September 28, 2006
Look Who Approves Torture
I would expect that torture, no matter what sort of "legislation" congressional castrati produce and that the President then signs, would be illegal, and that the Supreme Court—or some international tribunal—would find it so. I'm told, however, by people with more experience in government than me, who still work in the belly of the beast, that moral decency no longer applies. Given today's "legislation" the President will do whatever he wants, with or without consent from the courts, without consequence, at least until the US regime changes in fundamental ways. I have long thought the Tyrant belongs in jail, for life, and now I only hope that I live long enough to see the day...
September 27, 2006
A Worthless NIE
Why have the Democrats seized upon the recently, partially declassified NIE as some kind of 'proof' of anything? Why have the Republicans tried to defend the Tyrant's policies on the basis of the NIE's judgments? And why haven't any commentators noticed anything wrong with this document? In the first place, this is one of the most pathetically written scraps of paper I've ever seen the US bureaucracy produce. If I'd been supervising Negroponte I'd have torn the thing into shreds in his face and sent him back to write up something I could read. From these few pages filled with mind-numbing passive tense constructions, it's impossible to know what the document is trying to say. (In fact, it seems to be trying to not say anything.) The real indication—often the only indication—of an intelligible thought comes when you write it down. If what you write isn't clear, there's no clear thinking behind it. Period. Secondly, if what was declassified is supposed to be some sort of executive summary, one must ask, why hasn't the word Palestine appeared anywhere in it? If the collective judgment of a mega-billion dollar intelligence apparatus regarding Islamic terrorism can't manage to notice that Israel's appalling treatment of the Palestinians is a critical element in our relations with the Islamic world, then one must be skeptical whether this apparatus can produce any intelligence analysis of any value whatsoever.
September 26, 2006
Language and Institutional Perversions in a Time of Painful Birth Pangs (Kafka Era Studies, No. 2)
By Edward S. Herman
The powerful control language as well as policy and its institutional apparatus. The two are of course closely interrelated. If the powerful can successfully label their targets "terrorists," it is easier to put in place policies to slaughter them. With a sufficiently compliant media system you can make yourself into a victim engaging in "self defense" even as you attack a virtually disarmed country across the ocean by "shock and awe" tactics openly designed to terrorize the target population into submission. Killing and terrorizing via helicopter gunships and assorted bombs from the air, and search and destroy operations and invasions and terrorization of households is not terrorism. By the internalized rule of the compliant media, according to which invidious language applies only to others, this clear terrorization does not make you a terrorist. On the other hand, the resistance is quickly found to be terroristic by its use of IEDs, suicide bombers and other weapons of the weak.
September 24, 2006
Pseudoconservative Crackup?
By Werther*
Echoing Richard Hofstadter, we observed two and a half years ago in "Pseudoconservatism Revisited," that the typical pseudoconservative suffers from a disorder in his relationship to authority. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that that judgment is, if anything, an understatement of the problem. Given the headlong flight from rationalism of the Bush cult—creationism, apocalyptic delusions, fantasies about medieval torture, bogus environmental science, psychotically dysfunctional assessments of "progress" in Iraq that make a post-Stalingrad Goebbels look like a flinty-eyed empiricist—it is clear that pseudoconservatism is also a dissociation from physical reality.
September 23, 2006
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Electronic Vote Fraud
The October 5th issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a wonderful article by RFK Jr. on electronic vote fraud. Not much new here, but this is an important follow-on to his earlier Rolling Stone article, and does a great service in keeping the issue before the public. All too many people, including especially progressives, can't seem to get their minds around the fact that electronic vote fraud is happening. As Kennedy puts it, "It seems insane that such clear threats to our election system have not stopped the proliferation of touch-screen technology." I hope he continues to write on this subject and that, perhaps in his next article, he tackles the spinelessness of the Democratic leadership in the face of it.
