Glenn Greenwald writes in his final Salon column:

[Daveed] Gartenstein-Ross’ entire lucrative career as a “terrorism expert” desperately depends on the perpetuation of the Islamic Terror threat. He markets himself as an expert in Islamic Terror by highlighting that he was born Jewish, converted to Islam while in college, and then Saw the Light and converted to Christianity. During his short stint as a Muslim, he worked at the al-Haramain charity foundation in Oregon — the same one that was found to have been illegally spied upon by the Bush NSA — but became an FBI informant against the group because — as he claimed in a book,”My Year Inside Radical Islam”, which he subsequently wrote to profit off of his conduct — he was horrified by “the group hatreds and anti-intellectualism of radical Islam.”

He is now listed as an “expert” at the neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (the group’s list of “experts” is basically a Who’s Who of every unhinged neocon extremist in the country). Gartenstein-Ross is specifically employed by the Foundation as something called “Director of the Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization.”

Stephen Walt writes:

Two lessons might be drawn from [the 2012 Olympics]. The first is that the head-long rush to privatize everything — including the provision of security — has some obvious downsides. When markets and private firms fail, it is the state that has to come to the rescue. It was true after the 2007-08 financial crisis, it’s true in the ongoing euro-mess, and it was true in the Olympics. Bear that in mind when Romney and new VP nominee Paul Ryan tout the virtues of shrinking government, especially the need to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

The second lesson is that we continue to over-react to the “terrorist threat.” Here I recommend you read John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart’s The Terrorism Delusion: America’s Overwrought Response to September 11, in the latest issue of International Security. Mueller and Stewart analyze 50 cases of supposed “Islamic terrorist plots” against the United States, and show how virtually all of the perpetrators were (in their words) “incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational and foolish.” They quote former Glenn Carle, former deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats saying “we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are,” noting further that al Qaeda’s “capabilities are far inferior to its desires.”

One of the ways Cleveland writer Harvey Pekar became famous was his sparring with David Letterman on the issue of General Electric, owner of NBC, the network airing Letterman’s show. Pekar died ub 2010, but if he were around, I imagine he would be all over GE’s connection to the military-industrial complex and NBC’s Stars Earn Stripes.

Previously…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan – two guys from wealthy families who have never had to toil for a living – will tell working stiffs what’s good for them.

And what might that be?

Tax breaks on wealth to provide incentives to the rich; less social security and Medicare as motivations to spur workers. We need more of this. That’s their message.

Oh, and by the way, Social Security to Wall Street, too. Invest in failure.

Close tax loopholes. What does that mean, R & R? There goes your mortgage tax deduction. Cut government spending the R & R way – end food stamps to deal with obesity.

The Republicans also seem to forget that the Boston Tea Party was against a foreign power. The Republican Tea Party is against its own people.

And working stiffs are supposed to believe this shit.

Only the brainwashed, Romney.

[Including the Plain Dealer Roldo? JH]

I think so.

“Into a presidential campaign that has been short of substance and long on personal attacks, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has injected an element around which worthwhile debate might begin to coalesce.

“The element’s name is Paul Ryan,” says a Plain Dealer editorial.

The headline says: “Choosing Ryan sharpens Romney.”

Get ready to end your subscriptions. The PD is on its way to a Romney endorsement.

Believe it. As I do.

Previously…

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Okay, Mayor Frank when are you going to ask for a cut of that $1 billion Randy Lerner and family are getting for the Browns? Are you really serious about helping the children of Cleveland?

Here’s an idea from one of my readers: charge the 7.75 percent sales tax on the $1,000,000,000 (that’s $1 billion) purchase of the Cleveland Browns in Cuyahoga County.

Mayor Frank Jackson there could be $77,500,000 for your children of Cleveland. Quite a tidy sum.

You can lower or drop the November levy. No tax for your mostly impoverished residents. Sound good? Sounds excellent to me.

You have such a good relationship with Gov. John Kasich, who, as you, is vitally interested in the welfare of Cleveland children. The two of you can agree to use the entire sales tax for the Cleveland schools. A dandy idea.

After all, who has subsidized the Browns franchise owner more than the school children of Cleveland? Who will subsidize the new owner more than those same children?

I’ve pointed out numerous times that the deal worked out by Browns executive as the city’s negotiator, Fred Nance helped free the Browns Continue Reading »

Thank you Susan Miller.

