Torture enabler coming to Fairbanks: We See Yoo!

As you can tell by the title of my post, I am in no way neutral when it comes to the crime committed by John Yoo, who enabled the torture of prisoners by the United States through his vile legal opinion for the Bush Administration. He has sullied the term "lawyer," and it is astonishing to me that he is still licensed to practice law. There is a warrant for his arrest for war crimes in Spain. (See also Fire John Woo! for more information.)

Yoo is coming as a guest speaker for the Alaska Bar Association convention, to be held at the Princess Hotel May 4, 5, & 6. Yoo is a featured speaker on Friday:

The Balance Between Security and Civil Liberties in Wartime

This program will be moderated by Jeff Feldman, and will put the views advanced by Professor Yoo and Mr. Wax on trial through an interactive program of cross-examination and Socratic dialog. Please join us in what we expect to be an electric discussion of the most pressing constitutional issues of our time.

Steve Wax is a federal public defender and the author of the book, Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror. This segment of the conference is scheduled from 8:30 am to noon on Friday in the Edgewater Room, according to the conference program.

After the conference, the ACLU and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship will hold a potluck and discussion with Wax at 6:30 pm.

Perhaps a little review of the history would be helpful. First, here's a definition of torture under US legal code.

(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

Note that those who conspire to commit torture are subject to the same punishment as those who actually do the torture:

(a) Offense.— Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

(b) Jurisdiction.— There is jurisdiction over the activity prohibited in subsection (a) if—

(1) the alleged offender is a national of the United States; or
(2) the alleged offender is present in the United States, irrespective of the nationality of the victim or alleged offender.

(c) Conspiracy.— A person who conspires to commit an offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties (other than the penalty of death) as the penalties prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

John Yoo wrote the infamous "Torture Memo" that provided the Bush Administration with the justification it needed to commit torture (see the PDF: part 1 and part 2). The memo was eventually rescinded, but the man who authored it continues to defend it, and several others he wrote. By inviting John Yoo to speak at the convention, the Alaska Bar Association has, in effect, legitimized his position. It gives the appearance that he's seen not as a criminal of the very worst kind running around loose on a convoluted technicality; instead, he is a respected scholar with a defensible viewpoint. That is detestable, and shameful.

And the United States government, our CURRENT administration, continues to try to get the whole icky business swept under the rug.

I think the good people of Fairbanks need to get their feet on the street and protest the abomination that this man enabled, and protest the fact that he is out, free, and on the lecture circuit.

Farming systems and Food, Inc.

Week four of the food systems course has again been chock-full of readings, ideas, and a movie: Food Inc.. I've heard about the film, which came out in 2008, but I'd never seen it. It's put me off feedlot anything: pork, poultry, beef. Yick.

I took notes during the film, which we watched on Feb. 8. The movie concentrates on food safety (or lack thereof) and the sort of indentured servitude in which farmers and factory workers are trapped in the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, CAFOs, or factory farms/industrial farms that are where, horrifically, most of our meat is raised. It also goes into the influence of fast food and supermarket chains (in particular, MacDonald's and Wal-Mart) on the way meat is produced–their incredible purchasing power makes a big difference.

Here's a few items I jotted down:

