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.

Succumbing to the witch's wiles

At long last, The Ester Republic has succumbed to Palin mania and put up a cover with her visage on it. Jamie Smith couldn't stand it anymore and did a simply lovely take on poor martyred Sarah, and wrote up a little rant to go with it on his blog. The man's outdone himself this time. I especially like the tiny American flag pin on her breast; an excellent detail and anachronism (along with the weapons on the pyre, but those are far more obvious).

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...

The Threat Level is Orange

Hans is driving down from Fairbanks to fetch me; he called this morning from Cantwell, where there was an extraordinary amount of background noise. Normally when we go through Cantwell on our way to and from the Alaska Press Club conference, we gas up at Cantwell, and it's dead quiet. (There was one exception, when a blizzard had created near-whiteout conditions. That was the time we got mooned by some impatient immortals.) This year, however, there's apparently some sort of snowmachine happening, and the place that Hans called from had all kinds of laughter and conversation and bustle in the background.

There's a peek of sunshine coming through, which dovetails with the weather prediction last night, that the wind would shift for a while in the late morning and then come back straight from the volcano to Anchorage. However, my flight isn't scheduled until something like 1 pm, by which time who knows what will happen. I still haven't been able to get through to the airport to take a flight credit/change, whathaveyou. I've been using my boarding pass from yesterday as a bookmark. Keeps it functional.

Had a great but extremely pricey dinner at the Corsair restaurant last night, in the basement of this building. It was odd, eating alone, just sitting there listening to the background music, being annoyed by a loud-voiced woman at a nearby table who kept up a stream of incredibly vacuous commentary on her dogs. The dogs sounded ill-trained, and the woman hardly let anybody else get a word in edgewise. It made me think about the kinds of conversations I have at dinner or in public places. I can see trading entertaining dog stories, but really, how long can one carry on a monologue about the dog running around the neighbors' yard and getting the dogcatcher called on them? Not really very witty anecdotes, and more repetition and just plain dullness than I thought was possible in real life. It was like a long, drawn-out,not very funny low-budget sitcom performed by a very bad actress off stage.

The conversations I hear in the Eagle there's all sorts of interesting topics and thoughtful discussion, witty jokes, anecdotes of reasonable complexity or pertinence. Politics, religion, science, construction, music, poetry, books, dance, body language, social interaction....I mean, even when the people I know talk about dogs, they at least have something sensible to say. This was just DULL. Still, I probably missed parts of the conversation, because the people who were with her seemed to have quieter voices, but still. For those of us forced to eavesdrop because of the sheer volume of a voice in a restaurant, it would be nice to listen to something intelligent. If somebody was talking like this in the Eagle, everyone would get up and move away from the speaker, or they'd be cut off because they would obviously have descended past the point of higher brain functionality and be unable to drive themselves home.

Ah, yes. Orange. The color of interminable waiting, of dull conversation, of travelers' disappointment and annoyance, of excruiciatingly stupid television programming. Of petty security bureaucracy.

I have to say, however, that the Era Aviation people have been pretty helpful through all this repeated attempts to get out of town. And the coffee cafe ladies were great.

Nonsustainable industry practice: stupid wanton waste

This extremely pertinent question was posted on Fiery Blazing Handbasket, and picked up by Kodiak Konfidential, but it's just too barbed a point not to repeat once again:

Does anyone else find it odd that the Bering Sea pollock trawlers can catch and discard as bycatch over 100,000 king salmon per year while the small, community-based fishing effort has to shut down? That we haven't even managed to let enough kings by on the Yukon to meet our treaty obligation to the Canadians?

All so Americans can eat cheap fish sticks?

It's real stupidity, and corruption in action, that's what it is. Bycatch waste has got to be the stupidest shortsighted cut-off-your-nose practice in the fishing industry. It costs fisherfolk a lot of effort, time, money, and bad press--but it's the bottom trawlers and big industrial-size factory fishing boats and nets that do the real damage. "Bycatch" is dead dolphins in the tuna harvest (finally got some protections there, after a long, long fight), king salmon in the pollack harvest, dead sea turtles, dead sharks, dead birds, and so on and so on....and it's a HUGE problem. According to Global Chefs magazine, something like 25% of all fisheries catch is wasted.