Yesterday morning I wrote about TrapWire, a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans. Trapwire collects video data from thousands of surveillance cameras, according to emails made public by WikiLeaks.

When the news broke hacktivists discovered that Trapwire was already taking down information as fast as it could to prevent further disclosure. One such bit of information is who runs the day-to-day operations of Trapwire. When the initial page came down, hacktivists were still able to grab the data from Google Cache before that too disappeared. (Question: what does it take to scrub a page from Google Cache)

Below is the information found on the Google Cache page:

TRAPWIRE

Leadership

Dan Botsch, President: As President and one of the founders of the company, Mr. Botsch oversees all aspects of the organization.

Prior to joining TrapWire, Dan served 11 years as an Intelligence Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, focusing on Russian and Eastern European affairs. He also has experience in corporate security, having served as the Deputy Director of a Business Intelligence Group that monitored political, economic, security and market dynamics for a Global 100 energy company. Dan holds an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business; a Masters degree in International Affairs from Boston University; and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Political Science from Bates College.

Michael Maness, Director of Business Development: As Senior Director, Mr. Maness is currently responsible for the Business Development activities of TrapWire. During the formation of the company he made important contributions to the development of the TrapWire Critical Infrastructure system rules engine and its unique, structured reporting formats. Additionally, he contributed to the design and development of some of our training programs, and provides counterterrorism and surveillance expertise in support of TrapWire system deployments.

Mike joined TrapWire following 20 years of service with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he directed counterterrorism and security operations in the Middle-East, the Balkans and Europe. As a senior operations officer and field operations manager, he was instrumental in combating Al-Qaeda’s operational units in the immediate wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has also been recognized by the CIA for his work in Bosnia and Kosovo during the crises there. Fluent in several languages, Mike is a graduate of Texas State University where he was awarded degrees in International Relations and Foreign Languages.

Michael K. Chang, Director of Operations: As Director of Operations, Mr. Chang is responsible for all TrapWire training programs and TrapWire system deployments. Prior to joining TrapWire in 2005, Mike served 12 years with the Central Intelligence Agency as a counterterrorism operations officer and security officer. He designed and implemented numerous, multifaceted counterterrorism operations and training programs and worked closely with various military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies across the globe.

He also served as an Assistant Team Leader and Special Agent on the personal security detail of the Director and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Mike has served as a senior instructor for various field training programs, including Counterterrorism Operations, Protective Operations, and Surveillance Detection. He is also a CIA certified firearms and weapons instructor. He has an M.A. in Forensic Science from George Washington University and a B.S. in Administration of Justice from Pennsylvania State University.

Paul Chadha, Director of Information Technology: As Director of Information Technology, Mr. Chadha manages TrapWire’s corporate-wide technology infrastructure, including the operation and maintenance of TrapWire Data Centers worldwide. Paul is responsible for ensuring information security and high system availability to meet the demanding requirements of our government and private sector clients. Paul is also responsible for managing the software development of the TrapWire suite of products, ongoing Client Support Services, and technical integration efforts for TrapWire system deployments.

Paul has more than a decade of experience in the Information Technology arena and has led numerous efforts to overhaul corporate networks in need of tighter security and added reliability. Paul currently holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA) certifications.

A member of the Cleveland Heights City Council assured me that the recently installed cameras in Cleveland Heights are for internal use only and the data is not shared with Trapwire, or any other agency, organization or individual.

As I told Cavana Faithwalker yesterday over an excellent Colombian lunch at Barroco Grill, that was the response I expected — we are the community that once trumpeted its status as a nuclear-free zone after all — but that I thought it still important to ask the question so that our representatives know that we’re paying attention.

A Scout writes:

I arrived on Sunday with 15 yards of rainbow ribbons in my pocket to distribute to like minded Scouts who noticed the right pocket on my uniform. I was surprised- I ran out within the first 2 hours!

Over the day, camp staff and a few adult leaders were seen with them on. By dinner, most staff had removed them. One young staffer approached me with tears in his eyes to inform me they had been told to remove them “because they were not part of the official Scout Uniform.”

That night, at the opening campfire, staff had a few clever skits about scouts being Brave while leaders fainted in their midst. A day went by with no conversation.

