A baby sleeps on the ground at a Buddhist monastery that houses internally displaced people May 16, 2008, in a village on the outskirts of Rangoon, Burma. The official death toll of Cyclone Nargis has reached 78,000, double the figure given on Wednesday. However, independent experts claim that the actual number could be over 200,000. By Getty Images.
All charges have been dropped because Detainee 063, as he was called, was tortured under order of the president. Philippe Sands reviews the background and evidence. The Dish has been following the case of Qahtani for several years. One of the torture techniques used against Qahtani, and approved by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, was pioneered by the Gestapo. In pre-Bush America, we prosecuted the perpetrators and executed them for war crimes. Now we grant them legal immunity – in a bill crafted in part by John McCain.
"I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that anyone who supported me — the 17 million people who have voted for me — understand what a grave error it would be not to vote for Sen. McCain . . . uh, Sen. Obama, and against Sen. McCain," – Senator Hillary Clinton.
CNN cleaned up the quote. But you know how she really feels.
A reader writes:
I’m currently residing in China and am a regular reader of your blog. As you already know, your blog appears to be blocked in China.China blocks things and often you never know why. Since you can typically use a proxy server to get around the block, it just adds another level of amusement to surfing. However, I just noticed that all of the other Atlantic blogs, including Fallows, and the main Atlantic site itself are not currently blocked. As far as I can tell, your blog is the only blocked portion of the Atlantic site.Who did Hillary call?
From Haaretz today:
Participants at a recent inner cabinet meeting were listening to details of the Egyptian mediation initiative between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip recently, when a senior minister reportedly reminded those present that Israel does not negotiate, directly or indirectly, with Hamas. Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin interrupted, saying there was no other way to describe the talks.
Not Gaza, hopes Michael Totten. But pretty grim.
My Sunday Times column is on what McCain seems to be learning from David Cameron, the leader of Britain’s Tories:
As Tim Pawlenty, the young Republican governor of Minnesota, noted recently: “The country is changing. The Republican party has to have a message that reflects faces and voices of America. We have to do a better job of recruiting women candidates, candidates of colour and diversity.” Pawlenty, by the way, is often spoken of as a vice-presidential pick for McCain.
Yes, Bush paid lip service to diversity and had two African-American secretaries of state. But his immigration plans collapsed after a revolt in his own party, his antigay positions alienated him from the more inclusive younger generation and Hurricane Katrina and those scenes from New Orleans killed his small gains among black voters.
McCain, moreover, is up against more than Bush was four years ago. He will almost certainly have to confront a black Democratic rival whose closest competitor was a woman. The danger is that disaffection with the Republican brand and a huge wave of young, black and Latino voters could become an electoral tsunami crushing the Republicans in November.
So McCameronism is the new product. And McCain, who was one of the few American Republicans to visit the young Tory leader before he was riding high in the polls, is trying to follow the British lead.
It’s harder. McCain hasn’t even begun to overhaul his party – and will have to run for office by both disowning and coopting it at the same time, not an easy task.
If elected, he will have to govern as an independent, triangulating away from what is almost certain to be a large Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress.
But this is the only chance he’ll ever get. And if he has to learn a thing or two from a British fortysomething, he’s happy to do so. From Thatcher, we got Reagan. From Cameron, McCain? Unforeseen, for sure. But so has almost everything important that has happened in this election so far.
(Photo: Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron and Senator John McCain at the Bournemouth International Centre on October 1, 2006 in Bournemouth, England. This was the first party conference since Cameron took over the leadership of the Tory party. By Bruno Vincent/Getty Images.)
A reader writes:
As a Christian myself, the thing that I find so attractive about Buddhism is the practice. I always cringe when someone calls themselves a Budddhist simply because they like hippy dippy shit. My mother is a Zen Buddhist nun (shaved head, robes – the whole 9 yards) and let me tell you, there’s nothing hippy dippy about what she does. Up at 4am, meditation for hours on end, it is not for the weak. It’s extremely disciplined and challenging. And on the flip side,
what I dislike most about present day Christianity is that it more often than not is perceived as being simply a set of beliefs, not a practice.
As you know, Christianity has it’s own version of meditation, we just call it ‘centering prayer’, or ‘contemplative prayer’. It is, however, exactly the same thing. And it’s this PRACTICE, not set of things to believe, that connects one to God. All prayer does that, of course, but I tend to think that it’s only when we stop asking God for favors and are simply present for him that we actually might manage to connect with him. And this goes back to the issue of the ‘self’ – I don’t think that’s a specifically Buddhist notion. Centering prayer brings us to the same idea – letting go of the self and simply being present for God. If I recall correctly Simone Weil talks about this at length in "Waiting for God" and "The Cloud of Unknowing" is of course all about this too. The 14th century monk who wrote that was talking about this exactly.
And I say all of this being a complete hypocrite who can’t seem to manage to detach from my life for 10 minutes a day and start meditating/centering/whatever you wanna call it. I should really work on that.
And I gotta ask, what is it that Jesus was doing in the wilderness for 40 days? Just hanging out?
(Painting: Martha and Mary by He Qi.)
I ask again: who else can do this? In any party? Anywhere?
Many readers have emailed to say how much they appreciated this piece. So here’s the link for those of you who have lives and didn’t read the Dish yesterday. Money quote:
Putting gay relationships in some other category–civil unions, domestic partnerships, whatever–may alleviate real human needs, but by their very euphemism, by their very separateness, they actually build a wall between gay people and their families. They put back the barrier many of us have spent a lifetime trying to erase.
