Author: Athenian

A quick glance at various stories that seemed to slide by over the last few days would suggest that we are not. By “we” I mean more than the usual suspects in this worst of all administrations. I also mean all the rest of us, from corrections officers in the US to poachers in Congo.

In the US, we are going to wreck the bi-partisan anti-proliferation policy of the last three decades, start closing our eyes in space, keep letting the rich get richer while shackling imprisoned women during childbirth.

In the Congo, we are eating our closest cousins to extinction.

To top it all off, a cabbie suggested to me that if the only way to contain bird flu was to kill all the birds then we should do it.

Links and excepts below the fold.

Wreck the anti-proliferation policy. link.

Presidents from both parties — from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton — had refused to make this deal, which India has wanted for more than three decades.
“It’s a terrible deal, a disaster,” said Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. “The Indians are free to make as much nuclear material as they want. Meanwhile, we’re going to sell them fuel for their civilian reactors. That frees up their resources for the military side, and that stinks.”

Closing our eyes in space. link

Budget cuts and poor management may be jeopardizing the future of our eyes in orbit — America’s fleet of environmental satellites, vital tools for forecasting hurricanes, protecting water supplies and predicting global warming.

Rich get richer. Worth reading the rest if you can find it. Krugman is always great. link

Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.

Shackled childbirth. link

America regards itself as an eminently civilized country, but in many states female prisoners who give birth are required to be held in shackles during labor. Besides being grotesquely inhumane, this appalling practice is medically dangerous.

Eating our cousins. link

As few as 5,000 may now remain in Congo, down from an estimated 100,000 in 1984, said Ino Guabini, a primatologist with the World Wildlife Fund.
snip
But for poor villagers, bonobos can be lucrative business, with much of the meat heading for expensive, clandestine meals at restaurants in the cities.
One bonobo can earn $200 for Richard Ipaka, a 50-year-old part-time poacher who lives in the provincial capital, Mbandaka.
“That’s enough money for two months,” he said.
Like many Congolese, he said he did not know bonobos are found in the wild only in his country. And like many others, he was skeptical that the ape is endangered.
“Our ancestors have been eating bonobos for centuries. How could they disappear?” Ipaka said.
But the peace-loving bonobos are increasingly difficult to sight, and not just because they’re good at hiding, suspended from the high branches of trees or swiftly traversing the lattice of thick, muddy roots strewn over the forest floor.

Even though it is a silly AP article entitled “‘Hippie Chimps’ Fast Dissappearing” you should read it all and much more. The really sad thing about losing the bonobos is that they, at least, have found a non-violent way to live. Some people have suggested that we are so close to chimpanzees that we should be reclassified as Pan Sapiens. It is the “sapiens” part that I always have trouble with.

Sorry to use Times Select sources but Krugman et al deserve to be read even behind a wall –

The Taliban apparently shot down a Chinook helicopter killing all 17 aboard. Hostile Fire May Have Downed U.S. Copter.

If confirmed, Tuesday’s attack would apparently be the first time a U.S.-led coalition aircraft here has been downed by hostile fire, representing a major new threat to the coalition. The U.S.-backed mujahedeen war against Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s finally turned when the Afghan fighters acquired the ability to shoot down Soviet aircraft.
[snip]
Concerns already have been on the rise that rebel attacks here have been escalating into a conflict on the scale of that in Iraq.

More than 660 people have been killed in Afghanistan since March — including 465 suspected insurgents, 29 U.S. troops, 43 Afghan police and soldiers, and 125 civilians — a level unprecedented since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
[snip]
The violence has left much of desperately poor Afghanistan off-limits to aid workers.

Afghan and U.S. officials have predicted that the situation will deteriorate in the lead-up to legislative elections in September — the next key step toward democracy after a quarter-century of war.

That is bad enough but it is this Chicago Tribune story that really bodes ill:

Shayesta Khan should not have been killed. He was about 75, a village elder with a long white beard and a white cap, a peacemaker who settled local squabbles. He said he liked the Americans and once helped U.S. troops search a villager’s home for weapons.
Khan never expected U.S. soldiers to show up at his house in the middle of the night. When they did, bursting into his family compound on May 17, Khan was asleep. By the time the soldiers left, Khan was dead, shot in his pajamas in his bedroom.
[snip]
Such errors have happened before–homes have been bombed by mistake, innocent people have been caught in crossfire. But Khan’s death is different.