Then, this morning, I was asked for more ribbons by one staff member because, ‘a bunch of us talked about our oath to be Brave…. And, we’re finding ways to display our ribbons or for some of us to just keep them in our pockets as a reminder about what is right.’

The small and ignorant men who have so dishonorably abandoned the American values that I came to understand were embodied in the honor of earning the rank of Eagle Scout are losing to the boys who understand what Honor really is.

From Cub Scout Pack 214 in St. Louis, Missouri:

When you say “On my honor,” that’s like saying “I promise.” It also means you are the kind of person who always tries to do what is right and you can be trusted to keep this promise. No one can take your honor from you, but you can throw it away by breaking your promise and doing what you know is wrong.

The above boy scout, his peers, the camp staff and the growing number of my Eagle brothers understand this.

Previously…

Normally I would have simply included a link to Ashleigh Banfield’s 24 April 2003 Landon Lecture as a note to Glenn Greenwald’s piece on the NBC abomination Stars Earn Stripes, but what Banfield said was so prescient, that I wanted to offer her words in their own post. Below is a part of her talk that Greenwald chose to quote.

From then-MSNBC-star-war-correspondent Ashleigh Banfield:

I suppose you watch enough television to know that the big TV show is over and that the war is now over essentially — the major combat operations are over anyway, according to the Pentagon and defense officials — but there is so much that is left behind. . . .

That said, what didn’t you see? You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage?

There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you’re getting the story, it just means you’re getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that’s what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news.

But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid of a horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn’t see what it took to do that.

When I said the war was over I kind of mean that in the sense that cards are being pulled from this famous deck now of the 55 most wanted, and they’re sort of falling out of the deck as quickly as the numbers are falling off the rating chart for the cable news stations. We have plummeted into the basement in the last week. We went from millions of viewers to just a few hundred thousand in the course of a couple of days. . . .

I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war about the horrors of war, but I’m very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it may have changed people’s opinions. It was very sanitized. . . .

This TV show that we just gave you was extraordinarily entertaining, and I really hope that the legacy that it leaves behind is not one that shows war as glorious, because there’s nothing more dangerous than a democracy that thinks this is a glorious thing to do.

War is ugly and it’s dangerous, and in this world the way we are discussed on the Arab street, it feeds and fuels their hatred and their desire to kill themselves to take out Americans. It’s a dangerous thing to propagate. . . .

I’m hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big hires on other networks, right wing hires to chase after this effect, and you can already see that flag waving in the corners of those cable news stations where they have exciting American music to go along with their war coverage.

Ashleigh Banfield is now hosts the 11 a.m. spot for CNN.

On a normal week I may paste a panel from one of John Backderf’s cartoons to lead readers back to his excellent work, but this week I couldn’t decide which made me laugh (and think) more so this morning I present a Derfian double feature on obesity and Chick-Fil-A.

I’m betting that the clowns who dreamed up this reality show cluster fuck never served a day.

Glenn Greenwald writes:

Needless to say, this is all being done To Honor The Troops. The winner will receive $100,000 [that’s 20 percent of what the winner of Big Brother gets and a tiny, tiny percent of the revenues NBC hopes to collect from advertisers, JH] to donate to a military-related charity of their choice. Referring to NBC’s claims about the purpose of the show, the Post says it is all done “to raise awareness about how hard our fighting forces work, how much they sacrifice, and so on and so on, until it begins to sound like nebulous praise.” Reflecting broader cultural realities, the show’s Bad Ass Operatives are treated like deities (one of them “starts to feel self-conscious when Cain, his teammate, won’t stop fawning over him”). I wonder how actual troops who face real danger to their lives feel about having NBC exploit The Troops and convert their combat burdens into a fun reality show with feigned “danger.” And, of course, the substantial profit NBC hopes to make from selling commercials won’t be donated to veterans groups at all but will be tallied up as corporate profits — but that’s all just totally incidental to the Honor The Troops goal motivating all of this.

Linda Holmes writes:

Claiming to have been in danger here is a little strange, particularly when compared with the risks faced by people who do this kind of thing in the military rather than on a game show. No one is saying swimming with heavy gear isn’t hard, or learning to shoot a machine gun isn’t hard, or doing a belly-crawl isn’t hard, or walking in the mud isn’t hard. And nobody is saying that you can’t gain an extra appreciation for some of what actual soldiers go through by doing those things.

