Count Basie's orchestra performing "Dickie's Dream"

Count Basie's orchestra performing "Dickie's Dream" in 1957 on CBS's The Sound of Jazz.

“…the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali”

Al Gore pulled no punches when pointed to the failure of the Bush administration to sign emissions targets at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali this week. Representatives of over 180 nations have met to discuss problems associated with climate change and to begin negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Talks at Bali are stalled over language that industrialized nations should cut their carbon emissions by 25-40% by 2020. The United States opposes the targets.

The U.S. government is planning an alternative conference next month that may be boycotted by members of the European Union unless Washington agrees to mention numerical targets for deep reductions in global warming gases.

This from the London Times:

Mr Gore, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for his work on climate change, was clear in his denunciation of President Bush’s attitude.

“I am not an official and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: my own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali,” he said, to the applause of delegates.

“You can feel anger and frustration and direct it at the United States of America. Or you can make a second choice, you can decide to move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large open blank space in our document and put a footnote by it.”

Kevin Rudd, the new Prime Minister of Australia, overturned his predecessor’s policy and signed up to the Kyoto Protocol within days of entering office. Mr Gore is hoping that the next occupant of the White House will implement a similarly decisive change.

“Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now,” said Mr Gore

“One year and 40 days from today, there will be a new inauguration in the United States. I must tell you candidly that I cannot promise that the person who is elected will have the position I expect they will have, but I can tell you I believe it is quite likely.”

The former presidential candidate also called for the successor to the Kyoto pact, which was introduced in 1997, to be brought forward two years to 2010. The original pact remains unsigned by the United States.

Yvo de Boer, the UN climate chief, said he was worried that US reticence would derail plans to set international emissions targets in the coming years.

“I’m very concerned about the pace of things,” he said. “If we don’t get wording on the future, then the whole house of cards falls to pieces.”

As the UN talks entered their final hours, the European Union threatened to boycott a US-led climate meeting next month unless Washington agrees to a deal mentioning numerical targets for deep reductions in global warming gases.

“No result in Bali means no Major Economies Meeting,” said Sigmar Gabriel, the EU’s top environment official. “This is the clear position of the EU. I do not know what we should talk about if there is no target.”

The EU proposed a draft document suggesting that industrialised nations consider cutting emissions by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.

The United States, Japan, Russia and several other governments refused to accept any specific targets arguing that they would limit the scope of future talks.

The European Union and others say that the figures reflect the measures scientists say are needed to rein in global warming and head off predictions of rising sea levels, worsening floods and droughts, and the extinction of plant and animal species.

Ray Charles -- Hit the Road Jack!

A classic.

Iraq: We're fighting for the ability to keep on fighting

Mathew Yglesias (via Andrew Sullivan) hits the nail on the head in his analysis of retired Army colonel Douglas Macgregor’s recent piece in Mother Jones magazine when he says,

The trouble is that the war's rationale has become circular -- "success" means success at putting the military engagement on a sustainable basis. We're fighting for the ability to keep on fighting. But sustaining that posture keeps making the United States and our position in the world as a whole weaker and weaker.

It wasn’t that long ago that there was hope for the transformation of Iraq into reasonably secular, reasonably democratic, economically affluent and stable state from a decades old brutally repressive dictatorship. What resulted from the downfall of Baath rule has been low-level multiple civil wars, a dysfunctional central government, out-of-control crime, an open door to Al Qada and other terrorist groups, approximately two million refugees who have fled the country, approximately two million internally displaced Iraqis, the break-up of the country into three semi-autonomous sections, and outside interference from neighbors whose motives are not benevolent.

Success has been defined down so that now the “surge” has succeeded in stabilizing the conflict so that the United States can reduce the number of troops in Iraq to pre-surge levels. Mind you, the success we're hearing about is not an end to the conflict but stabilization of it (for now). We’re fighting for the ability to keep on fighting while steadily losing ground to enemies and losing credibility with allies both in and out of Iraq. That’s some success.

Macgregor’s article can be found here.