He was an old man shot in his bedroom, and despite an informant’s tip, no bombmaking material was found in the family compound. His death prompted the Afghan government to pay Khan’s family about $4,000 and make a rare public criticism of U.S. troops. It also has highlighted the increasing tension between Afghans and Americans in some parts of the country.

Afghan officials worry insurgents could use the death to recruit followers or turn people against the U.S.-led coalition.
[snip]
The family said the soldiers arrived after midnight, breaking open a side door, where steps lead to an open area outside Khan’s bedroom. In the confusion, family members heard shouts and then gunshots.

Khan’s sons said he was trying to light the lantern above his bed when he was shot. Intelligence official Esmati, who has investigated the case, said he believes Khan was trying to grab a shirt. The bullets hit just above Khan’s bed and the door. They appear to have been fired from outside, through the windows.

Afghan officials who saw the body said Khan was shot several times, on the left side of his head and body. Azimi, the defense spokesman, said Khan was innocent.

“Someone should be put on trial for this,” he said. “He was just an old man, lying down in his bed. This was not just a mistake. He was not running away.” Emphasis added.

We failed to finish the job in Afghanistan because of Bush’s urgent desire to invade Iraq. NATO had offered to put up to 60,000 troops into the country (this is following the successful invasion) and was rebuffed by the Administration. The Stabilization force they did allow was, and is, restricted to Kabul. OBL was allowed to get away. Tensions are rising between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And now we are killing respected elders in their beds and our birds are being shot out of the sky.

Bush did not just break the prime rule “Never get involved in a land war in Asia” once. He did it twice.

It is a real heartbreaker because if we had done Afghanistan right and deferred Iraq until it could be done legally and properly, America and Americans would be a lot more popular around the world right now.

Michael Ignatieff’s piece in the New York Times titled Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?  is second on the list of most emailed articles, i.e. high on their Recommended List. While it contains some stuff that is a joy to read, Mr Ignatieff asks several wrong questions which of course lead to wrong answers.

He begins by quoting Jefferson’s letter for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

”To some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,” he wrote, the American form of republican self-government would become every nation’s birthright. Democracy’s worldwide triumph was assured, he went on to say, because ”the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion” would soon convince all men that they were born not to be ruled but to rule themselves in freedom.

Powerful words. However, Ignatieff seems to think that W is a “gambler from Texas” who has bet his presidency on the Iraq war:

If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office. For any president, it must be daunting to know already that his reputation depends on what Jefferson once called ”so inscrutable [an] arrangement of causes and consequences in this world.”

Bush will not be remembered as a “plain-speaking visionary” even if peace breaks out all over and the self-satisfied arrogance of this intellectual midget could not be daunted by anything.

Here comes the good part:

The consequences are more likely to be positive if the president begins to show some concern about the gap between his words and his administration’s performance. For he runs an administration with the least care for consistency between what it says and does of any administration in modern times. The real money committed to the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is trifling. The president may have doubled the National Endowment for Democracy’s budget, but it is still only $80 million a year. But even if there were more money, there is such doubt in the Middle East that the president actually means what he says — in the wake of 60 years of American presidents cozying up to tyrants in the region — that every dollar spent on democracy in the Middle East runs the risk of undermining the cause it supports. Actual Arab democrats recoil from the embrace of American good intentions. Just ask a community-affairs officer trying to give American dollars away for the promotion of democracy in Mosul, in northern Iraq, how easy it is to get anyone to even take the money, let alone spend it honestly.

 And then there are the prisoners, the hooded man with the wires hanging from his body, the universal icon of the gap between the ideals of American freedom and the sordid — and criminal — realities of American detention and interrogation practice. The fetid example of these abuses makes American talk of democracy sound hollow. It will not be possible to encourage the rule of law in Egypt if America is sending Hosni Mubarak shackled prisoners to torture. It will be impossible to secure democratic change in Morocco or Afghanistan or anywhere else if Muslims believe that American guards desecrated the Koran. The failure to convict anybody higher than a sergeant for these crimes leaves many Americans and a lot of the world wondering whether Jefferson’s vision of America hasn’t degenerated into an ideology of self-congratulation, whose function is no longer to inspire but to lie.

