Whose Side Is God On? Kony's? Roy Moore's

Take religion or leave it. Some people get a lot of comfort from it. My problem has never been with religion per se; it's always been with armed religion. If God's on your side... well, anything goes. Right from the days of the Bible you had permission-- even a duty to-- butcher women and children... as long as you're doing God's work. The conquistadors enslaved and wiped out most of the population of what's now known as Latin America, in the name of Jesus. You know what those beheadings by ISIS are all about? Right, God's will. Religions and weapons... always bad. Never good. Never.

I worry that all the fake religionists down South-- the Trump base-- are so heavily armed. These people shouldn't be allowed to play with butter knives unsupervised and now the Republicans are making sure they can turn their legal semi-automatic weapons into machine guns with the bump stock devices Paul Ryan refuses to allow a vote on.

It wasn't that long ago that these same religionist freaks were funding Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. Remember them? About 5 years ago I read a piece in The Atlantic about Kony's crazy war and how he had God on his side. Josh Kron wrote about a "powerful network of [American] Christian activists, traditionally dominated by the Christian right, that has at times brought mass attention, almost single-handedly, to some of Africa's worst and most ignored conflicts, from South Sudan to the Nuba Mountains, Darfur to the Lord's Resistance Army. The movement has also sparked controversy. It is a community of activists that wields disproportionate influence over African affairs, from military politics to public health to social policy. As they work to organize a global effort to catch the leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, a distinct but not-so-distant wing of the same movement helped to implement Uganda's notorious anti-gay law, which legalizes the killing of 'repeat' gay men." Right wing activists in America funded Kony's slaughter of as many as 100,000 people in Uganda. You know... God on their side. He says his army is fighting for the Ten Commandments-- like Roy Moore, another armed religionist crackpot who believes God's on his side too.

This week NPR interviewed Alexis Okeowo, author of A Moonless, Starless Sky, "about about ordinary Africans who are standing up to extremism, people who are in their own ways resisting religious and cultural fundamentalism in acts of everyday bravery." It's worth listening to:


The whole idea of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army was-- of course-- to turn Uganda into a theocracy... so he would cut off people's hands if they worked on the Sabbath. And kidnap 60,000 children and make them fight in his army when he needed to do "God's work." Like all religionist crackpots, Kony, who thinks he's a fundamentalist Christian, says he's "the spokesperson of God." He's supposedly still roaming around in the remote bush of the Central African Republic, avoiding an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Why should you care about the Albertine Rift? The November National Geographic does a spectacular job of explaining

The Albertine Rift extends 920 miles from Lake Albert in the north to Lake Tanganyika in the south. The giant but much shallower Lake Victoria, by the way, isn't a true rift lake at all, though as the National Geographic article explains, its underlying geology explains why the East African Rift splits below Uganda into western and eastern portions. (By all means click to enlarge this map, which this isn't a National Geographic map, by the way. It's from the Woods Hole Research Center's PAWAR project.)


"As the global population soars toward nine billion by 2045, this corner of Africa shows what’s at stake in the decades ahead. The Rift is rich in rainfall, deep lakes, volcanic soil, and biodiversity. It is also one of the most densely populated places on Earth. A desperate competition for land and resources—and between people and wildlife—has erupted here with unspeakable violence. How can the conflict be stopped? Will there be any room left for the wild?"

-- the introductory blurb for the November
National Geographic feature "Rift in Paradise"

"The paradox of the Albertine Rift is that its very richness has led to scarcity. People crowded into this area because of its fertile volcanic soil, its plentiful rainfall, its biodiversity, and its high altitude, which made it inhospitable to mosquitoes and tsetse flies and the diseases they carry. As the population soared, more and more forest was cut down to increase farm and grazing land. Even in the 19th century the paradise that visitors beheld was already racked with a central preoccupation: Is there enough for everyone?"

-- from Robert Draper's main article text

"The Albertine Rift, as writer Robert Draper and photographers Pascal Maitre and Joel Sartore show us in this month’s story, is a landscape shaped by violence -- the convulsions of plate tectonics produced its beautiful lakes, savannas, and mountains. But the overlay of human violence on its geography is unremittingly ugly. The Rift is a malignant tangle of human need and suffering."

-- from Geographic Editor Chris Johns's Editor's Note

"In the [Ugandan] capital city of Kampala, one gets a taste of what the end of the world might look like. Uganda is a country that can sustainably hold 8 to 9 million people. They're at 34 million now, on their way to 80 to 90 million by mid-century. The cars are out of a Mad Max movie. People cook meat in the dark by burning charcoal in tire rims. Mounds of garbage are everywhere. It's filthy, grueling, and crushing."

