Really.

Really.

Bad.

Breitbart posted photos yesterday of a promotional booklet published in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel. The booklet includes a short biographical sketch of Obama, which says that he was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

Photo credit: breitbart.com

Miriam Goderich, now a partner in Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, then an assistant at Acton & Dystel, quickly fired off a disclaimer to Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard:

You’re undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.  This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time.  There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.  I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.

Problem is, nobody–not Obama, not Goderich, not anyone–fixed the mistake . . . for 16 years! According to Breitbart, that was through at least three different versions of Dystel’s website, and four editions of Obama’s autobiography. This means dozens of people would have reviewed the copy over the years.

In addition to photos of the original 1991 booklet, Breitbart also has screen shots, here, of the bio clip on the Dystel website in 1998 (the text has been revised but the birthplace remains the same), and on the Dystel & Goderich website in 2005 (text updated to show that Obama is a U.S. senator, birthplace the same), and again in 2007 (text revised yet again, birthplace remains the same).

The White House didn’t respond to media requests for a comment, and most of the mainstream media ignored the story. The rest reported Breitbart’s post, accepted Goderich’s explanation and moved on. ABC’s article is typical.

Really, people?

If that’s the best you can do, you need to stop patting yourselves on the back for being the Guardians of our Liberty.

Here’s the deal: Either Obama was born in Kenya or he wasn’t. If he were, of course, he couldn’t be president. But let’s assume he wasn’t. There are a couple of problems with that.

For one thing, the President is a liar.

It defies belief to think that in sixteen years, Obama never once read the bio blurb his literary agent was circulating. In fact, Edward J. Acton, the other half of Acton & Dystel, told Breitbart that Obama was “probably” asked to approve the text. But apparently Obama-the-aspiring-author was trying to fashion a more exotic literary persona than just Barry from Chicago.

Another indication that Obama knew what the blurb said is that it changed when he launched his presidential bid in 2007. Remember, in ’91, ’98, ’05 and again on April 3, 2007, it said Obama was born in Kenya. But by April 21st, 2007, the bio had been changed to say he was born in Hawaii.

For another thing, the Guardians of our Liberty can’t investigate their way out of a wet paper bag.

It was a simple mistake, says Goderich. Maybe so. But so far nobody in the mainstream media has asked Goderich the obvious question: Where did she get the idea that a writer the blurb describes as an “African-American” was born in, of all places, Kenya? The vast majority of African Americans are born, of course, in America. Who told Goderich that this young Harvard grad had been born in Kenya?

It’s the obvious question to ask. But the media seems entirely uninterested in asking it.

And then there’s the media four years ago: You know, the ones who put presidential candidates under a microscope, who go through their pasts with a fine-tooth comb. Why did nobody run across this back in 2008, when Obama was running for president? It would have been easy enough to find. The bio was still being used in 2007, and would have been available online to anyone doing a quick check of the candidate’s current literary agent. As the U.K. Telegraph’s Tim Stanley says:

Whatever you think of Breitbart.com’s punishing vetting process, it has exposed just how little work the mainstream media did in investigating candidate Obama back in 2008. Not all of Team Breitbart’s revelations have been election-deciders, but they have often been stuff that a simple Google would have uncovered. If they revealed tomorrow that he’d had his own cross-dressing-themed sitcom on primetime TV in the 1980s, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Neither would I, Professor Stanley. Neither would I.

(CCL Pete Souza)

Over the last three years, the tide has turned. We broke the Taliban’s momentum. We’ve built strong Afghan security forces. We devastated al Qaeda’s leadership, taking out over 20 of their top 30 leaders.

So said President Obama at Bagram Airfield on the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Ironically, the May 1st speech came exactly nine years to the day after then-President Bush’s much-lampooned “mission accomplished” speech,  in which he prematurely heralded the end of “the Battle of Iraq.”

I guess those who can’t remember the past really are doomed to repeat it.

Yes, the tide appears to have turned. But not in the direction the President implied. In fact, on that very visit, the President’s actions spoke louder, or at least more truly, than his words.

President Obama gave his speech at night. He met with Hamid Karzai at night. In fact, the entire visit was under cover of darkness. The President flew in after dark and left a scant six hours later.

