Category: Civil Rights

Zim Update

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Well, it’s been about a month, so it’s time for another update on what is happening in Zimbabwe.

The two biggest pieces of news are Robert Mugabe’s health, he is 85 years old, and there are officially denied rumors that he has gone to Qatar for prostate cancer treatment, and he has missed some significant meetings.

Additionally, we are beginning to see senior ZANU-PF members vying for position, with, for example, someone having put up the party youth group (I assume that this mean young adults) to call for the removal of John Nkomo and Joyce Mujuru from the party presidium.

We are also seeing the situation with the Chiadzwa diamond fields get out of hand,with a threat by the world Diamond Council to suspend Zimbabwe from the Kimberly Process certification, which would label one of their few sources of hard currency “blood diamonds,” though threat comes with a statement which immediately backtracks from the threat, though they are making noise about revisiting the issue in November.

The Parliament has also opened an investigation into the accusations of brutality, corruption, and slave labor, and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses has made a call for the prompt release of the Kimberly report.

The reason that this is significant is because it is a sign of loss of control by Mugabe. It’s fairly clear that he feels that he cannot give the order for the Zimbabwean military to stand down in Chiadzwa because it would eliminate one of the few remaining means that he has to bribe reward loyalists, and it is unclear if the army would obey if he were to give the order.

This is an indication that Mugabe is losing power within ZANU-PF as people look to his exit.

On a more prosaic level, it looks like Mugabe is trying to kill Tsvangerai again: He has had to sack somemembers of his security team for “misplacing” transport for a significant portion of his security detail, which left him ill-protected…..Then again, maybe I’m just a cynic.

Meanwhile, the Mutambara faction of the MDC appears to be in the process of self destructing, with conflicting claims as to who leads the MDC-M, reports that the party has split in 3 parts, 3 MDC-M MPs moving to join the MDC-T, and Mutambara being unable to convince an MP from his own party to step down and take an ambassadorship in order to allow deputy president Gibson Sibanda to keep his position on cabinet as Minister of State for National Healing and Reconciliation. (The constitution prohibits a cabinet post being held by someone not an MP for more than 3 months)

We had Zuma taking over for the completely useless and biased Mbeki as mediator, and while we got some strong language, such as Zuma calling Mugabe’s behavior in negotiations deviant, but the results, despite Tsvangerai’s pleas for action, have not gone beyond a SADC call for an extraordinary summit.

Most notably, you have the issues of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General, Johannes Tomana, both tremendously corrupt and incompetent ZANU-PF loyalists, which means that the power of the purse and state violence (though both the police and military) remain firmly in the hands of Mugabe.

With the elimination of the $Z as a currency, this has reduced Gono’s power to pay off people, but he is once again attempting to reintroduce the local currency, though Finance Minister Tendai Biti is fighting him tooth and nail on this.

The harassment of MDC members of parliament continues, with police making trumped up arrests of opposition MPs.

It’s clearly an attempt to reduce the MDC majority in parliament, since once convicted, they can no longer serve, and so there would have to be by-elections.

The problem for the ZANU-PF with this strategy is that they are polling in the single digits, (also here).

ZANU-PF has proposed 5-year extension on the current 1-year freeze on elections, but the MDC has made it clear that it has no interest in such a proposal.

The 2nd of ZANU-PF is to make elections impossible, either by pleading poverty, or by refusing to staff the election board created by the unity government agreement.

Meanwhile, the IMF has issued $400 million in foreign currency reserves, which would be good news, except for the fact that Gideon Gono (remember him?) is insisting that he is in charge of disbursing all these funds.

I’d sooner have Bernie Madoff managing that money.

It Looks Like Campaign Finance Limits Are Dead

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At least, that is my take on reading Dahlia Lithwick’s observations in court.

We will be seeing corporate sponsored electioneering in 2010, but I expect the 5-4 decision to add a twist which will allow labor unions, which are outspent under today’s rules, to continue to remain in their straight jacket.

We have some profoundly deceitful and venal men on the bench.

This will likely be the 2nd most disgraceful decision in the past 9 years.

Ashcroft Can Be Sued Over Misuse of Material Witness Statute

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There are limits to the immunity of people in law enforcement.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that you can sue someone for being wrongly arrested or imprisoned, but not for being wrongly indicted or prosecuted, so a 3 judge federal appellate panel, by a vote of 2½ to ½, there was a partial concurrence by one of the judges, said that a Lawsuit against John Ashcroft over the misuse of the material witness statute can proceed.

Basically, the purpose of the material witness statute is to ensure that a witness who might otherwise become unavailable, i.e. skip town, will be available to the authorities, but John Ashcroft used it to detain people on his whim, which the judges describes as, “repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

Because a prosecutor cannot be sued for a prosecution, but he can be for an arrest.

Glenn Greenwald’s take on this is a good read.

