Neocon Snakes Slithering Away

Justin Raimondo is watching and listening as all the little neo snakes hiss some self-serving (if transparent) lies to distance themselves from the folly of Iraq; there they go, slither, slither: Kristol, Buckley, and Fukuyama---

"... Bill Kristol...the little Lenin of the neocons,

"'We have not had a serious three year effort to fight a war in Iraq, as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out.'

"...And all this time you thought American troops were fighting and dying in a deadly serious way. Alas, you were wrong, because, you see, the Bush administration was never serious about implementing the neocon agenda of 'liberating' the entire Middle East by force of arms.

"...William F. Buckley, Jr., the former enfant terrible of the conservative movement and founder of National Review magazine, the literary hub of right-wing activism since the late 1950s. In a piece for NR, the 'pope' of the American Right declared:

"'One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.

"'...One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

"'The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence...'

"The first postulate is based on – what? The answer is: nothing. Neither the history of the region, nor the proximity of Iraq to Iran, is taken into account by this axiom, which seems merely a projection of the American penchant for normalcy. In universalizing characteristics that may perhaps be unique to Americans, we have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of our hollow 'victory' and visited ruin upon our own interests and prestige, wrecking an entire country in the process.

"Speaking of mutant offspring, the neocon theoretician Francis Fukuyama, whose famous thesis that capital-H History has "ended" was the leitmotif of neoconservative thought in the early 1990s, has also defected from the ranks of the War Party, albeit proclaiming his own innocence in the process.

"'As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shi'ite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.'

"The only proper reaction to this is: Now he tells us?

"Like Buckley, there is no acknowledgment of his own personal error or responsibility, no apology for misleading his readers and those who took – and still take – him seriously."

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8606

Deceit And Greed At Harvard

Even as they were under contract to support the conversion of old Russia into a capitalist state, a couple Harvard academics were double-dipping. "If this case shows anything...it's that intelligence does not equal wisdom."

And greed does not equal wisdom does not equal academic integrity blah blah blah. As if this has anything to do with intelligence or wisdom. It's simple ethics, folks.

"...Mr. McClintick chronicled financial improprieties by those in charge of Harvard's Russia project, including Andrei Shleifer, a professor of economics who is a friend and protégé of Dr. Summers's, and Jonathan Hay, a Harvard-trained lawyer. The two men were accused of making personal investments in Russia at a time when they were working under contract to establish capitalism in the former Soviet nation.

"Their behavior led the United States government to file civil charges against Harvard, Mr. Shleifer and Mr. Hay for fraud, breach of contract and making false claims. In a settlement reached last summer, Harvard agreed to pay $26.5 million. Mr. Hay was ordered to pay a fine based on his future earnings and Mr. Shleifer agreed to pay $2 million, though none of the parties admitted wrongdoing. Mr. Shleifer has not been subjected to any disciplinary action from Harvard.

"Some Harvard watchers attribute that to Dr. Summers's influence, though he formally recused himself from the matter, and they see the entire affair, assiduously detailed by Mr. McClintick, as an indelible stain on Harvard's reputation."

So where's the part about the insidious influence of government contracts on academic integrity? It isn't there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/business/media/27mclintick.html?th&emc=th

Cosmic Undercounts

"After scanning the heavens for a decade, a venerable NASA satellite appears to have discovered the origin of the 'X-ray Milky Way,' the mysterious X-ray counterpart to the profusion of visible stars that make up the galaxy.

"The new research suggests that scientists have undercounted the number of stars in the galaxy -- perhaps by billions. NASA said the findings by a team from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and Russia's Space Research Institute would be published in upcoming editions of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/26/AR2006022601150.html?referrer=email

-Alive And Well For The Moment-

---and governing the 7,107 islands comprising the Phillipine Republic. 

Phillipines Coup Attempt Squashed, For Now

Phillipines President Arroyo seems to have survived another coup attempt:

"MANILA, Philippines -- President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency Friday, saying she had quashed a coup plot but that the Philippines still faced a "clear threat" from treasonous forces.

"Clashes erupted as riot police used water cannons to disperse about 5,000 protesters defying a ban on rallying at a shrine to the 1986 revolt that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/23/AR2006022301628.html?referrer=email

Dubya and Dubai

Maybe this is a plea for a personal reality check, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something just too easy and simple about the political outrage over the sale of the port operations to Dubai:

1. How come this issue appeared in all the media so quickly and so full-blown?
2. How come so many Republicans adopted the antiBush, antisale, antiDubai position so quickly, including the leadership of both houses?
3. How come both Bush and his cabinet-level cronies were so conveniently distanced from responsibility for the deal, claiming they knew nothing until they heard about it through the media? (Especially so, given that Treasury Sec. Snow chaired CSX Rail until he came to Treasury---a firm that sold out to Dubai PW just two years ago?) How come we have a couple ready-made fall guys waiting for the axe at the third tier down, who so conveniently can be faulted for short-cutting regulatory procedures and failing to appreciate the security considerations and political fallout of their determinations?
4. How come all this antiBush drama is so neatly pegged to a relatively minor transaction which could be resolved in a single sit-down with the congressional leadership if somebody wanted? Or scrapped in a minute with no real consequences? It's a throwaway, in terms of substance. Dubai could handle the loss with no problem, has already expressed its patience with our political processes, and could be taken care of down the road if need be.
5. How come this issue is so ready-made for public consumption, presenting a remarkably simplified controversy, the security/fear bugaboo, the Islamophobe subtext, and the secretive, arrogant Bush administration as a foil---for all the poor, outraged Republican congressmen running for reelection this year? That is, all the poor challenged Republicans...

Like poor Rick Santorum, in the squeaker of his life, who has suddenly been given a way to capture the spotlight in defense of our beleaguered shores, distance himself from an unpopular president, and endear himself to the voters by reinforcing their fears and prejudices, all at the same time, and without spending a dime.

I don't know if the whole thing was hatched as a plot to prop up the campaigns of struggling Republicans in contested districts, if his handlers prompted Bush to take a bull-headed position and raise the level of the drama, if he's just out there doing his own predictable thing, or if the issue arose on its own and then got strategized for the upcoming races. The icing on the cake is all the clueless Dems out there contributing unwittingly to the righteousness of their opponents' stand. It's a classic fork: they can't attack Bush without supporting their opponents in Congress. Smells like Rove to me.

