A couple of reminders of a truly unpleasant event

Today is the second anniversary of the attempted self-coup on January 6th, 2001, and a couple of things you should read on it (provided you can find the time - one of them is quite lengthy, and the other isn't exactly a quick read, either) include the following:

The full text of the House January 6th Committee's report is available, but be forewarned: it's over 800 pages in length, and although you might want to read all the details it's going to take a good long time to actually finish it. 

RationalWiki's article on January 6th is shorter (but still extremely detailed) and has a good deal of appropriate snark that the official report had to avoid for the usual reasons. Either way, neither of these will let you forget what actually happened that day - which is precisely what the perpetrators, fellow travellers and apologists for the coup attempt don't want.

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 4

  (NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 4 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.)  

Day 4 hearing (courtesy C-SPAN)

Day 4 transcript (courtesy NPR) 

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 3

   (NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 3 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 3 hearing (courtesy AP News)

Day 3 transcript (courtesy NPR)

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 2

(NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 1 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 2 hearing (courtesy MSNBC)

Day 2 transcript (courtesy NPR)

January 6th Committee Hearings: Day 1

(NOTE: the following is a video copy and transcript of Day 1 of the US House Committee hearings tasked with investigating the attack on the US Capitol Building that occurred on January 6th, 2021. I'll attempt to post videos and transcripts for all meetings until the Committee has finished its hearings.) 

Day 1 hearing (courtesy MSNBC)

Day 1 transcript (courtesy NPR.org)

Black robes, darker times ahead

 This week wasn't just about Roe v. Wade. Not by a long shot.

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down a series of decisions this week that don't merely smack of an effort to return the court to a pre-Warren court era; they practically look like an effort to go all the way back to the Taney court instead, and the rulings they set down are at times so mutually contradictory at that it looks like they're not even trying to justify them through stare decisis or any other comprehensible form of legal precedent.

We've been told as a nation that although it's perfectly acceptable for state legislatures to regulate and even ban abortion, it isn't acceptable for them to regulate concealed carry rules for firearms. SCOTUS also ruled in favor of the proposition that if a state subsidizes tuition to private schools it must also subsidize tuition to religious schools, which effectively means that the only way out for states choosing not to do so is to cut off all tuition assistance to private schools, secular or otherwise. And then there's there's Vega vs. Tekoh, which weakens Miranda protections against self-incrimination. It wasn't a week where the Supreme Court covered itself in glory, and that's a huge understatement.

And then on Friday, Roe v. Wade was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

My own personal view on the issue of abortion is that it's strictly between a woman, her physician and whoever else she asks for an opinion as to whether she chooses to obtain one or not. My view shouldn't enter into the issue unless I'm specifically asked about it, and if I'm not asked about it it's none of my business.

Women involved in making such a decision have enough to worry about without everyone else throwing in their own two cents, and if they can't negotiate the issue despite the input of their spouse or partner, friends, family members and their own religious views (or lack thereof) the opinion of someone who neither knows their situation or can be in their head to know what they're going through won't be of help, either. And because of Dobbs, that decision has just been made all the more excruciating. Considering how many states passed trigger laws greatly restricting or outlawing abortion that went into effect when Roe fell, the decision has become incredibly expensive as well. So is raising an unexpected child, but the majority of the court doesn't seem particularly concerned with that. And if the pregnancy is ectopic? Well, that's obviously the woman's problem, not the court's.

Regardless of this decision, abortion will not disappear. They'll merely become exceedingly difficult to obtain legally in several states and will be forced underground, but they'll still be performed - albeit at much greater risk to the health or even the life of the patient.

But as far as one of the things that could cut back on unwanted or unviable pregnancies - namely access to effective contraceptives - might be under assault as well. Clarence Thomas has already gone on record as stating that earlier decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (which allowed married couples to buy contraceptives) and Obergefell v. Hodges (the decision that legalized interstate protection of same-sex marriages) might have to be revisited on the same grounds that Roe was overturned. Of course, the irony with is that the same thing could be said of Loving v. Virginia, and that means that Thomas' own interracial marriage of 35 years could be invalidated.

But I'm sure he'd be perfectly okay with that, right?

It's been a while...

Hi. This is the first time that I've posted anything on this blog for nearly six months, and the reason for that is simple:

A lot of shit has happened. A lot.

If you look at the current situation in Ukraine or the hearings on the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021 that are going on right now, news events have effectively been an avalanche over the last few months, and they distracted me to the point where I decided not to write anything here because there was just too damn much of it. I'm finally getting around to it now because a friend pointed out that it had been nearly half a year ago when I last posted. Again, it was due to a shitstorm of news that caused me to even feel buried by it at times. I'm sure any number of people - if not a majority - feel the same way.