Bycatch.org has a database of bycatch reduction methods, and NOAA has a whole Fisheries Feature devoted to the issue.

But, as Global Chefs and others point out, consumer action can have quite an effect. And it's the big fleets and megacorps, not the little Yukon River villages, that do the most damage.

Here's an interesting article from March 1999 from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations on the management issues regarding sustainability, with a good bit of background on the present problems.

Sock it to him!

Courtesy a Republic irregular who shall remain nameless:

Sock & Awe! the new Bush-whacking, TSA-approved internet game: remove your shoe and whup George upside the head! Watch him turn purple! He's a tricky little devil, though, pops up where you least expect it!

This excellent quote from Douglas Adams accompanied the link:

"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

It is preceded in the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with this note:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Univers is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another one which states that this has already happened.

I think that we are living in this second, even more bizarre something, the Douglas Adamsian Universe.

Have fun!

Will the embarrassment never end?

Governor Palin is applying for a job, and she doesn't even know what it is. When asked by a third-grader what the vice president does, Sarah Palin said:

[T]hey’re in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

I thought she was reasonably intelligent, but now I'm beginning to have my doubts. What happened to her brains? It's like as soon as she was chosen as McCain's running mate that she's been zombified, turned into the Alaska Barbie everybody makes jokes about. I mean, come on!

The full story comes from ThinkProgress (thanks to Michelle for tipping me off on this). Here's what the Constitution says about the role of the Veep in the Senate:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

So, Gov. Palin has embarrassed Alaska yet again by demonstrating that she doesn't understand the difference between the Executive and the Legislative branches of government. (I suppose that's fitting, given that GW Bush doesn't understand them either.) More on this at the Raw Story:

Palin also apparently did little to study up after fumbling a question about her prospective duties during this month's debate with Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden.

"I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate," she told the debate audience.

Asked to explain what she meant, Palin continued into the realm of the fanciful, endorsing Cheney's position of a more powerful vice presidency while crafting interpretations of the office even he didn't seem to have envisioned.

"Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. ... So I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there," she said. "And we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation."

My aunt and cousin used to live in Wasilla, back when it was an Alaska town and hadn't been taken over by the box store/strip mall worshippers like Palin (it was under her mayorship that the runaway box building really got going). Wasillans should be cringing by now. I hope.

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.

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.

A contrast in Veeps: Cheney, Palin, and Biden

Okay, so think about it. We know what Cheney is like: advocate for torture, shill for the oil companies, George Bush puppet master, Mr. Secrecy himself (always flitting back and forth from the infamous Undisclosed Location). Despite his disdain for things like the Constitution, liberty, and civil rights, you gotta give the man one thing: he'd know how to run the country if George dropped dead. (Of course, that's because he is running the country, but that's another issue.)

And there's Obama's selected running mate: Senator Joe Biden. He's got experience up the wazoo, with thirty years in the Senate and loads of foreign policy and national security knowledge. He knows how to campaign, and he's got the savvy to be a real asset to the president, and to take his place if need be.

But then we have Sarah Palin, recently Wasilla mayor and now Alaska governor. She's young and healthy and intelligent, and so far has proven a capable governor. But suppose McCain kicks off? The question that must always be asked of the suitability of a vice-presidential candidate is, "Could they serve as president?"

Yep, politics is the Great Sport of modern America. A better comedy nor scarier horror show you cannot find.

McCain: a liberal conservative

A local conservative described John McCain this way tonight, saying that this was why most conservatives hated McCain: he was a liberal conservative. In other words, he was too dang liberal. I laughed myself silly. John "Bush Lite" McCain has long since ceased being "conservative" but he was never a liberal, least of all now.

An oxymoron, indeed. Of course, most conservatives are not, these days, at least in this country. They're either neocons (as in, the "new con game") or rightwingnuts (missing any bolts to hold them down to earth). McCain panders to the both of them, thereby, apparently, pissing off both segments. And he's certainly raised the ire of Democrats who were pleased with his "maverick" qualities so long ago.

I was playing cribbage with Kate, but was sitting too close to the rather loud and exuberant political discussion at the right wing of the bar, and just couldn't keep my mouth shut on the more egregious statements (Kate's valiant efforts to distract me ["Shut yer piehole and play!"] notwithstanding). But mostly I managed to keep out of it. Not very well, but I did.

