What I should really do is look at NY, and volunteer for something locally. I'm just not seeing a way to make the blog useful. Which it may not be.
Um, you're smart enough, you're good enough, and doggonit people like you?
Like that?
I had planned to sit down and make some phone calls on Monday, when work is a little less hectic.
Incidentally, someone from BlackBoxVoting.org was on the radio this morning (Brad & Britt In The Morning?), and she suggested that everyone go to the web site, download the citizens toolkit, and choose just one thing (of 20) to do. Some of them seem like something we could do together.
I said I'd do NY, and I have done nothing. I am also behind on grading, and in general, overcommitted.
So rather than offer help, I'm going to ask for some. I have promised to give a talk at a teach in Friday Nov. 3. My assignment is to talk about the stories of people who have been tortured as a part of the US war on terror. The appeal will be largely emotion, but I hope to highlight two very important facts: 1. anyone can be subject to torture at this point and 2. many people who have been tortured are completely innocent.
Right now, my plan is to discuss Jose Padilla and Maher Arar, stick with well established facts, and use a lot of visuals.
Any advice?
I'm having an insane week at work and haven't had even a second to think clearly about this. But I've been carrying around a link that I meant to post here on Monday.
An activist is assembling a media contact list for nonprofit organizations to use. Volunteers are asked to either: 1) call a reporter to confirm that their contact information is correct; 2) research proper name/contact information for a particular media organization, or 3) find a website for a given media outlet.
Frankly, this is kind of what I was imagining when the great Unfogged activism project was proposed -- simple, piecemeal data collection that could be done piecemeal by a widely distributed set of talented volunteers.
Sorry to be so incoherent. Anyway, maybe this can spark discussion about how best to format this voting project of ours: http://mediavolunteer.org/
I don't know if this is effective, or if this is the effect you're going for, but starting with some explanation of tortures like waterboarding, or 'stress positions', or 'the attention slap' (which I understand the Israelis stopped using partially because they were killing prisoners that way) in non-US contexts, to make it easier to accept them as torture, before you move into the stories about what we've done might be helpful.
I said I'd do Callifornia, and I haven't done much. I was planning to do some this weekend but excuse excuse waah waah lazy. What I have done, though, made me think of a way to make this something actually productive and also to scale it waaaaay back, because I think we've bitten off more than we can chew here.
I was looking through the online ballot pamphlet and found that the California Secretary of State, the highest-ranked official in the state in charge of elections, is up for re-election this year. It's the kind of race that you don't hear much about leading up to the election, and then you show up in the voting booth and wonder too late where the candidates stand on things you care about.
I propose that we each take on one or more states and, for that state, find out:
* who is the highest-ranked official in charge of elections
* whether that seat is up for election in November
* of the major-party candidates, who takes the stronger stand on accountability in electronic voting.
In California, Bruce McPherson is the incumbent in the race and, while I like his record in general, I failed to find an unequivocal statement on his campaign website that this was an important issue to him or that he does not blindly trust Diebold and co. In contrast, his opponent, Debra Bowen, has made election integrity the cornerstone of her campaign.
It's been done. That site only focuses on a few swing states, though; it might be good to expand it to others.
I'd recommend against pinning too much of your argument on the possibility of "innocent people" being tortured. It's true and important, but it carries a shadow: to assert that torturing the innocent is wrong leaves open the claim that torturing the guilty is just fine. (Compare Vonnegut's penetrating analysis of what Christians can learn from the Crucifixion.)
Since very few people would torture someone whom they believed innocent, every case becomes an exception--if the torturee turns out to be innocent, it's just an "honest mistake". Oh, well, sorry about that! Furthermore, separating "torture of the innocent" from "torture of the guilty" encourages the Administration to play these shell games with prisoners, to make sure the public can't be confident of who's guilty and who might not be.
It's hard for a relativist like me to say this, but torture is wrong because it's evil. That's dangerous to assert in an argument, but it matters; if the American concept of a "War on Terror" is to have some meaning other than as code for "War on Muslims We Don't Own", America has to find some kind of moral high ground and demonstrate that there are moral lines we won't cross, even for our own potential advantage.
As a side note: anything you can find to firm up the argument that torture is ineffective could be valuable, since moviegoing Americans think to ourselves "Geez, I know torture would make me talk". It's a lot easier to give up something you shouldn't be doing if you know it won't work anyway.
The world can see easily enough that we are armed with depleted uranium artillery and unmanned drones with missiles, while those we fight are armed with whatever explosives they can cook up or steal from us and whatever schoolchildren can be cajoled into strapping them on. Now think about the first reel of every action movie ever: who's got all the power, and who's on the outside? I'm as American as the next, um, American, but I've seen this movie and I know how it ends. If this country doesn't step up morally and make our blather about liberty and human rights stand for something, we'll be remembered in a century as the Empire that had to be destroyed--assuming there's anyone around to remember anything.
Er, the above rant was inspired by 5 and 7.
