Category Archives: Politics

Charlie Hebdo and censorship

Politics, Psychological Musings, Religion

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Almost everybody is against killing people over a cartoon, especially if the cartoon doesn’t push any of our buttons. That is because we believe in free speech. Of course, if a Muslim cleric in Yemen is instigating violence against us, then we think it is OK to kill them, especially if we use drones. As an aside, according to The Guardian, In Yemen, 17 named men were targeted multiple times. Strikes on them killed 273 people, at least seven of them children. At least four of the targets are still alive. End aside.

About a week ago, I posted two cartoons from Charlie Hebdo and, now that I have thought about it, I am sorry. Making fun of the weak and disadvantaged may be easy, still it is closer to bullying than I am comfortable with. The jokes that work best are jokes about the powerful – especially if they are pompous as well – and jokes on the joke teller. It is easy to make fun of religion, to a non-believer like me, the facts just seem so goofy. I like to think that the bedrock of Love, Compassion, Tolerance, which, I am told, underlie all the religions, are not goofy but the details are. Jokes about the details, especially when they are told by somebody who is a member of the religion, can be funny – I think that is why Stephen Colbert’s jokes about Christianity are so funny, he is a Catholic who even teaches Catholic Sunday School – or not.

The problem is who decides if a joke is funny?

I contend that it should be the person being offended. If a person – a Methodist, say – doesn’t like being called a Methoddy, they have the right to not like it. Of course, I also have the right – the absolute right under our constitution – to call them a Methoddy, I just don’t have the right to judge if they are offended or not. If the Methoddy is offended , I don’t have the right to say they shouldn’t be, no matter what my intent. If I continue to call them a Methoddy, if I am going to be honest with myself, I have to admit that I just don’t give a shit about them or admit that I want to be offensive.

A lot of Muslims – I have no idea how few or how many, there are about 1.6 Billion self identified Muslims in the world so a few can be alot of people – are bothered by any image of Mohammed, some are very bothered, just like some Christians were bothered by the Piss- Christ and, as I recall some were very bothered. I don’t understand it, these are not things that rattle my cage, but that doesn’t give me the right  to say it shouldn’t rattle theirs. It also doesn’t take away my right to say pretty much anything I want, it doesn’t take away my legal right to be as boorish as I damn well please.

To the Mullin and starting back, thinking about Political Bravery and Dishonesty

Politics, Travel

Mullin-1898Driving south to The Mullin Automotive Museum, we gently climbed up the Salinas Valley to Paso Robles. This is Steinbeck Territory,  and heavily Mexican (it is not an area of the United States that one would have to learn English to prosper). It is rich farmland, with a highway through it. After the rains – not the last deluge, but the rains for the last couple of weeks – the land has been transformed. For at least three years, our Savanna has been lifeless, the golden hills, brown and dull. Now it is coming alive. The green is emerald, so bright it is shocking, Michele says it looks like Ireland.  Mullin-1900

We started the drive late, just as the storm was clearing. As we head southeast, the storm was moving east even faster. so we drove on wet roads with clearing skies.

At the southeast end of the Valley, as we started to climb out of the alluvial bottomland, we passed what I had expected to be the depleted San Ardo Oil Field. Except that it seems to be no longer depleted. All the old, rusted rocking horses – rocking horses is what I grew up calling them but they are also called pumpjacks and they are those big see-saw thing that pump the oil out of the ground – have been giving a fresh coat of paint or replaced and are ready to pump out more oil. With all the new technology – including fracking, but far from only fracking – they are getting better at finding and extracting every last drop. We now produce almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia and gas seems cheap again. Good Times must be here to stay.  Of course the damage to the planet that burning that oil is still the same, but, at least, it is cheaper to do it.

As we drove into a great sunset, we talked about oil and politics and  Dianne Feinstein’s act  of courage.
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Releasing that Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report must have been very  painful. Feinstein is no Liberal, she voted for the Patriot Act  and its extension, including the FISA provisions. She thinks that Edward Snowden is a traitor and she has voted to give NSA more powers. Feinstein is head of the Intelligence Committee and she has been a cheerleader for the CIA. but, apparently, the CIA she cheers for, doesn’t condone torture.  The other CIA, however, didn’t want the report released and either did President Obama. Feinstein had to fight to get the Report even done. Releasing as much information as she released was damaging and must have cost her friendships.

