Gaza's over, and we don't have to think about it anymore. Whatever happened, Israel successfully defended itself against the terrorists and life is back to normal.

Right?

Sorry. There's news out that we need to pay attention to. While the Israeli war in Gaza was going on, I was unwilling to describe it as a war of genocide, or a war of terror, or a war on civilians. Apparently I was wrong.

The news isn't coming from anti-Semites here, or Arab or Palestinian organs in the Middle East, but from legitimate Israeli news sources.

You should read or listen to the NPR story in its entirety, but here are some highlights:

WESTERVELT: Shaul says some of the soldiers he's interviewed also say they destroyed civilian property and homes, actions that seemed to have little or no tactical purpose or necessity. Some soldiers, he says, called it gratuitous and stupid.

The rabbi's office passed out booklets during the war that among other things urged soldiers not to show mercy to the enemy. The army's chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronsky, is from Itamar, a West Banks settlement with a history of right-wing activism. Former soldier Yehuda Shaul says the picture that emerges is of a chief military rabbi promoting the fight in Gaza as a holy war.

Human Rights Watch has also reported on Israeli atrocities, including Israel's use of white phosphorus weapons.

Of course, it's not easy to get the information, because Israel blocked access to Gaza by human rights investigators. Still, it is clear that, whatever official Israeli policy was, it was Israel's widespread practice to target and slaughter Gaza civilians.

“We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do … to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture,” Bush said.

I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4m x 4m [13 feet by 13 feet]. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed….

The truth is out. The guy who told the truth was Abu Zubaydah, one of the planners of the 2001 terrorist attacks. One of the most vicious criminals you could ever hope to meet.The guy who lied was the President of the United States.

What we hear about is waterboarding, but that isn't half of it. It isn't even the beginning. Throw out all the allegations of waterboarding, and what U.S. forces did was still torture under any definition, or at least any definition worthy of respect from a civilized people. In other words, any definition except that promulgated by torture apologist John Yoo. The findings come from a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and they are damning. You should read the entire article in the New York Review of Books to get a full understanding of what happened, but even what little I have room for here is shocking.

The report details other techniques, used in combination, including constant cold temperatures, loud noises, forced standing (one prisoner was forced to stand by being handcuffed to the ceiling of his cell for an entire month), repeated beatings, sleep deprivation (water was sprayed in their faces whenever they dozed off), prolonged exposure to light or dark, prisoners being repeatedly slammed against the walls of their cells, prisoners being handcuffed to chairs or hospital beds, naked, for weeks on end. It seems endless.

Remember what Bush said. “We do not torture.” He lied.

Remember a few other things. Remember the “ticking time bomb” scenario. We have constantly heard that the euphemistically named enhanced interrogation techniques have protected us against further terrorist attacks. This is almost certainly a lie.

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/12/10/PH2007121002144.jpgOr, on another tack, remember the gloating tone with which the American sources reported that Abu Zubaydah folded immediately after being waterboarded, with the unstated message that he clearly wasn't man enough to take it. Now see the report from John Kiriakou, the CIA officer who tortured him:

He resisted. He was able to withstand the water boarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds…. And a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured. And from that day on he answered every question just like I'm sitting here speaking to you….

We hear claims about bringing the criminals to justice. When those claims are made, they generally refer to Osama bin Laden and his accomplices. Criminals they are, no question about it. Justice, though? When will we see Rice, Ashcroft, Cheney, Kiriakou, and Bush prosecuted?

Pursuant to the subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the American International Group (AIG) has released a list of the bonuses issued by its Financial Products division. While seventy-three employees received bonuses of at least $1,000,000.00, some of the bonuses were paid to people who didn't even work for AIG.

Among the workers deemed by AIG to be deserving of special recognition for outstanding job performance were:

Captain Joe Hazelwood, Exxon-Mobil Corporation. AIG President and CEO Edward M. Liddy observed, “It is true that there was one incident in which Capt. Hazelwood performed at less than his peak, but people overlook the many voyages in which Capt. Hazelwood neither ran aground and caused a massive oil spill, nor operated his ship under the influence of alcohol. On balance, Hazelwood was entitled to a bonus of $800,000 because it is in the interests of Exxon-Mobil to retain the best and the brightest.”