Unfortunately it is pretty much all downhill from here. Later on he dumps all over Germans and Canadians, among others:

Other democratic leaders may suspect Bush is right, but that doesn’t mean they are joining his crusade. Never have there been more democracies. Never has America been more alone in spreading democracy’s promise.

Here his premise is simply flawed, probably because he is wearing blinders. Germany and Canada and all the others “sat out” the Iraq war not because they don’t believe in spreading freedom and democracy, even at the point of a gun (he is right that the point of a gun is often very useful in securing freedom and democracy, Germany and Japan being simply the most prominent examples) but because nations like people don’t enjoy being told to bugger off and then ordered to help with a massively risky and illegal undertaking. In Afghanistan all these countries offered treasure and blood. It is simply unfair to criticize them for wanting no part in an illegal adventure that was clearly not about spreading freedom and democracy after the US administration told them get lost.

Ignatieff then speaks of the retreat of American liberalism from the Jeffersonian ideals:

 

The fact that many foreigners do not happen to buy into the American version of promoting democracy may not be much of a surprise. What is significant is how many American liberals don’t share the vision, either.

 On this issue, there has been a huge reversal of roles in American politics. Once upon a time, liberal Democrats were the custodians of the Jeffersonian message that American democracy should be exported to the world, and conservative Republicans were its realist opponents. Beginning in the late 1940’s, as the political commentator Peter Beinart has rediscovered, liberals like Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Adlai Stevenson realized that liberals would have to reinvent themselves. This was partly a matter of principle — they detested Soviet tyranny — and partly a matter of pragmatism. They wanted to avoid being tarred as fellow travelers, the fate that had met Franklin Roosevelt’s former running mate, the radical reformer Henry Wallace. The liberals who founded Americans for Democratic Action refounded liberalism as an anti-Communist internationalism, dedicated to defending freedom and democracy abroad from Communist threat. The missionary Jeffersonianism in this reinvention worried many people — for example, George Kennan, the diplomat and foreign-policy analyst who argued that containment of the Communist menace was all that prudent politics could accomplish.

[snip, unfortunately. It is a good bit.]

 It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy. At the time, many conservative realists argued for detente, risk avoidance and placation of the Soviet bear. Faced with the Republican embrace of Jeffersonian ambitions for America abroad, liberals chose retreat or scorn. Bill Clinton — who took reluctant risks to defend freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo — partly arrested this retreat, yet since his administration, the withdrawal of American liberalism from the defense and promotion of freedom overseas has been startling. The Michael Moore-style left conquered the Democratic Party’s heart; now the view was that America’s only guiding interest overseas was furthering the interests of Halliburton and Exxon. The relentless emphasis on the hidden role of oil makes the promotion of democracy seem like a devious cover or lame excuse. The unseen cost of this pseudo-Marxist realism is that it disconnected the Democratic Party from the patriotic idealism of the very electorate it sought to persuade.

 John Kerry’s presidential campaign could not overcome liberal America’s fatal incapacity to connect to the common faith of the American electorate in the Jeffersonian ideal. Instead he ran as the prudent, risk-avoiding realist in 2004 — despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he had fought in Vietnam. Kerry’s caution was bred in the Mekong. The danger and death he encountered gave him some good reasons to prefer realism to idealism, and risk avoidance to hubris. Faced with a rival who proclaimed that freedom was not just America’s gift to mankind but God’s gift to the world, it was understandable that Kerry would seek to emphasize how complex reality was, how resistant to American purposes it might be and how high the price of American dreams could prove. As it turned out, the American electorate seemed to know only too well how high the price was in Iraq, and it still chose the gambler over the realist. In 2004, the Jefferson dream won decisively over American prudence.

This part is really tricky. There be minefields in here. Was Reagan really talking about promoting democracy? Is that why he supported a covert and dirty war against the Sandinistas? Why are Clinton’s wars called “reluctant risks”? If the interests of Halliburton and Exxon are NOT guiding America’s actions overseas, why was the war in Iraq seemingly designed around Halliburton’s needs and NOT those of our armed forces and of the Iraqi’s we’re there to `liberate’? Did the American electorate have any real idea of how high the price tag for Iraq would eventually be? Did Bush win decisively?

