February 27, 2006
(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay
I don't know what Otis Redding would've thought about the Dubai/Ports problem. It does seem to me, though, that discussion sorts itself fairly neatly into two camps, without much overlap, if any: those who are relatively open-minded, reasonable, and prudent, and those who wear one or another ideological blinder(s), are more tuned in to 'international' needs than national ones, and have a tendency to 'go along' a little too easily with their own crowd (and I don't mean only the priapic Frist). Perhaps I'm over-generalizing out of the particular, but I don't think so. There should be a word for it, 'seminal identifier' or some such. Probably the Germans have one.
February 21, 2006
Evolution news
A bit of science news that's worth noticing, thinking about, and filing away for future reference: BBC and the London Times report research suggesting that human beings evolved social skills not as a result of hunting, but of being hunted. "Humanity evolved more by helping each other than by fighting with one another.” Makes sense to me...
Bonobo
The Bonobo female I last remember took a look at my Rolex and was curious about how I wound the movement. She looked at it, she looked me in the eye, and she listened to the damn thing tick. She was almost human. We used to take them cut up sugar cane, split oranges, and bananas—and I used to marvel at how the chimps, with a short stick of sugar cane, would chase the red-ass baboons around inside a huge cage. The baboons were two or three times larger, with canine teeth many times longer—but the chimps knew how to use a stick, and would howl to tell anybody who didn't see.
We let the baby chimps out of their cages into the trees, to play. Adults were too difficult to re-cage so remained imprisoned... And I don't know how many actually survived the Zoo's total loss of funds during the civil war... how many died, how many lived... The ones who lived were probably used in AIDs experiments—and, of course, later died.
I remember how a researcher had caught her glasses in a Bonobo baby's hair. The mother, who could have torn the researcher limb from limb, raced across the lab. If she'd wanted, she could have killed her. Any other kind of chimp, hearing its child's cries, would have. Instead, she very delicately looked at the caught hairs and with the utmost care disentangled them. That chimp—THAT CHIMP—had more humanity than most people. The Bonobos were to ordinary chimps as ordinary chimps are to monkeys, but that, and a sawbuck, just gets 'em a cuppa java...
February 17, 2006
Iran Mañana
The way I figure it, two things are required before the US attacks Iran: first, the administration will have launched a full-bore propaganda campaign for at least six months, terrorizing Americans and to whatever extent possible equating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's President, with Hitler. Second, operatives in the White House, meaning Karl "Turd-Blossom" Rove, must conclude that for some extended period it is politically safe for gasoline prices to triple, or more. Such does not apply in the run-up to November – indeed, it would be the kiss of death for Republicans. These two conditions not being met Iran therefore most likely remains safe, at least through the end of this year.
February 14, 2006
A Half-Dozen Questions They Don't Want You to Ask
By Werther*
Readers of these reflections will note that we have sought to illuminate many of the issues that vex and bother us: from the ongoing military expedition in Babylon to the corruption of Congressional placemen; from the deliberations of the Icelandic Allthing to the precise meaning of the surrender ceremony attendant to the Warsaw Rising of 1944. But all these essays have thus far avoided meeting head-on the most historically significant (meaning consequential) event to take place in the Western Hemisphere since the fall of Vicksburg in 1863.
Continue reading "A Half-Dozen Questions They Don't Want You to Ask"...
Slow News
Last week the LA Times, the Washington Post, and Reuters all reported on the removal of the CIA's top counter-terrorism official, Robert Grenier. None of them got the story right, probably as a result of excessive stenographitis. Last Sunday the London Times helpfully set things straight: Grenier was fired for opposing the use of torture. There is, btw, subsequent to it almost nothing but the Times story available on the net...
Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004 it seems Americans have been successfully de-sensitized to the routine use of torture by the criminal gang that runs our government. Yet the Europeans remain interested, to the point of considering questioning – or asking to question – senior Bush officials. And a UN investigation now says that the US is torturing prisoners at Guantanamo, and recommends that the facility be closed. Like it or not, news about such things will continue to dribble out so long as the torture regime remains in place.
Americans should sit up and take notice if for no other reason than because if we allow our putative leaders to act this way towards others overseas it is only a matter of time before they decide they'll act in exactly the same way towards us here at home.
February 10, 2006
The Katrina Response
It's fairly clear from the reporting – starting with this NYT piece and going through the wires, foreign papers, and the BBC – that Michael Brown's disclosure today regarding how much the White House knew about Katrina's impact and when they knew it is only going to further obfuscate the true problem, namely, that the Bush gang were quite happy for the worst to happen and that initially, thinking they could get away with it, their plan was to do as little as possible or perhaps even nothing at all.
February 9, 2006
What The Hand Dare Seize The Fire...
