Politics

The Village Voice has an excerpt from the book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, which is fascinating reading. The hobby of planespotting–watching and recording information about planes that take off and land–led a few individuals to deduce that planes spotted at “Base Camp” in Nevada were being used by the CIA to transport prisoners to locations in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Individuals correlating data with each other over the Internet and comparing to flight logs and testimony from released prisoners yielded very specific results. Civil Air Landing Permit data was used to identify obscure companies with clearance to land anywhere they want, including restricted military bases–such as One Leasing, Richmor Aviation, Stevens Express Leasing, Tepper Aviation, Path Corporation, Rapid Air Trans, Aviation Specialties, Devon Holding and Leasing, Crowell Aviation, and Premier Executive Transport Services. The planes owned by some of these companies were found to be visiting military bases, Guantanamo Bay, Morocco, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Jon Sifton of Human Rights Watch has conducted analysis of the resulting flight data to determine which stops were merely for refueling and which were for destinations–acute angles for inbound and outbound flights from a stop are indicative of a destination rather than a refueling stop, for example. ...

George W. Bush is on the campaign trail for racist Virginia Senator George Allen and for Pennsylvania Representative Don Sherwood–just in case you had any doubts about where Bush stands on moral issues. Allen is the Senator who referred to an Indian representative of his opponent’s campaign as a “macaca," a racial slur common in French North Africa, where his mother grew up. He also used to keep a noose hanging in his office, and several people who knew him in his college days have reported that he used to make common use of the epithet “nigger” (but not the word “epithet”), and two sources say that he once put the severed head of a deer in the mailbox of a black family. Sherwood has admitted to having a lengthy (five-year) adulterous affair, and he settled a lawsuit which accused him of choking his mistress. His wife has referred to his affair as “a mistake." Bush’s press secretary Tony Snow addressed the president’s support of Sherwood by observing that we are all sinners and deserve forgiveness. Forgiveness, perhaps. A seat in Congress, no. UPDATE (October 20, 2006): Bush chose to campaign for these people of poor character during the same week that he has proclaimed “National Character Counts Week, 2006," a proclamation which begins: America’s strength is found in the spirit and character of our people. During National Character Counts Week, we renew our commitment to instilling values in our young people and to encouraging all Americans to remember the importance of good character.UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Don Sherwood lost, and it looks like George Allen will also lose.

Maher Arar, a Canadian (born in Syria) who was arrested by the U.S. and sent to Syria where he was tortured as a result of the RCMP’s erroneous labeling of him as someone associated with al Qaeda, was unable to receive a human rights award in Washington, D.C. because his name is still on the TSA no-fly list. Arar currently has a lawsuit pending in Canada against the RCMP. (Also see the Wikipedia entry on Arar.) This is further evidence of the TSA’s failure to competently maintain the no-fly list. UPDATE (October 20, 2006): Ed Brayton has discussed this story today. UPDATE (January 23, 2007): The U.S. Attorney General and head of Homeland Security are both insisting that Arar remain on the no-fly list for reasons which they have disclosed only to officials in Canada. The Canadians don’t think those reasons make any sense. My guess is that they think somebody they sent off to be tortured might have a beef with the people who did it to him.

There’s an excellent article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi called “The Worst Congress Ever." When the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress, I hope they will not be following the Republican rulebook for payback, but will try to return some dignity, honesty, integrity, and accountability to the legislative branch of our government. One exception, though–they should follow the Republican lead from 1995 and not require minority party approval for issuing subpoenas to the White House as they clean house. It’s high time that Congress started actually providing some oversight of the executive branch again.