But Iraqi freedom also depends on something whose measurement is equally complex: what price, in soldiers’ bodies and lives, the American people are prepared to pay. The members of the American public are ceaselessly told that stabilizing Iraq will make them more secure. They are told that fighting the terrorists there is better than fighting them at home. [You know what I think of that.] They are told that victory in Iraq will spread democracy and stability in the arc from Algeria to Afghanistan. They are told that when this happens, ”they” won’t hate Americans, or hate them as much as they do now. It’s hard to know what the American people believe about these claims, but one vital test of whether the claims are believed is the number of adolescent men and women prepared to show up at the recruiting posts in the suburban shopping malls and how many already in the service or Guard choose to re-enlist and sign up for another tour in Ramadi or Falluja. The current word is that recruitment is down, and this is a serious sign that someone at least thinks America is paying too high a price for its ideals.

The American public is promised all these wonderful things but is never exhorted to pitch in and help. While we don’t hear much about cakewalks anymore, taxes keep on being cut, the dead are hidden, our leaders do not call upon people to enlist, the war is kept out of sight, as much as possible, and we are urged to go shopping. What is this, the implementation of the phrase `when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping’?

There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson’s dream must work. Its ultimate task in American life is to redeem loss, to rescue sacrifice from oblivion and futility and to give it shining purpose. The real truth about Iraq is that we just don’t know — yet — whether the dream will do its work this time. This is the somber question that hangs unanswered as Americans approach this Fourth of July.

Indeed. It would help if our leaders started giving us the truth.

[Update] Added poll and crossposted to dKos

No attacks have occurred in the United States since September 11, 2001.

Osama bin Laden arguably helped the President’s reelection campaign.

Most of us were convinced that Al Qaeda was in favor of a Bush victory.

Why?

They have us where they want us. Taking out Saddam was a double gift to Al Qaeda. Not only did we take out an avowedly secular enemy of the Wahhabis, we also placed all of our best troops in an illegal, immoral and untenable position. The Iraqi Resistance has the right to try kill the forces of the invaders. We too would reserve this right. But it goes beyond this. It is as if Moslems had invaded a European country or attempted to subdue a European people in their empire demanding independence .

When Greece began her bid to break free of the Ottoman Empire, volunteers from across Christendom arrived to help fight off the `Turk.’ Lord Byron (the poet) would have been labeled a `foreign fighter’ and shipped off to Gitmo.  The mythology we are providing to OBL’s fantasy future nation would be worth 200 billion if we were making friends. Instead, we are training our enemies with the lives of our best.

Al Qaeda is growing up and thinking strategically. What better than to have the Americans demonstrate their impotence in Afghanistan and Iraq and their perfidy at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Cross-hairs grow on the backs of every American around the world, without Al Qaeda having to lift a finger.

The best, absolutely priceless part of all this for the terrorist masterminds who determine success depending on how many people died that day, is that they get to train their forces for free with live ammunition, against the best troops in the field today. They will take virtually unlimited casualties in order to keep the training grounds open and since we cannot police the borders…

The wingnuts figure that it is better to kill terrorists in Iraq rather than in the States. The terrorists figure that it is better to learn how to kill the best and most fearsome Americans in Iraq for free while establishing new links and creating a groundswell of support among their target demographic: Muslims and Arabs and especially and especially young Muslim Arabs, of whom there are many and they do not have much else to do.

Even if things begin to go south for Al Qaeda in Iraq, they will have gained priceless knowledge. They now know how to shape charges in order to slice through an armored vehicle. They have probably figured out how we jam their signals and are learning how to circumvent. They certainly know and have demonstrated to the world that our military and our intelligence agencies are not the infallible, invincible gods that we had half-convinced the world they were.

It is sad when myths are shattered. It took a long time and a lot of effort to achieve what one idiot destroyed in half a term.

My prediction: Al Qaeda will strike again inside the US when they next need to lower American intelligence. (note the lack of capitalization) This event will again be seized upon by the government to grant greater powers to itself. This is also in Al Qaeda’s interest.