All that being said, I'm posting this to say that I'm back. I'll probably be posting shorter entries like I did when I first got an account on LiveJournal years ago, but there will be longer pieces from time to time as well. The simple fact is that a blog is only good when it stays updated, and it's about time that I revived this blog and its mirror site. So I have.

Here's hoping that I can keep doing it for a good, long time.

In Memoriam: Andrew Vachss, 1942-2021

Obituaries have been few and far between for one of my favorite mystery writers - no, one of my favorite writers, period - since his passing a few days ago, but he considered his career as a novelist more of a side-job in comparison to his work as a legal advocate for abused and exploited children. To Vachss, this wasn't merely a career - it was a personal, lifelong call to arms. And he kept up at it until the time of his death.

A bibliography of his published fiction can be found here, but the article on him at Encyclopedia.com is the one that does him proper justice. The only thing I corrected was his year of death, which hadn't been updated. His CV shown below shows how much drive and energy he had, but more importantly, it shows exactly who he was in life.

VACHSS, Andrew (Henry) 1942-2021 (Andrew H. Vachss)

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "Vax"; born October 19, 1942, in New York, NY; son of Bernard and Geraldine (Mattus) Vachss; married; wife's name, Alice (an attorney and writer). Education: Case Western Reserve University, B.A., 1965; New England School of Law, J.D. (magna cum laude), 1975.

CAREER: U.S. Public Health Service in Ohio, field interviewer and investigator for Task Force on Eradication of Syphilis, 1965-66; Department of Social Services, New York, NY, began as caseworker, became unit supervisor of multi-problem ghetto casework team, 1966-69; Community Development Foundation, Norwalk, CT, field coordinator in Biafra, 1969, urban coordinator, 1970; Calumet Community Congress, Lake County, IN, organizer and coordinator, 1970-71; Uptown Community Organization, Chicago, IL, director, 1971; Libra, Inc., Cambridge, MA, director, 1971; Medfield-Norfolk Prison Project, Medfield, MA, deputy director, 1971-72; Department of Youth Services, Boston, MA, project director and director of Intensive Treatment Unit (ANDROS II), both 1972-73; Crime Control Coordinator's Office, Yonkers, NY, planner and analyst, 1974-75; attorney in private practice, 1976—. Director of Advocacy Associates in New York and New Jersey, 1973-75; director of New York City Juvenile Justice Planning Project, 1975—. Adjunct professor at College of New Resources, 1980-81; lecturer at Child Welfare League of America, Columbia University School of Social Work, Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality, Dominion Hospital, Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, Law Guardian Training Program—New York State Ninth Judicial District, Mississippi Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse, National Association of Counsel for Children, National Children's Advocacy Center, New Hampshire Department of Corrections, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, St. Luke's Hospital Child Protection Center, U.S. Campaign to End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism (ECPAT), and others.

MEMBER: PEN American Center, Writers Guild of America, ChildTrauma Academy, Protect PAC.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fellow of John Hay Whitney Foundation, 1976-77; Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, and Falcon Award, Maltese Falcon Society (Japan), both 1988, both for Strega; Deutschen Krimi Preis, 1989, for Flood; Raymond Chandler Award, Giurìa a Noir in Festival (Courmayeur, Italy), 2000, for body of work; Harvey J. Houck, Jr., Award from Justice for Children, for national child advocacy.

Twenty years ago

The first inkling that something was wrong that morning was a call I received from my friend Paul Carter where all he said was something like "Hey Chris, turn on the TV - you're not going to believe what's happening".

Then all hell broke loose.

And its effects have lasted for two decades afterwards, either directly or indirectly.

At the time, I was in the throes of an extended period of underemployment after I had been cut loose from my previous full-time job in late September of 1998, so I wasn't one of the thousands of people who evacuated downtown office buildings in Chicago after the planes hit in New York, Arlington and crashed after a passenger rebellion over Pennsylvania. I've worked in the Chicago loop for a total of nearly nine years, and I can only imagine how it was that day for people getting out.

A mutual friend of mine and Paul's was downtown that day, though, and what made it worse for Jeffrey Oelkers was that he had been in New York a few weeks before this happened. He had seen the twin towers of the World Trade Center firsthand just like anyone else in the area could. And he saw the terrifying footage of them getting destroyed weeks later after he stopped off at a place that had a TV on after being evacuated from work.