If this is what is in the works, expect the issue to fade in compromise or accommodation within a few weeks, and then, depending on the polling numbers for Bush and the standings of the Repubs in their home districts, another one or two dramatizations over the summer, featuring variations on the theme. Of course I could be wrong. I would much prefer this to be the crawl of the alligators toward the oval office.

For another take on the spectacle: http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8587

New Democratic Debacle

If you have been disheartened by Howard Dean's increasingly compromised expressions on the war, if you have wondered at the similar, confusing language most Democratic candidates are using to try to explain their war positions, here is the bad news. This great party of the apposition actually believes it has produced a formulation that will satisfy the antiwar vote, inoculate against GOP charges of weak-on-security, distinguish it from the white house, and attract the middle morons. And to accomplish this, as Joshua Frank points out, they had to go hire the pen of Reagan hack Lawrence Korb. They will probably try to slop Murtha's plan into the nasty stew as well. The name of this piece of rot---hold your nose if it's a new stink for you---is "Strategic Redeployment."

It is a disastrous piece of whoring that tries to be everything to everyone and of course ends up being nothing but same-o bush-lite. I suppose the party leaders exhausted themselves when Hillary and co. brainstormed the equally awful "America Can Do Better" earlier this year. (Psst, Hillary, it's not about America, it's about you political frauds doing better.)

We really need to hold them accountable on this, everyone of them who stops short of immediate disengagement and bringing the troops home now (and yes, we know that will require tactical maneuvers). But if they can't get it right on the war---the simplest and clearest of all the issues---how can they possibly get it right on corporate and lobby reform, health care, eco and energy, CE, etc, all far more complicated issues?

I don't know all the candidates in NY's CDs who satisfy this simple requirement. In the 20th, it's only Guller unless the Greens come up with someone. For the Senate, it's Tasini and Greenfield at the moment. Please add on other deserving candidates.

If you want to know more: http://www.antiwar.com/frank/

-Health Care, 1931-

 

Do No Harm

One of the distressing aspects of the taped beating that precipitated the death of the boot camp teen in Bay County is the presence of a nurse among the sheriff's personnel. Primary focus, however, has been on the doctor who performed the questionable autopsy. Citizens are well reminded that many professionals, including medical persons, often view their functions as narrowly defined by their discipline, an attitude reenforced by their academic training and job experience. In authoritarian structures like this one, they tend to submit to the perceived requirements of the dominant administrative character (which usually signs the paychecks)---in this case, law enforcement/corrections---succombing to the danger of confusing and compromising their professional conduct if the dominant culture betrays its own ethics. It is a phenomenon that wiser managers understand and factor into their administrative operations.

The problem has been exacerbated in recent decades by the increasing dependency of health care workers on salaried arrangements, large health center bureaucracies, and the requirements of the insurance industry, considerations which further undermine the traditional independence of professionals in the field.

"Dr. Siebert decided that the stress of the 'exercise' Martin experienced at the camp brought on a crisis that triggered blood clotting caused by the sickle-cell trait. This killed Martin, according to Dr. Siebert.

"Sickle-cell experts debunked this conclusion. While such disagreements aren't necessarily unusual, other factors put Dr. Siebert's findings on shaky ground. We know now that he has made gross discrepancies on other autopsies, missing outstanding scars on one body and writing that a woman had male genitalia when she did not."

Anybody want to buy an aspirin from this guy?

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13929243.htm

And a noble exception:

"A condemned US inmate's execution was cancelled after prison officials in California could not find a doctor or nurse willing to administer the lethal injection.

"Prison officials notified a federal appeals court that they could not comply with a judge's order to have a licensed medical expert give Michael Morales a fatal overdose of barbiturates."

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/060222/1/3yuzk.html

White House Links to Dubai Port Sale Disclosed

Whatever you think about the security issues involved in the port sale to Dubai (the oge supposes that our homeland security is such a sham that it wouldn't matter if Osama himself bought the port operations), the emergent focus is the financial connection of two top bush appointees to the parties in the deal.

"...Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port...was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

"The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.
The ties raised more concerns about the decision to give port control to a company owned by a nation linked to the 9/11 hijackers."

Isn't this a surpise, that vested financial interests may be the real determinants?

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/393375p-333478c.html

-East Coast Of Greenland-

...at least, for a while. 

A Faster Melt: Greenland's Glaciers

Unlike many issues in the political universe which are relatively easy to understand, global warming is such a complex proposition---involving so many disciplines and resources---that we are obliged to take our positions on faith in the opinions of a host of experts, or in the pronouncements of the various professional organizations to which they contribute. That goes counter to the inclinations of the skeptic, who wants to form his own opinions based on personal command of empirical evidence. Well, maybe there are opportunities for him; the recent data published on the dynamics of Greenland's glaciers are an example, although to what extent these could also offer an indexing function is not discussed:

"Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup.

"The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports...

"Scientists believe that computer models of how the Greenland ice sheet will react to global warming have seriously underestimated the threat posed by sea levels that could rise far more quickly than envisaged.

"The latest study, presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in St Louis, shows that rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the 'lubricant' of melt water forming at their base."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345927.ece

Jim Hansen (NASA Director of the Goddard Institute), who has had big issues with the bush administration's efforts to combat scientific disclosure, is even more pointed in his article:

"I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

"It's hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded.

"How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article345926.ece

So forget that alluring piece of retirement Carribean real estate. In fact, forget any coastal real estate at all. Last season alone, we had the tsunami and Katrina, and that's without rising sea levels. California? Earthquakes and coastal...