-- from photographer Joel Sartore's sidebar essay,
"Close Call in Paradise"

by Ken

I've written a number of times about one of my favorite New York City tour leaders, Jack Eichenbaum, with whom I've done tours organized by the Municipal Art Society, the New York Transit Museum, the Queens Historical Society (Jack is the Queens borough historian), as well as tours of his own (notably the more or less day-long "Life on the #7 train"), trying to explain that what sets Jack apart from other tour guides is in part his profession: not "architectual historian" or "urban historian," but urban geographer.

Oh, I know. You're saying, "OMG, this one is going to start yammering now about bleeping geography. There is truly no God."

What can I say? I know Americans hate geography. Almost as much as they hate history, and they only hate history more because they're more often poked and prodded about historical jibberjabber they don't want to know about. Whereas Howie and I have had lifelong fascinations with geography. Not identical fascinations, but fascinations strong and deep enough to be an important underpinning of our bond.

So when I do a walking tour with Jack Eichenbaum, I know I'm not going to get so much about the design of the buildings, as I will from other tour leaders. What I'm likely to get striking insight into is how the development of regions and towns and cities and neighborhoods has been shaped by the configuration of land and water as related to the surrounding area and impacted on by climate and weather. So much of New York City's development, for example, has been strongly influenced by transportation -- as with the arrival and placement -- all geography-influenced -- of trolleys and ferries, and later railroads and subways.

Which is by way of trying to explain why I've been blown away by a spectacular set of features in the November National Georgraphic focusing on a seemingly arcane subject: the Albertine Rift of East Africa. Oh, I've known in a general way about the East African rift system, and with maybe a little prompting I could have explained that it's a major north-south fault system at the juncture of the Nubian and Somali plates (to the west and east, respectively). But in truth I would have been kind of vague about what geographical form this rift system takes -- kind of vague, and wrong.

In my head I've got the phrase "East Africa Rift Valley," and so I always think "valley" -- that the rift takes the form of a valley in the region where the two great plates are pulling apart. And there is a certain amount of valley in the East African Rift system. But there are also substantial mountains and, perhaps most significantly, resource-rich highlands, along with those big lakes, the "Great Lakes of Africa."

This issue of the Geographic includes one of the society's famous "map supplements," a feature that used to excite me but hasn't much for a lot of years now. This one, though, has on one side the best map I've ever seen of the region, and on the other side a host of visual elements that help the reader understand just what goes into making up the region's geography. It's been a couple of weeks now, and I'm still beginning to digest this material. It actually shows us, not just tells but shows, the four basic kinds of terrain found in the Albertine Rift. Just extraordinary stuff. I'm sorry I couldn't find any of it online to share.

National Geographic caption for this photo by Pascal Maitre: Rule of the gun prevails in North Kivu, a conflict-ravaged province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Mai-Mai Kifuafua, one of many local militias, flaunts its power on a road where it extorts money from villagers and travelers. For almost 20 years near-constant fighting over land, mining riches, and power has terrorized the people.

In addition, before this issue I certainly wouldn't have understood how this underlying geography has set the stage, in the western part of this rift system, known as the Albertine Rift, for a goodly chunk of the worst violence and destruction taking place on the planet in recent decades. The paragraph I've quoted at the top of this post, from Robert Draper's main article, has its stage set by these two paragraphs:

The horrific violence that has occurred in this place -- and continues in lawless eastern Congo despite a 2009 peace accord -- is impossible to understand in simple terms. But there is no doubt that geography has played a role. Erase the borders of Uganda, the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania and you see what unites these disparate political entities: a landscape shaped by the violent forces of shifting plate tectonics. The East African Rift System bisects the horn of Africa -- the Nubian plate to the west moving away from the Somalian plate to the east—before forking down either side of Uganda.

The western rift includes the Virunga and Rwenzori mountain ranges and several of Africa's Great Lakes, where the deep rift has filled with water. Called the Albertine Rift (after Lake Albert), this 920-mile-long geologic crease of highland forests, snowcapped mountains, savannas, chain of lakes, and wetlands is the most fecund and biodiverse region on the African continent, the home of gorillas, okapis, lions, hippos, and elephants, dozens of rare bird and fish species, not to mention a bounty of minerals ranging from gold and tin to the key microchip component known as coltan. In the 19th century European explorers like David Livingstone and John Hanning Speke came here searching for the source of the Nile. They gazed in awe at the profusion of lush vegetation and vast bodies of water, according to the scholar Jean-Pierre Chrétien: "In the heart of black Africa, the Great Lakes literally dazzled the whites."