Our plan was to meet Malcolm Pearson in Ventura where we would spend the night. The next morning we went to the Mullin Museum with Malcolm and then we split. Malcolm journeyed  deeper into the Southland and we spent the night in Ventura. As it turned out, our timing was perfect, as the day ended, we wandered past the strawberry fields of Oxnard and down to the beach just in time to watch the sun set over the Channel Islands.
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Then we caught the 38th Annual Ventura Harbor Parade of Lights (wheeee!).  Mullin-2069
Mullin-Sunday morning, as we had breakfast before starting for home, we heard that the Senate had passed the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill. We weren’t sure, but the inference was that the passed bill included language – written by the lobbyists for CitiGroup and put in at the last minute – that relaxed or eliminated many of the government controls put in by the Dodd-Frank Bill. It will now be easier, again, for banks to do, among other things, credit swaps and still be eligible for Federal Government Bailouts. I thought that stopping risky behavior was one of the main reasons Dodd-Frank was passed in the first place. Now we are back to where we started, if the banks gamble and make money, they keep it and pay big bonuses, if they lose, the taxpayer bail them out.

To round out the Spending Bill, it provides $64 billion for military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other countries, while money is saved by cutting the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service which should make it easier for companies to trash the environment and lower the taxes they pay. What galls me the most about all this is that it was a bipartisan bill with the Democrats claiming it Was the best we could get. Maybe, but I am inclined to think that it is just politics as usual with the Democrats just giving lip service to fighting Wall Street while they vote like Republicans. The only good thing about the way the voting went is that neither California Senator voted for it. They voted the way they talk.

After breakfast, we started home on the Pacific Coast Highway (which is really on the coast less than half the time).

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To end on an aside, we left Ventura and drove along the coast until the highway turned inland, about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara, at Gaviota. I was driving and Michele was riding shotgun with the camera. It wasn’t until we turned inland that Michele took her first shot. We both thought that was telling. Telling what, we weren’t sure, but something. End aside.

Torture

Cars, Politics, Travel

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We may have made a few terrorists uncomfortable for a short period of time in order to get information that we felt was essential to protecting the United States. Deputy Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin.

There really weren’t many surprises in the Senate Torture Report. When it was reported that Lynndie England, Ivan Frederick  – who his friends affectionately called Chip – Megan Ambuhl, et al, posted pictures of their torturing prisoners sometime in 2003-2004, I didn’t believe that they were Lone Wolves. To me, and everybody I talked to who had been in the military, they were just too far down the ladder to have made that decision and then blithely photograph it. I thought that the decision had been made much higher up and, when the Privates and Spec 4s had been caught, they were scapegoated.

It really didn’t surprise me that the CIA was lying, anybody who read about the CIA fighting and redacting the Senate Report. Speaking of which, I was surprised that Senator Feinstein took such a strong stance. Pleasantly surprised.

What also surprised me was that the CIA paid something like 80 million dollars – EIGHTY MILLION – to a couple of consultants to torture people.

Peter Kuhlman, on facebook, linked to an article in The American Conservative that makes as much sense as anything I have read. As Peter said,  Money quote:”Willingness to torture became, first within elite government and opinion-making circles, then in the culture generally, and finally as a partisan GOP talking point, a litmus test of seriousness with respect to the fight against terrorism. That – proving one’s seriousness in the fight – was its primary purpose from the beginning, in my view. It was only secondarily about extracting intelligence. …It was never about “them” at all. It was about us. It was our psychological security blanket, our best evidence that we were “all-in” in this war, the thing that proved to us that we were fierce enough to win.”