But to say that you can understand what it’s like to be in the military by shooting a gun and swimming with heavy gear is like saying you can understand what it’s like to have cancer by shaving your head. You can perhaps gain sympathy for what one element of the experience feels like, but it seems awfully arrogant to set this up as any sort of “now I understand what these guys go through” mind-blower. When Crews says he’s participating “to get to see what the soldier life is really about,” it’s supposed to sound admiring of that life, but it reads as unintentionally dismissive.

You want to honor the troops? How about a reality show with the men and women who provide death notifications to the families. You want to honor the troops? How about talking to the people who dig the graves? You want to honor the troops? How about the real heroic struggles of the those who have survived their wounds and are now fighting back to restore any normalcy to their lives.

I am one veteran who is pissed with Stars Earn Stripes and I call total bull shit on NBC, Mark Burnett, Dick Wolf and David Hurwitz.

Jill writes: Back to reality today but a final image from an outstanding birthday day – thank you to Raya Zimon – my ray-a-sunshine always.

[Upate @ 0829 — From Cleveland Heights City Council Member Bonnie Kaplan:

Hi,
The cameras in Cleveland Heights are monitored by the Cleveland Hts police dept. There is no secondary monitoring, or data collection system involved.
Have a good day.
Bonnie Caplan]

Glenn Greenwald alerted me to this trending story this morning on Twitter.

David Seaman writes:

Trapwire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. Trapwire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.

And someone out there seems to be quite disappointed that word is getting out so swiftly; the Wikileaks web site is reportedly sustaining 10GB worth of DDoS attacks each second, which is massive.

Anyway, here’s what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing “foreign media”… if we had a free press, I’d be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): “Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology—and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

From PrivacySOS:

This week things got extra interesting with the revelation of an enormous, shadowy surveillance company with deep ties to the CIA: Trapwire exploded on the surveillance scene like a bat out of hell. And people are justifiably freaked out about it.

But people are also publishing a lot of information that seems to have appeared out of the ether, grounded in no documentation whatsoever. There is no need to speculate or conjure surveillance bogeymen where they do not exist. The documented facts speak loudly enough.

Furthermore, we don’t even have to look to pre-crime, globally networked spook software like Trapwire to be concerned about where we stand vis a vis privacy rights and government powers. Take the following stories from just the past month as a small sample of our problems, serving to illustrate the seriousness of our current predicament:

From Ben Doernberg:

TrapWire is also noteworthy because it maintains a centralized database of all these reports submitted by citizens or TrapWire-enabled CCTV cameras. TrapWire not only collects these reports but cross references them across geographic and territorial boundaries; for instance, a report from the London Stock Exchange might be cross referenced with a report from the LAPD, or a citizen’s phone call in Washington, DC. That an intelligence network connecting private businesses, military bases, civilian police, and federal agencies has managed to escape attention for so long is surprising, to say the least.

Finally, TrapWire is raising concerns because of its close ties to the CIA. Its CEO, President, and two of its top three managers are all ex-CIA, with more than 10 years experience each. The CIA is generally “prohibited from collecting intelligence concerning the domestic activities of U.S. citizens.” While the emails released by WikiLeaks do not indicate that information obtained by TrapWire has been shared with the CIA, TrapWire’s former parent company (also run by TrapWire’s CEO) was involved with a number of CIA contracting operations, and it does not seem out of the realm of possibility that lines could at some point be crossed, either due to personal loyalties or an “ends justify the means” approach to combating terrorism.

In any case, it seems clear that TrapWire’s role in the US and international intelligence community bears scrutiny, scrutiny it has largely avoided until WikiLeaks’ latest release.

A natural question to be put to my local officials is this: are the recently installed surveliance cameras in Cleveland Heights linked into Trapwire? If they are, then I want them disconnected. Now!

[Update @ 0821: I just sent this email to the members of Cleveland Heights city council and several fellow citizens of Cleveland Heights.

Good morning all,

I hope that everyone had a pleasurable weekend.

The news this morning is not pleasant and I would appreciate responses to two concerns:

First, are any of the cameras, recordings or feeds from Cleveland Heights’ CCTV system linked, uploaded or reviewed by the Trapwire program?