National Geographic Editor Chris Johns provides this up-front Editor's Note from which I've also quoted up top, which in fact I hadn't read until I was preparing this post:

What began as an attempt to do my job in Africa’s Albertine Rift still haunts me. A lovely young woman carrying firewood on her back was walking through lush forest. My guide, a local schoolteacher, asked the woman if I could take her picture. She readily agreed. Afterward I asked if it was appropriate to reward her graciousness. As I gave her a modest amount of money to make her life a little easier, a man swinging a machete burst out of the forest, screaming that he was her husband. In a drunken rage, he demanded more cash and threatened us. As we began to drive off, I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the man beating her. I stopped and ran toward the stricken woman, but my guide pulled me back. He knew the man, he said. The situation could become more violent if I intervened. The man saw us and stopped his assault. They both waved me on. Reluctantly, I returned to my car, furious at the man and with myself, because I felt responsible for what had happened.

Five years later, in 1994, that region was the scene of more violence: the mass murder known as the Rwandan genocide.

The Albertine Rift, as writer Robert Draper and photographers Pascal Maitre and Joel Sartore show us in this month’s story, is a landscape shaped by violence -- the convulsions of plate tectonics produced its beautiful lakes, savannas, and mountains. But the overlay of human violence on its geography is unremittingly ugly. The Rift is a malignant tangle of human need and suffering. For millennia, people have crowded into the region, attracted by its fertile land and minerals. “The paradox,” Draper says, “is that its very richness has led to scarcity,” and in the story you will read why. This dilemma provokes the unshakable worry: Is there enough for everyone? That’s the pervading question in this seventh story in our Seven Billion series on world population.

I think we're all familiar with place names like Rwanda and Burundi, with their recent history of genocidal violence, and of course perennially suffering Uganda (directly to the north of the Albertine Rift, but obviously intimately connected), and the eastern Congo city of Goma, which most of us are probably aware has become a catch basin for the horrific overcrowding and even more horrific violence besetting the region. It has grown from a minor regional outpost to a refugee-swollen dumping ground of 3 million, and to make matters worse, it's poised between two impending natural catastrophes: the already-active (and already-deadly) volcano Nyiragongo and the likely-to-explode vast concentrations of methane in Lake Kivu to the south.

Refugee-gigantized Goma (photo also by Pascal Maitre) is already a human disaster area, without reference to the potentially catastrophic dangers it faces from deadly volcano Nyiragongo and potentially explosive methane-loaded Lake Kivu.

One last point: At a time when the general assumption is that print magazines have no further use, this is a story that can only be told properly in print, with that map supplement at the ready. Good one, National Geographic!

#

Republican Party's "Gay Problem" Rearing Its Head Again

GOP closet case Aaron Schock (right) says he burned the outfit.

There are Republicans-- usually the greed-and-selfishness wing of the party rather than the hatred-and-bigotry wing-- who aren't really very anti-gay at all. The American Conservative Union, which was once chaired by traumatically outed (underage male hookers) GOP closet case Rep. Bob Bauman (R-MD), has long been in charge of organizing the far right's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) get-together.

Just before Christmas ACU disclosed that a non-closeted gay right-wing group, GOProud, would be considered a "participating organization," the second-highest level of participation for this year's CPAC, giving them a voice in planning the conference. Perhaps some of the hatred-and-bigotry groups envision mauve and shocking pink place settings and CPAC-branded condoms in the gift bags. In any event, general freakout on the far edges of the right has ensued. And yesterday a rightist propaganda rag reported that some of the hate groups so important to the Republican coalition are bailing on CPAC because of GOProud's participation.

Two hate groups, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, have joined a boycott of CPAC by the anti-gay fanatics who run the American Principles Project, as have fringe groups like American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage.

The mini-civil war over the gays comes on top of a predictable outcome of all the glorification of greed and selfishness inside the GOP-- an embezzlement scandal in which the ex-wife of ACU Chairman David Keene is suspected of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the organization.

"Excellent. It is gratifying to see FRC and CWA respond appropriately to CPAC's moral sellout of allowing GOProud as a sponsor," said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, the nation's best-known organization dedicated exclusively to opposing the homosexual political agenda.

"By bringing in GOProud, CPAC was effectively saying moral opposition to homosexuality is no longer welcome in the conservative movement," said LaBarbera. "Would CPAC bring in an organization specifically devoted to promoting abortion and pretend it's conservative?" LaBarbera has formerly participated in CPAC, but said he may protest the conference this year.

"Shame on CPAC for defending the absurd proposition that one can be 'conservative' while embracing moral surrender-- in this case the idea espoused by GOProud of the government granting 'rights' and benefits based on sinful sexual conduct long regarded as anathema to biblical and Judeo-Christian values," LaBarbera added.

"[ACU has] gone libertarian, that's their focus," said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm. "Libertarianism is right on the economy, often wrong on national defense, and doesn't care about social conservatism. Libertarians only respect one leg of the Reagan revolution, and you can't stand for long on one leg."

