August 31, 2006
Quick EP Update
No, I haven't died. But I'm still having some health issues and, despite that, have been unusually busy—doing things apart from posting that should, I hope, help the site. First off, the tooth. I'm still not sure it's right and am worried that the endodontist may have missed something when he did the root canal. Then, perhaps in some way as a consequence of a difficult root canal operation, or perhaps unrelated, I've got a pinched nerve somewhere on my left side that's running from my neck to my thumb. Part of my left arm has been numb for about a week and the other part feels like it's being stuck repeatedly with an ice-pick. To be honest, I'm getting tired of being in constant pain for the past month, but—hey—that's just too bad for me. It's not ruinous and I'll keep plugging along. So, to change the subject: I've got an overseas interview lined up for Thursday morning, which should be interesting. You'll hear more about that in Friday's show. Then next Monday morning another overseas interview with a currently serving senior UN official, which hopefully will happen as planned. And I'm very much looking forward to that. Done this week, you'll have noticed a public service podcast recorded and posted on Monday. It's proving immensely popular, btw, and to be honest I'm puzzled why I'm the only one (that I know of) to have posted it to the web. Also this week, In These Times asked me to report on a three day training seminar put on by The New Organizing Institute. Which I was glad to do. So I've been busy with that. I had a somewhat mixed reaction to the proceedings, which I'll post here, perhaps in extended form, some time after ITT gets my story. OK, that's it. If anybody knows a good way to treat a pinched nerve please let me know. Otherwise things are going back to more-or-less normal.
August 23, 2006
Some In Rags, Some In Jags
The average CEO of a Fortune 500 company made $11.75 million in 2005. Few among progressives—and I suspect few old-fashioned Republicans, if you scratch the surface—would agree such compensation packages are remotely related to performance. "What the market will bear" has become, for CEOs and their ilk, code for board-room cronyism, just part of the transmission mechanism of state largess to the coddled few. All this while industry continues its flight offshore, leaving the American worker in the dirt. There are probably a lot of ways to put a stop to such looting, but one sure-fire way to apply the brakes, which should be in the mix but isn't, is raising taxes. Forget about taking back the Tyrant's many gifts to the rich. Forget about arguments whether "they pay their fair share". We're talking about nothing but a high-tone thieving class; socking it to them is merely returning to the public coffer money they've sucked out of it. Class warfare? Yes, indeed, and they started it. Returning to a 90% marginal rate on incomes above $1 million would be a forgiving start. Perhaps some not-so-debilitated Democrat somewhere has raised this issue. If so I hadn't heard it. But it could sell, if it were explained clearly, carefully, and repeatedly to the voter. More than that, though, on the merits it's a fine, basic issue of principle. To be honest, in our situation it's on par with an issue like capital punishment, a bright line that divides those in rags from those in Jags.
August 22, 2006
Water, Water, Everywhere
Even on land it's getting tough to have enough water, particularly at the right price. This New York Times article tries to get at the overall dimensions of the problem—I give them credit for trying—but understates it. You know that when T. Boone Pickens starts spending a lot of money on water rights, and tells people he expects to make a lot more, well, water is going to be a key public/private issue going forward. I guess once government at all levels privatizes water that's pretty much the end of a free society. No hyperbole intended.
August 21, 2006
Propaganda Watch
I'd remind the London Times that they're supposed to be in the news business, not acting the role of proxy flack for the State of Israel. In this article they "report" that "Israel vetoes peacekeepers from countries that do not recognize it." Alas, there's no definition of the word "veto" within the article, and its context is quite mushy, leaving most readers to assume that somewhere Israel has the authority to veto peacekeepers it doesn't want. Wrong. There's nothing in UNSC Res. 1701 remotely like that, the closest thing being in para 11(c) which says the UN will "coordinate" with the governments of Lebanon and Israel. "Coordinate" as used in Res. 1701 means whatever the UN wants it to mean. For the London Times to imply otherwise indicates that they're bought or dupes, or both. And they're not always like that—to make the point it might be worth holding their feet to the fire. Note that the Washington Post, amazingly, got this story right. Not so surprisingly the NYT didn't even try to report it—despite it's actually being news—probably on the (correct) assumption that their lying about it would become too complicated.
August 20, 2006
The Energy Well
I've long been interested in odd energy related efforts. Black Light Power, for example, which for many years has been "near" releasing products (and in which I almost invested but the cost of the entry ticket was too high), has always drawn charges of fraud, but nevertheless also has eminent people of the requisite background on its board, has published—a lot—in mainstream refereed journals, and seems to have genuinely found something, though I'm not sure their explanation for why what they've found happens is correct. The latest in such endeavors comes from Steorn, a small, high-tech firm in Dublin, that recently took out a full page advertisement in The Economist, challenging scientists to examine its free energy technology. My gut tells me that something along these lines is possible and that we may be near finding it. If we do, that means another, faster-paced scientific revolution.