Why?

Because, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the situation on the ground was judged too dangerous for him to be there during daylight hours.

Five days later, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, said on CNN’s State of the Union that the Taliban is gaining ground in Afghanistan. As evidence, Feinstein pointed to increased numbers of attacks, a Taliban shadow government in many provinces, and a network of madrassas in Pakistan busily producing a new generation of fighters.

Calling the Taliban’s growth “a huge problem,” Rogers also singled out an announced date of withdrawal and the President’s direct negotiations with the Taliban–which Obama acknowledged for the first time in his Bagram speech–as factors “work[ing] against what is our endgame here.” (Now there’s a surprise.)

The U.S. was scheduled to open a new consulate last month in Mazar-e Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan, and the fourth largest city in the country. Instead, after signing a 10-year lease and pouring over $80 million into the building, a former hotel, American officials announced ten days ago that they’re abandoning the project.

Why?

Because they can’t make the place safe.

Part of the problem is the site itself. The compound is surrounded by several tall buildings from which it could be fired upon, the perimeter wall–built of mud, straw and manure–isn’t strong enough to withstand the force of a car bomb, the setback from the wall to the buildings is insufficient, and quick emergency evacuation would be impossible because there’s no place in the compound big enough for a Black Hawk to land.

But the problem is way bigger than that. In a January memo assessing the consulate fiasco, Martin Kelly, acting management counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, wrote of a “real, measurable uptick in the threat stream” in Afghanistan as reason to dump the project. He cited:

• the April, 2011, attack on the U.N. compound, near the site of the now-failed consulate, in which a mob stormed the compound and killed seven U.N. employees;
• a “sophisticated surveillance operation against the consulate,” uncovered last August, which included plans to breach the site;
• the hours-long September attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul;
• the December bombing at the Blue Mosque, 200 yards from the prospective consulate site, in which four people were killed.

The tide is turning, all right: As we draw down our forces, the Taliban is regaining control of Afghanistan.

And, regardless of his rhetoric, the President knows the score. His commanders and his own Defense Secretary urged him last year to keep troop levels high through 2013. They warned him that recent coalition gains were “fragile.” NATO commanders told him there was no noticeable dividend from bin Laden’s death. The U.K.’s Guardian said at the time that:

American and British commanders in Kabul . . . have privately expressed concern that the White House is now being driven by political rather than military imperatives.

Having troops home this year is key to the President’s reelection strategy. So home they’re coming, regardless of the deteriorating situation on the ground. What the President must know but won’t say is that there are no good options here. We can either halt our withdrawal, or we can watch the Taliban seize control of Afghanistan again.

As I said, no good options.

But the President owes it both to our troops–alive, maimed and dead–and to the people of Afghanistan to tell the truth. He owes it to them to stop playing this cynical political game, using the lives of American troops and the Afghan people as his pawns.

(CCL sarae)

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said last Thursday that the U.S. has “made inquiries” regarding what she called “concerning reports” about Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng and his family:

We’ve expressed our concern should there be any sense of reprisal, et cetera, but we are awaiting further information.

According to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), since Chen’s dramatic escape last month:

• His brother and sister-in-law have been placed under house arrest.

• His elderly and ailing mother was arrested and charged with harboring a criminal. She is currently free on bail.

• His nephew, Chen Kegui, is in jail, charged with attempted homicide. Ten men broke into Chen Guangcheng’s brother’s house in the middle of the night and savagely beat the young man. He injured one of them, a Communist Party official. If convicted, he could face a sentence ranging from ten years in prison to execution.

• Authorities have confiscated the license of the lawyer defending Chen Kegui, and threatened to confiscate the license of a second lawyer who volunteered to defend him.

• About a dozen members of Chen’s extended family are now under some form of house arrest.

Are you getting any sense of reprisal yet, Ms. Nuland?

And this all happened while Chen was in the news. What happens when he’s not?

(Photo credit: U.S. State Dept.)

Chen has been offered fellowships at New York University and the University of Washington. But his passport application hasn’t been processed, he and his family aren’t allowed to leave his hospital ward, and his friends haven’t been allowed to visit.

