Worth reading: Lebanon edition
I am a Jew (NYCEve, Daily Kos diarist); I am a Muslim (Aziz Poonawalla, "City of Brass") --- Eve and Aziz write from the heart about the Israel/Lebanon crisis, being Americans, and the importance of homelands. Excerpts from NYCEve's post:

That Israel is aligned with the people I most despise forces me to recognize that Jews are at best tolerated, mostly unwanted by pretty much everyone--except that is, Christian evangelicals who voice support for their own misguided and nefarious reasons.

This sad reality is still true many years after eight million were murdered. Anti-semitism is flourishing throughout the world. We escape the sting of it in the United States. But to deny its existence and that American Jews are blessed to live in a country that still treats us with relative decency, is to ignore the obvious

I live in New York, a city where I don't feel as if I need to conceal my identity. But when I leave New York--an hour in any direction, even in the United States of America--I often recognize that though I am an American, being openly Jewish might engender an unwelcome encounter [...]

I'd like to deny it, but I know my destiny is linked to the survival of Israel. When an El El 747 touches down at Ben Gurion Airport, the tradition is for the cabin to be filled with the plaintive, mournful sound of the Israeli national anthem. Even, nyceve, a very assimilated American Jew, sheds a tear or two when I hear that music and I am reminded of our terrible history.

... from Aziz's responding post:

So what is it to be an American muslim? NYCeve speaks of rising anti-semitism in the world, and of how "being openly Jewish might engender an unwelcome encounter." I am not a victim - but I think that muslims in America have more to fear than Jews do. Do you think that the attitudes at LGF are fringe? I surf the red-sphere every day; I contribute at RedState; I live in Texas and listen to the callers on talk radio. Muslims are the new Jews in the US. How much longer can I say that the religious freedom which permits my faith to flourish here as no where else, will persist? [...]

But Jews do have Israel, a strong (nuclear-armed) state supported by a superpower. They are well and truly safe there, a safety that no Katyusha or suicide bomber can really threaten - those are the tools of fear alone and the Jews have long ago learned that fear can be overcome. I wish the American public faced the fear of terrorism with half the composure that Israelis do - we might be sacrificing fewer of our own society's basic principles of liberty were it so.

Muslims in the middle east have nothing like Israel. Ordinary muslims are always caught between terrorists, tyrants, mullahs, and madmen, and now - the wrath of Israel as well. Lebanese people, who have no control over Hizbollah, who have just escaped decades of civil war, and only recently in the Cedar Revolution thrown off the yoke of Syrian dominance and seized their destinies for themselves - are being killed. Why?

... and from the comments to Aziz' identical post at Daily Kos:

azizhp, really excellent diary . . . (94+ / 0-)
I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
You raise some extremely important issues.
Thank you.
-- by nyceve on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 07:14:38 AM PDT

* I almost didnt post this (104+ / 0-)
I really dont want you to feel I am attacking you at all. I cant express how hesitant I am nowadays. It seems like every sentence - no matter how carefully crafted, only delivers pain. You really eased my mind a bit with your comment - thank you.
-- by azizhp on Tue Jul 18, 2006 at 07:16:28 AM PDT

Bloodthirsty Children or Media Missiles (Michael Shaw, "Bag News Notes"); Emily Litella Speaks Out on the Situation in the Middle East (Jonathan Schwarz, "A tiny revolution") --- The photo on the right is among a series by several news agencies taken near an artillery position in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shamona. (A Guardian reporter writes about the circumstances here.*) The two posts address its implications in different ways.

In keeping with his blog's focus, Shaw is fascinated with the propaganda and visual implications of this and other photos of these children signing artillery shells. He also investigates the photojournalism involved, culminating with the discovery of this less well known photo, more clearly showing the staged, exploited nature of what happened -- for whatever that's worth. In the process, he cites Schwarz's post -- but rather misses its point, I think, claiming Schwarz "analogizes" Arab and Israeli kids as "sick killers." Schwarz had written:

...Sadly, until the Arabs let go of their culture of incitement and rage, I'm afraid there's no concession Israel can ever make that will bring peace with these people.

What's that?
Those aren't Lebanese girls writing on Hezbollah rockets, but Israeli girls writing on Israeli shells?
Oh.
Never mind.

