Psyche, Science, and Society

President deserves total loyalty, from “progressive” Congressman, that is

Evidently change means change in who the all-knowing leader is:

Creepy, revealing quote from White House staffer

By Glenn Greenwald

Jane Hamsher details the extremely aggressive tactics the White House and House leadership used to coerce liberal environmentalist members to vote for the cap-and-trade bill despite their belief that it helped polluters more than it did anything else (and remember their ability to do that the next time they claim that a bill they ostensibly support simply couldn’t pass because it lacked the necessary votes).  Jane quotes from a Politico article reporting on White House anger towards environmentalist Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, due to an impassioned floor speech he gave arguing that the bill was so industry-friendly that it would do more harm than good.  That article contains this quote:

The White House is smoking mad at Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who says he’s voting against the climate bill — despite the lobbying of the entire First Family in the Oval Office last night.

If the bill goes down, Obama won’t forget Doggett’s role, Democrats say.

It’s “stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country,” said an administration official.

This has become an emerging theme among both the White House and House leadership:  that progressive membeers of Congress have an obligation to carry out “the wishes of the President” even when they disagree (now, apparently, it’s “stunning” when they defy his dictates).  That was the same subservient mentality that led House Democrats who admitted they opposed the war supplemental spending and/or the foreign bank bailout to nonetheless vote for the bill:  because they President favored it.  The duty of Congress is not to obey the wishes of the President.

Note, too, that the sort of bullying tactics that were used for the war supplemental bill and now for the cap-and-trade bill are only directed towards the House progressives who want legislation to be less beholden to corporate donors; those tactics are never invoked against Blue Dogs who play a vital role in impeding progressive legislation and thus supply the perfect excuse for Democratic leaders as to why such legislation does not pass.  Let’s see if these tactics are used against Blue Dogs who impede a public option for health care, the repeal of DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and various issues relating to the closing of Guantanamo.  Will we hear condemnations from Rahm Emanuel’s underlings about how stunning and outrageous it is that conservative Democrats are “ignoring the wishes of the President?”

June 30th, 2009

Krugamn on treason to the planet

Paul Krugman expresses the sense of urgency many feel when addressing climate change comes up. In his column Krugman points out that the science increasingly predicts dire changes in our climate this century.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.

On point Krugman doesn’t make here is that these rapid changes will continue. Thus, not only will agriculture migrate up north, but it will continue migrating. Thus, millions of people will likely be on the move at any time, seeking an environment where they can live. Industry, involving fixed facilities, will have great difficulty in such circumstances. wars will dramatically increase as people flood borders toward livable areas.

Krugman points out the silliness of our political system to deal with this, with politicians turning climate science into a joke.

Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.

But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

Elsewhere in the article he states that:

[A]s I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

The anti-science attitudes spawned by Christian fundamentalists funded by major corporate interests may destroy us all.

The complete article is here.

June 30th, 2009

False imprisonment too long. Let Mohammed Jawad go

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes of the horrible injustices done to Mohammed Jawad at US hands. He also reminds us that the Obama administration is so desperate to keep this person who was a child when captured in indefinite imprisonment that they are using torture-obtained evidence to do so.

To answer Herbert’s question, given the paucity of evidence and the youth of Jawad when captured, one day was too long. Seven years is a crime:

How Long Is Long Enough?

By Bob Herbert

No one seems to know how old Mohammed Jawad was when he was seized by Afghan forces in Kabul six and a half years ago and turned over to American custody. Some reports say he was 14. Some say 16. The Afghan government believes he was 12.

What is not in dispute is that he was no older than an adolescent, and that since his capture he has been tortured and otherwise put through hell. The evidence against him has been discredited. He has tried to commit suicide. But the U.S. won’t let him go.

The treatment of the young captive was so egregious that the decorated U.S. Army officer assigned to prosecute him — a man gung-ho to secure a conviction against a defendant he believed had committed a serious crime against the American military — ended up removing himself from the case and declaring that he could no longer “in good conscience” participate in the military commissions set up to try accused terrorists.

Jawad was accused of hurling a hand grenade into a vehicle occupied by two American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter in December 2002. All three occupants of the vehicle were seriously injured.

Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld of the U.S. Army Reserve, a recipient of the Bronze Star, among other commendations, was named the lead prosecutor on the case in 2007. By then, Jawad had already been held for nearly five years. Colonel Vandeveld assumed that the case would be uncomplicated and that a conviction could be easily secured.

Jawad had confessed to the attack and, according to the charges against him, had acted as a member of an insurgent group called Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.

As Colonel Vandeveld began a diligent effort to assemble what he assumed would be the evidence that would convict Jawad, he became increasingly distressed and ultimately dismayed. It turned out, as a military judge would later rule, that Jawad’s Afghan captors had obtained his confession by torturing him. Then the boy was taken by U.S. authorities to Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, where he was held before eventually being transferred to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Colonel Vandeveld — “by sheer happenstance,” as he put it — came across a written summary of an interview of Jawad by a special agent of the Army Criminal Investigation Division. The summary, which was part of the official record of an entirely different case at Bagram, detailed extensive abuse that Jawad said had been inflicted on him at Bagram.

In a sworn affidavit, Colonel Vandeveld said, “This abuse included the slapping of Mr. Jawad across the face while Mr. Jawad’s head was covered with a hood, as well as Mr. Jawad’s having been shoved down a stairwell while both hooded and shackled.”

Jawad’s account had the ring of truth. As Colonel Vandeveld said in the affidavit, the interviewer “later testified as a defense witness … that Mr. Jawad’s statement was completely consistent with the statements of other prisoners held at Bagram at the time and, more importantly, that dozens of the guards had admitted to abusing the prisoners in exactly the way described by Jawad.”

Jawad also complained about being mistreated at Guantánamo, saying he had been moved with absurd frequency from cell to cell — the idea being to deprive him of sleep. A check of the official prison logs showed that Jawad had in fact been moved 112 times, without explanation, from one cell to another in a two-week period — an average of eight moves a day for 14 days.

As Colonel Vandeveld said in his affidavit: “Upon further investigation, we were able to determine that Mr. Jawad had been subjected to a sleep deprivation program popularly referred to as the ‘frequent flyer’ program.” The colonel said he lacked the words “to express the heartsickness” he felt as he came to fully understand the way Jawad had been treated by American soldiers.

On Dec. 25, 2003, Jawad tried to kill himself by repeatedly banging his head against a wall of his cell.

There is no credible evidence against Jawad, and his torture-induced confession has rightly been ruled inadmissible by a military judge. But the Obama administration does not feel that he has suffered enough. Not only have administration lawyers opposed defense efforts to secure Jawad’s freedom, but they are using, as the primary basis for their opposition, the fruits of the confession that was obtained through torture and has already been deemed inadmissible — without merit, of no value.

Colonel Vandeveld is no longer on active duty and has joined the effort by military defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union to secure Jawad’s freedom. Six years of virtual solitary confinement, he said, is enough for someone who was not much older than a child when he was taken into custody.

June 30th, 2009