Chen says he hasn’t seen U.S. officials in over a week,  and  journalists who have tried to visit him have been threatened or had their press credentials confiscated, according to the U.K.’s Guardian.

Chen’s lawyer told The Guardian Friday that when he tried to visit his client in the hospital week before last, he was instead detained and beaten by a “senior state security official.” The lawyer said his eardrum was perforated and his hearing damaged as a result.

Less than two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

The United States Government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead.

The conference is over, Madame Secretary, and you’re back home. Now we’re into those days and weeks ahead, when you gave your word, and ours as well, to remain engaged with Chen and his family.

But now the State Department is whistling a different tune. A State Department official said off the record last week that the Administration doesn’t want to push the issue and further antagonize China by insisting it uphold its deal. So, according to the official, they’re going to “let it go for the moment.”

So. Secretary Clinton mouthed a few fine words in Beijing, while Chen was in the international spotlight. She gave Chen–and his family, and the people who risked their lives and freedom to help him escape–reason to rely on the U.S. But apparently all she really wanted was to look good during the press conferences. And now she and the President are prepared to throw them all under the bus and move on.

At least all those huddled masses yearning to be free in China and elsewhere know the score now. The words of Emma Lazarus engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty are, after all, just words, and quaint 19th-century ones at that. What we really care about are money and power. To feather our own nest, we’re willing to side with a regime that forcibly spays and neuters its own citizens, and kills their babies, as if they were so many stray dogs and cats. And we’re willing to throw away people speaking up against all that.

We’re moving, as our president says, “Forward.” They’re on their own.

Except it’s not forward. It’s backward, into a dark night of tyranny and terror.

Please take a moment to email the President and ask him to stand up for Chen and follow through on our commitments to him and to his family. 

(CCL Jackie Guthrie)

President Obama visited Seattle again yesterday. According to The Seattle Times, he first attended a “High Dollar Brunch” at the 10,000-square-foot waterfront home of Ann and Bruce Blume. About 35 couples shelled out $35,800 a couple for club salad, roast turkey with spice rub, Yakima asparagus, a 10-minute stump speech and a little Q&A.

Then it was on to The Paramount Theatre for the low-dollar affair, headlined by The Dave Matthews Band. Five thousand dollars got you lunch and a photo op with POTUS (extra people in the picture, $1,000 a pop). Or for those on a budget, there was lunch only ($1,000 a plate), or a chair only ($250 for “premium” seating, $100 for the chair behind the post).

This is the third of these fundraiser combos–a $35,800-a-couple brunch followed by a $1,000-a-person lunch–the President has held in Seattle since September.

He also did an event for the 99%: a “semi-public” tour of the Boeing plant in Everett.

At the Paramount, the President talked mainly about money. I mean, what else, right? Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching!

Oh, wait. That’s not quite right. Let’s see. . . . He said Romney was out of touch with ordinary working people.

But mainly he talked about the economy, and what he termed “the most destructive, worst [economic] crisis we’ve seen since the Great Depression.” He said:

Sometimes people forget the magnitude of it. . . . Sometimes I forget.

Well, yeah, I can certainly see why.

Here’s a clip of the President’s confession (and a tip of the hat to Sound Politics for it):

Then last night it was off to SoCal to attend a $40,000-per-person soiree at George Clooney’s house. It netted about $15 million. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

Don’t feel bad, Mr. President. I’d probably forget, too.

(CCL Amy T. Schubert)

I had a post ready to go today. But then North Carolina’s Amendment One passed last night. By a landslide, 61% to 39%.

Amendment One amends North Carolina’s Constitution to say that:

marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized.

I think same-sex marriage is a bad idea, indirectly harmful to children and invariably destructive, in its execution, of religious freedom. I’ve talked about that here, here, here and here.

So I should be celebrating, right?

But I read David Kinnaman this morning, president of The Barna Group:

It would be hard to overestimate how firmly people reject–and feel rejected by–Christians.