As I wrote at Bag News Notes, there is (or was, it's been a while since I've looked) a frequent feature on the right wing Little Green Footballs (LGF) blog site called "Palestinian child abuse." It involves showing photos -- and, sadly, authentic ones -- of West Bank, Gaza, etc. kids dressed in suicide bomber mockups, or in military garb, etc. I think Schwarz was simply pointing out that the impulse to indoctrinate kids with hatred and/or use them for propaganda purposes is not as one-sided as sites like LGF imply.


Syria, the Model (Jim Henley, "Unqualified Offerings") --- Henley observes that the two most dangerous places to be in the Arab world right now are democracies the Bush administration was once pleased to take credit for. While Iraq is clearly failing to secure its borders and maintain order,

...[t]he Lebanese lesson is even more dire: American speech and action since Israel began retaliating for Hezbollah’s prisoner grab announces that democracy gains an Arab state exactly no leverage when Arab and Israeli interests collide. [...]

People would, literally, rather be in Syria. It’s where everyone from Lebanon that can afford to leave is trying to get. [...]

The bomb them free crowd has made the work of liberalizing the Middle East much harder than it needed to be.

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* Pointed out by Nell Lancaster in a comment at Bag News Notes. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:18:00 PM -- |    

 
Bush Pilot
In German, but you don't really need it -- except maybe to learn that this was really a small fuel tank.



Via jurassicpork ("Welcome to Pottersville").

UPDATE, 7/21: I've translated the script and made it the first comment. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:13:00 PM -- |    

 
RILA v. Fielder strikes down Fair Share Health Care
The Washington Post's Matthew Mosk and Yian Q. Mui report ('Wal-Mart Law' in Md. Rejected By Court) that federal district judge J. Frederick Motz has struck down the Fair Share Health Care bill passed earlier this year, ruling it conflicts with a federal law setting national guidelines for employee benefits. The Fair Share bill required Maryland companies with over 10,000 employees to pay a minimum of 8% of payroll to health care benefits, or make up the difference with payments to a state Medicaid fund.

In his RILA v. Fielder ruling, Judge Motz agreed with the Retail Industry Leaders Association that the Fair Share Health Care act was incompatible with ERISA (the Employment Retirement Income Security Act). Mosk and Mui report:

The Maryland law, Motz wrote, "violates ERISA's fundamental purpose of permitting multi-state employers to maintain nationwide health and welfare plans, providing uniform nationwide benefits and permitting uniform national administration."

Maryland lawmakers had been relying on an advisory opinion signed by Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. (D) that listed a series of recent Supreme Court opinions, which, he argued, gave Maryland the latitude to impose the restrictions on Wal-Mart.

Motz, however, said his reading of the cases was different. "My finding that the Act is preempted is in accordance with long established Supreme Court law that state laws which impose employee health or welfare mandates on employers are invalid," the judge wrote.

Prior to the bill's veto override vote, at least one expert disagreed with this view of Supreme Court rulings on the matter. The Maryland Gazette reported that George Washington University law professor Phyllis Borzi believed that "since a 1995 decision, the Supreme Court has given states more control in regulating employee benefits." The Baltimore Sun reported that Attorney General Joseph Curran agreed, "arguing that the Maryland law did not conflict with federal rules because it does not force employers to provide a specific level of health benefits. Rather, it gave companies the option of spending a certain amount on health care or paying a tax to the state."

While that may seem like a distinction without a difference at first, I should think just paying a tax or fee to the state is operationally a very different (and simpler) choice than going to the trouble of arranging a competitive health care plan of one's own. Be that as it may, it appears to me from inexpertly skimming the ruling that Motz's key argument is

A short description of the statutes involved in Travelers, DeBuono, and Dillingham is sufficient to demonstrate that they lie at the periphery of ERISA analysis, not (as does the Fair Share Act) at its core.

... so that he believes these Travelers etc. rulings do not open the way for states to be health policy "laboratories of democracy" regarding health benefits policy. Some of Motz's arguments appear odd to me; for example, he seems to argue at length that the bill is either a tax or a fee (I think he settles on regulatory fee) -- but soon thereafter asserts that "the General Assembly neither intended nor contemplated that Act would raise any revenue for the State" (since it was assumed companies would prefer to raise their health care expenditures to the 8% threshold). I hope lawyers such as Nathan Newman or publius will illuminate these arguments better than I can.