"[GOProud is] why Liberty Counsel and Liberty University dropped out of CPAC," Staver told WND. "Last year Liberty University was a CPAC sponsor, and we worked on a committee selecting speakers. We were not informed that GOProud was a consponsor. They were brought in at the eleventh hour, and we learned about it in a homosexual blog."

Liberty Counsel responded by sending a protest letter to the ACU.

"We said GOProud is not a conservative organization," said Staver. "They are undermining the military" by promoting open homosexuality, and "undermining marriage" by opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, which preserves the traditional definition of marriage by limiting it to one man and one woman.

"Anything that undermines marriage also undermines our freedom and economy," said Staver. "It is contrary to our fundamental values to have as a cosponsor an organization that promotes same-sex marriage."

"GOProud doesn't fit in any of the areas of conservatism within CPAC," Staver continued. "We asked CPAC to disassociate themselves from GOProud, but they refused to.

All this high-profile bickering about gays comes right before the likely outing of right-wing South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Washington, DC's most notorious closet queens. More and more Republican closet cases-- from Graham, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and newly elected Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) to incoming House Rules Committee Chair David Dreier (R-CA), rising Republican star Aaron Schock (R-IL) and a whole slew of hypocritical Republican backbenchers like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Adrian Smith (R-NE)-- are moving into important power positions inside a party half of whose base is obsessed with homophobia.

Meanwhile gay Republicans-- usually fiscal conservatives into the selfishness at the base of the right-wing agenda-- are beginning to assert themselves, claiming, delusionally, that anti-gay hysteria has nothing to do with conservatism. In the just-released list of 10 important people who voluntarily came out of the closet this past year, we find, besides pop culture celebrities like Ricky Martin, Sean Hayes, Chely Wright and Amber Heard, the former chairman of the Republican Party and the manager of George W. Bush's re-election campaign, Ken Mehlman, and Christian conservative icon Pastor Jim Swilley.

This list, of course, doesn't count all the Republicans who tumbled out of their closets involuntarily, often tragically, caught in the kinds of horrific situations closetry drives people to. California state Senator Roy Ashburn's outing should have been a teachable moment for Republican politicians cringing in their closets. He practically begged them to just come out and stop subjecting themselves to the terror and self-loathing identified with the closet. No one took his advice.

In fact, just his week the American far right's obsession with spreading its anti-gay hysteria to Uganda and across Africa bubbled over again as so-called "Christian" activist Martin Ssempa fled Uganda after a plot was uncovered to frame another pastor as gay.

According to the Advocate, Ssempa working with other anti-gay activists paid a man to say that Kayanjay had sexually assaulted him. After no evidence was found, Robson Matoyu, the man who’d accused Kayanjay, admitted that he’d been paid to lie on the innocent clergyman by Ssempa and other conspirators.

...Ssempra has made headlines over the last two years for his vocal stance against homosexuality and his support of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill that would make physical acts with members of the same sex punishable by the death penalty. He has organized demonstrations and spoken out in public for the bill -- often associating the LGBT community with pedophilia, insisting that he is a protector of children, and claiming that Uganda as a country opposes LGBT rights.

And, as I keep saying, and right-wing dimwit Jonah Goldberg confirmed in yesterday's L.A. Times, the whole gay thing has shifted from a state of rebelliousness and an outlaw lifestyle that attracted one archetype to... well, something increasingly insipid and white-bread, bourgeois enough even for Republicans. In fact, Goldberg's premise is that the very concept of a homosexual bourgeoisie is "subversive to both liberals and conservatives."

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love." And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.

...[L]ook at the decision to let gays openly serve in the military through the eyes of a principled hater of all things military. From that perspective, gays have just been co-opted by the Man. Meanwhile, the folks who used "don't ask, don't tell" as an excuse to keep the military from recruiting on campuses just saw their argument go up in flames.

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

Many of my conservative friends often act as if there's some grand alternative to both the bohemian or the bourgeois lifestyles. But there isn't. And given that open homosexuality is simply a fact of life, the rise of the HoBos-- the homosexual bourgeoisie-- strikes me as good news.

Streams of Consciousness, Christmas 2010

Terrorists

Although there were dozens of beautifully decorated white Christmas trees in the stately lobby of the recently renovated Mamounia Hotel yesterday, Marrakech is more a place to escape the gaudy, sacrilegious Xmas holidays than to come to celebrate them. (Toon and Mieke brought me a hand-crank, battery-free flashlight as a gift, though, and tonight we may go have dinner at Dar Zellij, although no one thought of it as a Christmas dinner especially.)

So this edition of Streams has only one thing in common with Christmas: December 25. Although I will mention that in the mad scramble for last-minute gifts-- where you are, though not were I am, electronic devices and the wonders of technology are among the most popular and sought-after; 31.1 million consumers, more than 15 percent of Americans, planned to do last-minute shopping-- but it's too late to order a Kindle from Amazon. Wii video games, the motion-detecting console from Microsoft Kinect, PaperJamz, Scrabble Flash, 3-D televisions and Apple's iPad are all going like... well the way sweaters and ties used to.