According to a three-year study by Kinnaman, here’s a breakdown of how Americans outside the Church, aged 16-29, view Christians:

• antihomosexual (91% of respondents)
• judgmental (87%)
• hypocritical (85%)
• old-fashioned (78%)
• too political (75%)
• out of touch with reality (72%)
• insensitive to others (70%)
• boring (68%).

Wow.

I’m a follower of Jesus, so that makes my heart hurt. Not so much because I’m worried about what people think about me (trust me, honey–once you hit 50, you quit losing sleep over that!) but because I’m worried about what people think about Jesus because of me.

Rachel Held Evans, a thirty-something author and blogger (and follower of Jesus) writes this morning, in a post entitled “How to Win a Culture War and Lose a Generation”:

As I watched my Facebook and Twitter feeds last night, the reaction among my friends fell into an imperfect but highly predictable pattern. Christians over 40 were celebrating. Christians under 40 were mourning.  Reading through the comments, the same thought kept returning to my mind as occurred to me when I first saw that Billy Graham ad [Graham took out full-age ads supporting Amendment One in North Carolina papers]: You’re losing us.

I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again…(though I’m starting to think that no one is listening): 

MY GENERATION IS TIRED OF THE CULTURE WARS.

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-at-white [sic] categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.

Here’s the entire post.

And here’s my question. How should we who identify as Christ-followers go about obeying the biblical admonition to speak the truth in love?

It’s not just a question of changing the perception that we’re anti-gay, judgmental, hypocritical, and so on. That suggests that the problem is just a PR problem. But it’s not.

My neighbor around the corner (who is a Christian) says that if your car breaks down, you’re way more likely to get help if it happens in front of a bar than if  it happens in front of a church building.

And, as I pointed out here, overall (insert all the usual exceptions and qualifications here) Christians have a long and dishonorable history of condemning the things the Bible prohibits that they would never do anyway, while remaining mum on biblical prohibitions of things they and their friends actually do:

In the same breath in which St. Paul prohibits homosexuality, he also forbids adultery, theft, greed, drunkenness, being verbally abusive, and swindling (2 Corinthians 6:9-11). The same New Testament that forbids homosexual behavior also forbids most divorce (Matthew 5:32), all remarriage after divorce (also Matthew 5:32), and worry (repeatedly). The same Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. Old Testament) that contains prohibitions against homosexuality also contains eloquent passages expressing and commanding care for the poor and marginalized.

So it’s not just a question of changing other people’s perceptions. It’s a question of changing our own behavior.

How can we really change, really become more like Jesus? How can we oppose behaviors we believe to be destructive not only of individuals but of the social fabric, while loving the people engaged in them the way Jesus did, and does?

Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum, said St. Augustine. (That translates, more or less, as “With love for people and hatred of sins.”) It’s a great sound bite. Now what does it look like?

One discussion participant on Tuesday asked Herrera Beutler to weigh in on the Clark County [Washington] Republican Party sanctioning County Commissioner Marc Boldt for making decision with which they did not agree. Boldt was barred from making a speech at the Clark County GOP convention, and he won’t get any financial support from the party or have access to resources such as mailing lists.

(Photo credit: U.S. Congress)

The participant asked Herrera Beutler: ‘How do you feel about the local Republican party action recently toward a Republican who wasn’t towing [sic] the line?’

Herrera Beutler said constituents, not political parties, should come first.

‘We were elected to govern, and that doesn’t mean you agree with everybody,’ she said. ‘I’m going to support both county commissioners who are up for election this year. Because I think that overall their goal is to govern. I’m going to catch flak for telling you that, but that’s OK.’

Here is the letter I sent to Rep. Herrera Beutler this morning:

Dear Rep. Herrera Beutler:

I’m puzzled about the reasons you gave for supporting Commissioner Marc Boldt at your community coffee event in Ridgefield last week, as described by The Columbian.

According to Stevie Mathieu, you said:

1) “Constituents, not political parties, should come first.”

I agree that a candidate’s party shouldn’t come first in deciding whom to support. That reduces complex issues to the puerile simplicity of an (R) or a (D) on a yard sign.

But constituents shouldn’t come first, either. Remember the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia? Putting constituents first is nothing more than pork barrel cronyism.