In the meantime, Michele and I are heading south to see a special show on the art of the Bugatti brothers at the Mullin. We will try to not think about torture.Mullin-0452

 

 

There are no bad guys

Americana, Politics

S F Auto Show-1710 I went to the San Francisco Auto Show over the Thanksgiving Weekend – with Grandson Auggie and his stellar father – my Son-In-Law – Gabe. and I want to write about it. But I kept thinking about the Ferguson Grand Jury and Michael Brown and that makes the Auto Show seem too frivolous. Now a Staten Island Grand Jury upped the ante with Eric Garner and the Auto Show has faded behind a red mist of – I don’t exactly know what to call it, really – something between Sadness and Rage.

Sadness that my country is not the exemplar of Fairness and Justice that I want it to be and Rage that, even with all the Unfairness and Injustice, with all the Inequality, with the biggest prison system the world has ever seen, most of us still think that The United States is the Greatest Country In The World. I so desperately want to make it somebody’s fault – somebody besides me, of course – but there are no bad guys here. Or, maybe, more accurately, we are all bad guys.

I have my opinions about the guilt or culpability of Darren Wilson, Michael Brown’s killer, but those opinions are based on somebody else’s opinions because I wasn’t there. What makes me sad, however, isn’t the guilt or innocence of Officer Wilson, it is the typical-ness of the act. The dispose-ability of young black men. A couple of days ago, another young black man, Rumain Brisbon, was killed in Phoenix by the police, and I don’t think it was even mentioned in the New York Times.

Michael Brown was killed. That is a fact. Still, it is a fact that does not mean the same thing to everybody. When I goggled different variations of How many black men were shot by police last year, I didn’t get much; the numbers are not as available as I would have thought. However, I did get this from The San Francisco Chrony, dated December 2010: The NAACP presented statistics from Oakland authorities on 45 officer-involved shootings from 2004 to 2008, one-third of which were fatal. Of the people shot, 37 were black and none was white. Although weapons were not found in 40 percent of cases, no officers were charged.

In 2010, Oakland was about 28% black and about 82% of officer-involved shootings were against black people. Let’s stipulate that those are accurate numbers, still, there are several ways to look at them. To me – and, apparently, the NAACP – it shows black people are shot by the police at a higher rate because they are black. To Conservatives, even though their default position is normally that they don’t like or trust the government – for example, conservative Fox News sided with Cliven Bundy, and his heavily armed friends, over the government agents trying to collect taxes that the courts had ruled are due – see the shooting disparity as proof that black people are more violent.

Sadly, many good Liberals pretty much believe the same thing. Unlike Conservatives, most Liberals like the government. Their default position is that the government is good and usually works. They believe the authorities are trying their best and that the police should be given the benefit of the doubt. They point to the fact that Michael Brown had just stolen some cigars and that  Eric Garner was, in fact, engaged in an illegal activity. That is not to say that Liberals like that Officer Wilson killed Brown, just that the killing was unfortunate, rare, and – to a certain extent – understandable. It was unfortunate, but it isn’t rare, still it is understandable. Michael Brown was – how I hate to put in the past tense here, but is doesn’t fit – big and Wilson was scared. Later, Wilson testified I felt another one of those punches in my face could knock me out or worse. I mean, it was, he’s obviously bigger than I was and stronger and the, I’ve already taken two to the face and I didn’t think I would, the third one could be fatal if he hit me right. Officer Wilson said Brown was like The Hulk with terrible resilience and incredible strength. Of course Wilson was scared.

A huge part of why Darren Wilson was scared is because he was under-trained. Then, to make the situation worse, he was heavily armed. That is a bad combination. It isn’t, however, a combination based on decisions Officer Wilson made, it is a combination the City Council along with the Chief of Police- who drew up and accepted the budgets for Police Training and equipment purchases  – made. Wilson being under-trained and heavily armed was also a decision facilitated by several Congresses and several Administrations, including the Obama Administration, whose numerous bills to improve Local Policing, or as they like to call it, Local Law Enforcement, leaned heavily on equipment over training.