Weaver of Dreams: Sonny Rollins (1959)

This is 29-year-old Sonny Rollins with just bass and drums playing "Weaver of Dreams" in the Netherlands in the Singer Theatre in the small town of Laren in 1959.

SonnyRollins (born September 7, 1930 in New York City) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Sonny Rollins has had a long, productive career in jazz, beginning his career at the age of 11 and playing with piano legend Thelonious Monk before reaching the age of 20. Rollins has outlived several of his jazz contemporaries such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Art Blakey, all performers with whom he has recorded.

In 1957 he pioneered the use of just bass and drums as accompaniment for his saxophone solos, a texture that came to be known as "strolling"; Throughout his career, Rollins used the technique, even backing bass and drum solos with sax licks (and bass for the drummer or drums for the bass player).

Where is the outrage over torture and high regard for American values once voiced by President Theodore Roosevelt?

The Philippines was ceded to the United States by Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1899. Filipinos, who had previously considered the Americans as allies against the Spanish, declared independence. Since the American government had planned to make the Philippines an American territory fighting soon broke out between Filipinos fighting for independence and occupying American soldiers.

The Philippine-American War is one of the lesser know conflicts in American history. The war lasted from 1899 until 1902 but hostilities lasted for least another decade. The insurrection was crushed (the Philippines wasn’t granted independence until 1946) and the fighting was brutal. Reports of atrocities against the population, including a form of torture known as the “water cure”, made their way back to the U.S. Some Americans were willing to tolerate or even encourage the treatment of the Filipino people…but not all. Talbot D'Alemberte writes in today’s Miami Herald:

The cable reads:

THE PRESIDENT DESIRES TO KNOW IN THE FULLEST AND MOST CIRCUMSTANTIAL MANNER ALL THE FACTS . . . FOR THE VERY REASON THAT THE PRESIDENT INTENDS TO BACK UP THE ARMY IN THE HEARTIEST FASHION IN EVERY LAWFUL AND LEGITIMATE METHOD OF DOING ITS WORK. HE ALSO INTENDS TO SEE THAT THE MOST VIGOROUS CARE IS EXERCISED TO DETECT AND PREVENT ANY CRUELTY OR BRUTALITY AND THAT MEN WHO ARE GUILTY THEREOF ARE PUNISHED. GREAT AS THE PROVOCATION HAS BEEN . . . NOTHING CAN JUSTIFY . . . THE USE OF TORTURE OR INHUMAN CONDUCT OF ANY KIND ON THE PART OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.

This message from the president of the United States was sent not to members of the American military dealing with insurgents in Iraq but to an earlier Army dealing with insurgents in the Philippines approximately a century ago. Even without the characteristic capitalization of cablegrams sent during President Theodore Roosevelt's time, the strong statement of outrage over torture and high regard for American values comes through. Today there is no similar message, either from the president or from the new attorney general. This is sad.

Teddy Roosevelt had to deal with the mistreatment of civilians by U.S. troops who were fighting an insurgency. American soldiers, who occupied the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, learned a technique of punishment and interrogation from the Spanish that they called ''the water cure.'' Along with other violence toward civilians, the U.S. soldiers used the technique liberally. Edmund Morris' biography Theodore Rex quotes the official report's description of that ``cure'':

``A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit on his arms and legs and hold him down, and either a gun barrel or a rife barrel or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin . . . is simply thrust into his jaws . . . and then water is poured onto his face, down his throat and nose . . . until the man gives some sign of giving in or becomes unconscious. . . . His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but who cannot drown.''

This may be the first use by American soldiers of what we now call ``waterboarding,'' which has surfaced in so many different places and come under so much scrutiny. It has been widely reported that some U.S. troops and ''other government agencies'' have used this technique, as well as other inhumane and degrading practices that run counter to international law principles prohibiting inhumane treatment of detainees. Even in the face of evidence of such abuse, the Bush administration has given us repeated assurances that U.S. personnel do not torture. We are also told they do not rape and kill innocent people, and yet rapes and killings have taken place without a condemnation that matches the force of Roosevelt's.