Avian Flu Strikes Germany, Denmark

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/international/europe/16flu.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1140103624-t6zYPQDBnVaKyk0DpFtX1w

Yuppies With Heads Up Their Arses

Excuse the four-letter word. Nothing else will do. I considered "heads in the sand," but that wouldn't meet the level of infuriating elitest delusion I just encountered in the current online edition of Orion, which I normally scan and delete. For some reason I read the featured essay today, their "Coda" (isn't that sweet?). Here's its message. Politics is totally corrupt and meaningless. You can't do anything about it. You can't affect global warming, corporate dominance, war, envornmental degradation, through political action. Therefore you go flyfishing. And you rationalize your disengagement from a heck of a big hunk of reality by copping to, "That's what Mother Theresa says." Well, I would like to ask Mr. David James Duncan how many poor he fed today while bathing in the zen of his trout stream, how many wounds he tended in the gutters of Calcutta. Did he also contract tuberculosis in the course of following his role model? Jeez, I have rarely been so incensed by anyone, right or left. Does this boob actually think that Mother Teresa would consider his self-indulgent idiocy some kind of good works? Nothing of course against fishing or staying in touch with nature---mandatory for a good psyche, while there's enough of nature left to allow for it, although that's not this creep's concern either---but you folks are pulling the wagon for fools like this one. How many of them are there? Do they vote? Do they actually think they are anything but self-obsessed parasites? Argh. At least he didn't try to cop to Thoreau:

"The day I rediscovered Mother Teresa's words 'We can do no great things—only small things, with great love,' the so-called war on terror had just cranked up, and the administration was attempting to dignify the call to violence with rhetoric so over the top it abrogated divine authority—Operation Infinite Justice, for example. What a grounded, utterly human antidote her words were. And what a relief! Instead of waking each morning and defining myself as an impotent war protester in an America run by oil-worshipping thugs, I started waking up and thinking, 'Okay. What small thing can I do today with love?'

"Mother's advice gave me permission to do stuff like play with my kids and go fishing again. I actually live her advice when I fish. No joke. On big Montana trout rivers, you often see fly fishers trying to do great things by fishing heroically, making great long casts out into the giant flow as if they're thinking Operation Infinite Trout! But we can do no great things. So those of us who like to actually catch trout scarcely glance at the vast flow. Instead we parse the river..."

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-1om/Duncan.html>

New Surveillance Scam?

Whistleblower tantalized Congress with intimations of more wide-scale spying:

"A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans' Constitutional rights.

"Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a "special access" electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress.

"Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution's protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws. He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees - members or their staff - because they lack high enough clearance."

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060214-053955-9494r

Young Blacks Killing Each Other At Higher Rates

The country is less violent---as the news is fond of reporting---as long as you aren't young, poor, undereducated, underemployed, overincarcerated, and black.

"'We're seeing a very angry population, and they don't go to fists anymore, they go right to guns...' Here in Milwaukee, where homicides jumped from 88 in 2004 to 122 last year, the number classified as arguments rose to 45 from 17, making up by far the largest category of killings, as gang and drug murders declined.

"In Houston, where homicides rose 24 percent last year, disputes were by far the largest category, 113 out of 336 killings. Officials were alarmed by the increase in murders well before Hurricane Katrina swelled the city's population by 150,000 people in September; the police say 18 homicides were related to evacuees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/national/12homicide.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Quick Takes

First photo of Bush and Abramoff, complete with Rove and Kickapoo tribal members:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1158908,00.html

Chertoff emerging as chief Katrina villain (as distinct from chief Katrina idiot):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101409.html

Bird flu hits Greece, Italy, and Bulgaria:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/international/europe/12flu.html?th&emc=th

And Cheney shoots companion quail hunter:

http://www.cnn.com/

Most Moronic Utterance Of The Month

This one, too, from south of the Potomac:

"This is itself a morality — the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form."
Stanley Fish, Professor of Law, Florida International University, NYTimes Op Ed today.

One hopes he has minimal teaching responsibilities.

-A Pleasant 2 Hours-

---by all accounts. 

The White Countess

If you like the big, rich productions offered by Merchant Ivory, peopled with top actors and set in exotic locales or against backgrounds of historical change (Room with a View, Remains of the Day), you may be looking forward to The White Countess (even though we've had exactly one-too-many titles with that term "countess" in them):

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=449163&category=ARTS&newsdate=2/10/2006

And if you want finally to know who Merchant Ivory is/was:

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=449183&category=ARTS&newsdate=2/10/2006

New bush Obscenity To Sell 85K Acres National Forest

Even against the wholesale rape of the nation in his stultifying efforts to privatize your interests, this one is breathtaking in the scope of its horror:

"The Bush administration Friday laid out plans to sell off more than $1 billion in public lands over the next decade, including 85,000 acres of national forest land in California...

"Congress must approve the plans, which several experts said would amount to the largest land sale of its kind since President Theodore Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 and created the modern national forest system.

"'This is a fire sale of public lands. It is utterly unprecedented,' said Char Miller, professor of environmental history at Trinity University in Houston, who has written extensively about the Forest Service. 'It signals that the lands and the agency that manages them are in deep trouble. For the American public, it is an awful way to understand that it no longer controls its public land."

"The Forest Service has earmarked more than 300,000 acres for sale in 32 states, including tracts in California national forests, ranging in size from 90 acres in Angeles National Forest to 32,921 acres in the Klamath National Forest. Most of the California land slated for the auction block would be scattered across six national forests in the Sierra Nevada."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-forests11feb11,0,1552161.story?track=tottext

New York And The Face Of Slavery

New York went slave-free almost 40 years before the 13th Amendment abolished the most far-reaching of practices in our catalog of wicked institutions, and our state is famous for her abolitionists and stations in the underground railroad; but in the face of the ABA's new initiative to describe a truer context for the historical consequences of slavery, some surprising facts are emerging about the role of the Empire State before 1827:

"The first federal census in 1790 showed that in Albany County alone, 3,722 slaves were living with 1,474 slaveholding families, according to statistics compiled by Schenectady historian Don Rittner. His research revealed that, at one point, a third of the county's homeowners -- farmers and merchants, shopkeepers and politicians -- had slaves.

"Albany Mayor Abraham Ten Broeck had a dozen. Revolutionary War Gen. Philip Schuyler shuttled two dozen slaves between his family's Albany and Saratoga homes.

"Guilderland farmer Jacob Van Aernam, a captain in the War of Independence, had three slaves harvesting his peaches."

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=448776&category=REGION&newsdate=2/9/2006

-Apparently Afraid Of Its Own Ashes-

The Phoenix And The Toons: When Terrorism Works

A Roman Catholic with his own ax to grind (check out the splendid rant at the end of his piece for the LATimes) calls our attention to the Boston Phoenix's confession:

"Among those who decline to show the caricatures, only one, the Boston Phoenix, has been forthright enough to admit that its editors made the decision 'out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. This is, frankly, our primary reason for not publishing any of the images in question. Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy.'"

