Buried in the news of the Kim Jong-Il's death yesterday and the immediacy of associated diplomacy was the passing of Czech playwright, national leader and savior/hero, Vaclav Havel, who gave the world the Velvet Revolution of 1989. After having been jailed numerous times by the Soviet puppet regime, he eventually became a great leader:
More so than any of the prominent figures from the period of anti-communist dissent, Havel used his position, voice and moral authority to advance present-day struggles for freedom. If he looked backward at all, it was only to find lessons from his own experience that might be useful for freedom-fighters today. Communicating those lessons, he once wrote to the Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, was a way of repaying a debt to those who helped him in his own time of need.
He found many ways to repay that debt. In 1991, at a moment when he himself might have received the Nobel Peace Prize for leading the Velvet Revolution, he campaigned successfully for it to be awarded to Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi and remained a steadfast supporter of the Burmese democracy movement. He termed Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus “the disgrace of Europe” and extended moral and practical solidarity to the opposition there. He developed a deep connection with Paya’s Varela Project,which pressed for free elections and other basic rights in Cuba; and he established the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba, recruiting to it ex-presidents, members of parliament and distinguished writers from throughout Latin America and Europe. He co-authored a report applying the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to the totalitarian system in North Korea, And he led the successful international campaign to give the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, launching it with an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao demanding Liu’s release from prison. The letter was delivered on Jan. 6, 2010, the 33rd anniversary of the day Havel himself was arrested for delivering the democracy manifesto Charter 77 to the Prague Castle.
This is the opposite of Kim Jong-Il, selfless rather than selfish. While artists sometimes turn leader with disastrous results, i.e. painter Adolph Hitler, Havel proved to be the right artist to lead his country into freedom.
Best of all, he had awesome taste in popular music, starting with his favorite and friend, Frank Zappa:
Not to mention Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground (like the Velvet Revolution):
And then, of course:
A better leader to remember. Keep on rocking in the free world, Vaclav, wherever you are.
Wow, for an off-year election, Tuesday, November 8, 2011 turned out to be a doozy of a setback for the reactionary GOP forces that swept the elections one year ago. Sanity has prevailed like wildfire:
Arizona State Senate President and architect of the absurdly strict immigration law, Republican Russell Pearce, was voted out in a recall election after spending crazy amounts of dough
Marriage equality is safe in Iowa thanks to a definitive Dem State Senator win that was supposed to be a squeaker with the Tea Party candidate
...and Pittsburgh got referendum approval of a city library-supporting tax (.25/$1000 of property value)
It sure seems like proof that Republican overreach and partisanship has awakened the non-reactionary Americans from their electoral slumber. I'll be interested to see if they guys like Kasich "moderating" their positions or at least pretending to from here to the next election. Is this the beginning of the Obama "comeback?"
It doesn't get better than this, from today's POTUS press conference in response to a question from the Fox reporter:
"I think I've been pretty clear on my position here. And that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site...
"We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts. And we've got to be clear about that. We've got to be clear about that because ... if we're going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get. The folks who are most interested in a war between the United States or the West and Islam are al Qaeda. That's what they've been banking on.
"And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in: how do I make sure I can get a good job, how can I make sure that my kids get a decent education, how can I make sure I'm safe, how can I improve my lot in life. And so they have rejected this violent ideology for the most part, overwhelmingly.
"And so from a national security interest, we want to be clear about who the enemy is here. It's a handful, a tiny minority of people who are engaging in horrific acts and have killed Muslims more than anybody else.
"The other reason it's important for us to remember that is because we've got millions of Muslim-Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They're going to school with our kids. They're our neighbors. They're our friends. They're our coworkers. And, you know, when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?
"I've got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan, in the uniform of the United States armed services. They're out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we've got to make sure that we are crystal clear for our sakes and their sakes: They are Americans. And we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don't differentiate between 'them' and 'us.' It's just 'us.'"
Check out the passion and thoughtfulness for yourself:
On one side, President Obama comes out for the Constitutional right of Freedom of Religion in the U.S.:
Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities - particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.
But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.