Second, does SkyCop receive, monitor, upload or review in any manner streamed or recorded, the data collected by the installed surveillance cameras in Cleveland Heights?

I eagerly await your response.

Do all you can to make today a good day,

Jeff Hess
1823 Lee Road

I’ll keep you posted when I receive replies.

See update @ 0829 above.]

I’ve thought about this before, and I confess that I’m being more than a little bit Squirrel! here, but watching Ms. Wanhurst talk about Todmorden reminded me of the herb garden at the back entrance to the Cleveland Height/University Heights main library on Lee Road (what happened to it this year?) and the water truck that I see all the time driving up and down Lee Road watering the hanging flower baskets the city plants every year (why not strawberries instead of flowers?).

While Britta Riley’s hydroponics are fascinating, I’m finding a simpler method more appropriate for my northern exposure only apartment.

I’m having lunch this afternoon with my brother Cavana Faithwalker and I will make urban gardening a part of our meandering conversation.

Bill Keller writes:

Presidents come with a cast of advisers, think tanks, lobbyists, legislators, donors and watchdogs. Some in the entourage end up in key jobs; others operate as a kind of shadow cabinet, vetting choices and enforcing doctrine.

This is especially true of Republicans, who have spent decades building a disciplined conservative infrastructure that recruits talent, culls dissenters and lays down the law. Compared with Democrats, who are scattered left and center, a Republican administration is more than ever a conservative turnkey project.

I’m not so certain that the Democratic Party doesn’t also have its “cast of advisers, think tanks, lobbyists, legislators, donors and watchdogs.” Democrats may not be as good at creating entourages, but looking at the administrations of presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, it seems to me that many of the same names repeat, no?

Shadow cabinets are good. Even politicians need to learn certain realities from their seniors.

So, this morning I advertantly discovered that there are words that you shouldn’t use when posting on the Civic Commons. I pasted the conclusion from a post I wrote this morning as a way of broadening a Civic Commons conversation I’m engaged in:

So then, is incivility an expression of power and civility that of largess or weakness? Is civility really the result of our inability to speak our minds? Did Dick Chaney tell Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) to go fuck yourself because he was vice president, richer than Midas and therefore could say what he liked without fear of retaliation?

Perhaps.

What do you think?

I was not surprised that the nanny filter didn’t like one word, it’s fairly easy to spot, but I got a laugh when it also tagged a second word. Can you guess which one?

Here’s what got posted:

So then, is incivility an expression of power and civility that of largess or weakness? Is civility really the result of our inability to speak our minds? Did D**k Chaney tell Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) to go f**k yourself because he was vice president, richer than Midas and therefore could say what he liked without fear of retaliation?

Yes, the Civic Commons language nanny doesn’t like the nickname for Richard.

That prompted an experiment: I created a list of the words I wouldn’t use in polite society starting with George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television and Lenny Bruce’s Nine Words I Was Areested For Saying. (Carlin used seven of the nine words in his list, but Bruce’s list may be apocraphyl, I can’t find an authoritative source).

Then I started to riff on all the other words I could think of (my list is by no means exhaustive, but it is extensive) and ran them all past the language nanny. Here’s what I got back:

a*s, balls, c********r, c**t, d**k, f**k, m**********r, p**s, s**t, tits,

airhead, asshat, beast, bimbo, birdbrain, blockhead, bonehead, booby, boor, breast, bubblehead, buffoon, bupkis, cad, chowderhead, chucklehead, churl, clodpole, clodpoll, clot, clown, cluck, clunk, creep, cretin, cuddie, cuddy, cur, deadhead, dim bulb, dimwit, dip, dodo, dolt, dolt, donkey, doofus, dope, dork, dullard, dumb, dumbbell, dumbhead, dum-dum, dummkopf, dummy, dunce, dunderhead, fathead, featherbrain,feck, fool,fuctard, gander, gawk, golem, goof, goon, goose, half-wit, hammerhead, hardhead, heel, himbo, idiot, ignoramus, imbecile, jackass, jerk, know-nothing, knucklehead, lamebrain, loggerhead, loon, loony, loser, lump, lunatic, lunkhead, madman, meathead, merde, mome, moron, mug, mutt, natural, nimrod, nincompoop, ninny, ninnyhammer, nit, nitwit, noddy, noodle, numbskull, numskull, nut, oaf, penis, pinhead, prat, putz, ratbag, retard, saphead, scatterbrain, schlub, schmuck, schnook, scum, shag, shlub, simpleton, skunk, slime, snake, snog, stinker, stock, stupe, stupid, stupid,suck, sucker, thickhead, turkey, vagina, villain; bimbette, woodenhead, yahoo, yo-yo, zany

There are one or two surprises. Which words do you think the nanny filter should have caught? Which words you allow? Which words would you not use in polite company?