For sure, the oge doesn't think the Phoenix gets it quite right either. Muslims' outrage is to some unknowable degree founded on, among other things, a belief that the West threatens their way of life. Only when we test that assumption by predicating some concrete behavior on it, will we begin a logical approach to this mischief of the past millenia. Otherwise, we are just dancing in the hideous expressions of the symptoms.

http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-et-rutten11feb11,0,900556.story?track=tottext

Pathetic.

Another Idiot Threatens To Tell All

From the bin of Defrocked, Disgraced, and otherwise Detected scraps regarding Fools, Felons, and Fiddlers---Mikey testifying (he thinks the word is derived from the habit of uptight little frauds holding their scrotum when they get caught at something bad, which is practically all the time) before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (the acronym for which, incidentally, would be HSAGAC or HSGAC, which sounds like the surgical procedure indicated for Joe Lieberman's jowls):

"'What I wish I had done was, frankly, just either quit earlier or whatever and gone to certain friends that I can't talk about and said we got to fix this -- I mean, what's going on is nuts,' Brown said, according to a Senate transcript of the meeting."

Can you imagine what an attempt at human communication between him and w must sound like?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0209-10.htm

Defrocked Priest Names Closeted Cardinal

Who knows?

"Halfway through the 44-page complaint, the priest-turned-advocate drops a bomb on the cardinal: He alleges that Egan is 'actively homosexual,' and that he has 'personal knowledge of this.' His suit names two other top Catholic clerics in the region as actively gay—Albany bishop Howard Hubbard and Newark archbishop John Myers.

"It's not that Hoatson has a problem with, as the suit puts it, 'consensual, adult private sexual behavior by these defendants.'

"No, what Hoatson claims is that, as leaders of a church requiring celibacy and condemning homosexuality, actively gay bishops are too afraid of being exposed themselves to turn in pedophile priests. The bishops' closeted homosexuality, as the lawsuit states, 'has compromised defendants' ability to supervise and control predators, and has served as a reason for the retaliation.'"

http://villagevoice.com/news/0606,lombardi,72095,6.html

Bird Flu Hits Africa

40,000 of 42,000 infected birds have reportedly died. The location is not on migratory routes to the Western hemisphere, we are told.

"The rapidly spreading bird flu virus has been detected for the first time in Africa, infecting chickens at a large commercial farm in Nigeria, the World Organization for Animal Health reported Wednesday.Tests conducted at a laboratory in Italy have confirmed the virus as the H5N1 strain, which has sickened 165 people in Asia and the Middle East, killing 88.

"Although there have been no reports of the virus infecting humans in Africa, health officials expressed concern over the outbreak spreading to another continent."

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-birdflu9feb09,0,4652018.story?track=tottext

Goodbye 

Goodbye 

REVISITING BETTY FRIEDAN

It is too bad that our myopic television cannot do proportionate justice to the passing of two remarkable women; one story at a time is the order of the day. Unfortunately for all of us, Betty Friedan's death, along with the full meaning of Coretta King's life, was eclipsed by televised coverage of the Clintons' stupid kibitzing---especially offensive, given Hillary's persistence in prosecuting the counterproductive war in Iraq, and Coretta King's lifelong peace activism--- and of Oprah's lime-lit egotism; of all the meaningful things that could be remembered---of all the meaningful things that remain undone---the recollected spectacle of the media mogul dragging the widow before the cameras and submitting her to her hairdresser's makeover, is certainly at the bottom of the oge's list. We know about the quilt, and yes, we all know she moved the widow from a deteriorating black neighborhood and bought her a luxury suite: things. If these are the best expressions of genuine emotion and gratitude that a titaness of consumerism and commercialized affect must bring to bear on even solemn occasions, so be it.

In her piece for the LA Times, Susan Jacoby makes the valuable point that women's rights, such as they are, are taken for granted by almost everyone under the age of 40, and that the danger holds that rights can be eroded as surely as they are won. I would go a step further and argue that, since the original grant by a handful of incredibly wise sons of the enlightenment, the successive governments have given us no further rights than those demanded by adamant and continuous protest and demonstration, or earned by the outpouring of sweat and blood---the GI Bill, in particular, and particularly for white males---and that the forces of greed and prejudice operate today not only to retrieve whatever part of them they can, but to foreclose on others long overdue: basic health care, access to education, a fair return on labor, and a secure old age.

Ms. Jacoby does us a service too by referring to Stanton's remarkable 1898 work, The Woman's Bible (the full text of which can be accessed on line, and which the oge revisited today after a too long absence), maybe the most powerful single demonstration of the cultural denigration of women ever made. Ironically, by this reference Ms. Jacoby belies her own statement that, "Historical amnesia, not the fundamentalist Christian right, is the true villain;" amnesia is the lost knowledge that consists precisely of those prejudices of religion and cultural doctrine which inform us, continuously. Historical amnesia is a meaningless abstraction, as Ms. Jacoby proceeds to demonstrate, unfortunately, in forgetting---if she ever learned---the real genius of early feminists, when she writes:

"This entire history is in urgent need of retelling today, at a time when other legacies of the movement — most notably legal abortion — are under assault." Like too many of her compatriots unduly influenced by both direct and veiled influences of the Marxists during the revived feminism of the 60's and 70's, she ignores the fact that Ms. Friedan's precursers generally despised the practice of abortion, considering it a tool of the men who controlled women's lives, a convenience of male entitlement and a cancellation of womanhood. She forgets how easily men rationalized their obligations through most of history. The early feminists argued for appreciation of womanhood in all its functions, including reproduction. In 1868 issues of The Revolution, Stanton termed abortion "infanticide" and proposed that a solution to abortion could be found partly in the enfranchisement of women. She paraded her seven pregnancies in public and celebrated each of her deliveries by hoisting the flag. When Alice Paul founded the National Women's Party in (c) 1915 she viewed abortion as the ultimate exploitation of women.

Now, I am not arguing that these women denied the right to an abortion or believed that reproduction was the primary function of women any more than of men (Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul, for example, never had children), only that they were looking at the other side of the coin, before feminism was stamped by twentieth century economics, which completed the commodification of both genders, refocusing the movement (again, with the willing help of Marxist thought) in most of its activity, from one of essential equality---more broadly challenging the culture, including religious, political, and domestic values---to one mainly of economic opportunity, including the functionally ancillary areas of education and workplace.