Don't expect to see any Members of Congress playing Scrabble Flash or PaperJamz during sessions, but obsessively dull tweeter-- and incoming House Speaker-- John Boehner has proposed new rules allowing House Members to play with electronic devices while the House is open for business. Boehner was once caught on the floor of the House handing out bribe checks from Big Tobacco (while the House was voting on tobacco regulation) and said at the time that that kind of practice must stop.

I can easily imagine lobbyists bidding for votes for their special-interest projects via e-mails and IMs from now on. Boehner, of course, says that the electronic devices won't be allowed to impair congressional decorum. Of course, for a man who gets soused on a daily basis and cries publicly and whose idea of decorum means not getting caught handing out bribe checks from lobbyists, this might be very broadly interpreted, especially now that the Republicans are getting rid of Pelosi's independent ethics watchdog mechanism.

The new rule would relax the complete ban on the use of gadgets like the iPad, iPhone or BlackBerry on the floor. Mobile phones, tablet computers and the whole universe of applications that run on them will be officially available to House members as they conduct business.

Members still may not talk on the phone in the chamber and are supposed to use the devices for official business only, according to a spokesman for the soon-to-be speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. But as long as the mute switch is on, lawmakers will be free to tap away.

...The decision represents a vivid concession of old-fashioned tradition to new technology. But while the nation’s lawmakers will be fully plugged in, they will also be in danger of tuning one another out.

As the Emily Post etiquette Web site states: “Tapping on a hand-held device is O.K. if it’s related to what’s being discussed, but taking care of personal business is unprofessional. Your associates might think that you were more interested in your gadget than the business at hand.”

Mobile technology has already started to sneak onto the floors of both the House and the Senate. While the rules of the 111th Congress officially banned iPads and other devices from the floor, there has been a “wink and a nod” approach to a lawmaker who takes furtive glances at his BlackBerry, according to a senior Republican aide.

The intent may be to let legislators look at the text of bills being discussed, but come on, we're dealing with a shitload of perverted Republican egomaniacs here, many of whom can be expected to continue their inane tweeting, while others play games, and others... well, just do what Republicans always do when they get into positions of power.

Random Mass Murder Also Big This Christmas Season

In the Taliban mini-state within Pakistan's northwest tribal area, a suicide bomber managed to kill over 40 people lining up for UN food aid packages in the town of Khar today. Unlike anti-Christian attacks in Iraq (and, more subtly, in Saudi Arabia) this is just anti-anyone-at-all.

Local police official Fazal-e-Rabbi said the bomber, dressed in a traditional women's burqa, first lobbed two hand grenades into the crowd gathered at a checkpoint outside the food center in the town of Khar on Saturday.

Rabbi said the attacker, who is believed to be a woman, then detonated an explosive vest. If true, it would be the first time that a woman has carried out a suicide attack in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

"First there were two small explosions and people started running for cover. But within seconds there was a major blast and there were dead bodies scattered everywhere," witness Hussain Ahmed said. "It was very terrifying."

Last night there were bombings in central Nigeria, and at least 11 people were killed. It's an area where Muslims and Christians are fighting over whose God is better.

Although the clashes take place between rivals gangs of Muslims and Christians, observers say the underlying causes are economic and political.

Muslims are generally from the Hausa- or Fulani-speaking communities.

They are often nomadic people who live from rearing animals or petty trade.

The mainly Christian Berom, Anaguta and Afisare groups have traditionally been farmers.

Some Christian farmers feel they are under threat, as Hausa-speaking Muslims come down from the north looking for pasture for their animals.

In a separate development, suspected Islamist sect members attacked a Catholic church during a Christmas Eve service in northern Nigeria, a military spokesman was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Roman anarchists bombed the Swiss and Chilean embassies in that city Thursday, seeking to "destroy the system of domination."

...[W]hile there's little doubt the group shares an ideological affinity with violent activists in other parts of the world, it's less certain that their capabilities rise to the level normally associated with international terrorism. The bombs, made from video cassette boxes stuffed with gunpowder and metal shards, were triggered by a nine-volt battery. Officials say they were mailed from within the country, using the Italian postal system. "It is a small group of individuals, not really capable of organizing themselves," says Gianfranco Pasquino, a professor of political science and expert in terrorism at the University of Bologna, adding that the anarchists had few supporters in Italian society. "To throw a bomb or put one in a letter is not that much of a challenge."

And in Uganda, where homophobic Christian fundies under the influence of American far right hate groups like Jim DeMint's and John Ensign's shady Family are terrorizing gay people and invading Somalia, and where a Yellow Fever epidemic is killing more people than terrorism, the burgeoning little fascist state is clamping down hard while the country's genocidal dictator is very much asserting himself domestically and internationally.