Homer J. Simpson, Fork and Spoon Operator, Sector 7-G. Absenteeism, gluttony, sleeping on the job, and generalized incompetence. $1,200,000.00. According to AIG's Liddy, “If AIG owned a nuclear power plant, he would be our safety officer.”

George L. Costanza. $3,800,000.00 for performance above and beyond the call of duty for multiple employers. Pendant Publishing: fired for having sex with cleaning woman on his desk. Play Now Corporation: defrauded corporation by posing as a handicapped employee.  New York Yankees: placed team in shrinkable cotton uniforms, causing painful rout, chafing; traded to Tyler Chicken for fermented chicken products. Krueger Industrial Smoothing: defrauded corporation out of $10,000 for contribution to “The Human Fund”, a nonexistent charity. AIG CEO Liddy's comment, “Are you sure he never worked for AIG/FP? He may not be Penske material, but we like the cut of his jib!”

UPDATE–Here's the link to the video: 

http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/burlington-city-council-0

Well, it's been an interesting week for free speech in Vermont, even if we don't include the abortive IRV recount in Burlington.

Still, since I mentioned Burlington, why not start out there? At Thursday's City Council meeting, the Democratic majority was up to what some would say are their old tricks, and some would say are their duty to their constituents that ordinances be passed only after due and careful consideration. You may have read the great reporting by Shay Totten, and if you haven't I'll invite you to hop over there rather than to recap the whole story.

The basics, though, are that in consideration of a zoning amendment on the height limit for new buildings, the Democrats, particulary Ed Adrian and David Berezniak, were interposing parliamentary objections to the extent that the people who wanted the ordinance to go through were getting mighty peeved. Accounts of what happened differ, but some say that Adrian and Brezniak were being disruptive, others say that they were forced to act as they were because Council President Kurt Wright wouldn't recognize them when they wanted to speak, so they had to speak up even when someone else was speaking.

Finally, Almost Mayor Kwik-Stop decided he'd had enough, so he called in the police.

That's right: at a public meeting of a legislative body, the presiding officer called in armed police officers to silence elected officials whose positions he disagreed with.

I get that many observers seem to feel that Adrian and Berezniak (they mostly seem to be blaming Adrian) were engaging in bad meeting behavior; that they should have just accepted the fact that they were in the minority and taken their lumps. On the other hand, calling in the cops to silence your political opponents? I think Almost Mayor Wright has hit a new low.

I'm also struck and horrified by the fact that so many commenters at Blurt and the Burlington Free Press are supporting Wright's actions. Maybe Ed Adrian is the most unpopular Democrat in the whole city of Burlington, I don't really care. Somehow I doubt it, since he was able to get elected. Maybe he should know better than to try to stand up to the Progs and Republicans when they decide what's going to happen. Still, if they're as bad as all that, convince the voters in their districts to vote them out. 

 Meanwhile, the Vermont Supreme Court handed down a victory for free speech Friday morning. It relates to the charges of disorderly conduct against Boots Wardinski and Michael Colby for demonstrating against John Negroponte when he spoke at the St. Johnsbury Academy graduation back in 2006.

Here are the facts, as the parties agreed to them:

On June 5, 2006, defendants Boots Wardinski and Michael Colby attended the St. Johnsbury Academy commencement ceremony.  Both defendants had tickets to the invitation-only ceremony at which John Negroponte, then the United States Director of National Intelligence, delivered a speech. Approximately two minutes into Negroponte’s address, defendant Wardinski stood from his seat and shouted that Negroponte “had blood on his hands” and invited the audience to join him in walking out on the commencement address.  At some point prior to defendant Wardinski’s remarks, defendant Colby also stood and shouted at Negroponte.  Academy staff and police officers promptly asked both defendants to leave and escorted them from the premises without resistance or further incident.  Despite these interruptions, which lasted no more than thirty seconds, Negroponte delivered his speech in its entirety.

The two were arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, and convicted.

On appeal, the Supreme Court looks at two important issues: how disruptive must conduct be before it counts as disorderly conduct, and how must we balance the public interest in order against the right to free expression.

I have to say, the Supremes handled this a lot better than Kurt Wright.  On the first point, the Court held that the thirty-second disturbance did not substantially interfere with the conduct of the three-hour graduation ceremony, or even with Negroponte's eight-minute speech. Similarly, balancing the defendants' First Amendment rights, the Court holds:

Both defendants left the site of the graduation ceremony upon being asked and without further incident, whereupon they were arrested.  Such de minimis disturbances, even if rude and out of place in the context of a commencement ceremony, cannot serve as the basis for criminal liability without running afoul of the First Amendment. 