Whoever Did This Should Be Fired

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While it is completely appropriate for the Pentagon to lay out rules regarding the press and tactically sensitive information, what should not be done, but has been done anyway, is to have their work screened by a public relations firm in order to determine if they are sufficiently “friendly” to the military, as the has been done.

What’s more, it’s not just any whore house public relations firm, it’s the Rendon Group, who manufactured the Iraqi National Congress and provided part of the excuse for the invasion of Iraq, as well as being a CIA front for ginning up the invasion of Panama.

It should noted that similar “rating” of journalists resulted in a Stars and Stripes reporter being denied an embed:

U.S. Army officials in Iraq engaged in a similar vetting practice two months ago, when they barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.

The contract has now been canceled, but anyone associated with this program should be fired, and to the degree that this violates the law, or military regulations, they should be prosecuted.

Yes, This Photo Needs to be Published

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On the right is a photo of Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, 21, of New Portland, Maine, in happier times.

Below is a photo of him dying, after being struck by an RPG in Afghanistan.

Secretary of Defense of Robert Gates tried to strong arm the Associated press into not distributing the photograph.

It is Secretary Gates behavior, and not that of the Associated Press which is repulsive.

In Bob Gates world, or for that matter, in George W. Bush’s world, there must be no reporting of the realities of war.

Robert Capa War Photos

Following the Vietnam War, the defense establishment concluded that the only way to deal with bad press is to muzzle the press, hence the press restrictions in Grenada, the Gulf War, the invasions of Afghanistan, and Iraq.

In there world, there is no Bob Capa, documenting, and honoring soldiers at (top to bottom) Omaha Beach, or the Spanish civil War, of the invasion of France in 1940 (I think).

Far from being decision “appalling” and a breach of “common decency,” as secretary Gates suggests, these pictures reveal the sacrifices of our fighting men, and honor them.

People like Bob Gates want to bury this sacrifice, because in showing it for all to see, it will sometimes raise questions about whether that sacrifice is truly justified, and that is not acceptable in the minds of the old men who send the young men to die.

In addition to being a craven way to think, as it implies an unwillingness to support one’s own ideas, it is a slap in the face of the idea that it is civilians who decide when and where we fight, and when it is no longer worth it for us to fight.

This is about REMFs covering their own flabby, generally lily-white, asses.

Lance Corporal Bernard Doing Honor to Himself and the Corps

Judge Orders Federal Reserve to Release Documents under FOIA.

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District Judge Loretta Preska has ordered the Federal Reserve to turn over loan and collateral data for their emergency loans under the Freedom of Information Act.

This is very important news for a number of reasons:

  • It means that the public will get to review what was actually in this part of the Fed’s “sh$%pile for cash” program.
  • It will spawn other FOIA suits.

And most importantly:

  • Is an unequivocal ruling by the courts that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency and has to abide by federal rules how they do business.

I’m fairly certain that the Fed will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if it can, because those folks really believe that seeing the man behind the curtain would destroy the United States of America.

They are wrong, of course, but it is clear that this is what they believe.

Jesus Was Best Man at a Gay Wedding

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Seriously, this is a part of early Christian mythology:

A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai in Israel. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman ‘pronubus’ (a best man), overseeing a wedding. The pronubus is Christ. The married couple are both men.

Is the icon suggesting that a gay “wedding” is being sanctified by Christ himself? The idea seems shocking. But the full answer comes from other early Christian sources about the two men featured in the icon, St. Sergius and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who were Christian martyrs. These two officers in the Roman army incurred the anger of Emperor Maximian when they were exposed as ‘secret Christians’ by refusing to enter a pagan temple. Both were sent to Syria circa 303 CE where Bacchus is thought to have died while being flogged. Sergius survived torture but was later beheaded. Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

….

Prof. John Boswell, the late Chairman of Yale University’s history department, discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient Christian church liturgical documents, there were also ceremonies called the “Office of Same-Sex Union” (10th and 11th century), and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).

So much for “traditional” marriage.

What the Christofascist jihad against gay marriage is really about is that some (far too many) people need to use religion to excuse their hate, and that gays, and gay marriage, are simply the latest target for their “5 minutes of hate.”

That Sound is George Orwell Spinning in His Grave at 4800 RPM

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Amazon sold copies of 1984 and Animal Farm in E-Book format for use on its Kindle reader, and when the publisher objected, it removed the books from its store, and from the Kindles of people who had already purchased the books.

The people bought these books, and thought that they owned them, albeit without the option of donating them at a later time, etc., but they were wrong, and all traces were removed from their readers.

As both David Pogue and Boing Boing note, this mirrors a number of concerns that people have with the new IP regime, and how it will apply to digital data.

Of course, the fact that these books were consigned to the “memory hole”, a term created by George Orwell in his book 1984, the irony here is obvious:

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As I am wont to say, “Who says that irony is dead?”