And in the U.S., the TSA is now taking a closer look at Thermoses and coffee cups, presumably to make sure no one is smuggling any fingernail clippers onto planes with them.

The Holiday Risk Report says, basically, "You never know."

Just days before Christmas, the White House asked Americans to be vigilant this holiday season, warning of a possible-- though unspecified-- terror threat from Al Qaeda. The caution echoed a week's worth of warnings from law enforcement authorities.

...[White House counter-terrorism chief John] Brennan's warning comes days after Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI, and Department of Homeland Security also alerted the public to a possible attack, citing a year's worth of thwarted attempts starting with last year's Christmas Day "underwear" plot. It was a year ago that a suspected Al Qaeda operative tried to detonate explosives packed in his underwear, onboard a flight bound from Amsterdam to Detroit.

This week Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC News in an exclusive interview that Americans "have to be prepared for potentially bad news."

"What I am trying to do in this interview is to make people aware of the fact that the threat is real, the threat is different, the threat is constant," he said.

"We are concerned these terrorists may seek to exploit the likely significant psychological impact of an attack targeting mass gatherings in large metropolitan areas during the 2010 holiday season, which has symbolic importance to many in the United States," said the "Security Awareness for the Holiday Season" bulletin released by the FBI and DHS last week.

Terrorizing The Terrorists

Pam's House Blend reports that starting next week Ireland will get civil unions. The country may be going bankrupt but at least the LGBT community will be able to go through that on an equal basis with everyone else. "The Minister for Justice and Law Reform Dermot Ahern TD today signed the Commencement Orders for the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights of Cohabitants Act 2010." Much to the consternation of the Vatican, Ireland is now in line with most of the E.U., where anti-gay discrimination is not tolerated.

Will Helen Thomas Be The Next Victim Of U.S. Psychosis Over Israel?

As Helene Cooper wrote in yesterday's NY Times, "[s]ome topics are so inflammatory that they are never discussed without first inserting a number of caveats." She was talking about Israel and if you think it's true of wherever you live, believe me, it's even truer in the New York metropolitan area, home to about 1.9 million Jews, making it the second biggest Jewish city in the world (after Tel-Aviv Metro). L.A. is the city with the second most American Jews, around 621,000, a bit more than Jerusalem... and southeast Florida. The U.S. has around 6.5 million Jews; Israel a bit less than 5 million. I didn't mean to get off into a demographic tangent; just remind people that it isn't easy to criticize Israel with impunity in NYC. So there are always qualifications. Criticisms start by acknowledging that "America’s commitment to Israel is motivated by morality and ethics-- a reaction to the Holocaust, to Western anti-Semitism and to American foot-dragging before and during World War II that left European Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. Second, Israel is a democracy with the same values as the United States. Third, the United States will never abandon Israel, and will help it keep its military edge over its neighbors. And America will guard Israel against an Iranian nuclear threat." And then comes the point:

[A] dispassionate argument that has gained increased traction in Washington-- both inside the Obama administration (including the Pentagon, White House and State Department) and outside, during forums, policy breakfasts, even a seder in Bethesda. Recent Israeli governments, particularly the one led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Cordesman argued, have ignored the national security concerns of its biggest benefactor, the United States, and instead have taken steps that damage American interests abroad.

“The depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset,” Mr. Cordesman wrote, in commentary for the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in strategy. “It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it tests the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews.”

The list of recent moves by the Netanyahu government that potentially threaten American interests has grown steadily, many foreign policy experts argue. The violence that broke out when Israeli commandos stormed aboard a Gaza flotilla last week chilled American relations with a key Muslim ally, Turkey. The Gaza fight also makes it more difficult for America to rally a coalition that includes Arab and Muslim states against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to stop Jewish housing construction in Arab East Jerusalem also strains American ties with Arab allies. It also makes reaching an eventual peace deal, which many administration officials believe is critical to America’s broader interests in the Muslim world, even more difficult.

Both President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversees America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have made the link in recent months between the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict and American security interests. During a press conference in April, Mr. Obama declared that conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure”; he drew an explicit tie between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

General Petraeus sounded a similar theme in Congressional testimony earlier this year, when he said that the lack of progress in the Middle East created a hostile environment for America. After a furor erupted, he said he wasn’t suggesting that soldiers were being put in harm’s way by American support for Israel, and he went to great lengths to point out the importance of America’s strategic partnership with Israel.

“But the status quo is unsustainable,” he said in an interview Friday. “If you don’t achieve progress in a just and lasting Mideast peace, the extremists are given a stick to beat us with.”

And in March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, that new construction in East Jerusalem or the West Bank “exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region hope to exploit.”