Fortunately, there’s a third and better alternative–and you can find it four words into the Declaration of Independence. The old countries of Europe were built on common blood. We weren’t. We were held together instead by principles and ideas–about the nature of life, human beings and government.

A few self-evident truths should come first. That would serve both your constituents and your party better.

That brings me to your second reason for endorsing Boldt:

2) “Overall [his] goal is to govern.”

You’re right, Congresswoman: You are going to catch flak for that! Stalin’s goal was to govern. So was Genghis Khan’s. You need to dig deeper than that.

Since you don’t put political parties first, I’ll assume you’re not supporting Commissioner Boldt simply because he’s the incumbent.

Is Columbian reporter Stephanie Rice right when she suggests that you’re supporting him for old times’ sake? Because you were one of the local kids he used to hire to pick blueberries in the summer? Or because he gave you your start in politics, appointing you to fill Richard Curtis’s seat in the State House back in 2007?

I, too, go way back with Marc. I’m calling him Commissioner Boldt in this letter, just as I’m addressing you as Congresswoman, to honor the office. But he used to rototill my garden in the spring. My husband and I helped sponsor him on a trip to eastern Europe to teach modern farming techniques there. Marc is my friend—has been for years. Nothing has changed that. But (see #1 above) the citizen-rulers of a republic need to govern, not on the basis of cronyism or party affiliation, but on the basis of principle.

But maybe you’re doing that. Maybe you’re supporting him because of his positions on the issues. Here are three that really bother me:

• Boldt supports the incredibly expensive extension of Portland light rail into Clark County–even after the Oregon Supreme Court found that the whole point of the $10 billion Columbia River Crossing project was to force Clark County to accept a light rail project it had twice resoundingly rejected by a vote of the people.

Do you support or oppose the extension of light rail into Clark County after two rejections by voters?

• Boldt campaigned last year in support of C-Tran’s request for a tax increase (Prop. 1)–even after an independent audit indicated that C-Tran could maintain services at current levels until 2023 without a tax increase.

Did you support or oppose Prop. 1?

• And, in 2009, Boldt voted with Commissioner Steve Stuart to raise property taxes in the county in the midst of the Great Recession.

Do you agree or disagree with that vote?

Please clarify your positions on these three issues, and your reasons for supporting Marc Boldt.

I’m posting this to my blog, crybelovedcountry.com, and will be glad to post your response as well.

Thank you for your time, and for your service on our behalf.

Best regards,

Carolyn Schultz-Rathbun

(Photo credit: U.S. State Dept.)

“Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and with a lever I will move the world.”

Barack Obama has said some very fine-sounding things about human rights through the years. But when push has come to shove this past week, his Administration has not been able to find that all-important place to stand.

Secretary Clinton, in China for the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, didn’t even mention human rights activist Chen Guangcheng in her opening remarks Thursday. In a 13-paragraph speech she managed to get out two sentences on human rights:

Now of course, as part of our dialogue, the United States raises the importance of human rights and fundamental freedoms because we believe that all governments do have to answer to citizens’ aspirations for dignity and the rule of law, and that no nation can or should deny those rights. As President Obama said this week, a China that protects the rights of all its citizens will be a stronger and more prosperous nation, and of course, a stronger partner on behalf of our common goals.

Of course, and of course. Perfunctory and boiler-plate language, then back to our common goals. No reference to the man pleading with her to take him along when she leaves, to at least meet with him, because he fears for his life and the lives of his family.

If you’ve been living under a rock the past two weeks, here’s a pretty good summary of Chen’s dramatic escape from 19 months of house arrest–without charge or sentence.

And here is the explosive report that sent the Chinese activist to jail for four years before that. Chen documented 7,000 cases of forced abortion in one small part of Shantung province. Then he brought a class-action suit on behalf of the women involved. The report includes accounts of a woman forcibly aborted and sterilized at seven months. Of villagers sleeping in fields to evade Family Planning officials. Of the detention, fining and torture of the extended family of violators of China’s One Child policy.