And, oh yeah, is there an adult reading this who didn’t hear the words in their head when they read the language nanny versions?

Isn’t language grand?

(Full disclosure: in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church I am a Catholic, although I have never practiced that particular faith and by virtue of my Reform conversion to Judaism in 1985, I am now a heretic and might be burned at the stake in another time. That I have since embraced reason and consider myself an Atheist, is of no consequence given the original break with the RCC.)

In light of our ongoing conversation — see the ticker in the right-hand column — at the Civic Commons regarding incivility, I found Mano Singham’s post yesterday instructive. Mano wrote:

US nuns tell the Vatican to go to hell

Well, not explicitly, because nuns don’t use use that kind of language, at least in public. But that is how I read the subtext of the statement that was released yesterday following the annual national meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious that represents 80% of the 57,000 US nuns.

Now I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Mano through our monthly Socrates Cafe meeting for a number of years and I’ve found him to be one of the most civil individuals I’ve ever known. He is also capable of what I would call passionate speech.

This is passage from which he drew his interpretation.

From the Leadership Conference on Women Religious [American Roman Catholic nuns, JH]:

The assembly articulated its belief that religious life, as it is lived by the women religious
who comprise [the Leadership Conference on Women Religious], is an authentic expression of this life that must not be compromised. The theology, ecclesiology, and spirituality of the Second Vatican Council serve as the
foundation of this form of religious life – and while those who live it must always be open to conversion – this life form should not be discounted.

The assembly instructed the LCWR officers to conduct their conversation with Archbishop Sartain from a stance of deep prayer that values mutual respect, careful listening and open dialogue. The officers will proceed with these discussions as long as possible, but will reconsider if LCWR is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission.

The members reiterated the importance and value of LCWR’s mission to its members and its role as a voice for justice in the world. They urged the officers not to allow the work with [the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (formerly known as the Inquisition, JH)] to absorb the time, energy, and resources of the conference nor to let it distract the conference from the work its mission requires.

What interested me here is the concept of subtext. As an adolescent male I read Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling and like most adolescent males I had a Beavis and Butthead you said moment when I read this passage:

to salute that part which is generally introduced into all controversies that arise among the lower orders of the English gentry at horse-races, cock-matches, and other public places. Allusions to this part are likewise often made for the sake of the jest. And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a— for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.

In a front porch conversation with Adam Harvey last evening that touched on this topic, Adam recalled an exchange among Beatrice, Don Pedro and Claudio — Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing the Act II, Scene I — in which Beatrice says:

The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

I leave you to research the origins of the phrase civil as an orange, but Adam’s (and Beatrice’s) point was that Claudio’s polite language masked passion, anger and hatred. Claudio is not civil from any desire to be civil, but rather he is civil because to be uncivil had serious consequences (kind of like how we tend to use phrases like officer and sir when speaking with the police at a traffic stop).

So then, is incivility an expression of power and civility that of largess or weakness? Is civility really the result of our inability to speak our minds? Did Dick Chaney tell Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) to go fuck yourself because he was vice president, richer than Midas and therefore could say what he liked without fear of retaliation?

Perhaps.

What do you think?

George Takei writes:

Many well-meaning people counter that the BSA is a private organization, and as such should be able to keep whomever they want out. This is of course the same justification used to prevent minorities from eating in restaurants during the Jim Crow years. And where an organization as revered and national in scope as the Scouts maintains and defends such a policy, it sends the wrong message to our youth, many of whom already are struggling with their own sexual identity–an identity which has nothing whatsoever to do with their “morality,” but everything to do with their self-esteem and happiness. Thus, while the BSA may have the “legal” right to continue to discriminate–a question I believe should be revisited–I and others have the same “legal” right to protest the policy, till our last breaths if necessary, as blatantly discriminatory and against everything that equality in America stands for.

Previously…