Betty Friedan had a strong sense of modern history. She effectively described the limitations of Freudian theory as well as its genius, characterizing the "victorian" culture of 19th C Austria as it framed his thinking, and she convincingly described how the suffusion of Freudian principles informed attitudes that reinforced stereotypes of female inferiority in post-war America. Of course, it was not just Freud, or primarily Freud, that produced the fashionably aproned housewife of the 40's and 50's, overwhelmed by "the problem that has no name," to which stereotype Ms. Friedan was reacting, especially as she recalled the relatively liberated women of the 20's and 30's. WWII was the main force, a global conflict fought by men in their traditional roles, who were loyally supported by the women in theirs, doing their part for the war effort and toiling in the munitions factories back home.

The war rewarded the men with the GI Bill, a revolution in access to education and social mobility for a new class of workers. The opportunities created by the peacetime conversion of the massive war economy produced an expanded population of workers with disposable income. The consumerism toward which both sexes were directed buoyed the myth of the happy home, as if any conceptualized domesticity per se could fulfill either sex in the shattered universe of post-industrialization. It is true that de Beauvoir had earlier defined the notion of the feminine in large, historical terms---and the simplest, if I understand her: the male is the One; the female is the Other: the male is; the female is the negative, what the male is not; the feminine is not what the female is, but what she is supposed to be---but Betty Friedan illustrated the problem for real women in a real time and place.

That the interests of those in government and commerce succeeded in coopting much of the movement for economic equality---by taking that portion of the wealth they were willing to share with the male workforce in the first place and splitting it (albeit not quite proportionately) with the new female workforce---is not her fault; she diagnosed, and it was left to others to prescribe and dispense. That what was eventually dispensed is today too often the desperation of a woman who is struggling to accomplish her duties as both wage earner and homemaker, or the dilemma of a young professional choosing between a career and motherhood, is not so much a function of de Beauvoir's eternal feminine as it is of Marx's class warfare; the feminine transcends class, sowing across the social spectrum, it seems to me, various forms of injustice and disaffection, depending on how a woman sees her situation. Some, I suspect, would like to take up a blade and slice the spousal or supervisory throat; others might trade places with their suburban sisters of the 50's. And some---actual beneficiaries of what has gone before---may in fact be living lives of enviable fulfillment, although quite how, in a world as wicked as this, where the Ones of other power relationships inflict on us one disaster after another, and fear upon fear, would be the question and the lesson.

So Ms. Jacoby is right that it is a good thing to revisit Betty Friedan, but it is not enough because what has happened since is not enough. We need to go back, in this country, at least to Lucretia Coffin Mott, a distant cousin of Franklin and associate of Emerson. She argued for---and maybe achieved, as a Quaker bride---absolute equality in marriage. She was a teacher, and a minister by 1821, and an active abolitionist. It was she who took the younger Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a co-delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. They were not seated because they were women. And then it was they hatched the idea for a convention to promote women's rights.

It came to pass eight years later, in Seneca Falls, NY. And in that year of the Women's Rights Convention, often pegged as the beginning of the movement, Karl Marx happened to publish his Manifesto. There may be a suggestion in that mix of issues through which Mott and Stanton struggled---slavery and race, gender and class---of just what threats we are always up against.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacoby7feb07,0,1908632.story?track=tottext

Scientists Hail Discovery of Hundreds of New Species in Remote New Guinea

How exciting!


"Among the new species of birds, frogs, butterflies and palms discovered in the expedition through this pristine environment, untouched by man, was the spectacular Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. The scientists are the first outsiders to see it. They could only reach the remote mountainous area by helicopter, which they described it as akin to finding a "Garden of Eden".

The most remarkable find was of a creature called Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise, named after the six spines on the top of its head, and thought "lost" to science. It had been previously identified only from the feathers of dead birds.

Scientists also found more than 20 new species of frogs, four new butterflies, five new species of palm and many other plants yet to be classified, including what may be the world's largest rhododendron flower. Botanists on the team said many plants were completely unlike anything they had encountered before.
Tree kangaroos, which are endangered elsewhere in New Guinea, were numerous and the team found one species entirely new to the island. The golden-mantled tree kangaroo is considered the most beautiful but also the rarest of the jungle-dwelling marsupials. There were also other marsupials, such as wallabies and mammals that have been hunted almost to extinction elsewhere. And a rare spiny anteater, the long beaked echidna, about which little is known, allowed itself to be picked up by hand. Dr Beehler said: "What was amazing was the lack of wariness of all the animals. In the wild, all species tend to be shy of humans, but that is learnt behaviour because they have encountered mankind. In Foja they did not appear to mind our presence at all."

Foreign Aid for NOLA?

Maybe we should just outsource it to China.

"'I know we had a little disappointment earlier with some signals we're getting from Washington but the international community may be able to fill the gap,' Nagin said when a delegation of French government and business officials passed through on Friday to explore potential business partnerships.

"Jordan's King Abdullah also visited New Orleans on Friday and Nagin said he would encourage foreign interests to help redevelop some of the areas hardest hit by the storm.

"'France can take Treme. The king of Jordan can take the Lower Ninth Ward,' he said, referring to two of the city's neighborhoods."

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-hurricanes-aid.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

-Policing The Police-

NYC's finest had a taste of their own medicine when officers protesting Bloomberg's recalcitrance on contract issues found themselves the subjects of surveillance. The inevitable law suit is pending. How would they react had they also been subject to herding among orange plastic queues, unlawful detention, and preemptive arrest?

Christie Todd Gets Hers

To those of you who think this pathetic daughter of privilege was merely ineffectual during her bushdick hookup, consider:

"U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

"'No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws,' the judge said."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0203-02.htm

-Scene From The Companion Kylix-

EUPHRONIOS VASE GOING BACK TO ITALY

Per Tom Hoving, the Met's foul-mouthed, limelighting, former shaker and mover:

"The first nanosecond I'd looked at the vase, I vowed to get it. I stood there in the warm sun in my shirtsleeves, sucking a beer, crusty with lack of sleep, but my mind and eyes were as alive as they'd ever been. This was the single most perfect and powerful work of art of its size that I had ever encountered." (A picture appears below this post.)