On the other side, the fear-mongering, Anti-Constitutional, opportunistic scum:
New York's Conservative Party is planning a television ad campaign to pressure a New York City utility to use its power to block a proposed mosque near ground zero that the ad says is planned by an "un-American" Muslim leader.
The ad states "patriotic Americans" want "real answers" about the cultural center proposed for lower Manhattan in a building partly owned by Consolidated Edison. Plans call for the Muslim center to include a mosque in the building about two blocks from the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
The ad asks viewers to contact the utility, which has more than 3 million customers, at a phone number provided on screen and is the first effort to try to get customers to target the company.
The Conservative Party's statewide ad to begin running next week says Republican candidate for governor Rick Lazio, the Conservative nominee, is asking the right questions about the effort and who or what groups will fund it.
Yep. Any chance to create a fake issue, run it through their rightwing noise machine cycles, try to stir up hatred and division, appeal to the lowest impulses of human nature, and create more misery than they already have with their economic policies.
All this drummed up, sanctimonious, hypocritical outrage is tiresome already to me. Might it be that for rest of our nation as well?
There's marriage equality in Iowa, so we're not exactly the first, and there's a stay, and it's going to all somehow end up in Chief Justice John Roberts' lap, but the vile Prop 8 forbidding same sex marriage was voided in court.
Judge Vaughan R. Walker, originally a Republican appointee, presided over a lopsided trial, per reports at the time, and his opinion is just this side of lacerating, particularly with regards to the defense's key "expert" -- whom His Honorable reclassified as a pundit:
Walker, in his decision, writes that "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gays and lesbians for denial of a marriage license." He evaluates as credible witnesses the panel of experts who testified against Proposition 8, and finds fault with the credentials of several witnesses who testified against same-sex marriage, including David Blankenhorn, President of the Institute for American Values:
Blankenhorn's testimony constitutes inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight," Walker writes. "Blankenhorn gave absolutely no explanation why manifestations of the deinstitutionalization of marriage would be exacerbated (and not, for example, ameliorated) by the presence of marriage for same-sex couples.His opinion lacks reliability, as there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion Blankenhorn proffered.
11. "Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."
The battle's not over, and I'm sure there are hateful, bigoted pockets of individuals ready to do violence over the ultimate nationalization of this decision, but this is now about facts found in a court of law by a very smart and fair judge who has made the ruling very difficult to win an appeal against. Every single one of these facts would have to be struck down. By, like, Clarence Thomas.
And the original victims of violence who suffered or showed extraordinary courage to pave the way for this emerging civil freedom have actually won this day by providing, over several decades now, that gay marriage is not any of these threats, these fears that have developed over centuries.
Bravo, CA. It makes the fires, earthquakes and life-shortening mortgages worth it.
Big credit to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his stirring defense of the Muslim community center to be built near ground zero, and for leading a multi-faith address on the subject today. Clearly super-hacks Palin, Gingrich, Lieberman, etc are just working on fear and anger, typical demagoguery. From a simple Federalist viewpoint, supposedly the philosophy these desperate hacks follow, shouldn't the decision be up to the New Yorkers who are overwhelmingly in favor of it?
“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.
“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.
"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right."
The Cordoba Initiative, the group building the mosque, is in fact an enemy of Bin Laden. That may not help an earlier argument I wanted to make about a mosque making it less likely that the site would be attacked again, but instead it speaks volumes about the reductive hatefulness of the GOP political attacks on the mosque.
As the Mayor says, NYC is the most free city in the free world. (Although I'd argue that Amsterdam could make a good case!) Death to tyrants, both overseas and in our midst.
Here's the whole event, which included three Jewish leaders as well:
Could the opening video of this piece be any squarer for 2010? Stoner movie clip, duh-uh? Hidden identity and having to explain common grown-up discretion?
At least the two professional women in the interview, particularly the psychiatrist, appear smart, calm and experienced.
Ever since the beginning of the democratic rebellion over the sham election in Iran, with the simple and effective green color association, I've thought of the newly deceased Corazon Aquino, Cory to her people, who by some historical accident ended up leading the "people power" overthrow of dictator Ferdinand Marco in the Philippines in 1986, and her trademark yellow dress:
Mrs. Aquino played the dutiful wife as her husband’s political star rose. In less than 20 years he became the country’s youngest elected mayor, governor and senator, emerging as one of the chief potential rivals of Mr. Marcos, who was then president.