At Roosevelt's insistence, military men implicated in torture and abuse, including even those of high rank, were prosecuted and sanctioned.

Imagine – a President with a sense of moral decency and the courage to act.

Desmond Tutu: U.S. detention and torture policies like apartheid-era South Africa

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has expressed surprise so many Americans have accepted arguments for the treatment of terrorist suspects that were once prevalent in South Africa’s defense of apartheid. Tutu was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

This from Reuters:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the United States and Britain of pursuing policies like those of South Africa's apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial.

At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) today, the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a "huge blot on a democracy".

"Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government," Archbishop Tutu said.

Archbishop Tutu is chairman of the Elders, a group of prominent international statesmen that includes former US president Jimmy Carter, anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela and his Mozambican-born wife, Graca Machel.

The group is spearheading a campaign to get one billion people to sign a pledge reaffirming the principles of the UNDR, passed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

Archbishop Tutu, who helped lead the struggle to overthrow white minority rule in South Africa, said he was surprised so many Americans had accepted the argument that the Guantanamo detentions were necessary because of national security.

"It is exactly what the apartheid government used to say here," the Anglican cleric said.

His remarks come amid a growing outcry over alleged abuses at Guantanamo, which was used as a mass detention centre for suspected violent Islamic radicals in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

Critics have said the US is circumventing international law by holding detainees without charge, often for years, and violated their human rights with forced confessions and torture tactics.

Dave Brubeck - Take Five

The Dave Brubeck Quartet playing "Take Five" in 1961.

Cuba agrees to U.N. political and civil rights pact as it cracks down on dissidents

The government of Cuba has announced it will sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and a similar pact on economic and social rights. The agreements will allow U.N. monitoring of Cuba’s human rights record. The Cuban government has refused to signs the pacts since they were first adopted by the United Nations in 1976.

The announcement came as police broke up a demonstration of dissidents honoring International Human Rights Day and demanding the release of political prisoners. The dissidents included the “Women in White” – female relatives of political prisoners. Women from Europe and Latin American joined the group protesting political repression on the island nation. Government supporters, reportedly coordinated by the state security apparatus, harassed the demonstrators.

This from the BBC:

Cuba has announced that it will sign two major UN agreements on civil and political rights and allow periodic UN monitoring of its human rights record.

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Cuba would allow scrutiny by the UN Human Rights Council in 2009.

The council was established last year, replacing a body Havana had argued was manipulated by the United States.

As Mr Perez Roque spoke, government supporters mobbed dissidents who were marking International Human Rights Day.

Mr Perez Roque said Cuba would soon sign the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and a similar agreement on social, economic and cultural rights.

These two legally binding protocols, which make up the UN Bill of Human Rights, will commit Cuba, among other things, to allowing freedom of expression and association, and the right to travel abroad.

Communist Cuba had long refused to sign the agreements. Havana also refused to be visited by a special rapporteur who was appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission.

The BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says now the commission and the post of rapporteur have gone, Cuba no longer feels under threat and therefore in a position to sign the two protocols.

The Cuban foreign minister told a news conference: "This decision reflects our desire for full co-operation with the UN on the basis of respect for our national sovereignty and the right of the Cuban people to their self-determination."

But as he spoke, just a few streets away from the foreign ministry a small group of opposition activists were mobbed and shouted down by government supporters, as they tried to hold a march.

Dissidents reported that police also picked up several organisers in the hours before the event. Also on Monday, the Cuban authorities deported eight Spanish women who took part in a protest by a group called the Ladies in White, which gathers every Sunday to call for the release of their imprisoned husbands.

The Cuban government says dissidents are "mercenaries" paid for by the US and that tourists have no business meddling in the country's internal affairs.

The treatment of the protesters, our correspondent says, is a reminder that old approaches continue.

Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow (1957)

Here is Billie Holiday reunited after many years with tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Introduced by Robert Herridge (producer/host of CBS' "The Sound of Jazz"), this is perhaps the single most famous "live jazz" performance in TV history. Other members of the all-star band seen here: Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, Mal Waldron.