All of this has led to deep soul-searching in parts of the American Jewish community, alongside a fierce debate among officials from past and present administrations. Mr. Obama’s mere characterization of the acts that led to the deaths in the Gaza flotilla as “tragic” unleashed a withering response from Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president. “There is no middle ground here,” she said in a statement. “Either the United States stands with the people of Israel in the war against radical Islamic terrorism or we are providing encouragement to Israel’s enemies-- and our own.”

Ms. Cheney’s remarks reflect some of the alarm among Israeli officials and some American Jewish leaders, who preferred the Bush administration’s steadfast support, no matter which Israeli government was in office and no matter what actions that government took.

Why anyone cares about what the singularly unaccomplished daughter of a disgraced and universally loathed former vice president-- who did so much to bring this country so low-- is a uniquely American phenomenon. I was more interested in what my friend Lyor has to say about it.

Lyor is part of the Israeli diaspora; he lives in L.A. His parents were born in Morocco and he was born in Israel. He's a surfer. He was also in the Israeli Navy and he's been giving me some good insights about how the Gaza-bound ships would have been handled better from a military perspective. But it was his political perspective that stunned me. He thinks the European Jews made a big mistake when they followed the Zionists to Palestine. "Worthless desert filled with angry Arabs; they should never have gone there. The biggest mistake they ever made was not taking the British up on their offer to let Jews settle in Uganda. We would have that country so rich by now. Look at all that's been wasted in Palestine."

I was flabbergasted. First of all, I didn't realize anyone, let alone someone in their twenties, even remembers how the Brits tried getting the European Jews to settle in Uganda. At the time it was perceived that the Palestinians might be hostile to the concept of the Jews moving in and, besides Uganda, the alternative places considered were Cyrenaica (currently known as Libya), Mesopotamia (yes, today's Iraq), Angola, Canada and Galveston (where nearly 10,000 European Jews actually settled!) And then there was Sitka, Alaska, soon to be a Coen Brother's smash...



Lyor doesn't see a happy ending, by the way. He thinks a huge war-- which will include Iran and possibly even Turkey, although I find that hard to believe-- is imminent. He feels that the only future for a Jewish state in Palestine would be if it were the 51st state of the United States, but that would probably take something really outlandish-- like a President Huckabee or President Palin. Nor does he think most Israelis would go for it.

He also reminded me of something else that I had forgotten. The ultra religious Jews that have wound up in control of the far right parties that now run the show in Israel don't work. That's right; working is against their religion. They read the Torah all day. I assume they're grateful for the couple of billion dollars a year American taxpayers contribute towards Israel so they can continue not working but living well, reading the Torah and making America less safe.

Can Russ Feingold Help Save The Ugandan LGBT Community?

Russ Feingold in Uganda

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) wrote a resolution urging the Ugandan government to abandon its efforts to enact one of the worst homophobic pieces of legislation anywhere in the world, a law that would, in fact, include outlawing political organizations, broadcasters and publishers that advocate on behalf of gay rights and the death penalty for anyone repeatedly engaging in gay sex. Feingold's resolution, which was co-sponsored by radical right Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, passed unanimously Tuesday night. (A companion bill, introduced by Howard Berman in the House, awaits action.)

Interestingly, even the overt gay-haters from the C-Street cult that encouraged Uganda to enact the bill, voted for Feingold's proposal-- including Jim DeMint (R-SC). Other nations where homosexuality is criminalized and were gays face the death penalty are barbaric and culturally backward states like Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Idaho, and Sudan. “I am glad that so many political, religious and civic leaders in Uganda and around the world have spoken out against this hateful and dangerous bill before the Ugandan Parliament. Sadly, this legislation is just one example of actions taken around the world to restrict the rights of people just because of their gender or sexual orientation. We need to speak out consistently against all such discrimination. The Senate’s passage of this resolution begins to move us in that direction, and I will continue working with my colleagues and the administration to continue to address this issue,” said Feingold, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa. His resolution:

Calling on members of the Parliament in Uganda to reject the proposed "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," and for other purposes.

Whereas a bill introduced on October 14, 2009, by a member of Parliament in Uganda would expand penalties for homosexuality to include the death penalty and requires citizens to report information about homosexuality to the police or face imprisonment;

Whereas many countries criminalize homosexuality, and in some countries, such as Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, the penalty for homosexuality includes the death penalty;

Whereas the United States, in seeking to promote the core American principles of equality and "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," has long championed the universality of human rights;

Whereas religious leaders in the United States, along with representatives from the Vatican and the Anglican Church, have stated that laws criminalizing homosexuality are unjust; and

Whereas the people and Government of the United States recognize that such laws undermine our commitment to combating HIV/AIDS globally through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) by stigmatizing and criminalizing vulnerable communities: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the Senate--

(1) calls on members of the Parliament in Uganda to reject the ‘‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’’ recently proposed in that country;

(2) urges the governments of all countries to reject and repeal similar criminalization laws; and

(3) encourages the Secretary of State to closely monitor human rights abuses that occur because of sexual orientation and to encourage the repeal or reform of laws such as the proposed "Anti-Homosexuality Bill" in Uganda that permit such abuses.