When Mr. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, extending his presidency beyond its two-term limit, Mr. Aquino was arrested and charged with subversion and illegal possession of firearms. He spent the next seven years behind bars. During that time, Mrs. Aquino’s political education began in earnest. As her husband’s only link to the world outside, she memorized his messages and statements and passed them on to the press.
In 1980, Mr. Marcos allowed Mr. Aquino to go to the United States for a triple-bypass heart operation. Mr. Aquino accepted academic posts at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the family settled in Newton, a suburb of Boston, for what Mrs. Aquino later recalled as the happiest three years of her life.
But despite warnings from Mr. Marcos’s powerful and eccentric wife, Imelda, Mr. Aquino pursued a sense of mission and returned to the Philippines on Aug. 21, 1983. He was escorted from his airplane by two soldiers, who gunned him down on a side stairway leading to the tarmac.
Mr. Marcos was widely blamed for the assassination, although no proof has emerged, and a huge antigovernment protest took place at Mr. Aquino’s funeral.
It was at his funeral, dressed in black and standing beside his open coffin, that Mrs. Aquino became a national symbol, showing the dignity and composure that would characterize her most difficult moments as president. Her popularity reached its peak during her presidential campaign against Mr. Marcos in January 1986, when she was surrounded by enthusiastic crowds chanting, “Cory! Cory! Cory!”
Cory Aquino, who survived six coup attempts during as many years in office, may not have been a perfect President of the country but she was what was needed to vanquish Marcos, who's name goes down in history as a crazy egomaniac asshole. Her reputation as a good leader is secure, and it shows how wise, compelling leadership can arise from where least expected.
With the traditionally commemorated 40th day after Neda's slaughter by Iranian basiji or Revolutionary Guard having turned into a police riot at her funeral this week, the eyes of the world are once again turned towards the movement there, if more fleetingly this time than last. There need to be some high-level army defectors as there were for Cory, but these people are not giving up in their quest for a fair democracy, even if they risk their lives:
I love books. I may not read as much as I used to or should or wish I did, but I can't pass a bookstore without thinking of stopping in, particularly an independent or used book store. My latest love is the legendary Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon. My latest skepticism is Amazon's Kindle.
While a used paperback can cost a couple bucks, you need to spend three hundred bucks to buy this electronic book device, the Kindle, and then pay more money for the actual books. And while it may add in convenience, it's not the reflective light-on-paper experience, it's pixels jetting at your eyes, an entirely different brain stimulation. Sure, you can load it up and it's lighter than the same number of novels, but it's not the same level of affection or attachment one has for a tome.
In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.
Appropriately enough, these were works by George Orwell, who invented the concept of the "memory hole" where the past is deleted by a totalitarian government in his classic dystopian tale, 1984.
So what happens when there's another 9/11 and, under massive political and social pressure, Amazon chooses to delete books found offensive to current society? Or what if some form of the intrusive Patriot Act leads to wireless auditing of your Kindle for seditious material?
Or what happens if a magnetic wave hits and the juice runs out?
I miss the daily newspaper in it's old form but I'm not as emotionally attached, in part because the massive amount of (wasted) paper it traditionally consumes seems obscene in these eco-scarcity conscious times. But books?
If it's on a Kindle, maybe it shouldn't be called a book anymore. Maybe it needs a new name.
Spent the day at the MI6 Conference in San Francisco, where the first big speaker of the morning was Nicholas Negroponte, who was amazing as he described his One Laptop per Child worldwide program, phenomenal, inspiring stuff.
He described how they have all these $35,000 grants that you can fund, or your group or your company, and these young Americans go into the most remote reaches of the world with solar and handcrank-powered indestructible little PCs. It's the brightest thing in the house in places where there's no electricity. The kids are learning directly, teaching their parents to read on it. They're creating their own PC hospitals where they service the machines themselves, thanks to the very inexpensive, modular design.