The Ordeal Continues
Just a brief personal update, which may also be a newsflash for those not listening to the latest couple podcasts. Due to urgent family matters I neglected a toothache for a couple weeks until last Wednesday, when the pain became so intense I had to seek emergency dental help. Naturally, my dentist was on vacation. His substitute kindly let me come in, but sent me promptly to an endodontist who did an emergency root canal on a tooth which already had a crown. And, fortunately, the crown came off with a couple taps from a metal hammer. So far, so good. Everything seemed fine until the local anesthetic wore off and the pain exploded again. By Friday evening I was running a fever of 101-plus, but when I called the endodontist (not a cheap one, either) I discovered he had no emergency number. Presumably after he gets my message he'll call back Monday morning. The substitute was hard to reach but finally I did get him by cell somewhere out on the Chesapeake Bay. (Do all dentists go on vacation at once?) He upped my dosage of ibuprofen to 800 mg. every six hours, which barely suppressed the pain, but did seem to knock out the fever. By Sunday afternoon the pain has decreased to nearly tolerable levels and I'm reducing the ibuprofen—I hope to resume normal activity soon, but basically most of my thought processes have, since Wednesday afternoon, been focused exclusively on my tooth.
August 18, 2006
Assertions Without Evidence
There's something wrong with a polity where the common coin of public discourse often, and without being challenged, consists of simple assertions unburdened by refutable facts. How far this is from assertions backed by proof—we're in the realm of assertions without any evidence, of any kind. What else to make of the "liquid bomb" terror scare? At first I was still inclined to allow the benefit of the doubt, but as time passed it's become clear that what happened was political fear mongering, not a legitimate threat, now or perhaps ever. I can remember when terrorist take-downs would involve trophies: weapons, explosives, propaganda, assorted paraphernalia. Something laid out on a table, or a blanket, for an eager press. Here, nothing adds up. There's no material evidence of explosives, no evidence of training, no evidence of planning. Nothing. And the story about turning an airplane's bathroom into a chemistry lab is coming under some heavy critique as well. Clearly, people are now much less susceptible to being taken in. And the Tyrant's polls are re-testing their lows (they're going to go lower). But all this worries me, because if those thugs with their hands on the levers of power can't get what they want through fear-mongering alone, they may well seek to arrange another real event.
August 15, 2006
A Walking Shadow
I don't feel too bad trashing UNSC Res. 1701, since Robert Fisk had written a piece along similar lines (I'm not sure when his was published but I first saw it a day after my post here), but the preliminary verdict needs some quick adjustment: Fisk today, in southern Lebanon, sees no sign of the much vaunted IDF. Evidently Hezbollah beat them back pretty thoroughly. And if, in fact, the IDF now retreats out of Lebanon with its tail between its legs then, yes, the cease-fire has a chance of sticking. Good. The main diplomatic chore facing Lebanon's friends, however, remains the same: holding Israel to account for war crimes and reparations. An important part of that still will be walking back the obnoxious traps in Res. 1701.
August 14, 2006
Lieberman's Luck
Quite a few people have written about what Joe Lieberman's primary defeat might mean for national politics. I'm not so sure whether or to what extent an election in Connecticut—denizens of this particular state being smarter, on average, than the rest of the country—may augur change elsewhere, but even if one could accurately describe a trend it might well be the lesser part of the news. Which what matters really may be his bad luck. Politicians are prone to superstitious ideas about things and I suspect more than a few are wondering just how much of Lieberman's luck may rub off on them. One can only hope it's quite catching...
August 13, 2006
Talk and Fight
While the UN isn't yet out of the game it has taken several large steps towards League of Nations irrelevancy. The UN Security Council's decision on Lebanon (Resolution 1701), adopted unanimously—one must ask how such a toothless resolution could possibly garner unanimous support—on August 11, means nothing. It is patently unenforceable, and to the extent that it sets any precedent for UN engagement with regard to Israel's calculated, cruel, and criminal conduct it is a negative one, going some distance to letting Israel off the hook. A child could see that Res. 1701 is merely a Catch-22: UN peacekeepers won't go in until the fighting stops; Israel won't stop fighting before Hezbollah does, and won't begin to leave until the fighting stops and the UN peacekeepers are ready to go in; for its part Hezbollah won't stop fighting until Israeli forces begin to withdraw. Ergo Israel will continue its offensive and the UN won't deploy. Nothing in Res. 1701 breaks that equation. Moreover, placing responsibility on the Lebanese government for disarming Hezbollah is a clear recipe for a new Lebanese civil war; either that or it stacks the diplomatic deck against Lebanese efforts to obtain help from outside forces. All around, a black mark in UN history.
August 2, 2006
What Should Lebanon Do?
In March of 1964 Kitty Genovese returned to her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, in the early morning hours. About 100 feet from her door she fell beneath the knife of a psychopathic necrophiliac, Winston Moseley, who stabbed her repeatedly over an approximately half hour period, in two separate attacks. She later died in an ambulance en route to hospital. Thirty eight individuals in her apartment complex observed or heard one or another parts of the incident. None intervened to stop it or called the police until the attack was over. Thus the "Genovese syndrome", where for complex psychological reasons bystanders fail to render aid in life and death situations. And the perennial question: Is passively watching a murder as bad as—or worse than—the deed itself?