To summarize: The Islamic fundies are really happy to be fighting a proxy war with the Christian fundies in Iraq, which is swell for them but shit for the rest of us because it weakens the best and strengthens the worst.

Crossposted among and between dKos, BooTrib and EuroTrib.

You detect and catch a young man trying to infiltrate your meeting about the “disappeared.” What do you do?

The minister responsible for “disappearing” your wife and your daughter to the rape-dungeons is in your sights. Do you fire?

You hold your fire and let the young man go, according to the movie, at least, where it even works out. The daughter is raped and machine-gunned but in the end Argentina becomes a democracy and Banderas is re-united with Emma Thompson.

Emma managed to escape from her captors by playing on the weakness of the only half-way decent prison guard. The only man who would not rape her was also the only one who would respond to an invitation and place himself in position to be garroted. [Discuss, though there is more]
George Bush destroyed the American Exception. America is now just another country with flawed elections, corrupt politics and suppressed dissent. A country which invades others with no legal basis, which defecates on the noblest desires of her friends while lauding the horrors of those most opposed to her true nature. And not least a country which “disappears” people. (I would provide links but I think the whole site is a source of links on this. Look up Susanhu, for example).

A number of questions arise.

Can we imagine ourselves a better America and a better world? If WE can’t see it, WE can’t get there.

When change comes, should the perpetrators, their enablers and their crimes be investigated in depth, even if it means civil war, or should we follow the Argentinean model and give a blanket amnesty in order to settle the crisis and allow the healing to begin?

At what point does violent resistance become not merely moral but imperative? Use your imagination. Imagine…

… the Germans and Japanese, victorious in WWII, occupying your state.
… the Chinese, a half century from now occupying the vast under-populated lands of North America.
… my aliens occupying your home town in order to “improve” America.

Now, imagine the reaction from
you,
the rednecks,
the survivalists,
the state,
the feds,
the army,
assorted other loonies and
bigfoot
as everyone tries to muscle-in on his territory.

We all have a bloody streak in us. I am completely against capital punishment and yet if I actually apprehended one of the people who has been poisoning dogs in the northern neighborhoods of Athens, I would do things to them that would make Nazis blush.

Hence, the poll. (BTW, while Greek law is often very progressive it falls down completely on this).

“We disagree with the characterization. There was significant postwar planning,” David Almacy, a White House spokesman, said.

“More importantly, the memo in question was written eight months before the war began — there was significant postwar planning in the time that elapsed,” he said.

Reuters story

“Some things we prepared for did not happen, like large numbers of refugees needing humanitarian assistance,” Almacy said. “And others we did not expect, such as large numbers of regime elements fleeing the battlefield only to return later.”

The death toll continues to mount from a violent insurgency that has killed hundreds of American troops and Iraqi civilians. The United States, which led the invasion in March 2003, has said it will not pull out until Iraqi forces are trained to take over security for their country.

“Significant postwar planning”

Significant? That’s the best they can do? Then of course they studiously ignored the plans they did have.

“We did not expect…”

Why in the world not? Key words here are “regime” and “elements.” Did you think these guys were going throw flowers at you?

“Not pull out until Iraqi forces are trained…”

Not before hell freezes over, then.  See,  this, this and this.

And while I haven’t had time to read this long article on torture yet (have printed it out) it sure looks interesting.

Update [2005-6-13 7:45:39 by Athenian]:
The New York Times has a story also intimating how long it will take to get a reliable Iraqi military:

Despite the Bush administration’s insistent optimism, Americans working with the Iraqis in the field believe that it could be several years, at least, before the new Iraqi forces will be ready to stand alone against the insurgents.

[snip]

A few days before the Mahmudiya raids, Iraqi soldiers at a local checkpoint apparently fell asleep in the hours before dawn, and the checkpoint was ambushed by insurgents. They tossed a grenade into the building, then stormed in and executed those left alive, killing at least eight Iraqis, American soldiers said. Since the attack, American troops have been conducting nighttime patrols to make sure the Iraqis stay awake.

[snip]

On several occasions, Sgt. First Class Michael Hanaway admonished the Iraqi soldiers to watch the perimeter instead of staring at the house being raided.