Reign of terror in Burma

The crackdown on the Burmese population by the government was much more violent and deadly than the Burmese dictatorship has admitted according to Human Rights Watch in a new report. Pro-democracy activists staged protests this fall against the decades-long military rule in the country. Buddhist monks joined the demonstrations in the streets but the government unleashed the full force of its military and security apparatus in crushing the movement and cutting off communications with the outside world.

Spokesmen for the government claim only a handful of civilians were killed and a small number detained. Reports from Burmese refugees via Human Rights Watch indicate those numbers are much higher and a reign of terror continues.

According to the press release from Human Rights Watch,

Human Rights Watch research determined that that the security forces shot into crowds using live ammunition and rubber bullets, beat marchers and monks before dragging them onto trucks, and arbitrarily detained thousands of people in official and unofficial places of detention. In addition to monks, many students and other civilians were killed, although without full and independent access to the country it is impossible to determine exact casualty figures.

“The crackdown in Burma is far from over,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Harsh repression continues, and the government is still lying about the extent of the deaths and detentions.”

Human Rights Watch found that the crackdown was carried out in part by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a “mass-based social welfare” organization with more than 23 million members that the Burmese military is grooming to lead a future civilian government. It operated alongside the Swan Arr Shin (Masters of Force) militia, soldiers and riot police in beating and detaining protestors.

****

Human Rights Watch said that hundreds of protestors, including monks and members of the ’88 Generation students, who led protests until being arrested in late August, remain unaccounted for. Human Rights Watch noted that before the protests there were more than 1,200 political prisoners languishing in Burma’s prisons and labor camps.

“The generals unleashed their civilian thugs, soldiers and police against monks and other peaceful protestors,” said Adams. “Now they should account for those killed and shed light on the fate of the missing.”

Human Rights Watch called for greater international action, including by the United Nations Security Council, to press the Burmese government to undertake major reforms. On December 11, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, will present his findings on the crackdown to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Human Rights Watch criticized the lack of action by countries with good relations and influence on Burma, such as China, India, Russia, Thailand, and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations members. China has made it clear that it will not allow the UN Security Council to take up Burma in any meaningful way. Despite the killing of a Japanese journalist by Burmese security forces, Japan has reacted timidly.

“It’s time for the world to impose a UN arms embargo and financial sanctions, to hurt Burma’s leaders until they make real changes,” said Adams. “Countries like China, India and Thailand have the responsibility to take action to help hold the generals accountable and to end this long nightmare of military repression.”

Thelonious Monk: Blue Monk

Thelonious Monk: Blue Monk (Oslo, April 1966)

Thelonious Monk - piano. Charlie Rouse - tenor. Larry Gales - bass. Ben Riley - drums.

Lebanon to Iraqi refugees: Leave or rot in jail

Lebanon is threatening thousands of Iraqi refugees with jail if they do not leave. Lebanon, which is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention extending legal rights to refugees fleeing political violence, is wary of hosting the Iraqis seeking safety for their families. According to the London Times, “As Iraqi refugees start to return from years of exile in neighbouring Syria, often propelled by tougher visa regulations or a lack of money, the 50,000 who have tried to settle in Lebanon face a grim choice between prison time and the danger of returning to their still violent country.”

The country already has approximately 300,000 Palestinians who have participated in Lebanon’s internal political strife.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report on the problem that calls on Lebanon to grant the refugees temporary and for other countries, particularly the United States, to do their part in the resettlement process. This from Human Rights Watch:

Lebanese authorities arrest Iraqi refugees without valid visas and detain them indefinitely to coerce them to return to Iraq, Human Rights Watch said in a report
released today.

“Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest,” said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director for Human Rights Watch. “Refugees who are arrested face the prospect of rotting in jail indefinitely unless they agree to return to Iraq and face the dangers there.”

The 66-page report, “Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon,” documents the Lebanese government’s failure to provide a legal status for Iraqi refugees in Lebanon and details the impact of this policy on the refugees’ lives.

Lebanon’s refusal to legalize the stay of Iraqi refugees affects not just the relatively small proportion of Iraqi refugees who are arrested and detained. As a result of this policy, most Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in fear of arrest. Without legal status in Lebanon, Iraqi refugees are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by employers and landlords.