Negroponte wanted it to be like opening the hood of an old VW, where you could see what was wrong even if you didn't know engines. There's a display part that he said display makers never like to make removable, since it's the part that usually breaks but only costs fifty cents to make. The display makers prefer for you to buy a whole new screen. Negroponte got the design he wanted.
Each of the PCs has these "ears" that fold up, stubby colorful antenna on either side, so the software creates local wireless web networks instantly. So in these villages, if just one kid on the network has an Internet connection, every kid is on the Internet.
It's the vision of peace, that we find our tribal, pre-national connections to each other, only this is so much more sophisticated, unprecedented in human history. The biggest webs of social connectivity in human history.
In Los Angeles County, longtime partners Diane Olson and Robin Tyler were the first and only same-sex couple to obtain a license this evening. Together 15 years, Olson and Tyler were the original plaintiffs in the 2004 California lawsuit challenging the ban on gay marriage as unconstitutional. The couple were chosen to receive the county's first license "in recognition of their unique role in the court's decision," said acting Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan.
So after eight years of showing up at the Beverly Hills courthouse each Valentine's Day and being repeatedly denied a marriage license, they returned this afternoon as conquering heroines -- with friends, their high-profile lawyer Gloria Allred and a mass of media in tow...
...At the county clerk's window, as Olson's and Tyler's marriage license was prepared, the full measure of the moment hit. "We've never gotten this far before," Tyler said.
"Well, you have, today," the clerk said.
It makes me proud to be in a state that leads the nation on reducing carbon emissions, creating high-tech business and science opportunities, and is near the front on this latest breakthrough in civil rights.
Props to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom for pushing the issue several years ago when he ordered the city to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, leading to the historic California Supreme Court decision. The same longtime couple that he chose to get the first one then got it this time:
Lyon, 83, and Martin, 87, were the first couple married four years ago when Newsom told the county clerk's office to start offering marriage certificates to same-sex couples. Eventually more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married in San Francisco that year, but those unions were later nullified by the court. Today, the couple, and dozens of others, had their first chance to make their unions truly legal...
...Several feet away sat a couple on vacation from Ireland who happened to stumble on the historic event. Christine Yearsley said she planned to stay at City Hall the rest of the afternoon to witness as much as she could.
"This gentleman just told me there are two elderly ladies who are getting married today after being together for 50 years," she said. "They're obviously committed! I think it's terrific. They're an example for heterosexuals, I think."
Today was a huge day politically for the U.S. and, after the Edwards endorsement and the West Virginia primary the day before that...I just think we have a lot more coming.
But today was something special.
It started with Sen. John McCain laying out his vision, i.e. a sci-fi style prediction of what the end of his first term will look like, chock full of promises but without any explication of how he will accomplish any of it. Welcome to 2013:
This is clearly meant to be a big re-branding moment for McCain, and he deserves credit for those places where he underlines his philosophical/operational differences with Bush, but as Joe Klein says (his writing actually much improved ever since getting lambasted by the blogs and actually responding to the criticism), it's all a bit, uh, hilarious:
No doubt, John McCain's attempt to lay out the goals of his prospective presidency was a worthy and honorable effort--but there was something deeply hilarious about it as well. Take his paragraph about Iraq:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.
And the tooth fairy will spread giggle-juice throughout the land, and the Mets will win the World Series and I will lose 20 pounds while continuing to consume vast quantities of Chinese and Italian food.
Poor Johnny. The ultimate result of his announcement on the evening headlines: stomped once again (shades of 2000) by that asshole who beat his ass back then. Bush goes to the Knesset and uses the somewhat solemn occasion of Israel's 60th Anniversary to attack Sen. Barack Obama with classic smeartalk:
President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to liken those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasers of the Nazis — a remark widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, who has advocated greater engagement with countries like Iran and Syria...
...The episode placed Mr. Bush squarely in one of the most divisive debates of the campaign to succeed him, as Republicans try to portray Mr. Obama as weak in the fight against terrorism. It also underscored what the White House has said will be an aggressive effort by Mr. Bush to use his presidential platform to influence the presidential election.