“You’ve got to look that way,” he shouted, motioning. “Not at me. That way.” The sergeant sighed. “They probably shouldn’t have been out here,” he said. Emphasis mine.

The novel Replay by Ken Grimwood sent its victim back to his youth, over and over again. My question draws its inspiration from this, with important differences.

Instead of going back some twenty-five years, you will go back a century or more. Instead of dying when you reach forty-two again, you are again reincarnated in the universe you have created, unlike the Replay character.

So this is the deal: Where would you like to start intervening in human history? Remember, it is a one way trip that will last forever. You will be transported to whatever time period you choose and will be reincarnated in the universe you just died in. I know that being a teenager again will be a drag but think of the advantages of being a baby again. : )

You could start deep in prehistory and guide humanity over the millennia before anyone has left Africa. You could start at the time of Christ and help spread His message with greater fidelity. You could start with Marx and help realize the communist ideal. Where do you think it all went wrong and where do you think the fulcrum point is?

Usually, when faced with this kind of question, I take the Cycladic civilization but my recent thinking has been revolving around Athens in the 5th century, perhaps because there are so many parallels. Athens tragically lost the Peloponnesian War through internal flaws and it is these that I yearn to fix. A warning about the coming plague with some advice regarding an certain foolish military adventure in a far away land of which the Athenians knew little.

Syracuse = Iraq?

or

vice versa?

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

I’ll include a poll though comments would be better.

By YUIS JUTEPOIER

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The mothership was spotted a couple years out. The aliens claimed to be friends of humanity, their only beef was with the United States. Claiming that the United States possessed Weapons of Interstellar Destruction and therefore threatened them directly, the Arcturans took their case to the United Nations. While informed observers doubted that the star-bound Pioneer and Voyager probes constituted WIDs, many were convinced by Ambassador Vader’s report.

Knowing full-well that UN inspections would uncover, at best, under-funded long-range plans for interstellar telescopes the Arcturan viceroy preempted their report by launching his invasion of the United States. His Excellency, Faud Reid Ratha III, however, had studied human history and was not about to repeat the mistakes he felt the Americans should have learned in Iraq, if not Vietnam.

Though Faud had too few troops to properly occupy a country the size of the US, he did know the first principles of power. After destroying the US military and political leadership (which had not prepared the country for the inevitable and had not planted a ready-made resistance) in the first few hours of intense orbital bombardment, his forces quickly captured the levers of state and bureaucracy and the means of communication, followed swiftly by the major armories and population centers. Signs of civil disturbance, such as looting and rioting, were forestalled with deadly force.

Though the Arcturan Empire stood to gain a great deal by occupying the US, (apart, that is from the strategic goal of knocking out what was surely going to become a major regional power in this part of the galaxy) Faud was generous parceling out the spoils and several other human states contributed forces to protect their new assets. At the same time he realized that whatever he was going to do in the United States could either be done in a lighting strike or over decades.

He opted for the former even though his forces had just finished putting down the insurgency on Alpha Centauri I, `b’ and before that had taken a mere seven years to crush the revolt on Sirius VII. They knew how to operate in small units, to blend in to a community, to exact overwhelming revenge, to instill both fear and hope. So elections were held around the US under proportional representation and power quickly passed to the governments thus constituted.

It was no easier for the Arcturans to give up power than for anyone else and they too gave themselves the right of detention even after the symbolic transfer of “sovereignty.” It was this, perhaps more than anything else, which crystallized the American Resistance into a potent force from a ragtag collection of right-wing militias, survivalists, religious, fanatics, Texans, Communists, common criminals and former-regime dead-enders.

Though still bitterly divided amongst themselves, the AR insurgents have learned how to work together and have killed several hundred Imperial troops despite the overwhelming technological advantage held by the off-worlders. They have been far more effective against those Americans working with the Arcturans to help reestablish services, security and the rule of law. At the same time, heavy handed Arcturan practices, such as systematic round-ups and use of heavy weapons in urban areas, as well as allegations of torture, strenuously denied by Imperial officials, have cost the Empire much of the local and interstellar goodwill it initially enjoyed after the heinous attacks on the Imperial Capital by Schaundi terrorists on 6/13/102027.