Like the worldwide pandemic that we've been living through since early 2020, 9/11 was an event that brought out the best in people - and the worst. A gas station attendant was shot to death in suburban Phoenix by a moronic self-described "patriot" just because he was wearing a turban. Unsurprisingly, the "patriot" didn't know the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim and even if he did, it probably wouldn't have stopped him from doing it. Conversely, there are stories of women going grocery shopping with Muslim friends of theirs because the Muslim women were afraid of reprisals. Events like 9/11 serve as a psychological mirror since they strip away the detachment that goes with the ability to think at a remove from trauma, and this is ultimately how you find out what you are, unwillingly. The long-term psychological trauma of that otherwise sunny Thursday morning is another element of this tragedy that will continue to be studied for decades afterwards.

Two decades have passed since that morning, and although people eventually went back to a semblance of their normal lives many people were permanently changed by what happened: the surviving close friends, relatives and loved ones of the people who died in the attacks, either as victims of the hijackings or on the ground. The first responders who risked their lives and either died in the collapse of the twin towers or suffered long-term health effects as a result of exposure to the now-poisonous air at the site. The countless scores of active-duty troops, reservists and eventual enlistees who fought in Afghanistan in the wake of the attacks. And countless others who saw it unfold in real time.

But the saddest truth is that after all of this, none of what happened then or since will give those 2,977 people their lives back.

Nothing will.

And that might be the hardest fact to swallow of all.

Afghanistan Agonistes

The impending collapse of Afghanistan shouldn't come as a surprise. And everyone's to blame. Everybody.

Why? Well, here's a thought - the US has been in Afghanistan for 19-plus years; the Soviets were there for roughly a decade. They - and the British Empire before that - thought that they could somehow take an intensely tribal, regionalized, backward society into the current century of their choice and make it behave as if any of the previous military interventions had actually worked.

They hadn't. And contemporary Afganistan is your proof.

From our point of view, no less than four American Presidents thought they could do what no one since Alexander the Great had done, which is change that region into something that it's not, or at least bring the Taliban to heel by military intervention (George W. Bush, Barack Obama until 2014) or by delusional "deals" he supposedly made with the Taliban (Trump). By withdrawing US forces, Biden is facing reality. The fact that that reality was hideously mangled by over forty years of civil wars, military intervention, constant butchery of civilians by warlords and different political and ethnic factions isn't strictly his fault. Instead, it's everybody's, going all the way back to 1978.

Granted, leaving what passes for Afghanistan's political "leadership" out of the blame game is equally daft. According to Transparency International, Afghanistan ranks 165th out of 180 countries in terms of political corruption. Add to this the fact that local military commanders decided to run for their lives or switch sides as soon as the Taliban rolled into town, and what you get is a collapse that was every bit as predictable as it was inevitable. What happens next is up to the Taliban and whoever chooses to fight them in the future, but what will probably happen is that the regime that holds onto Kabul will constitute the "government" and any number of guerilla bands and local warlords will constitute the real political power in the areas they actually control. And if the Taliban decides to shelter another group of Islamist lunatics who killed a shitload of foreign nationals elsewhere as they did with Al-Qaeda, the county will get bombed and invaded all over again. And the common people get to suffer the worst, just like they did in 1979 or 2001.

If Afghanistan ever manages to change - good luck with that idea ever being made a reality - it will be in spite of intervention by world or regional powers, not because of them. Pakistan, Iran and the like have reasons to keep Afghanistan in the current shape it's in, and Pakistan's military establishment in particular has no problems with the Taliban being in charge just as they were up until September 2001. The reality, however, is that the onus is on the Afghani people to fix things themselves. And when you've bottomed out as much as they have, the only direction out is to start to climb back up. Whether they can or not is anyone's guess.

35 reasons to stay angry

I haven't gotten around to posting about this yet because my initial take involved repeatedly copying and pasting the word "motherf***er" 35 times, but this is just another indication (out of an innumerable amount of previous examples) that the only thing Mitch McConnell is interested in is dying an incredibly rich bastard after being as much of an obstructionist tool in the Senate as possible before he goes.

House representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois) has stated that the 35 traffic cones in the Senate who voted against a commission effectively gave the Trumpers all the ability to cover up who was behind January 6th, but - even worse - also gave them all the excuses they needed to possibly try that shit all over again. If they do, and succeed, I'm done. It's either leave the country or go underground after that. And I'm not engaging in hyperbole about that fact.

A certain class of democratically elected politician - initially, at least - has always acted like they have a God-given right to stay in office permanently afterward, and that losing that office was the worst thing possibly imaginable, which is precisely the reasoning behind people like Putin, Erdogan, Duterte and (though he wasn't as successful as the other three) Trump. All of them share the belief (whether stated or not) that their particular form of autocracy and corruption was the best thing for all involved. Which is bullshit, of course, but it doesn't stop them from promulgating the idea to people dumb enough to be their followers. My response is simple, especially concerning Trump: think losing your office is bad? Try losing your entire fucking country instead.