Anyhoo, now I'm home and for some reason I keep thinking of the seven deadly sins. These are, for those of you not familiar with the Church's views on the world, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Of these, the ones that pop into my head with relation to tonight's political discussion and cribbage game are:

• gluttony: the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste.
• greed or avarice: a sin of excess; disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason (especially for personal gain, for example through bribery); hoarding, theft and robbery; simony.
• wrath: inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger; vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide).
• envy: sorrow for another's good.
• pride: the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor; a desire to be more important or attractive than others.

I wonder how my neighbor and I can be so far apart on political issues. It seems to me crystal clear that the Republican favorite (indeed, the Republican party) has degenerated into representing the worst and most sinful and most fearful of the United States and its character; I fail completely to see how good people can fall for their lies, or think that continuing so many of the failed policies of the past three Republican administrations can do anything but fail us and the country, again, thoroughly. Yet, people keep voting for them. Stevens won the primary again. Many of my local conservative neighbors voted for Bush. Twice.

And they seem to be amazed that I can vote for "wackos" like Nader, or a Democrat (any Democrat).

There's this tremendous, vast, uncrossable chasm between us, and not only can I barely see my neighbors on the other side, I can barely hear them—and they me. We can't seem to communicate. We can wave, and shout, but there's no real discussion, or understanding. I just don't get it. Neither do they. And this just doesn't seem right.

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?

That's Trouble with a capital T, my friends

That's Grumpy with a capital G and that's G and that rhymes with T and that spells TROUBLE, my friends, and why? I'll tell you why. Because that Gray Gray sky keeps throwing water at us! It's soggy and wet and miserable out there, and the berries are getting knocked off the bushes or are rotting right on them, and the sun is a barely remembered memory from a long-ago childhood dream. Salcha is washing away (well, it would, it's RIGHT NEXT to the river) and the only reason Fairbanks isn't is because of the Chena Flood Control Project. (We'll just see how much water that puppy can hold, won't we?)

So, to cheer ourselves up, my husband is reading that enthralling and oh-so-upbeat book, The Dark Side, by Jane Mayer. He reads bits to me. It's horrible. Not the book--that's excellent--but what she's written about. Here's a few reviews: From Tim Rutten, of the Los Angeles Times:

[I]f you intend to vote in November and read only one book between now and then, this should be it. ...[W]hat Mayer makes abundantly clear is how much more perilous the domestic situation might have become had there not been the modest degree of push back the White House has received from Congress and other rather courageous members of the executive branch. Former Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), for example, tells Mayer how George W. Bush's then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales sought a last-minute congressional resolution that "would give President Bush the authority to round up American citizens as enemy combatants, potentially stripping them of their civil liberties."

From Alan Brinkley, the New York Times:

There is no happy ending to this sordid and shameful story. Despite growing political pressure, despite Supreme Court decisions challenging the detainment policy, despite increasing revelations of the once-hidden program that have shocked the conscience of the world, there is little evidence that the secret camps and the torture programs have been abandoned or even much diminished. New heads of the Defense and Justice Departments have resisted addressing the torture issue, aware that dozens of their colleagues would face legal jeopardy should they do so. And the presidential candidates of both parties have so far shown little interest in confronting the use of torture or recommitting the country to the Geneva Conventions and to America’s own laws and traditions.

Interesting, isn't it? Our leaders just don't care. Why not? And why is this not screaming from the top of every newspaper, every radio station, every presidential campaign stop? I mean, I know that this isn't all one can talk about, being a newspaper publisher myself, but I do come back to this theme again and again. But not enough.

Here's an interview on Democracy Now! with the author, too.

Another review, from Salon, by Louis Bayard:

But who exactly was being interrogated? Mayer's big find is a classified CIA report from the summer of 2002, in which a senior analyst concludes that one-third of the camp's 600 prisoners have no connection to terrorism whatsoever. That figure was later amended by an FBI counterterrorism expert, who argued that no more than 50 of the detainees were worth holding. These findings directly contradicted administration assertions that Guantánamo harbored only "the worst of the worst." Not surprisingly, the administration refused to review the detainees' cases, with the result that many of them are still there, years after their initial incarceration -- and still without legal recourse because they have never been charged with a crime.

