April 29, 2006
Another Very Short Comment
William Pfaff seems to be on a tear. I'm beginning to think of him as the newspaper equivalent of Lou Dobbs—a fellow at the top of the game in the establishment media who takes a walk outside the box and doesn't look back. I've been reading Pfaff with interest and attention for decades but I don't remember his essays having made me sit up and take notice so forcefully until relatively recently. But perhaps this side of his writing has always been there; I could well be wrong. In any case, while I don't fully agree with his limning of root causes I could not agree more with his observations regarding the symptoms. Writing about today's 'crony capitalism', condemning it, and pointing out that its 'inevitable' superiority is simply untrue, Pfaff really gets it. This article is a must read.
April 25, 2006
Red Flag
It used to be when taking the State Department's course for DCMs (Deputy Chief of Mission, or Deputy Ambassador) the hoary old hands would say—and I have this anecdotally as I never took the course myself—the first thing you have to do when arriving at a new Embassy is to climb on the roof and count all the antennas. If you found one which went someplace you didn't know about you'd better get on it and control it because the very worst thing for the Ambassador and his or her team is a separate channel going somewhere back to the States, undermining his or her authority and very possibly introducing severe complications into relations with the host country. I don't know what they taught you about it in Ambassador school, but if you didn't learn the lesson as DCM you wouldn't get that far anyway...
April 23, 2006
Canned Meat and Its Derivatives
By Werther*
"Mundus vult decipi" ("the world wants to be deceived") — Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Item: On the evening of 31 August 1939, members of the S.S. took a concentration camp prisoner, Franciszek Honiok, to a German radio station in Gleiwitz (now Gliwice), on the border with Poland. S.S. operatives then broadcast a message in Polish urging Poles living in Silesia to attack Germans. After administering a lethal injection to Honiok, the operatives shot the corpse to simulate his having been shot while attacking the radio station. The German government invited police officials and the members of the press corps to view Honiok's corpse as evidence of a Polish attack. As the S.S. referred to concentration camp inmates used for this purpose as "canned goods," the operation became known to history (once it was revealed during the Nuremberg Tribunal) as "Operation Canned Meat."
April 22, 2006
Taliesin Redux
On matters military I prefer to defer to Werther—he has the experience I do not, besides being much more historically literate. As to the generals' revolt, however, Werther remains in a meditative neutral zone, having not yet arrived at his conclusions: thus I will offer a few general observations of my own.
I like general officers. They tend to be very bright, very well educated, fairly worldly, and perhaps psychologically a bit tougher than their brethren in the diplomatic service. Yet I am reminded—not being particularly well read in the Bible, either, nevertheless—of Mark 10 13-16, "for to [those who are like children] belongs the kingdom of God." General officers have, as a rule, managed to maintain something of this favorable childlike outlook on life, it being a great virtue but also, for some, their downfall. Call it mental plasticity. It allows them to bring a brio to the party which dusty pedestrian types can never match.
April 18, 2006
You Get The Government You Deserve
It's a beautiful day in Washington D.C., the sun is shining, and I've just been for a lovely long walk in the park with my dog, Hugo, who's a very large Black Labrador. How sad it is, then, to sit down at the computer and see a bunch of news stories about the Tyrant who "won't rule out" the first use of nuclear weapons against Iran. I'm reminded of what some old Russia hands used to say, albeit fondly, about the Soviet Union: "The Russians are a very nice people but they've got the government they deserve." Why was that? Because they let a bunch of commissars (not too different, if you think about it, from today's neocons) take over their politics and society. Essentially, the Russians were wimps. And if you think about it some more, that's exactly what the putative opposition to Bush—with a handful of notable exceptions from each party—amounts to: a bunch of wimps. And we've got the government we deserve...
April 17, 2006
The Oil Factor
I note that oil prices are up to record levels based on our saber-rattling against Iran. I haven't noticed, however, that anybody's properly connected the two, so I thought I would: We shouldn't put it past the Bush gang to use war-mongering (especially if no actual war is in the offing) to further line the pockets of their oil pals.
In order for there to be a credible show of sabre-rattling of course there must be active plans which, of course, must be leaked to people like Sy Hersh. I still contend that it would be catastrophic for the Republicans if Bush attacked Iran before November, that the Republicans know that, and that most likely any attack envisioned would take place after November, if at all. The tricky thing, though, is that saber-rattling has shown, historically, a tendency to get out of control in the absence of really smart leaders. JFK and the Cuban missile crisis comes to mind. But these White House weasels could easily misstep...
April 10, 2006
This Ain't The Life, Skeezix!
What can we say—the French have done it again. Trades Unions and students are happy. Prime Minister de Villepin capitulated completely. (See BBC, London Times, WP, AFP, Reuters, AP.) What this means for the future of French politics isn't clear yet but I suspect it will have some lasting impact. And I would venture to suggest that demos on a similar scale here in DC would produce similar retreats by government. Imagine: two or three million on the streets against the war. Perhaps, indeed, the immigration demonstrations today may be a precursor...
Immigration Indecision
It's not that difficult to figure out the right thing to do about so-called illegal immigrants. If you want to be honest about it, the laws on what's legal and what's not haven't been enforced for decades because both big business and individual middle class types like you and me have wanted cheap labor. (Full disclosure: my lawn care guy and his crew are from Brazil and I don't ask questions.)
April 8, 2006
The Gospel of Judas
It's a minor niggle in a sense, but I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I was annoyed at the coverage I'd seen this evening on TV concerning the Gospel of Judas. I haven't thoroughly perused television and cable coverage, nor what's been written either in MSM or the blogosphere, so my comments may not be entirely new—and I'd certainly expect to see something similar emerge at some point at least in the academic debate. (I have no particular pride of authorship here.) But what Lehrer asked Elaine Pagels and his other guest, and the critical question I saw discussed on other reports, was what importance the discovery might have. All the answers cast the problem in terms of our understanding of Judas' role in New Testament events. But this is wrong. Assuming that the Gospel of Judas is genuine—and most scholars appear to think it is—the most important question it raises is not about Judas but about the historical Jesus: Was Jesus an innocent victim, as is always taught, or did he connive in some way to create a legend? If the latter this is indeed a different sort of character.
April 7, 2006
Live To Work, Or Work To Live?
Maybe the distinction is without a difference, but the truth in it reflects critical cultural differences between France and the United States. In France (and one must always make a further distinction between Paris and non-Paris) people have a relatively much greater sensitivity to quality of life issues. And in the French psyche, in a way perhaps unique in Europe, wild emotional excess and cold mathematical logic have fused without canceling each other out. Indeed, in no other culture that I'm familiar with—a possible exception being India—have the two combined so prodigiously, so exuberantly. Thus when a significant part of French society rebels against the American model of wage labor there is probably something we can learn from it. Or at least something we can be pretty sure that we don't understand.
April 5, 2006
∃ternity, Or Bust¡
From time to time I get mail from devout Christians who object to stray comments in my podcasts about creationists. I have been mulling over whether and how to respond, particularly given that several of these notes have been quite polite and well intentioned. I hesitate to add insult to injury... So please allow me a few limited remarks about creationism which—helpfully as it turns out—segue nicely into a few more general observations about our state of knowledge regarding what we're living in. I think it's past time that non-scientists resumed their role in the exercise of natural philosophy, and—such as it is—this is my contribution.