The mainstream media has suggested that Clinton’s reticence about Chen is born simply of a desire not to derail the annual talks. That, when it comes right down to it, economics trumps human rights for the Obama Administration. That, in the words of The Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers, in a scathing article last night entitled “Beacon No More: America Abandons Chen Guangcheng”:

trade and economic deals couldn’t be hampered by a human-rights nuisance.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Upon taking office, President Obama reinstated President Clinton’s funding (suspended under President Bush) of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The UNFPA  staunchly denies any direct involvement in forced abortions in China. But in 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell reported, after a fact-finding mission to China:

The UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s population-planning activities allows the Chinese government to implement more effectively its program of coercive abortion.

Under President Obama, the U.S. sends $55 million a year to the UNFPA, an organization that for 30 years, in Rep. Chris Smith’s (R-NJ) words:

has unapologetically stood not with oppressed women but with the oppressors of women; an organization that has made the Chinese killing machine more efficacious and lethal; an organization that has systematically whitewashed and defended these crimes against humanity.

We fancy ourselves to be, as President Obama has written, a country that “stands up for human rights.” He says that:

we align ourselves with men and women around the world who struggle for the right to speak their minds, to choose their leaders, and to be treated with dignity and respect.

But actually, in this case, we can’t. To align ourselves with Chen with any moral authority, the Administration would have to renounce its financial support of China’s barbaric One Child policy.

Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers explains the One Child policy [**Warning**: This video contains images, between 2:12 and 2:22, and between 2:28 and 2:30, of a woman, forcibly aborted at seven months, with her dead baby.]:

Give me a place to stand, said Archimedes, and I can move the world. But until we acknowledge our complicity in the barbarism Chen is fighting, we have no place to stand.

(Photo credit: capitolhillseattle.com)

Last Friday, Al Gore told graduates at Massachusetts’ Hampshire College:

Now is the time. We need an American Spring this spring. We need to occupy democracy in the United States of America.

Yesterday, thousands of people across the country tried to do just that. Sadly, though, Gore’s words were more prescient than, perhaps, he realized.

The pro-democracy Arab Spring has been largely hijacked by Islamists. As a direct result of the popular pro-democracy uprising, the most populous country in the Middle East is now poised to elect a president who favors sharia. Mubarak was notoriously corrupt, but Egypt has leaped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The Occupy movement isn’t being hijacked, because it has had anarchist theorists behind it from the beginning. But thousands of frustrated people are being co-opted by a movement they don’t understand.

The Occupy leadership is in bed with scary people. David Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist and leading Occupy theorist, told Reuters yesterday:

 We’ve been building important alliances and radicalized people in what they’re willing to endorse. . . . We pulled back from big civil disobedience plans this morning with the purpose of building stronger alliances.

In order to radicalize people in what they’re willing to endorse, in other words, you have to tone down the violence in the beginning.

But, in Seattle yesterday, even the toned-down version resulted, according to police, in “thousands and thousands” of dollars worth of damage.

As Seattle marchers passed the Federal Courthouse, “all hell broke loose,” according to David Madden, public information officer for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thugs smashed first-floor windows and double glass doors at the entrance, set a fire outside the entrance and pelted the building with paint balls.

Here’s video footage:

The marchers continued through downtown, smashing windows at Wells Fargo, HSBC, HomeStreet Bank and the Washington Athletic Club, as well as Niketown, American Apparel, Nordstrom, several Starbucks and other stores. They blocked traffic and damaged cars and buildings with paint, rocks, hammers and tire irons. They threw glass bottles and other objects at police. The Federal Courthouse closed early in the afternoon, as did a number of businesses.

Here’s more footage, starting at the courthouse and progressing through downtown. (Note the people in black; more on them  later.)

According to the Police Department Blotter, police seized about 70 weapons from protesters, including metal sign poles, sharpened wooden stakes, screw-topped wooden staffs and a corrugated metal barrier with jagged edges.

If you’re thinking that peaceful demonstrators don’t show up with sharpened wooden stakes, you’re right.

The Puget Sound Anarchists website has an announcement about the Cascadian Anarchist Olympics, held in Olympia two weekends ago. The three-day Anarchist Olympics were designed to “better prepare us all for success and safety on the streets, on May Day and beyond.”

