Locomotive Mule

gag on the gaggle

QUESTION: I’m sure President Ford was aware of those. In every speech he gives, President Bush invokes the atrocities of 9/11 and he talks about how that event has impressed on him a determination to always honor the victims of those atrocities in his daily conduct of his office. And I wonder if you could explain with some serious Texan straight talk here, Scott, how it is honoring the victims of 9/11 to restrict the questioning of the President on this subject to one hour?

McCLELLAN: I hope you’ll talk about the unprecedented cooperation that we’re providing to the commission when you report this, James. Because if you look back at what we’ve done, it is unprecedented. We have provided more than 2 million pages of documents. We provided more than 60 compact discs of radar, flight and other information; more than 800 audio cassette tapes of interviews and other materials; more than 100 briefings, including at the head-of-agency level; more than 560 interviews. So this administration is cooperating closely and in an unprecedented way with the 9/11 Commission, because their work is very important.

Yes their work is very important - but not important enough for the President to do more than “visit with them for an hour”.

I was raised on a very simple premise: “If you’ve nothing to hide, then you’ve nothing to fear”. I can’t get over the feeling that there’s something being hidden here.

McCLELLAN: And the President is pleased to sit down with the chairman and vice chairman to provide them with the information they need to do their job. And we believe …

QUESTION: Why only one hour? Why only one hour?

McCLELLAN: – we believe that he can provide them the necessary information in this private meeting.

Yes I suppose precedent is important, we can’t have Congress dragging the President into inquisitions all the time. But on the other hand, why not? If the President has nothing to hide, he should be more than willing to spend a few hours answering questions. Oh, what’s that? He doesn’t have time? He’s a busy man? Well he has time to travel the country giving stump speeches and raising campaign fundage - seems he’d have a few hours to “visit” with Congress, especially on a subject that’s “very important”.

McCLELLAN: Keep in mind there are separation of powers issues involved when you’re talking about a legislatively created body.

It’s Congress’ job to oversee the Executive branch, therefore it’s the President’s job to be overseen. Where does a President get off defining the rules whereby he can or cannot be interviewed by his overseers? Has the Presidency really become a monarchy with the Congress simply serving as lackeys?

Something really stinks here. There’s more than the usual stonewalling going on - either the GOP is just flat out paranoid or they’re guilty of something truly heinous.

A Case Study

In 1992, the American corporation Unocal entered into a joint venture with Burma’s military dictatorship (then called the SLORC, or State Law and Order Restoration Council) and a French corporation to construct and operate an oil pipeline running across the interior of the country to Thailand. According to Unocal, the project “brought significant benefits in health care, education and economic opportunity to more than 45,000 people” living in the path of the pipeline.

“John Doe I,” whose village lay directly in the path of Unocal’s pipeline, has a different story to tell (his name has been withheld in court proceedings to protect him from reprisals by the Burma government). John says that in 1992, SLORC soldiers allegedly on Unocal’s payroll ordered the villagers to move because their homes were in the way.

John says that while he couldn’t remain in his village, he refused to go where the soldiers had ordered him. Instead, he and his family moved to another nearby village, where they lived unnoticed for two years. But one day in 1994, while John was out fishing, soldiers ransacked the village, burning and looting. John’s wife, “Jane,” says that the soldiers recognized her and that one officer, enraged to find that the family had disobeyed the order to relocate, kicked Jane and her one-month-old baby into an open fire. She lost consciousness. When the soldiers left, John tells of coming home and finding his wife and daughter badly burned. They obeyed the soldiers and relocated to the new village, but were prevented by the soldiers from finding a doctor and the daughter died days afterwards from her wounds.

The villagers say that the reason the soldiers were so adamant about everyone relocating to the same village was that the pipeline needed a pool of captive labor. Every day, large numbers of villagers were allegedly rounded up and sent out to perform exhausting labor clearing roads, serving as porters, or cleaning the soldiers’ camps. The villagers say that those who refused to work, or who became too weak, were often killed. Others, they say, were beaten and tortured. Many of the women conscripted for work on the pipeline tell stories of being raped at knifepoint by soldiers as their families stood by helplessly and watched.

The villagers had little hope of having their stories heard in a Burma court. But in 1996, John, Jane and thirteen other villagers brought suit against Unocal in California under the Alien Tort Claims Act and California state law. They allege that Unocal aided and abetted SLORC in the commission of these crimes.

Unocal argues that it cannot be held accountable for the excesses of the government in whose country it happened to be working. The villagers, however, allege that Unocal not only knew what was going on, but was actually complicit in it. Burma’s military has an exceptionally bloody reputation, and routinely employs forced labor. Unocal nevertheless allegedly decided to hire the SLORC’s army to provide “security” for its operations, to clear a path for the pipeline, and to build all the necessary roads. While Unocal denies actually contracting for the soldiers’ services, it admits that the government provided battalions both to guard the pipeline project and help with the construction of required infrastructure. The degree to which Unocal directed the actions of those soldiers, and the question of whether they were actually on the corporation’s payroll, will be important issues if the case goes to trial.

The Alien Tort Claims Act has been on the books since 1789 and reads:

The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort [personal injury] only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.

In recent years this act has been used to allow victims to see a modicum of justice done (though rarely any cash). Civil rights abusers who escaped to the US have been tried and convicted in our courts.

Now our Justice Department is trying to seriously reduce the scope of the Act, saying it should apply only to human rights violations committed within the U.S.

This can be nothing other than a thinly veiled gift to large US corporations, allowing them to operate in other countries with impunity.

Human Rights Watch has some interesting info on the act and its history, here and here.

Either we as a nation act in accordance with our own lofty rhetoric about freedom, human rights and democracy or we do not. If we do not then we should not be surprised when the rest of the world eyes us with suspicion and loathing.

Bush&Co. are not acting in accordance with their stated goals and therefore, as a people, nor are we.

A Look at Clerical Sex Abuse Report

So the Church investigates itself and airs its laundry. Good for them - it’s about time.

But these priests, this 4% of the clergy, are criminals. They need to be locked up the same as anyone else would be.

* Though “many outstanding priests of a homosexual orientation” maintain celibacy, it’s significant that more than 80 percent of abuse incidents involved males under 18.

Under 18? That’s a crime in all 50 states.

* Church leaders “did not act effectively” to prevent abuse “or respond appropriately when it occurred.”

Seems the responses are still inappropriate.

Why is it that our Justice Department can spend who knows how many dollars to persue allegedly illegal abortions, spend massive amounts of MY dollars testing the constitutionality of various new methods of “investigation” but appear to be doing little or nothing about hundreds (thousands?) of child abusers.

I want to see these priests, these trusted and revered advisors to the young, thrown in jail.

It’s not the job of the Executive branch to selectively enforce the law but to enforce all the laws - regardless of who is accused.

Tired of chasing the ever elusive dynamic IP, I finally decided to cave to the corporate domination of the Internet and started to use a hosting company. So this is the new home for the Mule and with any luck (and decent uptimes) it’ll stay here for a while.