The Cowardly Generation

On May 13, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. The Allies suddenly found themselves saddled with nearly three hundred thousand prisoners of war, including the bulk of General Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps. Unable to feed or house their share, the British asked their American comrades to relieve them of the burden. And so, by the tens of thousands, German soldiers were loaded aboard Liberty Ships, which had carried American troops across the Atlantic. Eventually, some five hundred P.O.W. camps, scattered across forty-five of the forty-eight United States, housed some four hundred thousand men. In every one of those camps, the Geneva conventions were adhered to so scrupulously that, after the war, not a few of the inmates decided to stick around and become Americans themselves. That was extraordinary rendition, Greatest Generation style.

The “war on terror” is a very different kind of war, and the prisoners thereof are very different, too. It’s not just that a higher proportion of them appear to have been truly dedicated to the ideology in whose name they were fighting, or that they were unaffiliated with a government. It’s also that their numbers are small—a hamlet compared to the city-size P.O.W. population of 1945. In the nine years since the creation of the purpose-built prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a grand total of seven hundred and seventy-nine men (and boys—the youngest was fifteen years old when he was captured) have been sent there. It currently holds a hundred and seventy-two. Yet this relative handful of shackled, isolated prisoners has somehow been permitted to engender a miasma of popular fear and political cowardice that contrasts shamefully with the matter-of-fact courage of an earlier and simpler time.

—Hendrik Hertzberg, "Prisoners," The New Yorker, 18 April 2011

My First lesli_hannah Post

If you read lesli_hannah's blog, you know that she loves a good quotation and often posts them. I saw this one today on the profile of a Facebook friend and I had to post it here. And besides, I'm just too freaking busy to write the half dozen or so posts I've thought of the in the past few weeks. 

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."  

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974 

For Your Further Enlightenment XVIII

• Ezra Klein: "The Worst Idea in Washington"
• Joseph Stiglitz, Vanity Fair: "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%"
• Marketplace: "Report: GE will pay taxes after all" (see XVII)
• Dahlia Lithwick, Slate: "Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong: The Obama administration's appalling decision to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a military trial" (My sentiments exactly.)
• Think Progress: "REPORT: Everything You Need To Know About The Koch Brothers"
• David Frum: "TARP Profit Proves It Was the Right Call"
• Talking Points Memo: "CBO: GOP Budget Would Increase Debt, Then Stick It To Medicare Patients"
• Fareed Zakaria, Time: "Are America's Best Days Behind Us?"
• Think Progress: "Pence Lets Truth Slip On Uncompromising Stance: ‘We’re Trying To Score A Victory For The Republican People’"
• John Cole, Balloon Juice: "I'd Add A Couple of Things"

For Your Further Enlightenment XVII

• Howard Kurtz, The Daily Beast: "What's Killing NPR"
• Reuters: "Peanut allergy issue stirs controversy at Florida school" (This is a story about how small we can be.)
• Grist: "Bingaman tells the truth about gas prices, is lonely in doing so" (Related link: Jeff Bingaman, "Bingaman on Gasoline, Oil Prices," U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee)
• CNN: "South Dakota requires 3-day wait before abortion" (wherein we are introduced to condescending nanny-stater Dennis Daugaard, Governor of South Dakota, who said, "I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives. I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices.")
• Amanda Marcotte, AlterNet: "Christian Intruders: New Law Will Force Women to Listen to Religious Lectures Before Getting an Abortion"
• Bruce Bartlett, Capital Gains and Games: "GOP Is Blowing It by Pandering to Tea Party"
• Ezra Klein: "Counterintuitive thoughts on how to be happy" 
• Ezra Klein: "GE paid no taxes in 2010" 
• Think Progress: "Despite Paying No Income Taxes, GE CEO Lauded His Company’s Patriotism In 2009 West Point Speech"
• Andrew Sullivan: "The Obama Effect" 
• Ezra Klein: "Republican Policies Don't Care about Poor People" 
• Think Progress: "In 2010, CEO Pay Went Up 27% While Worker Pay Went Up 2%"
• Andrew Sullivan, "Yglesias Award Nominee" (Sen. Scott Brown) 

A Dude from Barcelona that likes to draw stuff

A Facebook friend made me aware of Alex Noriega's blog, Stuff No One Told Me. Noriega is "a dude from Barcelona that likes to draw stuff." I'm following him now, and so should you. Here's a sampler of his work.