The Washington Post article reports that the law is overwhelmingly popular in Maryland, with 77% of respondents to one survey favoring it. Maryland legislators and the current Attorney General Joseph Curran appear resolved to appeal the RILA v. Fielder ruling, and AG candidate Tom Perez has expressed his strong support for the bill as well:

It is quite clear to me that the intent of this legislation was to demand action by all large, private-sector employers in our State to develop or maintain health benefits' programs for as many employees as possible. There are many chapters left in the legal battle; we will prevail because this legislation is both legally and morally sound.

Motz's ruling did find against RILA in one respect: the Fair Share bill did not violate equal protection guarantees by "singling out" Wal-Mart. From the ruling:

The Supreme Court has made it clear that “equal protection is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.” ... A necessary corollary of this principle is that legislatures are permitted the “leeway to approach a perceived problem incrementally.” [...]

...unless there is a reason to “infer antipathy” from the targeting of a particular group or person, “[t]he Constitution presumes that . . . even improvident decisions will eventually be rectified by the democratic process and that judicial intervention is generally unwarranted no matter how unwisely we may think a political branch has acted.” ... It is only in cases involving politically vulnerable groups that the Supreme Court has appeared to rely, at least in part, on legislative antipathy when invalidating a law under the rational basis test.

But beyond that silver lining -- such as it is -- this is obviously a setback for the Fair Share idea, and one I hope is overturned as soon as possible.


=====
UPDATE, 7/20: a Progressive States Network bulletin comments that the Fair Share defeat may well be reversed, and in any event has little to no bearing on other approaches to the Wal-Mart issue, e.g., prevailing wage or "big box" laws. The article makes the same point I do about "singling out" not being grounds for overturning the law. Thanks, eRobin!

UPDATE, 7/25: Labor law professor Paul Secunda ("Workplace Prof Blog") identifies the same key passage re ERISA and comments, "...is the Maryland law really focused on ERISA plans? Some would argue that the law does not directly interfere with Wal-Mart's health care plan, but only requires it to spend a given amount of money on health care regardless of whether it has such a plan or not. My sense is that this dispute lies at the heart of this controversy over Fair Share laws."

EDIT, 7/29: New ERISA link directly to the statute's language, rather than to a DOL overview.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:16:00 PM -- |    

 
Jamie Raskin for Maryland Senate
Jamin ("Jamie") Raskin lives in my neighborhood; in talking with him and listening to him now and then over the past few years, I feel he's someone whose political instincts I trust and whose views I largely share.

So I put up a yard sign for him even before spending some time researching and contrasting those views with those of his opponent in the September 12 primary, incumbent District 20 State Senator Ida Ruben. While I'm now even more convinced Raskin is the better choice, readers should of course come to their own conclusions.

I should start by acknowledging that Senator Ruben has been an ally of a couple of legislative initiatives I supported. She sponsored and voted for the Fair Share Health Care bill, and seems to have performed quite a bit more creditably than most Senate Democrats on the issue of verified electronic voting, which ran afoul of "Democratic" state senators Miller and Hollinger after a 193-0 victory in the Assembly.

But Raskin would have done at least as well on both issues, and on other issues I care about, Raskin is better. For example, he's a more unequivocal foe of capital punishment than Ruben is. Senator Ruben currently implies she's against it and did vote for a moratorium in 2003, but she voted in 1998 to widen its use, and said she supported the death penalty in 2002 as an anti-crime measure. Maybe she's come around, maybe not.

Raskin is a constitutional law professor, and his passions are clearly highest about electoral reform and democracy building. He advocates high school voter registration, voter-verified voting, and the instant runoff voting option, as well as ending corporate campaign contributions and ex-felon disenfranchisement. He also advocates increasing Maryland's low teacher pensions, universal health care and an increased minimum wage, the inner Purple Line, reversing utility deregulation and alleviating regressive property tax rates. Unlike Ruben, he opposes the ICC (Inter County Connector).

Ruben welcomes visitors to her web site with the words "I work hard to make sure that our schools are fully funded, our economy grows, and that quality health care is accessible to all," and she points to health care votes that bear out her claim. Still, I think it's fair to say that by her own estimation, Ruben's principal service to District 20 voters has been to bring home funds for local projects rather than advance statewide causes her district's Democratic Party voters support; her web site lists positions and achievements -- but no concrete plans for future work that I saw.