• In the chicken ranches of the south, debt by the large-scale chicken meat sellers like Perdue or Tyson is deftly put onto the farmers, who (a) don't own the chickens (b) but must raise them to the specifications and requirements of the meat company and have no control over how their business is run. The farmer, who earns maybe $18,000 a year, ends up in major debt (in the realm of $100,000 to a half-million) because each chicken house costs a huge amount and the equipment, feed, and antibiotics (a necessary part of the operation) are also expensive--but the price the farmer gets for the meat is pretty much dictated by the company.
• The movie described the way the hog industry had dramatically changed, following the pattern in the poultry and beef industries.
• It went into the tactics of companies for dealing with regulation: infiltration of the agencies responsible for oversight by former lobbyists and former or future employees of the industries they are supposed to regulate, the reduction of funding for agencies, and the demonizing of government regulation and promotion of "personal responsibility" and "self-policing." The most interesting former employee (of Monsanto) was Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who worked as a lawyer for the company and later wrote the Supreme Court majority opinion that allowed Monsanto to prosecute farmers for seed patent infringement when their crops had been contaminated by Monsanto's Roundup-Ready GMO crops (the farmers have to prove they didn't steal it). Thomas didn't recuse himself, obviously. (He didn't recuse himself in the Roundup-Ready alfalfa case, either.)
• The film spent quite some time on the case of Moe Parr, who ran a seed-cleaning company and was being sued by Monsanto for, essentially, assisting in theft. He was driven out of business, eventually. (Monsanto has a reply to Food Inc. here.)
• The movie talked about Kevin's Law, that was introduced in response to the death of a little boy, Kevin, from a hamburger contaminated with a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria. Kevin's Law, simply put, would give the USDA the power to shut down meat packing plants that have too many health infringements, among other things. And guess what? it keeps dying in committee, even though it gets introduced every year since 2005. The ironic thing was that I had thought that it had been passed, and that we had protection like this already. The interviews with his mother were both very interesting and moving--not schmaltzy, even though it dealt with the very personal loss of her son. She and her mother have gone on to be very active politically for foodborne illness research and prevention.
• Another interesting aspect of the tactics used in the meat-packing industry was the undermining of unions, the hiring of illegal or new immigrants (but it's the immigrants who get hauled off to jail, not the managers or officers of the companies), and effect of NAFTA in driving Mexican farmers out of work and off their land because of cheap, subsidized corn from the US. The film made mention of Upton Sinclair's 1906 book, The Jungle, and how this led to the meatpacking industry's strength for many years as one of the safest, best-paid, and generally good industries in which to work in the US due to union effort and the public's appalled reaction to the horrors Sinclair described. Now, however, the meatpacking industry is back to being unsafe, and has lost much of the gains made during the middle of the 20th century.
• In one of the funnier ironic moments of the movie, an engineer and efficiency designer for one of the companies involved in the meat processing industry was glowingly describing their control room, where they could monitor and adjust the speed and activities of the machinery moving and treating meat in plants across the country. He said, with obvious pride, that it was "a marriage between technology and industry"--but apparently, I observed, not a marriage with agriculture.
• A stomach-turning moment for me came when they showed how a percentage of ammonia-treated beef is mixed into hamburger as a means of sterilizing the meat so that harmful pathogens don't survive. Again, a prideful manager spoke about how the percentage of meat in the industry that had this stuff in it should be up to 80% by 2010. I wondered about the effects of that ammonia on me when I eat the burger. I'm afraid I'm not buying hamburger any more unless I know this crud isn't in it.

In contrast to the industrialized food system, the movie interviewed Joel Salatin, an author and farmer and a wonderfully outspoken, biting, funny man. There were several good bits in the interview, but his point that growth in market share is not an end in itself was important. He doesn't want to get big—he'd no longer be farming.

And that, I think, was the essential point of the movie: that the consolidation and overmechanization of food/agriculture operations had made them into an industry, a means of making money—and they really have nothing to do with actual food or human beings anymore, resulting in an industry that isn't safe, isn't producing food, subsidizes disease, and has no connection to the land, plants, people, and animals it is supposedly about.

Previous posts in this series:

Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

TTY scam: Yorkies for Sale

Or perhaps it's English bulldogs, or terriers to give away. Sound familiar? It should: it's exactly the same scam as that run by those arseholes sending e-mails requesting ad placement. Same phrasing, and a curiously insistent person wanting to know when, exactly, the credit card will be run, and can it be run today, right now, in fact? I received one of these calls a couple of weeks ago, and it was so suspicious that the only thing I could think of was that the person on the TTY machine (also known as a TDD) had stolen somebody else's card. They gave me a name and residence address (Juneau, and I looked it up on Google--it appeared to be a local church). Took 45 minutes to get exactly nowhere.

Then Leah got another call yesterday. What a waste of time!

The scam may not be in the ad placement, but in the dog end (so to speak). Free or cheap dogs, but shipping that costs a lot and somehow the dogs never arrive.

I get requests for ads all the time, usually by e-mail, that reveal that the person placing them has no real interest in the periodical in which they are to be placed and no conception of English grammar. There are often mistakes in spelling and grammar, but not the kind a native speaker of English would make. They also clearly know nothing of the periodical they have contacted (for example, how often the Republic comes out!) The same is true of this new TTY version of the scam.

I'm not sure if it's a hearing shyster taking advantage of the TTY phone, a deaf shyster abusing a TTY phone, or a person posing as a TTY operator but who is in fact a scam artist. No matter the case, newspapers and magazines should watch out.

Made me spit out my tea

I just heard this delightful little tidbit on NPR, the Word from Our Sponsor "not-an-ad" advertisement: "Brought to you by Monsanto, committed to sustainable agriculture," and then (paraphrasing) 'by using gene splicing technology and modern agricultural techniques to ensure a bountiful harvest', or something like that.

I spat out my tea--talk about greenwashing! Pretty website, though.