An archivist at the Arizona Historical Foundation, Linda Whitaker, found a 25-min 16mm film canister last fall while preparing an exhibition on World War II Japanese internment camps. The film can was labeled “Poston Color Dupe.” The film turned out to be footage of Arizona’s Poston internment camp, which was located in La Paz county, 12 miles south of Parker. The film had a magnetic strip for sound, but it had deteriorated, so what is left is a color silent film. It has been converted to DVD format and is for sale for $40 from the Arizona Historical Foundation. Poston was one of two sets of Japanese internment camps in Arizona, and was also known as the Colorado River Relocation Center. It was composed of three camps, called Poston I, II, and III, on reservation land of the Colorado Indians. It operated from April 1942 to March 1946, and at its peak housed 18,000 people. The other was the Gila River Relocation Center about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix, which housed 13,000 people at its peak, and operated from May 1942 to February 1946. It was composed of two camps, Butte Camp and Canal Camp, which were built over the objections of the Gila River Indian tribe, on whose land they were built. The Japanese-Americans who were taken from their homes in California and Arizona and forced to live in these prison camps were mostly U.S. citizens (about 2/3). The Poston and Gila River camps were, at the time, the third and fourth largest “cities” in Arizona, after Phoenix and Tucson. The Poston camp was built by Del Webb, best known as a homebuilder of planned communities in the southwest (such as Sun City and Anthem). The discovery of this film serves to remind us how a country can get so caught up in wartime fear that it disregards its own Constitution and tramples the rights of individuals. ...

Recent amendments and proposed amendments to state constitutions like Arizona’s Proposition 107, which “preserves “marriage” as only consisting of the union of one man and one woman, and prohibits creating or recognizing any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to that of marriage,” have been backed by the Alliance Defense Fund. These constitutional amendments will not just be used to block same-sex marriage (already prohibited by multiple Arizona statutes, as I’ve pointed out here), but to prevent things like domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners. In response to these claims, the ADF denies it, calling this a “false argument” used to “confuse”: Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex “marriage” argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people… Same-sex “marriage” advocates argue that eliminating domestic partnerships or other counterfeit marital institutions is hateful and mean spirited, because it will undermine benefits granted to unmarried people. Unfortunately, many people (including some so-called “conservative” politicians) have bought into this fallacious argument. ...

MSNBC has the story, about David Kuo’s new book, Tempting Faith: More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.The office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book. ...

Sen. John McCain has attempted to blame President Clinton for North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons: “I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration’s policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard. “The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They’ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,” he said. ...

State Rep. Russell Pearce (R-Mesa), one of the most vocal opponents of illegal immigration in the Arizona legislature, sent an email out to supporters that contained an article from the National Alliance’s website. The article, titled “Who Rules America? The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken,” criticized the media for promotion multiculturalism and racial equality, for depicting “any racially conscious White Person” as a bigot, and for presenting the Holocaust as fact. Pearce says he does not agree with the article, but forwarded it after reading the first few paragraphs, which he agreed with. Once he realized the nature of the article, he sent out an apology to supporters and asked them to delete the original email and not forward it further. The Arizona Republic quotes a Pearce apology, beginning with a quote that sounds like he’s been taking grammar lessons from Yoda: “Ugly the words contained in it really are. … They are not mine and I disavow them completely. Worse still, the website links to a group whose politics are the ugliest imaginable. I am saddened and embarrassed that this went out with my name on it and I am also saddened at the loss of the friend who sent this to me. His heart is dark and I am unable to get him to see that what drives him is ugly and evil at its core."This comes after Pearce has been under fire for his comments in support of a 1954 federal deportation program called “Operation Wetback." Pearce has defended himself by observing that this was, in fact, what the program was called. I don’t know if he prefaced his references to it by pointing out that he recognizes that the name is offensive, but if he did so he shouldn’t have been criticized for the use of the name. His support of the program, however, is certainly subject to criticism. I wonder if Pearce also thinks the Jerome Deportation or Bisbee Deportation (both of 1917) were good ideas–both involved numerous Mexican workers (as well as European immigrants), though they were deported by train to New Mexico at the behest of vigilantes working for the mining companies, with the assistance of the local authorities.

It just keeps getting pushed back farther and farther. Arizona Representative Jim Kolbe (R-District 8) has informed the Washington Post that he knew of inappropriate Foley emails back in 2000, which he confronted Foley about and brought to the attention of clerk of the House Karen Haas. Another source claims those emails were sexually explicit, but Kolbe press secretary Korenna Cline disagreed with that description, saying that the emails had only made the former page who received them uncomfortable. Kolbe, one of three openly gay Congressmen (the other two are Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)), was identified by multiple pages interviewed by the Post as one of the only members of Congress to take interest in them. UPDATE (October 10, 2006): Kolbe now disagrees with his press secretary about some details–he says he didn’t see the emails, didn’t directly confront Foley, and didn’t personally pass on the complaint to the clerk of the House, but simply recommended to the page with the complaint that it be done.