While cautious voters are right to think twice before electing a challenger over an experienced 19-year incumbent, Ruben doesn't appear to be considered tremendously effective in Annapolis. An admittedly unscientific January survey by the Gazette of Annapolis insiders (reporters, lobbyists, partisan operatives, and governors' aides) listed Ruben among the least effective state senators. Despite her long tenure in Annapolis, she's never held a committee chair.

Bringing home the bacon is nothing to sneeze at, but these days, Democrats like me yearn for a little more of a counterattack on Ehrlich, Bush, and the Republican Party generally. I think that's what we'd get with Raskin, who seems poised to be an energetic, progressive voice in Annapolis if he's elected. As one supporter comments at Free State Politics:

I think the issue between Ruben and Raskin is a choice between an ineffective representative who usually votes the right way, but leads on nothing, and a dynamic, committed progressive who will take the lead on issues progressives in District 20 truly care about...

A local cable channel news magazine program, "The Coffeehouse," (slogan: "Progressive TV for Maryland, DC, and Virginia") has produced a segment about the Ruben-Raskin race thus far. As the "progressive" moniker suggests, the sympathies of Mark Cohen's piece are with Raskin. Still, I'd say it's a high quality news essay that makes its points fairly, even if the title of the piece -- "Man Against the Political Machine: Raskin vs. Ruben" -- seems to promise otherwise.

The television piece gives you a sense of Raskin's humor; asked "don't we need a third party?" by a Green party voter he hoped to reregister as a Democrat, his answer was "no, I think we need a second party." He also disavowed ambitions for national office, saying he has no interest in being a freshman Democrat in a Republican controlled House. Instead, he feels he can accomplish more in Annapolis, saying "the states are no longer just the laboratories of democracy, the states are the last refuge of democracy, and this is where we're going to rebuild the Democratic Party..."

I hope so. Raskin and Ruben will be debating this evening at 7:30pm at Takoma Park's Community Center.


=====
SELECTED ENDORSEMENTS:
Ruben -- Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD-5), former governor Parris Glendening; MD/DC AFL-CIO, MCEA, MCC Firefighters, SEIU 500.
Raskin -- Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume, gubernatorial candidate Martin O'Malley, former Montgomery Councilman Blair Ewing, Takoma Park councilwoman Joy Austin-Lane; Jim Hightower, Jesse Jackson, Jr.; Progressive Democrats of America, 21st Century Democrats; Montgomery County Green Democrats. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:33:00 AM -- |    

 
The miracle of Bullfeathers
Even though he's disgraced by scandal and has now lost in his bid to be Georgia's Lieutenant Governor, this is so moving and inspirational to me:

[Ralph] Reed has said that, on a Saturday evening in September of 1983, he had a religious experience while at Bullfeathers, an upscale pub in Capitol Hill that is popular with staffers (and, to a lesser extent, members) of the House of Representatives. Regarding the experience, Reed said 'the Holy Spirit simply demanded me to come to Jesus'. He walked outside the pub to a phone booth, thumbed through the yellow pages under 'Churches,' and found the Evangel Assembly of God in Camp Springs, Maryland. He visited the next morning and became a born-again Christian.

Via digby; the Wikipedia account above (Bullfeathers link added) cites Nina Easton's book "Gang of Five" as its source.

I'm imagining some kind of early Renaissance painting version of this, call it the "The conversion of St. Ralph." But I'd throw in George Grosz congressmen and a dove -- no, maybe a flying pig -- beaming alternating dollar signs and crosses as our young hero gazes heavenwards, a beer pitcher in his hand. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:16:00 PM -- |    

 
Organ harvesting in China: postscript and followup
On Sunday, I posted "The perfect crime against humanity?", a piece about the Report Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China by two distinguished Canadians, David Kilgour and David Matas.

I came across the organ harvesting story via a crumpled newspaper under my Metro seat last weekend. It was the Epoch Times, a newspaper I was unfamiliar with.* Leafing through it, I was naturally arrested by the story "Kilgour-Matas report confirms organ harvesting in China," reported by Cindy Chan, and decided to have a look at the report and its authors once I got home. This postscript serves to belatedly follow my usual practice of crediting a deserving newspaper and reporter.