Yet, this could have been us. And our Congresspeople ALL voted to support the administration on these kinds of horrors.

So yeah, we're feeling cheery and sunny and optimistic and Happy!

Not.

International House of Prayer meets Farenheit 451

No, I am not making this up. There really is a church of the IHOP. And they're really burning books.

Y'know, I always wonder about this book-burning thing. It seems to lead to people-burning. As Austin Cline says, "People don’t burn books simply because they disagree with the message of the books, they burn books because the message of the books is a threat — a serious threat, in fact, not something remote and [hypothetical]." He goes on:

Burning books and burning people are connected because both stem from a desire to eliminate ideas that are a threat to the some group or ideology which is in power. Heinrich Heine recognized that such a connection could exist and perceived that once people could be persuaded to burn books, then at least some of them could be persuaded to take the further step of burning those responsible for the creation of those books.

Book burning keeps happening--but none of it has succeeded in doing in ideas yet. The people who do this are FOOLS--it's pointless, dangerous, and has nothing to do with "humility"--but everything to do with mob violence.

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." ("Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.")
—Heinrich Heine, from his play Almansor (1821)

Absurdity triumphs over realism

Or optimism, for that matter. Absurdity seems to be the ruling force in the world today. Let's just take a few examples of items found recently on the blogosphere and elsewhere:

• Don Young's mother-in-law quote (but then, this is typical Yon Dungism, so what else is new?)
• DOT is at it again, apparently, this time with the new Elmore Road in Anchorage
• Beavers are biting back in Kodiak (pay attention, Jamie!)
• Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake stuck his foot in his mouth and wiggled his toes energetically at Quinhagak recently on a campaign-cum-factfinding trip with Ted "Torture" Stevens by saying, sagely, that concern about post-traumatic stress and brain injury in Iraq vets was overblown.
• Our detention camp is STILL operating in Guantanamo Bay.
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems to think that going nuclear will reduce greenhouse emissions, and seems to have bought the rotten goods that nuclear is "clean". But hey, the French have been advocating this for a long time...unfortunately, this attitude is catching. Some doofus in Chicago seems to think it's a good idea too, and he's not alone.
Don't forget Galena! Yep, nuclear power is just fine, safe in an earthquake and flood zone, too, clean as a whistle.

Every day, there's more! Clean coal and other conundrums...

Philo lives!

Yes, there is a counterpart to the Yabba-Dabba-Doo, although she isn't a submarine. This just in from the New York Times: "environmentally minded pirates" have captured the Svizter Korsakov, a Russian tugboat with a shady past.

While environmentally minded pirates might make a nice complement to the bishops who today urged followers to cut their carbon footprint for Lent, there was no way to verify the spokesman’s identity or what he said.

At the very least, though, there was a lucky coincidence between one of his claims and the record of the hijacked tugboat, the Svitzer Korsakov. The caller’s charge that the boat was “part of the environmental destruction” would not be the first levelled against the vessel. But that controversy is located thousands of nautical miles away at Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, where oil companies are trying to build a hub for gas and oil production.

The news story from Garoweonline has more on this delightful development:

He claimed that the Russia-registered ship, Svitzer Korsakov, is "part of the environmental destruction" being committed by various foreign ships off of Somali shores.

"We are the gentlemen who work in the ocean…since the [Somali] civil war began the ocean has been our Mother," the man said…,[the] "group's name is the Ocean Salvation Corps, and they are a group of Somali nationalists who took it upon themselves to protect the country’s shores."

"The ships we now control have the equipment which destroyed the Indian Ocean," the man said, adding: "More than 70,000 tons of fish species is on abroad."

The group's spokesman said, "it is their promise to protect any reporter willing to verify his claims first-hand".

Now THAT would be an interesting assignment. Any takers out there (willing to work for peanuts, of course, as we're poor) on behalf of the Republic?

In related news, two activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society were held hostage last month by Japanese whalers on board the Yushin Maru No. 2 for -- gads -- protesting whaling and attempting to deliver a letter of protest to the crew of the whaler. Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are calling each other names over this. Greenpeace:

"He [Watson] revels in being a pirate. He says he is prepared to defy the laws," says Greenpeace Australia's chief Steve Shallhorn.