To be sure: a vase is not a vase is not a vase. Archaic Greek vases of this order were works of art, and their painters ranked with sculptors and other artists. Do not confuse these with utilitarian ware; it is unlikely this krater ever tasted wine. It may have been commissioned. It appears to have gone to a wealthy Etruscan via the high-end export trade that supplied luxuries for their funereal requirements. Like the Egyptians, Etruscans outfitted their tombs with accoutrements befitting their station, so tomb raiders have enjoyed some good pickings in Italy as well. Consistent with the lead allegation at the time of Hoving's purchase, the terms of the krater's anticipated return to Italian authorities support the evidence for its plunder from a Roman necropolis shortly before it entered the (very limited) market in the early 70s.

When the oge was getting his books on Greek vases in the '60s, there was, of course, no reference in Beazley, Devambez, or Cook to the subject work. The vase was unknown until Hoving bought it for the Met in his secret deal in 1972. By his own admission, its provenance was dubious from the beginning, and he did his best to rationalize a feasible story of its acquisition. Like any major curator, of course, Hoving understood the old adage about possession and the law. And he was right, if possessing a unique antiquity for 30+ years has been worth the original price of $1M, not to mention all the accompanying costs, legal and otherwise, the deal entailed; a million dollars bought a lot in 1972.

Hoving was looking at the first completely intact work by one of the finest vase painters working in 6thC BC Athens. 17 other pieces by Euphronios are known, a mixture of works he signed in his varying roles of potter and painter, including what may be a painted companion piece to the krater, a cup or kylix, depicting the same theme---all these fragmentary in various degrees. Before Hoving's eyes was a lustrous vessel, glowing in the richest tones of red-orange and black you are likely to encounter. Reconstructed from its shards, it stood 18" with a reported capacity of 12 gallons. Its type, krater, was a design for mixing strong wine and water.

The initial impression of the vase is overwhelming. The relationship between its shape and ornamentation is absolutely satisfying. The proportion of red and black, and their positioning on the vase, are masterful, presenting a balance of mass and color that challenges any achievement of Rothko, who attempts little more. The borders and framing of the scenes are perfect as well. You will find few other pieces of Attic pottery that rise to this level of design. I share Hoving's overall estimation (the draftsmanship is far from perfect), but with the qualification that it is brilliant with regard not just to what Euphronios accomplished---although that is great--- but to what he attempted.

Before going on, we have to appreciate the challenges to technique imposed by the medium. Red-figure painting was invented (and accepted rather quickly) because it overcame the major problem of Black-figure painting, which essentially presented figures in silhouette (black on red, instead of red on black). It was almost impossible to layer or stack figures because the painter had trouble distinguishing their dark mass, and detailing them was similarly difficult. With Red-figure, the artist had a more visible "skin" for his figures, and he strove to create more detailed and complex scenes, attempting foreshortened and overlapped figures. With either color, however, he was dealing with a distinction that only emerged during firing, the more challenging as detail and complexity increased. While the painter was doing his work, the clay of the unfired pot and the slip (watered-down clay) with which he was painting the design, were the same substance and almost the same color. He was working close to blind. Add to this the problem of applying the hundreds of final line details with an instrument some compare to a pastry bag with a needle nozzle, through which the thin matter, still of almost indistinguishable color, was squeezed onto the surface of the vase. As much as some painters might try to rely on incising outlines, every detail---each link in the chain thorax of Thanatos, each strand of hair, each tiny pinion of the winged gods---was applied in, or quickly dried to, practically the same color as the background. During firing, the supply or starvation of air, controlled in stages, acted on the iron oxides in the clay to promote color. The slip, being thin and superficial, was affected more quickly than the body of the pot, producing the color contrast.

But there was another constraint on the painter, time. The body of the vase was permitted to dry only to a certain point, and the painting of the slip, including the additional pigments for the occasional reds, purples, and whites, had to be applied within a period of time that allowed for a successful firing. Different experts provide different estimates, one of them allowing---incredulously?---little more than an hour for the painting of the complete vase! I would not, however, discount the possibility of unknown aides, maybe stencils, maybe the help of an assistant working on the borders simultaneously. In any event, we are looking at something that may be as much a record of an instance of a form of performance art as it is a painting.

This time constraint, as Hoving points out in an early installment of his saga, accounts for the fact that the reverse panels of most vases are not so detailed, adventurous, or complex as the obverse. It was there that the painter could employ his fudge factor. And this is where I part company with, or maybe provide an alternative justification for, Hoving's unreserved praise of the vase's artistry.

Euphronios had to have been pressed for time. (The reader is directed to the excellent Met website to view details of the scene, enhanced by zoom and pan features: http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOnezoom.asp?dep=13&zoomFlag=1&viewmode=1&item=1972%2E11%2E10 ) As one critic of the purchase pointed out at the time, Thanatos' left ear is drawn backwards. But there are additional mistakes. Hermes' feet are impossibly turned with respect to his body. His kerykeion bends oddly at midpoint. You will see that the hand of Hypnos does not quite manage to encircle Sarpedon's leg. In contrast, Thanatos got a better grip on the hero's arm, at the right side of the panel. The streams of blood fall at an odd diagonal. I tried to allow that this might be dried blood, but where it passes from his chest wound to stream toward the ground, it continues to defy gravity. I could suppose that the application of the pigmented slip that would turn red in the firing, was the last or near-last piece of the job, maybe rushed on as the big pot was being hurried to the kiln. On the companion cup, Sarpedon's blood flows consistent with the force of gravity. But these, and a few more lapses, are easily overlooked, much as the anachronistic front eye that the painters of this period insisted on painting on their profiles (within a generation or so, they would adopt a lateral convention).

The big problem is compositional. Here, however, we need to back up and consider the theme of the panel. Without delving into the particular literary and mythic sources for Sarpedon, it is enough to recognize the power of the archetypal image of the slain hero and his momentous departure from the field of battle. Not far beneath it lies the notion of lost hope, where the death of the champion delivers his people to the enemy, often prospective of the fallen city. It is the energizing impulse of the Iliad, of the surrogate Hector as he enacts a preview of the death of Achilles, magnified by Troy's destined doom, of Arthur and of Siegfried, the image of whom, borne on his shield, inspired the composer's supreme symphonic passage.