Saturday and Sunday mornings, we will be doing a series of presentations and hands-on workshops aimed at sharing skills and knowledge that will help us fight and win both on and off the streets, such as cell phone security, tear gas defense, and more. Saturday and Sunday afternoons will be mock competitions, including speed consensus, slingshot target practice, team de-blocing and more.

I’ve participated in many demonstrations, but I’ve never needed to learn tear gas defense. Or slingshot target practice. Or team de-blocing.

De-what?

First you have to know about black blocs. Here’s Mike Castleman, software technologist and part-time anarchist, to explain them:

The Black Bloc is a tactic that has been used in demonstrations for years. It is used as a security and safety measure. In it’s[sic]  essential form, each participant of a Black Bloc wears somewhat of a uniform (see the Clothing section). The idea of wearing this uniform is that if every single person in the Bloc looks relatively alike, it is hard for the police to determine which individual did what. For instance, if a Black Bloc participant throws a brick at a store window and runs into the Bloc, she will easily blend in with everyone else. However, if a person wearing normal street clothes happens [sic] to throw a brick and run into the Bloc, chances are that she will have been filmed or photographed and later caught by the police.

De-blocing, according to Castleman, is simply changing your clothes and blending into the crowd after having done bad things.

These are people who came to yesterday’s Occupy Seattle-sponsored General Strike trained and intending to do violence to people and property.

Co-opting the frustrated but inchoate masses is an old tactic. The Bolsheviks used it in 1917. The Islamists used it in the Arab Spring. And anarchists are using it now. Occupiers and their supporters–including Al Gore and friends–are at a crossroads. They can break with a movement in bed with–indeed begun by–anarchists who want to destroy what they can’t have. Or they can share in the responsibility for the violence done and the violence to come.

Which is it going to be?

(Image: He Peirong)

On Human Rights Day, 2008, then President-elect Barack Obama penned these words:

When the United States stands up for human rights . . . we align ourselves with men and women around the world who struggle for the right to speak their minds, to choose their leaders, and to be treated with dignity and respect.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, he said:

 To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Fine words, all of them.

But now that Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng has effected a daring escape from house arrest, the President’s mouthpiece, chief counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, is striking a much more pragmatic note. Asked yesterday on Fox News Sunday whether the U.S. might hand Chen over to Chinese authorities to preserve relations with China, Brennan said:

[T]he president tries to balance our commitment to human rights, making sure that the people throughout the world have the ability to express themselves freely and openly, but also that we can continue to carry out our relationships with key countries overseas. . . . China-U.S. relations is [sic] very important, so we are going to make sure that we do this the appropriate way and that the appropriate balance is struck.

So much for standing up for human rights. Now, when it actually matters, it’s all about balance.

The Wall Street Journal puts its finger on the fence the President is trying to straddle:

Keeping Mr. Chen at a U.S. facility could strain relations with China. Turning over Mr. Chen to Chinese authorities might subject him to harsh punishment, which could be politically damaging to the Obama administration.

But, as The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin points out, standing up for Chen isn’t going to cause China to stop cooperating with us–because they’re not:

The Chinese have blocked action to pressure Bashar al-Assad. The Chinese have done nothing to restrain the North Koreans, who shoot off rockets (however incompetently) without fear of retribution. On Iran, Reuters reports: ‘China is considering sovereign guarantees for its ships to enable the world’s second-biggest oil consumer to continue importing Iranian crude after new EU sanctions come into effect in July, the head of China’s shipowners’ association said.’

Chen, 40, climbed over the back wall of his home a week ago and slipped through rings of guards. (Did I mention he’s blind?) Fellow activist He Peirong picked him up and drove him 370 miles to Beijing. There another activist, Guo Yushan, shuttled him from safe house to safe house. (The New York Times gives details of Chen’s dramatic flight here.)

Both He and Guo have since been arrested, along with Chen’s brother and nephew. Chinese activists fear Chen’s wife, mother and six-year-old daughter may also be in  imminent danger.

Hu Jia, who was detained over the weekend for questioning by the Chinese police, is saying this morning that Chen is now in the American Embassy and has met with U.S. Ambassador, and former Washington State governor, Gary Locke.

