter is, we are hardly a light unto the nations right now, unless you want to count countries struggling with their own human rights problems like the Ukraine.

To be fair, we are only doing this to "outsiders," people who are actively engaged in a war against us (at least purportedly so, this is one of the big problems with conducting a war in this manner, you sweep up a bunch of innocents also and stick them in there, which only makes things worse). This does not, yet, involve use of these methods as a means of suppressing dissent in this country. Here's the rub, how long can we do this stuff, call them legitemate means in the fight against terrorism, before it gets extended to political dissenters in this country. We were already on that somewhat slippery slope with Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi when the Supreme Court put a minor skid to it (and Hamdi's been released as a result), but look at the rhetoric of some of the right in this country. They've effectively called millions of people traitors for opposing the president in a time of war. John Ashcroft famously claimed that those who oppose his actions in rounding up suspects give aid and comfort to the terrorists. What is that if not a call for a greater crackdown on political dissent.

Once the tactics have been legitemized, then the only barrier is that we need to extend the reach of targets we use those tactics against. What's first, jailing of political dissenters without trial or charges? Coercive questioning, torture, disappearances. We should not even be crawling near this slipperly slope, and yet, our government has no concern about where they are taking this.

Supreme Court Unfriendly to Medical Marijuana

Appropos to my post yesterday, it appears as if sanity in the area of drugs is still a ways off. Apparently, the US Supreme Court, so often a friend to right wing state's rights claims, is not so friendly to those claims coming from the Blue states. If you want to discriminate against minorities or disabled people, a state's rights defense will fly. If you want to have autonomy over your body then you are out of luck. The case hasn't been decided yet, but the NY Times seems to believe that the tenor of the debate left little doubt as to where the decision would fall.

The Drug Scourge - Moral or Practical Problem?

For those of you who have HBO, and are addicted like me to just about every show they make, you are probably also fans of The Wire. I think this is just about the greatest show I've ever watched. Generally, it follows a group of Baltimore police officers (they were all at some time in the same unit, but have scattered over time), and a few different drug gangs in Baltimore.

In the present series, a Major who is in charge of the western district decided that he'd had enough of the idiotic cyle of policing and violence that he'd dealt with in trying to stop the drug trade in his district, a battle he realized he was losing. After having one more series of citizen complaints about the whole area being controlled by drug dealers who prevent people from leaving their homes safely, he finally decided on a radical solution. He found 3 neighborhoods in his district that were uninhabited, and he pushed all of the dealers in his district into those 3 neighborhoods (the local kids called it Hamsterdam, when one of the officers pushing them there mentioned Amsterdam and the dealers garbled it). The result, that area turned into hell, with every ill you could imagine in the inner city bunched up into one area with the police turning a blind eye to all except crimes of violence. The 95% of the rest of the district that he pushed them out of? Paradise by comparison. Citizens are writing letters thanking them, crime's dropping by 15% in just weeks, people are able to go outside in the middle of the day, everything is just peachy.

This got me thinking, I've been in favor of legalizing drugs for a long time, but here's the question that The Wire raised for me. Do most people believe that drug use is a moral or practical problem. Here's the difference. Murder, rape, robbery, theft, these are all moral problems. Whether or not you personally are victimized, all of society is hurt by those actions, and they are clearly a moral wrong any way you look at it. Therefore, if someone only murders, or rapes, or beats their wife in the privacy of their own home, it is still a moral problem.

What about drug use? Is that a moral problem, in that someone smoking a joint or shooting up in the privacy of their own home (and not doing anything else wrong in their life), or is that only a practical problem, in that practically, it causes other moral problems to exist? You see, if you ask the question about murder, one would never say we can't allow murder because of the practical implications: the practical implications are that a moral wrong is occurring that destroys the fabric of society. But, drug use? Can we say that the use itself is the evil society is trying to prevent, or it leads to evils we wish to prevent, like murder, rape, etc....?

If drug use is a moral problem, then there is only one solution, we must fight it like we fight other true evils like rape. But, if it is a practical problem, then it is like traffic, or pollution, or drinking (and driving, which is drinking's big attendant problem). If it is a practical problem, shouldn't we find a practical solution, rather than a zero sum game solution that involves either winning completely, or losing completely? What if we compromised so as to reduce harm as much as possible?

If drug use is a practical problem, then the solution would be to try and reduce the problem as much as possible, not to go to war. Methods of reducing harm are so obvious, too, that it hurts to see us chase our own tails trying to "fix" things by doing the dumb stuff we're doing. Now, instead of being able to focus on moral problems, we've created a greater market for moral problems, and we focus greater attention on the practical problem of drugs than we do with the moral problems of true crime.

Clearly this could be a rallying point for liberals and conservatives alike. I just don't see how it can be considered to be a moral problem what people do in the privacy of their own lives that doesn't specifically hurt someone else. Will we ever get real on this?

Where's the Danger?

Maybe I haven't paid enough attention since the election, or paid too much beforehand, but have I been missing a few orange alerts or something? It seems as if every holiday, every day where inordinant amounts of people got into cars or airplanes for the last 3 years, all we heard were terror alerts coming from the government. Maybe I haven't paid attention well of late, but it seems to me that there hasn't been a terror alert in a month, since the election ended. There were, however, many terror alerts right before the election. But then Bush won, and Ashcroft resigned noting that the nation was "now" safe from terrorism (I guess since there is no more need to alarm the public, since there are no more elections, we are now safe).

Now, Thanksgiving has come and gone and the only thing I saw on the news about travel advisories was about how crowded it was. Nary a word on terrorism.

Now, the Bush administration couldn't have been using false threats of terror to alarm the country, could they have? Ooops, treason, defeatism, prison, reeducation. Sorry!

Election Silence

Alright, I've been caught up in my own misery since the election. I haven't blogged in the slightest, although I've sat angrily for a long time. I'm going to blog more frequently, and who knows, maybe people will even begin to read this site. In the meantime, I know I'm just whistling in the wind, but what the hell.

I really think that the right is engaging in full scale war on the normal people in this country in search of a theoracy/corporate takeover of our country. It is time to respond like we really want to win. It is no longer time to take the high road, we must take the winning road, by whatever means necessary, since that is what's being done to us.

Therefore, I think it's time that we start fighting the right in every venue we can. We should no longer listen to or read their media. I know it's nice to see what they're saying, but they don't care about what we're saying, why should we care about what they're saying? Furthermore, they use our listening in and general liberal interest in what all sides are saying as validation of their point of view when the ratings come out. So, let's starve their media, let's starve their corporations. They make fun of us, calling us out of touch elites, limousine liberals. Well, let's put our money where our mouths are, don't patronize their companies if you can at all help it.

To that end, I have found a site which begins to put together a rudimentary list of "blue" companies and "red" companies, ie - those that give to Democrats and those that give to Republicans. My view: don't patronize (if you can help it), any company that gives more than, say, 60% of their political giving to Republicans. Let's make it harder for them to survive.Like I said, this is war, let's fight like we really care about the results.

"We will beat them in their stores, in their companies, in shopping malls, in the gas stations, we will never give up, we will win" or something Churchillian like that.

Go to the site Choose the Blue, and live it.

Update: At the very least, start making these choices where you get your gas. The only company that I see which gives to Democrats (the others give overwhelmingly to Republicans) is Shell Oil. Start out by going there exclusively. It's an easy choice.