They've got the money to make their greenwash look good, I guess...

What 9/11 has brought us

Seven years ago, approximately 3,000 people of many nationalities, ethnicities, and languages died in horrific acts of mass murder committed on the United States' eastern seaboard. The world commiserated with us, offered help and sympathy. We mourned.

Great leaders take the adversities of a nation and inspire their people to rise above them. To offer hope, and direction, and resolve, to move an injured people to do great things, requires a person who can orate, who can give us meaningful, potent words that appeal to our higher selves and make us believe that we can do more, that we are meant to be noble, selfless, brave, generous—a great leader not only leads us to breathe in those words and ideas and feelings, a great leader helps us to find the abilities we need within ourselves to actually be what is needed. Literally, in • spirare, to breathe in.

Unfortunately, we didn't have a great leader.

We had a poor orator and simplistic thinker—but one with a good speechwriter, and with a group of men and women behind him devoted to twisted ideals. And so, when he and they spoke to the nation and the world, we heard an appeal not to our higher selves, but to that which was basest: an appeal to our fear, for revenge. We heard lies. And because our leader had a good speechwriter, and because it is easier to ignite a mob than to inspire a people, far too many of us became inspired to those horrible words.

Since September 11, 2001, we have:

Roused ourselves to war based on deliberate lies. We are now involved in two wars, one very badly executed in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and are flirting with a third. Approximately 1,255,000 Iraqis have died as a result since we invaded.

Indebted ourselves to the tune of 53 trillion dollars.

Tolerated and even accepted torture as an appropriate means of questioning suspects.

Tolerated the idea that not all men are created equal, and some have fewer rights than others. Those with fewer rights can be declared outside the law, by the president, without explanation or proof of anything, and held indefinitely, secretly, and without access to lawyers or family.

Accepted domestic spying, wiretapping without a warrant, and other features of the surveillance state as normal and even necessary.

Marginalized and even criminalized dissent.

Accepted the corruption and trivialization of the major news media.

Never underestimate the power of the spoken word.

Fluff and lies

Obsidian Wings has an excellent analysis of the falsehoods in Sarah Palin's speech. In condensed form, here they are:

1. McCain shows constancy. Nope: check the Carpetbagger Report on this.
2. "Thanks, but no thanks." Er, she did accept the money, and at a time when Louisiana and Mississippi were in desperate need of money for infrastructure rebuilding.
3. Obama hasn't authored major legislation. Unless you think that the "strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet" is, perhaps, major. Apparently Palin doesn't actually think much of ethics... And all these other bills that Obama sponsored or co-authored don't count with her either.
4. Obama is against producing more energy. Uh, what? That's directly contradicted here, on his website.
5. Under Obama, our taxes would go up. Yeah, right. See my commentary below on this pony puckey. (Pay attention, Mark. You mocked me the other night on this, and I'm not happy about it. )

Many thanks to Hilzoy for this excellent factchecking and analysis.

The Reality-Based Community also has a good refutation of Palin's lies.

And of course, the Daily Show has the word on community organizers. (See this interesting New York Times discussion of the term.)

Sarah, I'm really disappointed in you. Your speech is making me think seriously for the first time ever of actually donating money to the Democratic presidential campaign. I've been a long-time Green, but with this particular election and these particular candidates I might just break ranks. (God, I cringe to say this out loud.) Of course, what's really really annoying is that the Greens are damn good, but are shut out.

The Republicans offered nothing but the same old crap, with more extremism. Given what that's brought us to in the last eight years, I'm appalled that people could possibly think this would be good for the country. Apparently, though, you can fool a chump again and again.

Amy Goodman arrested!

So what the hell is it with these cops arresting peaceful protesters? and journalists? and lawyers? This is freaking CRAZY! Here's the press release and video from Democracy Now! And where the hell is NPR on this? Why aren't they covering these arrests on All Things Considered? They've been going on for three days! Bozos. But that might interfere with the policies set up by the Republican stooge at the head of NPR these days...can't have any negative publicity about the Republican National Convention, can we? just lots and lots of coverage of Ms. Beauty Queen Palin.

And guess what, folks: the FBI is involved. The Federales, the Minnesota state police, the locals. This is criminal. They should be going after real criminals and not intimidating people simply exercizing their first amendment rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and press!

The Jamestown Press reports that a small group of protestors (idiots!) attacked the Connecticut delegation on "Monday afternoon", and then the cops got involved, and all hell broke loose. This doesn't, however, explain the horrendous behavior by the cops on the 30th and the 31st.