At this stage it is still possible that the Arcturan intervention will work out for both the Arcturan Empire and for the United States and the local species. Though the Empire is losing several irreplaceable troops every month (motherships do not grow on trees) and the recent campaign of assassinations against `collaborators’ would not seem to inspire confidence, Imperial officials asserted that their campaign against the `terrorists’ was gathering steam and that it was only a matter of time before the newly elected government could take over all security tasks and the Imperial forces could be redeployed at more pressing crisis spots. Critics say that the Empire has bitten off more than it can chew and that it is bound to choke.

Additional reporting by humans in the United States and elsewhere on Earth. They are best left anonymous.

A man is slated to be murdered by the state in revenge for the killing of an old woman. His sister has liver disease and he applied for some extra time in order to donate part of his own liver to her. This might seem like a reasonable request. Most people spend years and even decades on Death Row, what’s a few extra months, especially when it might save an innocent life. Not to the Indiana Parole Board, according to this Reuters story, appearing, appropriately, in the Oddly Enough section.

Indiana officials recommended on Friday that a man facing execution next week should not get clemency, a decision that could end his attempt to donate part of his liver to his sister.
[snip]
A spokeswoman for the Indiana Parole Board said the panel’s four members voted unanimously to recommend that Johnson be denied clemency. There was no separate vote on a stay, she said.

Update [2005-5-25 6:33:35 by Athenian]: “Gregory Scott Johnson died by injection at 12:28 a.m.” according to this AP story. The governor denied Johnson’s request and released letters from doctors supporting his position:

The governor’s office released a letter Daniels received from two transplant doctors who said the presence of a hepatitis B antibody in Johnson’s system and his heavy body weight made him unsuitable as a donor.

Given the sister’s condition and the fact that she likely will need a kidney as well, she would be better served by obtaining a full liver and kidney from the same donor through customary channels, the letter said.

May he rest in peace.

The above is sickening enough but it was the final paragraph in the story that prompted this diary:

In a Florida case, an inmate was denied a request to donate a kidney to his brother. The condemned man was later exonerated and released from jail, but his brother died waiting for a transplant, Dieter said. [executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center]

The entire criminal justice and penal system in the United States is a blight upon the country. People have been executed even though their defense counsel was asleep or drunk during the trial. But to cause, even indirectly, the death of innocent relatives because of unnecessary and spiteful cruelty in an unseemly rush to kill prisoners, is flat out disgusting. What is wrong with these people?  

Last spring apprehension gripped the citizens of this small country. The long ruling Socialists had just been voted out of power leaving the untested center-right New Democracy party to face the incredible challenge of hosting the first Olympics to be held in Greece for 108 years.

The Greeks are famously ill-organized procrastinators whose saving grace is their pride. The country was fearful that the last-minute way of doing things was not going to be good enough this time. As we walked through the construction site that our city had been for so long and we saw how much remained to be done on this day last year, we despaired. We compared the whole enterprise to a slow motion train wreck and feared the worst.

And then the gods of Olympus intervened.  
It began with football. The last major football meet that Greece went to was the World Cup in the United States. We lost our group level games with a total score of 10-0 (4-0, 4-0, 2-0). So we were not entirely confident that our national team would not disgrace us again in Portugal last June for the Euro Cup.

The gods protected our goalmouth (ask the Czechs) as the Cinderella story unfolded. Greece beat the hosts, saw off the Spaniards, kicked French ass, survived the Czechs and beat the hosts again to become the most unlikely Cup winners ever. You really should have been in Athens that Fourth of July.

Then the much feared Olympics, with an added billion euros in security spending on top of everything else because of US-UK paranoia. I remember counting 3 blimps (two security) and about 6 to 12 helicopters and airplanes flying at ALL times in the days before the games. The games were bloodless and even security-alert-free (unlike Atlanta) and a great success.

Tonight, Greece won its first ever Eurovision song contest, the very same contest that gave Abba to the world. Yes, I know it is sad, inane and boring. In the national morale stakes however, it is a wonderful tonic and caps off a truly magical year, which followed a long time during which national esteem was bumping along the dirt road.

Perhaps what you should take from this is that just as things can deteriorate rapidly, so too can magical seeming events happen suddenly, unexpectedly and swiftly. The gods or God (if you prefer) move in mysterious ways. Alternatively, streaks happen.