Zimbabwe Update

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Well, the drafting of a new constitution is a complete mess, with ZANU-PF busing in thugs to disrupt the charter meeting.

In a darkly humorous development, it appears that ZANU-PF did not think it out fully, as they did not include transport back home for their thugs, who were stranded for a few days at the hotel at which the meeting is being held.

From the other side, there have been threats of boycotts from civil society groups, who claim that they have not been fully included in the process, and that parliamentarians have complete control of the process.

As a historical aside, this sort of stuff makes the US Constitutional convention, which was conducted in secret, look awfully attractive.

In terms of the current government, it appears that ZANU-PF is engineering trumped up charges against MDC members of parliament, in order to get them suspended, which, if done in sufficient quantities, would flip control of the chamber back to the ZANU-PF.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric about an inclusive government, I really don’t think that there will be any progress without a some external entity, and South Africa is the entity best suited to this, having a boot on Mugabe’s neck to coerce “good faith” moving forward.

Finally, it appears that the situation in the Zimbabwean diamond mines is getting worse. While the government has agreed to remove the army from the mines, “in phases”, but the army has refused to leave.

So the the “Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) has called for a temporary ban on trade in diamonds from Zimbabwe’s Marange fields“.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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On Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC, Chuck Todd said that the emperor had no clothes, when he said that in the Ricci case that, ““he majority actually, well, to put it bluntly, legislated from the bench.”

I have repeatedly called Chuck Todd, “one of the stupidest muthf%$#ers in the White House press room,” for his sometime absurdly naive acceptance of the beltway conventional wisdom.

This is not one of those times though. He nailed it when he described the conservative majority’s intent in this vote as being judicial activism, even if Joe Scarborough reacted like a cow that had just stepped on its own udder.

Let There Be No Kings

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It appears that Barack Obama is moving forward with a system of non-judicial indefinite detention.

The reports are that he plans to implement this through an executive order.

We know that it’s a bad policy, because they are leading off with a lie:

One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order.

“Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,” the official said. Such an order can be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should either be prosecuted or released.

Every major civil liberties organization in the country denounced the plan. What’s more, the idea that civil liberties groups might think that would somehow be “better” if it were implemented through an executive order, which puts the power for the decision in the hands on one man, as opposed to legislation, which requires public debate and places the decision in the hands on 535 men, is simply a lie.

What’s more, the criteria for indefinite detention, at least on the basis of his speech ago at the National Archives, is whether or not a conviction can be guaranteed, which sets the precedent that the government will only accord the protections of a court to those for whom it is guaranteed to convict.

This is more than un-American, it is anti-American.

I will not vote for, or support in any way, a politician who supports this, even if the “Republicans are worse.”

The Supreme Court Gets One Right, 8-1

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With Clarance “The Speed Bump” Thomas being the dissent.

Notwithstanding some very hostile questioning by justices at the arguments, the Supreme Court has ruled that strip searching a 13 year old girl because someone alleged she was carrying Advil on her is just wrong.

Unfortunately, they also said that the plaintiff, Savana Redding, could not pursue her lawsuit, because at the time, the law was not clear.

This is the first time in decades that the supreme court has ruled for student’s rights at school.

I guess the spectacle of a 13 year old white girl being stripped for possession of headache pills was too much for even them.

I rather imagine that if Ms. Redding were black, the vote would have been closer.

Now is the Time to Fire an Officer, President Obama

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Stars and Stripes is reporting that the US Army has barred one of its reporters from embedding with a unit because they found his coverage too aggressive:

Asserting that Stars and Stripes “refused to highlight” good news in Iraq that the U.S. military wanted to emphasize, Army officials have barred a Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division that is attempting to secure the violent city of Mosul.

…

Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news,” Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin’s embed request.

…

The Army’s denial of Druzin’s embed request appears to violate the Pentagon’s established ground rules regarding embedded reporters, which state: “These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information.”

Whoever gave this order, and whatever superiors backed them up on this, are in violation of military regulations, federal laws, military policy, and the basic values of this republic, and Barack Obama should fire them.

There is no allegation of a security breach, just that the reporter was not “cooperative.”

We Are Seeing a Real Change in Politics Here

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We now have a second threatened Democratic pol coming out in favor of gay marriage, the 1st was Chris Dodd, New Jersey Governor John Corzine, who currently trails his challenger significantly.

What this represents is a change in the politics of gay rights and gay marriage.

Democratic politicians are now seeing this position as a political asset rather than a political liability.

Barack Obama should note this when dealing with DOMA and DADT.

Dodd Comes Out in Favor of Marriage Equality

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I am not sure whether Chris Dodd’s official announcement of his support for marriage equality is being driven by a legitimate change in view, a recognition that the public is moving in this direction at a blindingly fast pace, or desperation over his otherwise low poll numbers in Connecticut following the entire business with his mortgage.

I really don’t care why he is doing this as much as I care that it is the right thing.