The Legendary Dr. John

"How Come My Dog Don't Bark (When You Come Around)"

Mitt Romney and the Republican religious test for office

This Thursday, Mitt Romney is scheduled to give a speech at George H. W. Bush’s Presidential library, in College Station, Texas. It is being hyped in advance as his “Kennedy moment” as a reference to John F. Kennedy’s speech during the 1960 presidential campaign before the Greater Houston Ministerial Assoication. Kennedy sought to allay fears that his Catholicism would influence his decisioin making as President of the United States. Mitt Romney wishes to allay concerns by conservative Christians that his Mormonism is a non-Christian cult. This, of course, comes as Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and ordained Southern Baptist minister, rises in the Iowa polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

However, Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, believes

… Kennedy's approach would not be a strong model for Romney because many Republican voters, particularly Christian conservatives, bristle at the notion of separation of church and state and want religion to be a guiding principle for the next president.

"Kennedy's speech was actually an antireligion speech; it was a don't pay-any-attention-to-my-Catholicism speech," Wolfe said. "In the 2007 Republican Party you can't do that, because it's a party that essentially has a religious test for the nomination."

Kennedy was unequivocal and argued for a strict separation of church and state:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

George Packer also sees the problem for Romney to argue for tolerance of his particular faith but intolerance of other (non-Christian) faiths and points of view:

Romney’s intention is the exact opposite of Kennedy’s. He’s caught in a trap of his own and his party’s making. Romney can’t raise the shield of secularism, as Kennedy did, because he is seeking the nomination of a sectarian party that’s built on a religious test. He can’t stand on any principle at all, secular or religious; instead, he has to win over the Christianists, who make up a large part of the Republican base, even though he belongs to a faith that most of them consider un-Christian. His eternal truth will be: “Hey, we’re not that different.” He parades his large and perfect family, he reminds us of his spotless personal life, he is dismissive of the possibility of appointing a Muslim Cabinet member, all to immunize himself against the religious bigotry of the voters he’s wooing. He’s going to do the same thing on Thursday. So no more comparisons with Kennedy, please.

The awkwardness of Romney’s situation was on painful display in last week’s Republican debate, in St. Petersburg, Florida. A questioner wanted to know whether the candidates believed in the Bible’s literal truth. Perhaps he knew that Mormons believe that the Bible isn’t the whole truth, that there are three other scriptures. Here’s how Romney tried to glide over the abyss and slip one past the fundamentalists:

ROMNEY: I believe the Bible is the word of God, absolutely. And I try…(Applause)…I try to live by it as well as I can, but I miss in a lot of ways. But it’s a guide for my life and for hundreds of millions, billions of people around the world. I believe in the Bible.

ANDERSON COOPER: Does that mean you believe every word?

ROMNEY: You know—yes, I believe it’s the word of God, the Bible is the word of God. The Bible is the word of God. I mean, I might interpret the word differently than you interpret the word, but I read the Bible and I believe the Bible is the word of God. I don’t disagree with the Bible. I try to live by it.

Three decades of creeping sectarianism had made it impossible for Romney or any of the other Republicans on that stage to denounce the irrelevance of the question, as Kennedy would have. Religiosity—as opposed to religion—now completely infects our politics. Democrats have to swear that they believe; Republicans have to swear that they believe literally. In 2008, Kennedy’s brand of secularism would be torn to pieces by pastoral commissars, fretful advisers, and a shallow press corps. If any candidate is in a position to emulate Kennedy’s speech, it’s Barack Obama, who, like J.F.K., is the victim of right-wing rumors abetted by the mainstream press—in Obama’s case, that he’s a secret Muslim.

But, since the wall between church and state is crumbling and Romney is going to give a speech about religion, let him answer a question that’s entirely legitimate in a secular country: Why did you never publicly question your church’s exclusion of blacks from full membership? The policy ended only in 1978, when Romney was thirty-one. Past candidates, including Bill Clinton, have had to explain their membership in discriminatory country clubs. What’s Romney’s reason for his long silence on the racist practices of his church? The answer would say a good deal more about the candidate’s character than his views on the Bible’s literal truth.