That is the American way. Washington is stuffed full of lobbyists pushing expensive equipment. They push it on the military and the police, both national police and local police. As a result, the police have become armed as if they were an occupying army (and it has become hard for them to resist acting that way). We want to believe that Ferguson and Staten Island and Phoenix are rare, but the people facing that occupying army know it isn’t rare. They know that the potential of something going wrong is alway there. That is not an accident, it is how the system has been designed. That is very sad,

A couple of thoughts on Ferguson

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

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I like to think that I never thought I just hit a triple, but that isn’t true, like George Bush, I was born on third base and I have often thought I was responsible for all the easiness in my life. So my emotions on Ferguson are pretty detached and this is not a time for detachment. What I would rather do is post  several quotes that say what I would like to say, only better. The first bunch is from the web but the last two were from good friends who I don’t see enough in real life but still continue to enrich it on facebook, Ophelia Ramirez and Vern Smith.

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor…As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented. Justice Antonin Scalia,

this outcome, and so many like it, are the result of a system functioning the way it is intended to function. Racism is baked right into the foundation:

Every one of those grand jurors might have hearts of purest gold. The outcome was predetermined precisely because the outcome did not rely on the individual character of the jurors. We have police aggression against black people because the white moneyed classes of this country have demanded aggressive policing and the moneyed control our policy. We have police aggression because the War on Drugs provokes it and we still have a War on Drugs because the War on Drugs puts vast amounts of tax dollars in the hands of police departments and a voracious prison industrial complex. We have police aggression against black people because centuries of gerrymandering and political manipulation have been undertaken with the explicit purpose of empowering some people and disenfranchising others. from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. 

None of that can be solved through having pure hearts and pure minds. Racism is not a problem of mind. Racism cannot be combated by individuals not being racist. A pure heart makes no difference. In response to systemic injustice, you’ve got to change the systems themselves. It’s the only thing that will ever work. Jamelle Bouie 

…..The Language of the Unheard.

I will not condone, nor can I condemn. I hear the heartache of a mother, and the frustration of a people, and all people. I’m looking out into a world so broken, saddened, without answers. Does the quest for the blood of one man atone for a justice that cannot be found? Fear, frustration, hopelessness, desperation….they all share the same face on a million souls. I will not accept that there are no answers, that there are no bridges. Justice too often appears like formless smoke, near, but unobtainable. I will not be distracted by sanctimonious condemnation of the act without the damnation of the stage it springs from. And, most importantly, I will not accept the loss of another generation, when so much can be done, if we reach out…..out into a world that seems so broken, and listen without judging, and find our common ground. To build a new future, to find justice, to end the cycle. Vern Smith

A grand jury of twelve people – nine white, three black – decided that the policeman who shot and killed an unarmed teenager will not be indicted of any charge. I did not sit on the jury, nor was I present at the shooting. I do not know, and may never know what really happened. Perhaps the policeman really did feel threatened and in the few seconds he had to make a decision, he felt the use of a firearm was the only way to handle the situation. Perhaps in following the strict letter of the law, the grand jury felt they could not, in good conscience, render an indictment. I just don’t know.

What I do know is this: racism in this country is alive and unfortunately, quite well. I see it in my own life. I well remember my brothers being pulled over and harassed by the police for no other reason other than the color of their brown skin. I hear it in the comments I still get, such as, “You are very pretty for a Mexican girl”, or “For a Mexican, you speak well”. I see it in my extended family where my sister-in-laws niece was killed in a drive by five years ago and the police have yet to catch the killer because, really, they do not have the time/resources to investigate the killing of another black teenager killed in an area where this is an everyday occurrence. And my experiences pale when compared to the 200 plus years of discrimination that people of color have endured, and continue to endure in this country.

I understand the outrage with the lack of indictment of yet another person who has killed an unarmed young man of color. I understand the feeling of despair. However, looting, rioting, destroying property, and possibly hurting someone else is not the answer. How does this possibly help?

What I also know is that we have an opportunity to turn this around; an opportunity to put the outrage into something constructive; an opportunity to turn from hate and know that love really is the answer. Think of the immense changes Gandhi facilitated through non-violence. Civil rights were in large part brought about through determined non-violence. Peaceful actions are more powerful than rioting and looting. More powerful than killing. And more powerful than hate.

I so urge, no I beg everyone reading this to turn away from violence and use this an opportunity to remember that at our core, we are one. We are brother and sisters all. We have, in this situation, the call to effect change through peaceful and powerful channels.

Today, how will you be peaceable?
Ophelia Ramirez