 The Court quoted with approval a 1949 decision from the U.S. Supreme Court:

“[F]reedom of speech, though not absolute, is nevertheless protected against . . . punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”

Maybe somebody should read that to the Un-Mayor before the next City Council meeting.

A new study shows that Vermont has a higher percentage of its population, 34%* , asserting that they belong to “no religion”

Follow this link to the charts.

*CORRECTION: The 21% figure posted earlier was the change, not the absolute fraction. Thanks to worriedinvt for pointing that out.

WPTZ just reported that after a review of the ballots of four wards confirmed the election night results, Kurt Wright pulled the plug on his recount request and conceded to reelected Mayor Bob Kiss.

It was just yesterday that Doug Hoffer, commenting on an earlier recount thread, made this prediction:

I predict Kurt will do as Tim Ashe’s opponent did and agree to stop it midway through;

.

And GMD commenter farjas responded:

I’ll match your prediction with one nearly as prophetic. Kurt Wright will not abandon this effort halfway through, no matter how “torturous” the recount process (see Minnesota: Coleman for proof).

Good call, Doug.

We’ll probably have to wait until tomorrow for more information, but those are the basics.

UPDATE: Haik has the same news over at Burlington Pol, but the only additional detail he has is a more specific lineup of the wards that completed before the end.

Sam Hemingway has a brand-new analysis of the results of Burlington's mayoral election on the front page today, and I think it's a mixed bag. Still, in light of the continuing discussion of what happened, almost anything that keeps people focussing on the data is probably worthwhile.

Not that there aren't some howlers in the article. For instance, “The fact that Montroll came in third is what cost him the election,” Gierzynski said.

 I think it's very likely true that getting fewer votes than the winning candidate proved fatal to Montroll's election. How could it be any other way?

In addition, Hemingway seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about bullet voting as though it is some kind of distortion of the system, when in fact it is simply a way to vote your choices. If your preference is choice A, and no other candidate is acceptable to you, you will vote for A and leave the rest of your ballot blank. You will get what you wan: choice A gets your vote, and if A doesn't win none of the other candates gets any help from you.

We also get a relatively context-free comment from Garrison Nelson, an IRV opponent: 

“The fact is, 71 percent of the voters voted against Kiss.”

Maybe they just ran out of enough space for the quote where Nelson said, “The fact is that 67 percent of the voters voted against Wright,” or maybe I just missed it.

As skeptical as I am (maybe that's a polite way of saying I think te pending recount is a waste of time), I  hope the recount produces some useful information. I don't really expect that tobe the case, but I hope so.

Meanwhile, there's still an active conversation of IRV also going on over at Blurt.

What do you think? We're now hearing and reading reports that Howard Dean may be in the running for Surgeon General, now that CNN TV star Sanjay Gupta has decided he doesn't want to give up the big mediabucks to do it.

 Obviously Dean didn't get the HHS or health care reform jobs, and among other reasons people have attributed that to the extreme hostility that Rahm Emanuel has for him.

So if that's the case, what makes Surgeon General different? Is it because nobody really wants the job? Given the opportunity to sort of make your own portfolio, and the history of past surgeons general to get in trouble with their mouths (see, C. Everett Koop, Jocyelyn Elders) it would almost seem to be an ideal job for Dean, doesn't it?

Taking their lead from unsuccessful mayoral candidate Kurt Wright, the New York Yankees have filed for a recount of the 2004 American League Championship Series, which the Boston Red Sox won in an unprecedented comeback, after being down 3-0 in games.

“We need to reevaluate the methodology by which these results were reached,” said Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. “The Yankees clearly won the series in Games One, Two, and Three. How can you justify some new counting method that gives the series to the Red Sox?”

Mayoral candidate Kurt Wright agreed. 

“I don't expect the results to change,” Wright said Friday morning. “But I still felt it was an opportunity to look at the system and see how it worked, and we're not going to have an opportunity to do this again.

“It's an opportunity for people who are concerned with this system to have a comfort level with the process,” he continued.

Meanwhile, other local Republicans are calling for a complete audit of the 2004 season, asking whether the monotonicity and Condorcet criteria were satisfied. Upon being informed that the rules of Major League Baseball contain no such criteria, they replied, “What?”