However, this also puts in me in mind of the plants put in protest crowds in Seattle during the World Trade Organization talks and in other places around the world.

Sleazy peazy pudding and pie

We'll take your money and let you die.

Neil Davis over at the Health Care Morass blog points out that the health care swift-boaters are at it again with those Harry and Louise ads that sank the Clinton attempt to better our health care system (admittedly a flawed proposal--mostly, as I understand it, because it tried too hard to compromise with the money people). Davis is much more circumspect than I am in my assessment of this kind of ad. I find it enraging. These people are advocating for a system that is proven to be inefficient, expensive, and very bad for our collective health. People die because of our stupid private insurance coverage system. And these selfish idiots want to privatize it even more. People, OUR SYSTEM DOESN"T WORK!

You want fiscal efficiency? Single-payer or socialized medicine is far more economical for everyone.

You want better health? Even Dominica's got better health care than we do. We're ranked at #37 by the World Health Organization.

You want convenience and choice and no waiting? Well, you won't get that here--insurance paperwork is nasty, our health care is rationed on the basis of ability to pay, and getting in to see a doctor can take quite a while. Or not. It's just not very predictable. But that's not the case in, say, France or Canada, no matter what the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies will try to tell you.

I don't get it. People are so afraid of the big bad boogeyman of socialized or government anything, that they can't seem to see past the hype and look at the facts: government really does do some things better (and single-payer isn't the same thing as socialized medicine anyway). But no: out come the same stupid mind-wipe ad campaigns. It's truly weird. Or diabolically money-grubbing.

Man, am I glad I don't have a TV.

And the prosecution SLAM-dunks the Stevens' defense volley!

Ah, yes, the Great Alaskan Sporting Event: watching the Elected Officials vs. the Prosecuting Attorneys. The ADN's Alaska Politics blog has got some great info on the latest legal motions, courtesy Erika Bolstad and David Hulen. (What a time for Libby Casey to be in Washington!) First, Stevens and his lawyers claim the case against him should be dropped, dismissed, tossed out, because, well, this, that, and the other...but not because the charges might be false (of course, he did plead not guilty).

But the prosecution was ready for 'em: a hard fastball of motions and out comes the promise of MORE EVIDENCE! More unreported gifts: a Jeep Cherokee! a secret interest-free loan! an unpaid-for backup generator at the infamous Girdwood residence! this last at Stevens' request!!!

And then there's that job for one of Stevens' sons! with--wait for it--VECO! and as if that wasn't enough--for a grandson, too!

Good god almighty.

But there's more--Stevens' "Non-Legislative Acts" concerning the natural gas pipeline, the Sakhalin oil fields, and the Pakistani pipeline (also a few other things). From the indictment:

It was a part of the scheme that STEVENS, while at the same time concealing his continuing receipt of things of value from ALLEN and VECO from 1999 to 2006, received and accepted solicitations for multiple official actions from ALLEN and other VECO employees, and knowing that STEVENS could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO during that same time period. These solicitations for official action, some of which were made directly to STEVENS, included the following topics: (a) funding requests and other assistance with certain international VECO projects and partnerships, including those in Pakistan and Russia; (b) requests for multiple federal grants and contracts to benefit VECO, its subsidiaries, and its business partners, including grants from the National Science Foundation to a VECO subsidiary; and (c) assistance on both federal and state issues in connection with the effort to construct a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope Region.

Basically, Stevens' claim is that his actions were legislative and innocent, and protected by what's known as the Speech or Debate Clause, intended to protect those activities that a member of Congress might undertake that are integral to his or her duties. The prosecution is claiming, on the other hand, that while the legislative activities might be protected, the concealment of the benefits he received for certain actions is definitely not, and

evidence will be offered at trial for the purpose of demonstrating Senator Stevens' intent and his motive to conceal the substantial benefits he received from VECO by, among other things, lying on his mandatory, financial disclosure forms.

Did you notice that? They wrote "among other things", implying that there is even more muck to rake.

And that muck is assuredly oily: undertaking, lessee, official actions on an international scale so that a particular company can get rich?

Ah, but the prosecution's not worrying about that sort of thing. It's the dishonesty they're hopped up about.

Boy, howdy, is this going to be an interesting couple of months.

If you can't redact 'em, eliminate 'em

Ah, yes, ol' George just keeps coming up with those doozies. Remember the scandal when it was revealed that Bush administration officials were redacting the scientific reports on the environment, etc., to conform to what the administration wanted? Politicization of science and perversion of editing á la Stalin--check out the 138-page report (PDF).