“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr. Bush said, in a speech otherwise devoted to spotlighting Israel’s friendship with the United States.
Firestorm. Obama hit back, Pelosi, Kerry, Dean, Emanuel, even Sen. Hillary Clinton.
“This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Biden has hit the same loosened up stage as Nelson Rockefeller in his later years when they couldn't hurt him anymore, like when Rocky flipped the finger back at a student who birded him during a campus speech. The fact that CNN et al had a censored word running through their crawls -- "bulls**t" -- in the context of criticizing Bush is just too sweet. It's not like we all haven't been saying it these past 8 years!
McCain, who seems like the most available guy on any campaign bus, bless him, heard about it from a reporter and agreed with Bush. Even though he's voiced having to deal with Hamas in the past. Even worse, he got it wrong on Ronald Reagan: Ronnie did negotiate with Iran.
It just minimized his whole vision thing and gave Obama the perfect opening to carry through the Fall -- now he can surely attack McCain by aligning him squarely with the current President and run against George (least popular ever) to beat John.
Ultimately, Matthew Yglesias get it right about McCain's saying that talking to our enemies somehow automatically confers a prestige onto them that actually makes a difference:
This is such a common talking point on the right that you'd think that somewhere out there you could find some kind of causal explanation of how this works. Obama takes office. The Iranians, having heard his campaign rhetoric, send a message through the Swiss or something about the possibility of arranging a summit. Our guys talk to their guys, the meeting happens, and this gives Khatami enhanced prestige in the eyes of whom? And what does this enhanced prestige allow him to do? What, in other words, are we afraid of?
So many kneejerk neoconik idiots out there who don't know the difference between talks and appeasement, even Chris Matthews is taking them down:
But if that's not enough, this is also a day where the House Republicans fell to pieces over an Iraq War funding bill, and House Judiciary Committee Democrats are preparing to have Karl Rove arrested.
But even neither of those score the biggest story of the day.
The California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
The 4-to-3 decision, drawing on a ruling 60 years ago that struck down a state ban on interracial marriage, would make California the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages.
Right on right on. In 30 days, unless there's some sort of judicial stay, same sex couples will be able to get married like everyone else. There will be fireworks by those opposed, but the fact is that a majority of young people not only don't care, they're want to go to their gay friends' weddings.
It will likely increase tourism which is great because California has been hit with major budget shortfalls. Back when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom legalized gay marriage, the jewelers, florists, clothing shops or wedding planners in San Francisco had a banner year.
There will likely be a bit proposition battle this fall over a proposed CA constitutional amendment once again instituting a ban, and the fight could be tight. I'm hoping my state does the right thing. Because now that gay Americans can come out of the closet and be embraced by their parents, it really means something to be able to get hitched in the eyes of society and the law. From an email sent to Andrew Sullivan:
My Beloved, Samantha, just asked me to update my Facebook page to confirm that I'm engaged to her. My mother just called for the third time this morning and choked out through her tears, "I promise this is the last time I'll call this morning, but I understand that the proper protocol is that the mother of the bride pays for the wedding." I've left a message for our minister to see if he is available in 30 days to officiate our wedding.
Read the whole email and see a photo of the engaged and their two daughters here.
And please, dear Lord, let this year be the first official year of the 21st Century.
Here's a fascinating contrast between two candidates on the Republican side of the Presidential nomination ledger. One is Rudy Giuliani, possible frontrunner, the other Ron Paul, bane of their existence.
Ex-Mayor Rudy spent the last week being mauled by his history of using NYC cops to protect his mistress. He went on Meet the Press ostensibly for damage control, but appears to have only dug his hole deeper. Maybe the most damning aspect of the interview was his propensity to giggle in response to Tim Russert's toughest questions, as if channeling Hillary Clinton's round of Sunday talk shows earlier this season. Check out the incredibly odd TPM compilation here.
On the other hand, Rep. Ron Paul gave a rather illuminating ABC News interview where he candidly responded to a range of morality-based questioning with a firm, even rational libertarian (small "l") philosophy. As Paul has said, while he is certainly flawed, the philosophy isn't, and will have its day.