In 2005, Chen filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of women victimized by China’s brutal and systematic use of forced abortion and sterilization to enforce its One Child Policy. The suit was rejected, and Chen was sentenced to four years in jail. Since his release he has been under house arrest in his village, without either charge or sentence.

In a video released last Friday and addressed to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Chen describes the repeated beatings he, his wife and mother have received while under house arrest, and calls on Wen to investigate and punish the wrongdoers and ensure the safety of his family.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner leave this evening for the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing. Sure, they’ve been planning to talk about our enormous trade imbalance. But one of the sources of that trade imbalance is China’s human rights deficit.

Chinese activist Dr. Yang Jianli says:

China’s export success is rooted in removing economic and political rights from the vast majority of Chinese citizens and sticking them with poor working conditions, ultra-low wages and the peonage that most Chinese workers experience. . . . Simply put, it is the Chinese political system that creates the economic system and trade imbalances the dialogue seeks to redress.

. . . Repair the rights deficit, and you begin to repair the trade deficit, the trust deficit, the moral deficit and the political deficit.

Is the President going to walk his talk, or throw Chen under the bus  in a craven attempt to curry economic favor with thugs and goons? In an election year, that probably depends, sadly, on how long Chen can manage to capture the attention of the notoriously ADD American public.

Please take thirty seconds to sign a petition to the president, asking him to advocate for Chen. And please ask all your friends to sign as well. Let’s encourage the president to follow through on his fine words.

(CCL weemeeuw)

It’s a bright cold day in April, 1946. London is still a shambles. George Orwell’s wife, Eileen, died last year during a routine operation, leaving him to raise their adopted son, nine-month-old Richard.

Orwell is suffering from the tuberculosis that will kill him in less than four years. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been sloshing about in his brain for several years now–hardly a cheerful subject for extended meditation–and next month he’ll head off to a primitive farmhouse, lent by a friend, on the remote Scottish island of Jura, to begin the difficult process of giving birth to Winston Smith.

But he has been writing feverishly since Eileen died, and he has a few last articles to get done before he leaves. One, “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” appears today in Tribune, a weekly socialist newspaper that will still be in print in the 21st century:

Before the swallow, before the daffodil, and not much later than the snowdrop, the common toad salutes the coming of spring after his own fashion, which is to emerge from a hole in the ground, where he has lain buried since the previous autumn, and crawl as rapidly as possible towards the nearest suitable patch of water. Something — some kind of shudder in the earth, or perhaps merely a rise of a few degrees in the temperature — has told him that it is time to wake up: though a few toads appear to sleep the clock round and miss out a year from time to time — at any rate, I have more than once dug them up, alive and apparently well, in the middle of the summer.

At this period, after his long fast, the toad has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent. His movements are languid but purposeful, his body is shrunken, and by contrast his eyes look abnormally large. This allows one to notice, what one might not at another time, that a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature. It is like gold, or more exactly it is like the golden-coloured semi-precious stone which one sometimes sees in signet-rings, and which I think is called a chrysoberyl.

Orwell goes on to describe the toads spawning (“I mention the spawning of the toads because it is one of the phenomena of spring which most deeply appeal to me, and because the toad, unlike the skylark and the primrose, has never had much of a boost from poets.”) and other more conventional indicators of spring. He then stops to consider whether it’s wrong to enjoy spring, the world being what it is, but decides that it’s not:

I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and — to return to my first instance — toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable. . . .

At any rate, spring is here, even in London N. 1, and they can’t stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

* * *

“It seems like the world is coming apart faster than we can fix it,” my son said the other day.

And it does.

So.

We can crawl into our caves, nail the blankets over the entrance, curl up in a ball and start rocking. Or we can stop to enjoy the toads and frogs (they give a long concert now every night where I live), the tulips and daffodils (they’ve just come up, here on my high mountain),  the apple and cherry trees in resplendent blossom.

They’re beautiful in themselves. And I, for one, trust that, as Carl Sandburg said of babies, the effulgent beauty of another spring is God’s opinion that life should go on.

Here’s Orwell’s whole essay. (And a tip of the hat to Camera Lucida via The Thinking Housewife for sending me out to find, and enjoy, it.)