Sea Shepherd:

"Greenpeace are the ocean poseurs ... I really have to question just what is Greenpeace's motivation in coming down here year after year," says anti-whaling activist Paul Watson from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

My suspicion is that as the situation in the environment grows more dire, we're going to see many more acts of ecopiracy, and many many more peaceable protests labeled "eco-terrorism" because the activism goes against somebody's corporate bottom line. YouTube has a movie commenting about that, and posits who the REAL pirates might be.

Sarah Palin for WHAT?

Ishmael Melville must have kicked himself for not thinking of this first. Some Conservative Guy in Colorado wants to draft Sarah Palin as GOP candidate for vice president. Hoo! And, as he points out, there's a whole movement for this! And it started in February 2007! There's all kinds of fun sites out there, written by panting male politicos who worship the ground she walks on with those high heels. Actually, that's not exclusively true: there are some women out there who think she's worth devoting a site to, also. I'm a bit behind the times on this: Ish found out about this back in March '07, but I quite obviously wasn't paying attention (can you blame me?).

Oh, this is priceless. I mean, she's pretty good as Republicans go these days (rather refreshingly so, in fact), but she really hasn't got the experience for a job like this. C'mon, guys, I know she's hot and everything, but jeez. Of course, as my husband says, "She'd get the dick vote."

But then, so did George Bush, although in a different sense....

In New Mexico

Well, we made it! I'd been working up to the VERY last minute (I meant to quit at 4 but quit at 6). After a frantic half-hour of running around trying to pack (me, that is--Hans had been all packed and has been cleaning the house for the last two-three weeks and it looks GREAT!), we were chauffered to the airport by Amy Cameron (thank you, Amy) and took off to the Lower 48 at 8:23 pm.

First stop was Anchorage, where we sat around for a couple of hours in the surreal Ted Stevens International Airport, enjoying the lovely tile work on the floors and disseminating seditious literature (back issues of the Republic). The most amazing part was listening to the announcements, made by one of those machine-voiced, smooth and oh-so-calm professional announcers saying things like "Do not leave bags unattended. Unattended bags will be presumed dangerous and will be removed by security and destroyed," "In case of emergency, call 911," and the very zen-like "The threat level is orange." Then they paged Hans, asking him to report to the TSA desk. We figured he was in real trouble, alien that he is, but it turned out he'd lost his checkbook in the john and some very nice person found it and turned it in.

So then we were off to Seattle. I read a sci-fi book on the way down. I really hate take-offs and landings, and this book, which dealt a lot with the nature of death (personal and of civilizations), didn't help. We hung out for a while, ate, looked at the cool artwork with which the airport is festooned (great mobile of a seagull made with tiny little sculptures of birds and whales and salmon etc.), and then discovered that we were waiting at the wrong gate and had to rush back to the other terminal to get the right one.

And then we were off to Tucson. This flight was VERY hard to sleep on for some reason. We landed at 10:30 or so in the morning to a scene of screamingly bright sunlight (hard on people groggy and bleary-eyed from too much travel and too little sleep), picked up our luggage, and went off to Dollar Rent-A-Car where Dad had reserved a car for us. But they didn't want our money. They wouldn't take cash, they wouldn't take a check (apparently nobody does in the airport), and Hans doesn't have a credit card. I do, but they didn't want that, either, because I'm not the driver. Really stupid. So we ended up renting a car from a place called Airport Car Rental, which was two and a half times as much, but took a cash deposit (actually, my credit card), and picked us up from the airport.



So after this inauspicious start, we drove for MILES through Arizona, stopping to snooze in a place called Texas Canyon on the way. Hans got out and took pictures of the cool rounded red rocks all over (very much like the ones in the scene in Galaxy Quest with the cute little green cannibals and the rock monster), and we drove on (and on and on). It was sundown by the time we got to New Mexico, and dark by the time we got to Cliff, but the directions Dad gave us were excellent, and we had no wrong turnings whatsoever. Dad met us at the gate, and we talked their ears off for a while, ate dinner, and zonked out in the most amazingly comfortable bed in the guest house.