Feingold is a remarkable guy-- a really one-of-a-kind character who certainly marches to the beat of his own drum. When he first ran (in 1992) in beat a right-wing extremist, Senator Bob Kasten, 53-46%. He had a closer call in 1998 against Mark Neumann, which he won 51-48%. Last time (2004) he beat Tim Michels 55-44%. There's been some speculation that popular former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson might be able to beat him. Today Thompson decided he won't be challenging Feingold after all. Great news! Feingold, though, says he was looking forward to an issues-oriented debate with Thompson, who was savaged when he appeared at the Wisconsin Republican activists meet-up today:

"I’m disappointed that Secretary Thompson decided not to get in the ring. I’m sure there will now be talk about other candidates getting in this race, but it’s my hope that the election can now be focused where it should be - on the issues important to the people of Wisconsin and who will be an independent voice for them in Washington, working hard to move our state forward."

Conservatives Want To Give Gays A Choice: Get The Cure Or... Get Killed

Do conservatives-- in this country, at this time, Republicans and Blue Dogs-- want to exterminate gay people? You'll have to ask them. I'm sure the Log Cabin Republicans and the GOProud Republicans don't. I doubt Republican closet cases David Dreier and Charlie Crist and Lindsey Graham want to. (I'm not as certain about more tightly closeted Republicans-- and more hysterical closeted Republicans at that-- like Mitch McConnell, Trent Franks, Adrian Smith and Patrick McHenry. And I'm far less certain about what the religio-fascist C-Street cult would like. They're at least partially behind the Kill the Gays legislation in the process of being adopted by Uganda. Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed huckster Richard Cohen, a self-proclaimed psychologist who says he "cures" gays and wrote a book, Coming Out Straight, that has been widely seen as a profitable joke-- until Ugandan right-wingers started using it to justify their anti-gay jihad. Oh-- and speaking of jihads by religious fanatics... Muslims also offer people who think differently than they do an opportunity to "change or die" just before they're killed (or "converted").

Below are both segments of Rachel's interview with Cohen, who may or may not have worked on Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), another "former" gay who now claims to be (mostly) straight.

Dangerous Right Wing Cult, The Family, Involved In Move To Exterminate Gays In Uganda

Headquarters of a lethal cancer in the heart of our nation's capital

If you visit us here at DWT from time to time, you may recall how excited I was earlier in the year about Nanci Griffith's new album, The Loving Kind, especially because I learned all about a Virginia couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who traveled to Washington, DC in order to get married in June, 1958. It was illegal at the time for black and whites to intermarry. They were dragged out of their bed and thrown into jail cells when they got back to sweet Virginie. Times have changed so drastically since then. Last year 1,959,532 Virginia voters (53% of those who went to the polls), helped elect the offspring of such a marriage. But, in some ways, time has stood still for homosexuals, who are still discriminated against by the same types of bigoted and insecure sociopaths as those who arrested and persecuted Richard and Mildred Loving. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made her marriage legal, a few months before she passed away last year, Mildred, having never spoken out on anything political before has this to say:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

So, I was heartened to read this morning that the Washington DC City Council voted 11-2-- despite threats and blackmail attempts from the Catholic Church and hysteria from right wing political hacks-- to approve legislation that would allow same-sex couples to get married in their city. Forget for a moment that bigoted Mormon fanatic Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has pledged to the satanic "god" he worships to use Congress to force DC to back away from the kind of equality for gays that was the salvation for mixed-race couples like the Lovings. Instead, let's take a look at something really insidious and dangerous to America that's going on among some of Jason Chaffetz' friends and neighbors, the demented, neo-fascist religious fanatics and sexual predators who live in the C Street House provided to the religious cult known as -- The Family.

Last night, Rachel Maddow did a segment on the relationship between the genuinely dangerous cult, The Family, and plans in Uganda to pass even more stringent anti-gay legislation, including the death penalty. Behind this move is a close political associate of both pop-pastor Rick Warren and the insidious Republicans and Blue Dogs who make up the viciously homophobic Family. Among the hate-filled bigots who make up The Family are Sam Brownback (R-KS), James Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mark Pryor (DLC-AR), John Thune (R-SD), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joe Pitts (R-PA), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Bart Stupak (anti-choice-MI), and Health Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). Villainous members no longer in public office include John Ashcroft, Dan Quayle, Ed Meese, Strom Thurmond, Jerry Ford and Richard Nixon.