Zapatistas

What's up with this?

The U.S. military is investigating whether Marines were justified late last month when they detained a convoy of security contractors working for a Charlotte-based company in Iraq, officials said Wednesday.

The military jailed 16 employees of Zapata Engineering and three interpreters for three days after the contractors were accused of firing shots at U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The contractors deny the allegations, and several say they were abused and humiliated while in custody at a site in Fallujah, company officials say.

…

Several Zapata workers say they were physically abused and humiliated while being detained.

They were stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and roughhoused by Marines, said Mark Schopper, a Nevada attorney who said he represents two of the Zapata employees detained in Iraq.

"Marines put their knees on the backs of their necks and ripped off religious medallions," Schopper said.

"They asked for attorneys, they asked for Amnesty International, they asked for the American Red Cross. All three requests were denied."

Do the Marines hate America? Were these American defense contractors trained to disassemble? I sure hope someone gets to the bottom of this.

The Right's Homosexual Agenda

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the right's war on homosexuality in the public schools. From attacking sex education curriculum to fighting against gay-strait alliance clubs to censoring gay-friendly content in student newspapers, conservatives are winning victories and liberals are left to ask, "what's going on here?"

There are two kinds of answers to that question. One kind is put out by PR flaks anxious to paint these efforts as the result of loving concern and civic engagement. The other comes from the wingnuts who are proud to say what they really believe — homosexuality is evil and needs to be rooted out. To its credit, the Times includes examples of both kinds of answers in its story.

From the "moderate" camp, we get the story of average folks just fighting for their rights in an increasingly hostile cultural mileau:

"The intensity of the culture wars has heated up over the last few years," said J. Michael Johnson, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative group that specializes in issues involving religion. "People are becoming more aware that they have rights, and they're feeling more emboldened to defend them. Across the country, people are saying enough is enough."

From the "wingnut" side, we get what is perhaps a more honest assessment of the movement's key motivation:

Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of another conservative group, Liberty Counsel, said: "We're concerned about the effort to capture youth through indoctrination into the homosexual lifestyle. Students are a captive audience, and they are being targeted by groups with that as an agenda."

And:

Two members of the Southern Baptist Convention have prepared a "resolution on homosexuality in public schools," to be introduced at the denomination's annual gathering this month. The resolution implores Baptist churches to determine whether schools in their area have "homosexual clubs or curricula or programs" and, if so, to encourage parents to remove their children from the schools.

The next time you hear someone argue that their freedom demands the elimination of freedom for others, be mindful of the kind of hate that position entails.