While there is certainly a connection between the Epoch Times and the Falun Gong movement, that's immaterial to the outrageous crime being reported in general, as well as to the Kilgour-Matas report in particular (neither author is affiliated with Falun Gong in any way). The paper is frank about following the story of Falun Gong persecution and other human rights violations in China, and deserves praise and credit for doing so.

Meanwhile, the organ harvesting story continues to develop, and can be followed in a special online section of the paper, Organ Harvesting in China's Labor Camps; the authors of the Canadian report on the issue, Mr. Kilgour and Mr. Matas, have responded to a denial in which the Chinese government called Falun Gong an "evil cult."

In truth, of course, Falun Gong practitioners are utterly undeserving of persecution. But they're a large population pool available for a lucrative practice that should not have even been begun with actual criminals (or with the arguably intermediate case of people selling narcotics or other drugs). The Chinese government is, or was,** going the old Soviet gulag system one worse by profiting not only from large scale incarceration, but from capital punishment as well. Like the gulag system, it was thus seeking ever wider groups to persecute and exploit -- and then execute and essentially cannibalize as well.

On Monday, Epoch Times published an interview with Sun Liyong, a former Beijing policeman now living in Australia who says executions in China were frequently timed to coincide with a need for the condemned prisoners organs. Everything was well organized:

After the prisoner was shot, he would collapse forward into the dug out hole. The coroner would check that he was dead and then place his body in a large plastic bag, tie it up and dump it in the vehicle with the red cross sign.

Staff in the vehicle would immediately begin removing the organs as the vehicle drove back to the hospital. At the same time, the organ recipient would be in the hospital, anaesthetized, and ready for the transplant operation.

An earlier interview with ex-policeman Zhang Jianhua corroborates the practice, and adds that police crackdowns were coordinated with the medical bureaucracy:

Organ harvesting has become an unmentioned part of the milieu. Every hospital is finding organs. Courts are finding police to find targets to get benefits. Through the Department of Finance, the Department of Public Health is giving funds to hospitals. Every year the Chinese communist regime carries on the "strike-hard" campaign in October and November. Some people are killed during the campaign. Then a lot of organs will be available. So every year around that time, the Department of Public Health gives funds to several large hospitals. As a result, operations and surgeries are abundant during this period of time.

Incentives were offered:

Our Public Security Bureau also benefits financially from the process. Our district Party secretary Liu Zhigeng said, on killing people, "When you execute one criminal, our Longgang District will award your Bureau 30,000 yuan."

Why would we refuse this money? As a result of this process, our Public Security Bureau is very enthusiastic about severely punishing criminals.

There was also a possible financial interaction with "foreign institutions":

The technology is very advanced and a lot of money is invested there. Many instruments come from foreign institutions specialized in this type equipment; these institutions loan money to you and give you any equipment you want, generating a substantial circulation of money. (emphasis added)

Hmm. Looks like the Chinese government might not be the only outfit to have profited from all this.


=====
* Although it turns out that Wenyi Wang, the reporter who yelled at Hu Jintao during an April White House press conference, was from the Epoch Times.
** The Kilgour Matas report acknowledges that the Chinese government passed a "temporary regulation" on July 1 banning the sale of human organs, requiring that donors give written permission for their organs to be transplanted, and setting in place other regulations. Kilgour and Matas point out that doesn't address events prior to that date, and that legislation doesn't necessarily mean action in China. I'd add that signatures can be forged or coerced, condemned prisoners might be sufficiently "nonpersons" to not fall under the requirement, and -- less speculatively -- that the "temporary" description doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Is "until after the 2008 Olympics" the unspoken understanding?

EDIT, 8/17: link to report fixed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:15:00 PM -- |    

 
Get your hands off me

Can't take him anywhere.

What. a. stupid. clueless. jerk. President of the United States sees G-8 meeting as boring frat party: Yo, Blair! What are you doing? Are you leaving? These guys take too long. Not me -- shit. Gonna grope Angela, then I gotta go home, got something to do tonight. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:45:00 PM -- |    

 
What Israel is doing is wrong
For a short while last week, before I understood the scope of the Israeli attacks, I supported them. The attack on and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers was an act of war by Hezbollah, an organization (or elements of it) that had no business sticking out the rest of Lebanon's neck for it. Despite hopeful signs in Lebanon, this was also but the latest in a string of serious provocations by Hezbollah since the "Cedar Revolution" that only failed to be lethal by good luck, Israeli resistance, and/or poor execution.