This is the general context in which Euphronios, not so far removed from the rage of war and the contests of heroes as you and I, approached the blank belly of the big damp pot. His was not to be a simple scene of party heterai or sporting satyrs. He was to depict legendary tragedy, and he aimed at the point between life and death. Thanatos and Hypnos are just lifting the body, their wings folded. Hermes has not begun the journey. We are on that transverse plane between worlds. Within the great inverted trapezoid of the scene, framed by the bell shape of the pot and enforced not only by the flanking figuring but by the upsweep of the handles, the angles of the gods' folded wings immediately seize our eyes between two opposing diagonals which initiate a large inverted triangle, completed at the apex where Hermes' winged foot is planted on the ground. This construct conditions us for a rapid succession of smaller triangles that suddenly animate the scene. Hermes seems to turn as the triangle formed by the crook of his left arm jumps to that formed by his uplifted right. Other triangulated figurations animate Thanatos to step in, and Hypnos to bend over.

Most affecting of all, however, and an achievement of high cost, is the hero's excruciating embrace of, and farewell to, the earth, accomplished by his spread arms. It is a gesture as poignant as any painted by our early Christian masters in their depictions of the holy and the sainted. Here the dynamic diagonals of the composition resolve themselves in their final expression, a righted triangle encompassing the hero's heart and fatal wound, his hands softening the figure as they relax toward the horizontal of final release. Sarpedon is dead---we know that irrefutably from the presence of the gods of death---but he is not yet in the land of the dead. He holds us at that point of passage. And the painter has accomplished the feat not through exposition, but through drama. We recall later constructions in which a triangle is defined at the bottom of a scene, William Blake's "Ancient of Days," where God's fingers literally hold the apex, or his "Red Dragon," in which the creature's legs describe the diagonals that intersect the horizontal of the woman of morning.

Euphronios paid a large price as he reached for this sublime moment. He unconvincingly turned the shoulder and arm against a frontal torso. And he directed the face downward, following the shoulder and arm as if to emphasize a lingering regard for the earth, but it is a difficult position, and one he executed imperfectly, failing to complete the droop of the head (compare the tragic but more facile execution of the upturned head chosen for the kylix). The head would also appear more natural positioned between Thanatos' arms, but the painter could not permit the god's forearm to cover the subject's face. Euphronios made additional sacrifices for his great effect, including placement of the winged foot of Hermes too far to the left, but they are minor. The genius of the work is that we experience how much is attempted; that he fell short is only an acknowledgement of the scale of his vision. It would be a marvelous thing to discover that in a later piece he resolved these problems.

I always return to the blood. It still streams from the body of a dead man, as if the laws of nature were suspended at this intersection of worlds. Is it possible, after all, that it flows deliberately, that genius directed it according to those generative diagonals?

In any event, the krater appears headed back to Italy, not that the Italians did anything to make it in the first place (they just entombed it for two and a half millenia), but I suppose the rightful considerations of indigenous entitlement have bolstered legal claims as well. It seems we have a couple years left to visit it again at the Met, if you can stand the ongoing mayhem that feels like too many junior high field trips overrunning New York's great museums (when will they increase the visiting hours?). And we hope it will pass by the Swiss policeman who broke the kylix during its return.

"A Classical vase that has long been the crown jewel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Greek galleries will probably be handed over to Italy at the beginning of 2008, the museum and Italian officials said yesterday, in their first public agreement on a date."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/arts/04muse.html?th&emc=th

And for Hoving's 6-part saga on what it is, how he got it, what it took to hold onto it for 30 years, the whole colorful cast of involved players, and why he, Tom, really is an OK guy:

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/hoving/hoving6-29-01.asp

-Euphronios Krater-

Red-figure Calyx Krater, 6thC BC, by Euxitheos, Euphronios

Generics LogJam: Bad Math

"At a time when the use of low-cost generic drugs is being embraced as one of the few ways to rein in skyrocketing health care costs, the Food and Drug Administration has a backlog of more than 800 applications to bring new generic products to the market -- an all-time high.

"As a result, experts say, fewer generic drugs will be available to consumers in the years ahead than the industry is ready and able to provide. The FDA, however, has told Congress that the office that reviews new generics needs no additional money, and the agency has no plans to hire more reviewers.

"'We are very aware that many, many people are waiting for more generics to be approved and that there is frustration about the backlog,' said Gary Buehler, director of the agency's Office of Generic Drugs."'

Think there could be some cause and effect at work here?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302598.html?referrer=email

Your Google Searches Are Recorded

Maybe this isn't news to you, but it's about as bad as the rest of us feared. It probably started as smart advertising strategy, to prioritize targeted consumers. But the result? Expect every incident of surfing, every search, to be a matter of record, including your I.P. address, so if authorities wanted to know exactly who went to a specific website at a given time, your visit could be reported. Now, not many of us would care about a warranted search to uncover a serial killer's tracks, but this slope is about as slippery as they come. And for now, the privacy law protecting---to some extent---your email does not extend to searches and surfing. What's the expression? We have been warned?

"Yahoo, Google and the new free AOL.com site, for example, maintain records of user surfing behavior. Google also keeps a log file that associates every search made on its site with the I.P. address of the searcher. And Yahoo uses similar information to sell advertising; car companies, for example, place display advertising shown only to people who have entered auto-related terms in Yahoo's search engine.

"It is unclear what standard is required to force Internet companies to turn over this search information to criminal investigators and perhaps civil litigants.

'"The big story is the privacy law that protects your e-mail does not protect your Google search terms,' said Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a former lawyer in the computer crime section of the Justice Department.

Other lawyers argue that the law that provides protection for e-mail content, or even the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, could be applied to data about Web searching, but the issue has not been tested in court."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/technology/04privacy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

- I weally weally want to kill that wabbit for Gillibwand and woast it and spwinkle it libewally all over with pwogwessive theowies.-

oge PICKETS GILLIBRAND ANNOUNCEMENT

As a resident in the 20th CD, and with a last-minute caveat, the oge planned his personal picket of Gillibrand's war position at her Harpersfield announcement 02.01.06, one of 4 sites at which she announced her campaign Tues. and Weds. I had emailed her campaign that I would picket. Since early summer I have tried to ascertain her positions on issues, and once some indication eked out, to influence her campaign to take a more rational position on one of them---the war---where she appears to be roughly in line with Hillary (incidentally, if she complains about the comparison to Hillary, remind her that her own website describes her as "a younger version of our favorite senator, Hillary Clinton," per Washington County Chair Sheila Comar, Home: News: "Getting off to a Green Start"). I could have focused on any of a number of issues, single-payer health care, campaign finance, energy, global trade, etc, on none of which she seemed to have clear, specific stances, but I chose to focus on the war as the simplest, most immediate issue. It is very hard to advocate across a spectrum of issues. I have studied her website, had three personal conversations (one telephone and two face to face), heard her speak twice in public, and exchanged emails. I don't discuss the content of the personal contacts, although frankly, that wouldn't change the picture of her or the campaign anyway.