Layla Zoe & Danny Marks - Call It Stormy Monday

This lady can really sing the blues.

It’s time to cut abstinent only sex (mis)education funding

Congress included in its spending legislation last summer increased funding for the Community Based Abstinent Education (CBAE) program. The House Appropriations subcommittee for Labor and Health & Human Services included the program as part of a compromise with Republican members. The deal disappointed many voters who believed the new Democratic majority would end the discredited program.

Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs censor information about birth control and the health benefits of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only sex education emphasizes complete abstinence from sex until marriage. Discussion of contraceptives is restricted to their failure rate.

Philosophically, the bottom line of the abstinence only education approach is that knowledge is bad and ignorance is necessary for the preservation of innocence. This line of thinking simply runs counter to the Enlightenment concept that knowledge is power. Abstinence only education is not education; it is indoctrination…that doesn’t work. Sexual abstinence for teenagers is desirable but the reality is significant numbers of teens are sexually active and need to know how to protect themselves and their partners. Regardless of whether they are sexually active or not they need to know what is going on with their bodies and the changes brought on by puberty. And assuming they remain abstinent until marriage, they still need the knowledge of how to have a fulfilling and safe sexual relationship with their spouse. Common decency demands comprehensive sex education for our kids, not out-and-out quackery and barely disguised religious dogma.

Politics being politics, the merits of the discredited program have far less to do with its place in the current Congressional spending bill than back room wheeling and dealing. But there may still be hope.

The New York Times has an excellent proposal. President Bush vetoed the Congressional spending bill as too expensive. If cuts need to be made then let’s start with federally funding absence only sex education. The Times editorial:

President Bush’s veto of Congress’s main social spending bill has Democratic leaders looking for places to make trims to satisfy the president’s sudden zeal for fiscal discipline. A small, but sensible, place to begin would be to eliminate the bill’s $28 million increase for one of Mr. Bush’s signature boondoggles — abstinence-only sex education.

Federal government spending on highly restrictive abstinence-only sex education has ballooned under President Bush, while evidence of the program’s danger as a public health strategy has continued to mount.

Last April, a Congressionally mandated evaluation found that students who received abstinence instruction in elementary and middle school were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not get such instruction.

States are catching on. Last month, Virginia became the 14th state to reject federal grant money for abstinence-only sex education to pursue the comprehensive approach supported by science and most Americans. That approach encourages abstinence but also arms young people with information about sexually transmitted diseases, contraceptives and pregnancy.

Expectations that the new Democratic Congress would confront the abstinence-only hoax have proved unfounded. Instead of cutting support, or at least ditching outrageous rules that restrict information about condoms and contraception, the vetoed spending plan actually increased money for faith-based and other groups offering abstinence education programs above the wasteful $113 million allotted for the current fiscal year.

The weak link is the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes the administration’s ineffective abstinence-only approach. But she seems to have ceded the issue to Representative David Obey, the House Appropriations chairman, who continues to insist on using it as bait for Republican votes on a budget compromise. Forgoing principle failed to produce a veto-proof majority for the spending bill the first time. Ms. Pelosi needs to reconsider whether expanding a discredited sex education program should be on the rather meager list of achievements of the first Democratic Congress in a decade.

Safe Sex

Rascal Rapper the Blueberry Condom passes along his wisdom on the subject of Safe Sex to Bleeker and his pal VJ.

George Benson with McCoy Tyner: Round Midnight

George Benson on the guitar and McCoy Tyner on the piano playing the Thelonius Monk classic, "Round Midnight."

Has the surge succeeded?

Any decrease in the level of violence in Iraq is certainly good news and Americans and Iraqis alike should be grateful to General Petraeus and the American troops for their part in making this tactical success happen. However, we need to remember that the whole purpose of the “surge” was to buy time for the dysfunctional Iraqi government, the various factions of Iraqi society, and the various ethnic and religious groups to reconcile. War, after all, is all about politics. Hard won victories on the battlefield can evaporate in thin air if the political side of conflicts is ignored.

