Bits and pieces

Occasional series of essays linking to stories interesting in their own right but for which I don’t have time to devote individual essays…

-DANCE OF THE DELUSIONAL DENIALISTS. Denialism seems to be the cause of the week. First, Pope Benedict XVI took flack for revoking the ex-communications of four ultra-conservative bishops who broke with Rome over Vatican II, the council which brought the Catholic Church into the modern era. The move by the Pope was designed to promote unity within the Church but he took heat from Jewish groups because one of the bishops is a Holocaust denier. The Pope's timing was seen as particularly crass, coming only a few days before Holocaust Remembrance Day. Only a few days before his rehabilitation, the bishop told Swedish television, "I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler." He went on to estimate that no more than a few hundred thousand Jews were killed by the Nazis and suggested that it wasn't due to any conscious policy of industrial mass murder. Another denialist also made news with some bizarre claims. Sonia Karadzic, daughter of indicted Serbian war criminal Radovan, insists her father is innocent. This is not newsworthy in itself but she went on to claim that the Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime in Europe since World War II, was ordered by then-US president Bill Clinton. She told the BBC, "It goes back to 1993, two years before the tragedy. It was determined then that Srebrenica would be the location of a crime, and that there would have to be a minimum of 5,000 victims. That was determined by President Clinton." This is the same Pres. Clinton who spent years RESISTING calls for US intervention in the Balkans.


-RENDERING JUSTICE. Former Nixon White House lawyer John Dean wonders if we are civilized enough to hold our leaders accountable for war crimes? Doubtful. 'Justice' is for low-level war criminals like the Abu Ghraib brigade or for high-level war criminals in geopolitically minor countries like Karadzic and Liberia's Charles Taylor. High-ranking war criminals in powerful countries get a free pass so long as they put their hand on their heart and swear they 'meant well... honest!' As long as we do that, we have to 'forget about the past' in the name of 'national unity' and 'respect for the office.' Accountability (for high-ranking officials only; Joe Six Pack is still punished if he breaks the law) must be sacrificed in the name of 'moving forward.' I think I've used every cheap catchphrase that's used to try to sweep such crimes under the rug. Though Dean warns Other countries are likely to take action against officials who condoned torture, even if the United States fails to do so. So-called executive privilege, the nakedest of authoritarian power grabs, is one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the American people, though that merits an essay by itself.


-NOT A CULT OF PERSONALITY, JUST LEADERSHIP. This weekend, Bolivians voted comfortably to approve sweeping changes to their constitution to decentralize power and grant equal rights to the country's large indigenous population. "This will be an egalitarian Bolivia, a Bolivia that leaves behind a dark, colonial, racist past," explained the country's vice-president. The changes were largely opposed in the country's economic heartland, where the people are predominantly of European descent. This is not surprising. People who have historically used state power to achieve and maintain positions of privilege will never give away those positions of privilege without a fight, often literally. Witness Ian Smith and his lunatic followers in Rhodesia or his successor Robert Mugabe and his (every shrinking) band of fanatics in Zimbabwe. They come to see their position of privilege as one of birth right. They see calls for equality as 'grievance politics' or 'special rights.' Bolivia is a very class-divided country, even by South American standards. President Evo Morales, the nation's first indigenous head of state, deserves tremendous praise for trying end Bolivia's social apartheid and raise the standard of living for the long-oppressed majority. Unlike one of his fellow left-wing South American leaders, Pres. Morales seems more concerned about improving the lives of his people than his own global superstardom.


-FREEDOM OF CHOICE, EMPLOYEE STYLE. Apparently The Employee Freedom of Choice Act gets the thumbs up for Human Rights Watch. While some states, such as New York, guarantee collective bargaining rights in their constitutions, there is no such protection nationally. HRW views this bill as a key protection of employees' right to freedom of association.


-STRANGER DANGER? Good news: according to new research, children online are far less at risk from pervy adults than is widely feared by parents. Bad news: they are far more at risk from their peers and cyberbullying.


-WHAT THE F...UDGE IS WRONG WITH SOCIETY? A 15 year old in California uses social pressure to discourage swearing and as a result receives death threats for it. Sadly, I'm not making this up.


-SOMETIMES NEW YORK STATE GOVT REMINDS ME OF A BANANA REPUBLIC. Political theater is so predictable that it's almost comical. Or it would be if we weren't spending millions of dollars to pay these clowns. Earlier this month, Democrats took control of the New York State Senate for the first time in 40 years. They spent much of those 40 years promising democratization of the institution should they take power. Republicans spent much of those 40 years treating Democratic members lower than dirt, rather than representatives of New Yorkers (Assembly Democrats do the same thing). For example. majority Republicans barred minority Democrats from putting their names on bills to be voted on by the whole chamber. But as soon as the change happened... well you know what followed. Senate Democrats introduced very modest rules changes. Republicans whined that they weren't democratic enough. Of course, they had 40 years of their own to implement minority-friendly rules and refused. Democrats promised a committee to study further changes. Republicans whined that the further changes should be made now; three months more was far too long to wait... after 40 years of obstructionism. In 2007, (then-minority) Democrats introduced a reform bill that was voted down by the GOP-run chamber. A few weeks ago, (now-minority) Republicans introduced a nearly identical bill and which was defeated in the Democrat-run chamber. Most Democrats who voted for the 2007 bill voted against this bill. Most Republicans who voted against the 2007 bill voted for this bill. No wonder the New York legislature is regularly described as the most dysfunctional in the nation.


-SPEAKING OF HYPOCRISY... My local Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand was recently appointed to the US Senate to fill the seat vacated by now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There will be a special election to fill Gillibrand's House seat. Republican county committee chairs decreed state Assembly minority leader Jim Tedisco, the biggest media whore in Albany, as the GOP candidate for the race. Tedisco, who bears a startling resemblance to a used car salesman, doesn't actually live in the Congressional district he wants to represent. Apparently he has a summer home in the district to where he claims he's going to move should he get elected. In 2006, then-challenger Gillibrand was attacked by Republicans because although she lived in the district, she had not lived here long enough for their standards. Standards which have dramatically changed a few short years later.


-SPEAKING OF DYSFUNCTIONAL... If you or I arbitrarily decided to stop paying taxes because money was getting a little short, we'd be in big trouble. But apparently it's okay when the state does it. As described by Adirondack Almanack blog, one of the cost-cutting proposals by NY Gov. David Paterson is to cap the state’s property tax payments to local towns, counties and school districts that host state Forest Preserve lands. About half of the land in the huge Adirondack Park is owned by the state; the other half is privately owned. Paterson's proposal would be devastating. It would decimate local government and school coffers, thus hugely increasing the tax burden on the region's private property owners (because while the state tax payments may disappear, you know that state mandates on municipalities and schools will not). Especially since the poor private sector economy inside the Blue Line and according lack of sales tax revenues makes the region's localities heavily dependent on property taxes as a revenue source. The Catskill Park in southeastern New York would also be affected.


-TONE DEAF MUSIC INDUSTRY. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has gained infamy by suing college students who illegally shared songs. After a wave of bad publicity, the RIAA finally smartened up and changed its strategy to press the file sharers' internet providers to cut off service. The record industry continues to shrivel because for too long it resisted new technologies rather than figuring out ways to make it work. Anyway, in what presumably is one of the last lawsuits, a Harvard law professor requested that the proceedings be streamed live on the Internet. The still tone-deaf RIAA objected. The judge slapped them down. She pointed out that the RIAA claims the whole point of their lawsuits was not to go after each illegal downloader but to serve as a broader deterrent and that their objection to publicizing the trial is at odds with this claim.