So I felt that striking back at Hezbollah military targets -- their rockets, headquarters, and so forth -- was legitimate, and I even thought wrecking Beirut Airport runways and some bridges in South Lebanon was not an outrageous way of both slowing the kidnappers and of getting the rest of Lebanon's undivided attention, so long as civilians were not injured.

But it's clear to me now that Israeli government does not care enough about minimizing collateral damage, probably never was merely aiming to slow kidnappers, and is waging a wholly disproportionate war on Lebanon as a whole. From the Irish Times, via Juan Cole ("Informed Comment"):

The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike.

Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .

I understand and support Israel's efforts not to be subjected to missile barrages or border raids, but what they're doing is grossly excessive collective punishment. Ehud Olmert is writing a shameful chapter in Israel's history. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:45:00 PM -- |    

 
Ringside seats to ethnic cleansing
Yes, Iraq can always get worse -- the proof is in each day's newspaper. But if we wouldn't do anything about that either, why are we there? From Military-Style Assault Kills Dozens in Iraqi Marketplace (Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post):

Masked attackers with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks slaughtered at least 40 people in a crowded market area south of Baghdad on Monday, hurling grenades to blow up merchants at their counters and shooting down mothers as they fled with their children, witnesses and authorities said.

The military-style assault on unarmed civilians in the mostly Shiite city of Mahmudiyah lasted 30 minutes and was vicious even for a country besieged daily by bombs and coldblooded attacks. At one point, the assailants entered a cafe and shot dead seven men -- most of them elderly -- while they were having tea, said Maythan Abdul Zahad, a police officer. He said the gunmen stepped on their victims' heads to keep them still.

Good thing Zarqawi's gone, we really turned a corner there. Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers weren't standing up -- and American ones were sitting down, too:

Survivors said Iraqi soldiers let the heavily armed, highly visible attackers pass through a checkpoint near the marketplace. Witnesses described Iraqi security forces largely leaving the civilians to their fate, although survivors gave conflicting accounts as to whether Iraqi police, soldiers or Shiite militiamen had tried to fight off the attackers.

Iraqi survivors also condemned U.S. forces, saying they watched the attack from their posts but did nothing until the killing stopped. American troops reported hearing detonations and gunfire, the U.S. command said, but added that Iraqi troops are responsible for security in Mahmudiyah and that American soldiers there do not intervene unless asked by the Iraqis.

Not my job, man. Not theirs, either, apparently. "At least" it cuts both ways; yesterday, Dexter Filkins reported ("In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq") reported that Sunni leaders (many? some? all?) now hoped American troops would stay and help protect them from similar Shiite militia rampages that have been occurring with increasing frequency.

The Sunni Arab leaders say they have no newfound love for the Americans. Many say they still sympathize with the insurgency and despise the Bush administration and the fact that the invasion has helped strengthen the power of neighboring Iran, which backs the ruling Shiite parties.

But the Sunni leaders have dropped demands for a quick withdrawal of American troops. Many now ask for little more than a timetable. A few Sunni leaders even say they want more American soldiers on the ground to help contain the widening chaos. [...]

But again, Americans have often have been doing little to help:

In late June, gunmen set afire 17 shops in the town center as the Iraqi Army stood by, said Hamdi Hassoun, a provincial council member and a Sunni Arab.

“We have called on the Americans for help, we have called on the prime minister’s office,” he said. “The infiltration of the police and army is common.”

But the Americans are slow to give aid, he said. Residents of troubled areas are seeing fewer American patrols now than a year ago, adding to a sense of anxiety and lawlessness. “The American forces don’t target those who are not attacking them,” Mr. Hassoun said. “They don’t care about the militias unless the militias attack them.”

(The story does point to a raid capturing a Shiite militia leader.) Writing about the Filkins story, BooMan ("Booman Tribune") argues:

If there is a way to prevent a near genocide in Iraq, we need to make that our top priority. But staying in Iraq indefinitely, working to prop up the very government that is carrying out that near genocide (or, at least, is powerless to stop it) it not an option. Think about it. It is really not an option.