Benchmarks for success in Iraq including the equitable distribution of oil revenues, holding provincial elections, and de-Baathification among others were laid out well over a year ago. Yet the success of the U.S. military strategy stands in marked contrast to lack of focus and failure of U.S. political strategy assisting and developing Iraqi institutions to serve the Iraqi people and deflate the tensions that can lead to civil war. The Bush administration seems to have given up on the benchmarks as signs of progress. This does not bode well for Iraq. Operation Sinbad in Basra was a similar military success by the British that failed in the long run because of the failure to take advantage of the brief stability brought by the campaign.

Here is an editorial from the International Herald Tribune on the issue:

There has been so much horrible news out of Iraq for so long that it is natural to want to celebrate better news. Sending another 30,000 American troops into Iraq has made life better: attacks are down, as are the number of American and Iraqi casualties. Some refugees are even venturing home. The news has cheered Americans and dampened Democrats' enthusiasm for keeping up the pressure on Iraq policy.

Unfortunately, it is just as important to look at what has not happened since President George W. Bush announced his surge: Iraq's leaders are no closer to making the political deals that are the only hope for building a self-sustaining peace.

Without a serious effort at national conciliation, American troops are just holding down the lid on a pressure cooker. Iraq's rival militias, the insurgents, the bitter sectarian resentments and the meddling neighbors haven't gone anywhere. Consider this all too familiar horror: on Thursday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded.

Perhaps 160,000 American troops could hold down the overall casualty numbers indefinitely, but they cannot wipe away that sort of hatred. That's the job of Iraq's leaders. Either way, the American military doesn't have enough troops for such an occupation without end, and the American Treasury can't keep spending $10 billion a month to maintain it.

Bush's escalation was sold as a way to buy Iraqi politicians breathing room to finally address the problems driving the sectarian violence: by agreeing on an equitable division of oil wealth, rules for provincial elections and ways to bring more Sunnis and former Baath Party members into the Shiite-dominated government.

Instead, Iraq's politicians - and their American backers - have squandered the time and the best efforts of American troops. Bush's generals are so frustrated that they've begun to complain publicly about the fecklessness of Iraq's leaders. The ever-feckless White House, rather than looking for ways to compel Iraq's leaders to perform, is lessening the pressure.

The New York Times reported this week that the Bush administration has scaled back its goals for political progress. Its newest low bar: Iraq's dysfunctional government manages to pass a budget and approves legislation to allow former Baath Party members to rejoin the government. (That was before the Iraqi Parliament dissolved into a shouting match over the Baath reconciliation bill and decided to put it off again.)

At least part of the recent good news can be traced to a new collaboration between American troops and Sunni fighters that last year were trying to kill Americans in wholesale numbers. The question is how long that collaboration will last if the Shiite-dominated government continues to deny the Sunnis access to basic government services and jobs.

There are also suggestions that Iran may be exercising more restraint. Fewer roadside bombs are apparently making their way across the border and Tehran's allies in the Mahdi Army are lying low. But Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, still have not begun a serious dialogue with Iran and all of Iraq's neighbors about what they're willing to do to help contain Iraq's chaos.

Bush still sees no need for a strategy to get all 160,000 troops in Iraq safely home. And as long as they know that this is the case, that Bush is willing to go on paying the bills - and protecting the Green Zone - Iraqi politicians will see no reason to compromise.

Americans need to ask themselves the questions Bush is refusing to answer: Is this country signing on to keep the peace in Iraq indefinitely? If so, how many American and Iraqi deaths a month are an acceptable price? If not, what's the plan for getting out?

The Bush administration owes it to the American troops who have sacrificed in Iraq and to the Iraqi people whose county is in disarray to do the political work necessary both within Iraq and with Iraq’s neighbors to keep this country from disintegrating into a failed state. To rely exclusively on the America military as this administration seems to be inclined to do means leaving American troops in Iraq permanently to prop up the dysfunctional Iraqi government. That is in no one’s best interest – American or Iraqi.