At first blush it was fairly easy to sympathize with the poor Danes. Who wants to see an orchestrated movement of Danish flag-burning? Or cyber-attacks on Danish web sites. And yet... While the mainstream, typically, ignored the warning signs, soon enough it came out that Flemming Rose, the editor who solicited the cartoons and published them, is something of a fly-by-night Danish neocon.
February 7, 2006
Juggernaut Gathering Momentum, Headed for Iran
By Ray McGovern*
What President George W. Bush, FOX news, and the Washington Times were saying about Iraq three years ago they are now saying about Iran. After Saturday's vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran's suspicious nuclear activities to the UN Security Council, the president wasted no time in warning, "The world will not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons."
The next IAEA milestone will be reached on March 6, when its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, makes a formal report to the Security Council regarding what steps Iran needs to take to allay growing suspicions. The Bush administration, however, has already mounted a full-court press to indict and convict the Iranian leaders, and the key question is why.
Continue reading " Juggernaut Gathering Momentum, Headed for Iran"...
February 6, 2006
A Reminder
A French caver, according to BBC, has discovered prehistoric cave art thought to be 27,000 years old.
We have this unfortunate tendency to think we're so modern, so full of knowledge, so powerful... we forget that not that long ago our ancestors lived in caves, that today there is, in fact, a great deal more that we do not know than we know, and that the universe may not see us in quite the same grandiose terms with which we see ourselves. Indeed, I believe it is probably fair to say, a priori, that most of our assumptions about the nature of reality are false – what matters is the way we integrate our ignorance into daily life and try to move beyond it.
February 4, 2006
The Badger Box
China, welcome to the Badger Box. The Pentagon must plan for something, must provide those mega-billions of contracts to support bipartisan graft for the Homeland. But one would think that somebody in the administration outside the Pentagon might have dropped a word: You can't go to war with China if the Chinese are paying for it. Unless and until the Chinese no longer hold hundreds of billions of dollars of (practically worthless) US government debt, then any real altercation with China will result in the immediate destruction of the US economy – on a far worse scale than a few nukes.
Rummy: get a clue...
A Religious Milestone
The Head of the Jesuits, the "Black Pope", voluntarily stands down for the first time in the order's history, thus marking the increasing irrelevancy of the Catholic Church to modern life. By many accounts about half the Catholic clergy is homosexual – some former insiders consider it runs as high as 80%. It may be fair to say the unreported remainder are alcoholics. All in thrall to Rome. Thus, a misogynist, out-of-touch and fundamentally uber-authoritarian organization, with strong anti-intellectual strains.
If in the American system Catholics began the process of true political integration into the mainstream with the election of John F. Kennedy, it is fairly clear – looking at the reactionary Catholics now on the Supreme Court, the right-gaggle of Catholics on the pundit side of the infotainment business, the inability of US Catholic leaders to deal with sexual predators in their midst – that despite what is probably still a majority liberal viewpoint among Catholic laity the pendulum is swinging back towards an insular, reactionary, and politically troublesome subculture.
As a non-churchgoer from many generations of Presbyterians I find these sad developments, in particular because I received part of my High School education from the Jesuits and remain grateful to them for it.
February 1, 2006
One Man Makes a Difference
Since SOTUS was evidently some sort of black comedy I figure it may be inspirational to turn to a real comedian who's made a major, positive impact in the last few days on civil liberties in the Anglo-Saxon world: Rowan Atkinson. Always on the lookout for ways to dilute civil liberty the Blair regime had proposed incomprehensible, draconian laws on 'hate speech.' These were amended by the House of Lords, but Blair's henchmen reinserted the incomprehensible, draconian language and were set to ram the thing through the House of Commons. Enter Mr. Atkinson. He lobbied, demonstrated, and penned a remarkably thoughtful essay. In large measure due to 'Mr. Bean's' efforts, Blair's bill failed yesterday in two separate votes, the first by ten votes, the second by one, ironically, Blair's own, as his Whip had miscalculated and sent him home...
We have our own problems with this kind of thing – Senator Kennedy, in particular, has been pushing 'hate speech' legislation for years. Indeed, late last year he almost succeeded in getting similarly incomprehensible, draconian proposals written into law but was thwarted at the last moment by an odd alliance mostly made up of activist Christian wingnuts who feared prosecution over their criticisms of homosexuality. No doubt Senator Kennedy will try again in 2006. In the next go-round civil libertarians of wider minds will realize, perhaps, how serious a threat to the First Amendment (especially given our recent abandonment of the Fourth Amendment) this proposal actually is. As the publisher of a Danish paper under fire for its caricatures of Mohammed said yesterday on French television: when you lose your freedom of expression "everything else in society becomes warped." (This despite an apology having been wrung out of his editor-in-chief.)