She is obviously accessible, and she obviously wants to know what we think (whether she really cares or will act on it is another matter). Kirsten is exceptional. She is extremely bright, adroit in interpersonal skills, appealing, and sometimes even seems childlike, despite the impression of strong reserves. Some of this could be my projection. I would not underestimate her abilities. She seems to want to be accepted by everyone (on her website and in her speeches she makes a point that she does not see herself as a Democrat, Independent, or Republican, but as someone interested in solutions to problems; this is probably political guile, but it could also reflect a personal need). In one-on-one contacts, she involves you with warmth and concern, tending to soften and blur her positions if you question them, accomodating you as much as she can; if you persist and she becomes uncomfortable, she withdraws somewhat, may ask questions, or retreat into a position of not knowing enough about the subject, giving you the impression that she may come around. On only a couple items has she told me outright that she disagreed.

Her husband, who the Times Union says is a venture capitalist, seems (appropriately) almost invisible in her presence, slight and quiet, but he is very attentive and plays an affirming and rescuing role when the discussion seems to him to need support or explication; his contributions then are quiet, diplomatic, and to the point.

Kirsten's wired. Everyone knows she has the support of Hillary and Spitzer. The Democratic leadership apparently got her into Pataki's last State of the State. She worked for Andrew Cuomo in HUD, whom we met again when the County brought him in for a fundraiser this year. She clerked on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and is a partner in a white shoe law firm with heavyweight clients; her corporate contacts are a given, no matter her pro bono work. The family is political. She's being launched in a district which the nationals consider medium-soft Republican, based on a lot of criteria I don't understand; I suspect this factors-in some thinking that the GOP's national problems and their disarray at the state level make Sweeney especially vulnerable now (some have charged that Pataki is secretly backing Kirsten in a GOP in-fight). In any event, the point I would make here is that Kirsten is not running for local office; her election would land her right in the middle of all the fundamental big issues that are driving us into a new dark age. We have the right to expect someone who is informed and clearly progressive on the big issues. (As for the flash points---womens' right to choose, gay rights, right to die, the religion wall, same sex union, stem cell, etc.---you tell me; they aren't in her speeches, and there isn't much if anything on her website. I suspect this is more political calculation.) So much for background.

I left my sign in the car and went inside the Maple Syrup facility, talked to some acquaintances for about 20 minutes until Kirsten arrived, and then approached her and her husband, reminding her of our prior contacts. She was warm and effusive, but I could ascertain no development on her unsatisfactory war position. Her speech was basically the same one I heard in Stamford at Russel's fundraiser: the same hokey stuff about her mother or aunt or whoever it is that shoots the deer and turkeys for Thanksgiving (at some point we should ask her about the cervine spongiform encephalitis found in NY's deer herds this year), her supportive family, how we need help with fuel bills, health insurance, etc. But on the war I heard only one change: she did not call for doubling the size of our special ops, just for an increase. At that, I thought I might actually have had some impact: I had previously written to her and her campaign about the absurdity of this piece of garbage on her website: "To combat the war on terror most effectively, we should double the size of our Special Operations Forces to take the war on terror to the roots of terror." Everything else was the same-o failed war policies, about a better plan for war success, more help to train Iraqis in developing their own security, and the obligatory homage to our troops. So with absolutely no movement evident in setting forth any more informed position or proposal, she finished her speech and I went outside and took up my picket.

On one side, my sign simply read, "Why Won't Gillibrand Bring the troops Home Now?" On the other, "Gillibrand Promotes Failed War Policies/Gillibrand: Your Hillary-Lite Hawk for 2006." I was there until all of the roughly three dozen attendees left, a number of whom stopped to talk to me, including Kirsten, who got out of her car and greeted me again with initial warmth. I have to say I just feel profoundly sad about this campaign; she could as easily be a meaningful champion. This was the point at which I escalated my efforts to influence the campaign's war stance from within the community of supporters to a public one. I had promised myself to give it a final shot---her announcement---before doing so. I don't think anyone hoped for an enlightened candidate to believe in more than I have, but I am not going to pretend that she is more than what she presents, even though her blank canvass and sunshine invite supporters to see what they want to. I have trouble criticizing people I know, so I will keep my distance. I will continue trying to influence this campaign, and I hope it will reform and win. But I will also call it what it is and has been: seductive, empty of real substance, and ultimately fraudulent. You do not have to be a partisan thrall, but you cannot be a generic politician. You cannot be everything to everyone. And I will not support a candidate on the ridiculous premise that once elected, the candidate will perform at a higher standard and in line with your expectations---although that is the hope of a number of Kirsten's supporters.

A word about the DFA endorsements: they don't stand for spit. All Dean and the DFA care about is winning elections. Winning elections gets you what we have in Congress right now: a herd of Democratic, compromised, lobby-fed sheep with a handful of frustrated shepherds who get caricaturized and locked away. Winning elections is only half---if that much---of the process; the bigger part, what we need to work on---is influencing candidates and incumbents. We do that by demanding that they act in our interest. We don't send them our dollars and we don't applaud their blatherings. We support and vote for third-party candidates if that's what's left. We picket and pressure. Etc. OK, off the soap box.

As it stands, Kirsten Gillibrand is politics as usual. If you like Hillary, fine, support her. Once you get past the smiles and warm fuzzies, however, you have to open your eyes and see that she's been groomed to be a hack. And if you read her website and listen to what she says, and stop kidding yourself, what you have at this point is not a candidate on top of the issues and fit for national office, but a hokey campaign full of ingratiating turkey shoots, backyard get togethers, and folksy talks around the kitchen table, with---to stay in the idiom---all the political relevance of Elmer Fudd.

OK, Gillibrand, show me I'm wrong.

Note: The Daily Star article on her announcement (I don't think the archived file is available yet) says that she supports the war. To be fair, that is not a direct quote, but an accurate characterization of her statements.