I agree -- but I'm not sure there is a way for Americans so inclined to prevent massive ethnic cleansing and "near genocide" any more in Iraq; I doubt Booman's suggestion of a regional conference will do anything more than briefly salve consciences -- and indications are this administration won't do any more than it has to either.

I think the main thing here, from our point of view, is that the Cheney administration and the Pentagon are not and never have been motivated to stop the ethnic cleansing on either side of the Sunni-Shiite divide. Judging by these stories and ones like them, it seems to me that the actual strategy, if you can call it that, is to gradually just withdraw to the permanent bases and let Iraq burn. I don't know what advantage they see in that -- other than desperately hanging on to those damned bases, I guess -- but that seems to be what they're aiming at.

And at that rate, we should demand they just keep going, and get out of Iraq altogether. Staying there is more destabilizing than it is helpful, and I don't know why American troops should be dying for the privilege of ringside seats to ethnic cleansing. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:25:00 AM -- |    

 
The perfect crime against humanity?
It would arguably combine the perfect crime against humanity with the perfect final solution for unwanted population groups: round up undesirables, classify them medically, dissect them, harvest kidneys, livers, and corneas for lucrative organ transplants, cremate the remains, stonewall inquiries.

It may have happened, and it may still be happening. In their Report Into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China, Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former prosecutor and member of Parliament David Kilgour have assembled a strong case, based on testimony and circumstantial evidence, that systematic, large scale murder of Falun Gong practitioners by organ harvesting is occurring in the People's Republic of China. It would indeed be a "grotesque form of evil."

The animosity of Chinese officials towards the relatively new (1992) Falun Gong movement is well known. The movement combines elements of meditation, breathing exercises, and philosophy, and was initially welcomed by the Chinese government. But its rapid growth and ability to mobilize demonstrations protesting against restrictions on it rattled Chinese officials, leading them to ban Falun Gong in 1999, and to begin harshly persecuting its adherents.

Just how harshly -- if not to say barbarically -- is not definitively proven by this report. Matas and Kilgour acknowledge that "the allegations, by their very nature, are difficult either to prove or disprove," since the alleged victims are cremated, and the governmental and medical perpetrators would be unlikely to confess to the crimes. The authors instead show that Chinese penal and medical systems have strong ideological and/or financial motives to commit such crimes, and that documented practices, indirect evidence, and testimony strongly suggest such crimes could and did take place:

• The Chinese government mandated a so-called "6-10" office to "eradicate" the Falun Gong, and the head of that office announced the intention of "...destroying them physically."
  
• An official admission that organs of executed prisoners were marketed -- and a pledge to "standardize" the practice rather than eliminate it
  
• A soaring organ transplant rate (about 10,000 per year from 2000 to 2005) far outstripping the acknowledged execution rate (about 1600 per year)
  
• Advertised or verbally asserted wait times for donor organs (e.g., advertised wait times of 2 weeks for liver, one week for kidneys) that are much shorter than elsewhere in the world (e.g., median of 32.5 months in Canada) -- bearing in mind the extremely short "shelf life" of one half to two days for such organs
• Incriminating web sites promising short wait times for organ transplant
• Systematic blood testing of jailed Falun Gong practitioners
  

In addition, there is more definitive evidence, if witnesses and investigative phone calls prove credible:

• Testimony from one witness saying her surgeon husband told her he had removed corneas from about 2000 anesthetized Falun Gong prisoners from 2001 to 2003, and that vital organs were harvested as well, causing death.
  
• Doctors from various hospitals and detention centers acknowledging in phone calls that Falun Gong organs were readily available

Alternative explanations are thinkable for many of these items, and others stand or fall on the credibility of the witnesses. But when taken together, they paint a picture that is hard to evaluate other than Matas and Kilgour do:

We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.

They make a number of sensible followup investigative questions: are there feasibility studies for the large scale expansion of Chinese organ transplant facilities? Where are the surviving kidney donors? Are there consistently consent records or organ source records at transplant facilities, or held by the organ recipients?

On July 1, legislation took effect in China banning the sales of human organs. But as Matas and Kilgour point out, "the 1982 Constitution of China provides that the people of China will turn China into a country with a high level of democracy. We are now twenty four years from the enactment of that commitment to democracy. Yet China is far from democratic."

Sure -- they can make more money this way.


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EDIT, 8/17: link to Kilgour-Matas report fixed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:11:00 PM -- |