Well, now, Bush has proposed simply eliminating the scientific review process for the Endangered Species Act altogether. Much simpler. As reported by the Washington Post:

The Bush administration yesterday proposed a regulatory overhaul of the Endangered Species Act to allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.

But Sarah Palin ought to like this travesty:

The new rules would also limit the impact of the administration's decision in May to list the polar bear as threatened with extinction because of shrinking sea ice.

Isn't this just loverly?

He's so indicted! He just can't hide it!

We know, we know, we know and he just can't hide it!

Senator Ted Stevens has been indicted for corruption. Here's the indictment (PDF).

It's international news.

This is mixed news for Alaska. On the one hand, it is very good to get this into the courts and dealt with: either he's innocent or he's guilty. One hopes that if they had enough that a grand jury indicted him, that the prosecutors have enough evidence to convict him, especially someone in such a public position and with such financial and political resources. You just DON'T do this without that backup. (Should always have this in any case, but when the indictee is such a powerful figure, your career is toast if you don't have your ducks lined up properly.)

So, assuming that the senator's ass is grass, Alaska has just lost the seniority, skill, and knowledge he possessed. We've lost a good chunk of that even without a conviction: his influence is now near-moot. Stevens has supported many good things for Alaska: science research, basic infrastructure funding, et cetera. He's also, to my mind, supported some horrific legislation and unconstitutional and immoral practices. So I am very glad, in this respect, for his downfall. He would have retired in one way or another anyway, and we would have lost his influence then.

It's Ray Metcalfe who kept at it and kept at it and finally exposed the maggots under the seats in our legislature and in our Congressional delegation. Vindication must be bittersweet.

Upcoming first anniversary of the FBI raid on Stevens' house

I received this afternoon a public service announcement of an event commemorating the FBI raid on Senator Stevens' house in Girdwood last year. To whit:

What: An observance of the first anniversary of the FBI's raid on Ted Stevens' Girdwood home
When/Where: 11:30 AM Wednesday July 30 at Ted Stevens' Fairbanks campaign HQ, Old Steese just north of College Road
Why: Let the public know the following facts have not been forgotten, we'll provide signs!
Who: Alaskans who want the corrupting influence of big money removed from Alaska politics

In the year since FBI agents raided Ted Stevens' Girdwood home, we've learned that:

• VECO employees donated over $180,000 in large dollar amounts to Ted Stevens - based on FEC records
• VECO employees doubled the size of Ted Stevens' $440,000 Girdwood home. Stevens claims to have paid $130,000 for this remodel. VECO was not in the housing renovation business, rather it is an oilfield service company.
• Ted Stevens arranged huge funding increases to the National Science Foundation to expand arctic research.
• The National Science foundation awarded contracts to VECO totalling $170 million to provide logistical support for arctic research.
• VECO hired Ben Stevens, paying him $243K for "giving advice, lobbying colleagues and taking official acts in matters before the legislature," (8/16/07 Anchorage Daily News)
• When asked by federal prosecutors, former VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith stated under oath that their payments to Ben Stevens constituted an illegal bribe.

(I can't say as I see increasing the National Science Foundation's funding as a bad thing, but it does look a little sticky when all those oil types are involved.)

Things looked bad enough to the FBI that they started taping Stevens' conversations.

For a really extensive listing, got to Alaska Report's Corrupt Bastards Page, an excellent reference. Retire Ted! also has a lot of stuff, but it's paid for by the Democratic Party of Alaska and hasn't been kept current.

At any rate, it looks like things will be lively at Stevens' campaign headquarters on Wednesday around lunchtime.

The CON con

The "con" is in trying to get rid of it. Neil Davis and I have been blogging about this issue over at the Health Care Morass blog. Neil's also written about it in the Republic and the Alaska Health Policy Review.

The free marketeers are at it again, claiming that the answer to rising health care costs, physician shortages, etc., will be solved if we only go to an open, competitive market in facilities services, medical specialties, etc. It's hogwash. The insert taken out in the News-Miner on Sunday by the group, "Alliance for Healthcare in Alaska", was a sneaky, deceptive advertorial that was full of falsehoods and twisted facts. Very, very low ball.

There's obviously a ton of money at stake.

And, of course, the first public hearing on rescinding the Certificate of Need law is in Fairbanks tomorrow at 9 in the morning. On a weekend with 40-below temperatures. They really don't want to hear from much of the public, do they? But, if you're willing and able to get there, here's where you can go testify to the legislature about it:

Saturday, February 9, 9 am
Legislative Affairs Office in the Alaska USA building
1292 Sadler Way, Suite 308, Fairbanks