As for a larger project, I'm not sure I believe we should all be doing the same thing. My local Democrat is on the Edwin Edwards plan (and is a pretty good representative), but YMMV.
Why don't we just have a big ol' weekly brag thread, in which everybody can talk about what they've actually done to Save the World since last week, and then there can be lots of high-fiving and cock jokes? If people start inspiring each other and working together, so much the better; but it's hardly necessary.
I remember the story of a professor at my local U who was in Beijing in '89, and passed through a courtyard where hundreds upon hundreds of students milled about, agonizingly, waiting hoursfor someone to be the first to head for Tiananmen.
So kudos to everybody who's started something! Me, I haven't done a damn thing yet. But I'm taking a look at the tool kit...
Weeelllll,
My information-gathering on NJ was pretty limited. Basically: The state has certified a whole bunch of machines (list here) but only a couple are in use. A list of machines in use by county is here. it looks like every county is just using one machine, which strikes me as good. Most everybody is using Sequoia AVC Advantage, which I found reviewed at Freedom-to-tinker and a roundup of stories about Sequoia at VoteTrustUSA. Passaic and Sussex counties are using ES & S machines, which me and Teofilo are leery of because of their address, VoteTrustUSA has a review. Monmouth has used Shoup machines in the past but is moving to Sequoia. So the validity of the 2004 NJ election seems to turn primarily on the Sequoia AVC Advantage, which looks a bit questionable from the VoteTrustUSA links, which however I have not read in any depth.
I'm sorry, 'cause I came in and stirred things all up, but then wasn't around on the weekend to follow through with hard thought. I also didn't have much notion of what to do once I'd read through the websites about voting machines, especially since CA seems mostly on the right track.
If the blog is going to be more useful than any other way of motivating people, it should use what it is unusually good at.
Writing is the obvious skill in the group, as well as getting at the essence of the argument.
Calling on expertise, because if no one here knows about something, I bet the collective knows someone who does.
Media access, probably. People said that influential people read here, and individually I bet we could get stuff in local newspapers.
But if there is gonna be a project, it'll have to be very concrete. (Is there Model Code language for adopting voting technology? I don't even know how to check. Writing Model Code might be small and doable and lead to a next step.) We could ask experts - have five people call up the editors of the pages that we linked to, and ask each what they thought Unfogged could get done.
Or, we could try a more distributed project. I liked the idea of getting coordinated op-eds in lots of papers, but I don't need you guys to write one myself and submit it to the Bee. Maybe just a public commitment, cheerleading and a made-up deadline is what I need to motivate.
Or, maybe Unfogged isn't the right venue until a leader with the crazy look comes along. (Also, I love the dorkiness of voting machines, but I thought y'all were way more worked up over habeus. You can only do this stuff longterm if you feel it deep inside.)
I'll be gone again this weekend, but when I get back, I'll see if there is still motivation for a project, and I'll put work in.
For example, since this:
As a closing thought: do you know the legal standard for declaring an American citizen an unlawful enemy combatant? Me neither.
really bugs people, maybe we could figure out what it means. Figure out the range of things that could get an American citizen an unlawful enemy combatant, pick two or three likely scenarios and prepare responses (legal and media responses) for when the Bush administration tries to do it.
This week was sandwiched between two weddings, so, no progress, but I have "call sec. of state" on my todo list for Monday.
Of course, if we decide to do something else instead, I'm in.
Figure out the range of things that could get an American citizen an unlawful enemy combatant, pick two or three likely scenarios and prepare responses (legal and media responses) for when the Bush administration tries to do it.
I like this idea a lot.
For example, since this:
As a closing thought: do you know the legal standard for declaring an American citizen an unlawful enemy combatant? Me neither.
really bugs people, maybe we could figure out what it means.
The lack of a clear legal standard is a feature, not a bug. There's no amount of scrutinizing the language that will get us a clear answer as to what it means.
Of course, the fact that the meaning is purposely unclear, to allow the executive maximum power to make such declarations, is something that needs to be publicized widely, for example by a coordinated op-ed writing campaign.
14, 16, 17: M/tch has it -- the project suggested in 14 is literally impossible, because the law as written states no standard. Presumably in practice the administration would be bound by some standard of absurdity -- they're at least going to accuse you of something really bad -- but there's no showing of fact they have to make, and no authority they have to make the case before.
Trying to place op-eds to make this point, which is a horrifying one, isn't a bad idea.
I wonder if I waterboarded my students, if I could get class credit for that and make a meaningful political point at the same time. Probably not, but it would help them put their quiz grades in perspective.
5 -- Mamdou Habib was tortured after being rendered. There was a pretty explicit description of his treatment in his court papers, filed in early 2005. The faces of Guantanamo page at CCR has a number of stories. El Banna and Al Rawi just lost their English appeal, btw.
That doesn't mean 14 is impossible--it's just speculative. I think it's a good idea to work out some possible scenarios, and maybe publicize them, before the administration drops one on us. Also, the argument about the law being too vague is more convincing when you have some specific examples in mind.
I don't know enough to really help with this project, though... I'd just be making stuff up.