September 21, 2006
War Criminals And Cluster Bombs
Let's say you're a small farmer in southern Lebanon. After the recent unpleasantness you go home to find your house bombed out, but your several hectares of lemon trees are intact. The land has been in your family for a couple hundred years, you don't have anywhere else to go, anything else you could do for a living, and you don't want to leave. So you stay to rebuild and harvest the fruit. Problem is, you've got cluster bombs.
Why I Switched To Apple
I have a geek streak. For many years I built my own computers—usually I had two or three working at a time, at one point I think five or six, on a mish-mash wired/wireless network. Some running Windows, some Linux (various flavors). Indeed, I still use a Windows mini-box I built about a year ago, to double-check coding for EP. But about three years ago I got myself a small Apple iBook, for an overseas trip. I was curious, too, whether it might provide reason to switch somewhat over to Apple and OSX. In short order I got a second iBook, then a third and a fourth (these got passed along in the food chain), and last year went whole-hog with a power mac, retiring all but said mini-box.
September 20, 2006
Book News
EP Guest Deanne Stillman has come out with a new book (she's still working on the one about wild horses), her tribute to Joshua Tree National Park. Among other things the book features a talking Joshua Tree (hates polls), rocks in the shape of late NY Yankee Manager Billy Martin, beautiful photographs by Galen Hunt, and a comparison of Richard Nixon's and the Tyrant's environmental policies—including an excerpt from Nixon's stirring pro-environment State of the Union speech in 1970. She's a great writer. I haven't got the book but you might want to check it out.
Diplomatic Momentum
For several weeks the US has been fairly quiet about Iran, while the Europeans and the IAEA have tried various ways to engage. Now, with the Tyrant's surprisingly mild UN speech it's starting to look like a general decision has taken place, or is in the works, that the costs of a war against Iran would be unacceptable. And this is understandable. From a diplomatic point of view, if the US attacks Iran no support from the rest of the world is to be expected, with the exception of Israel. The US would, increasingly, be viewed as a rogue superpower. But a rogue superpower that also happens to be the world's largest debtor nation, soaking up a substantial percent of the world's net savings to pay its bills, isn't really in any position to make everybody angry. The icing on the cake: Venezuela expressing solidarity with Iran. A cut-off of Iranian and Venezuelan oil combined with larger debt holders cashing in their chips spells collapse for the American economy. And that's the bottom line.
September 19, 2006
Mercenary Moments
The Los Angeles Times has an interesting story, picked up and commented on at Harpers, about the increasing privatization of US intelligence activities. It's worrisome, not least because commercial interests with an axe to grind are not the most likely neutral sources of intelligence analysis or, indeed, cleanly implemented covert operations. That aside (and not mentioned by either the LAT or Harpers), given the very grayness of it all plus the vast, almost unimaginable sums that disappear into the fog, one could reasonably entertain the possibility that phantom entities may be working both sides of the fence in the war on terror, e.g., that some may have had a hand in 9/11 and/or the anthrax scare. The possibility may not be mainstream, yet, but it seems to me that it's a worthy subject of investigation.
September 18, 2006
China Lays Down A Subtle Marker
This news hasn't been widely linked, so far as I can tell, but it's well worth noting: more Chinese blue-helmets to Lebanon. It's one thing if you 'accidentally' murder a peacekeeper from Finland, something a little different if they happen to be Chinese. So this should be a significant enhancement to Lebanese security. And while it would be too much of a stretch to call the contingent a trip-wire against an attack on Iran it does signal an important phase-change in Chinese engagement, likely to be followed by further measures.
We Hold These Truths
Almost all the discussion of the Tyrant's torture proposals assume (correctly) that, in fact, the issue is about torture. And virtually all the arguments about torture take up its merits and/or its morality, the latter class of argument standing on its own. No doubt it's helpful to get in all the criticism possible. I would suggest, though, that almost everything that's being said misses a larger point, that we cannot properly understand the advocacy of such policies in terms of rational but misguided motives or behavior. No—torture, as promulgated by the Tyrant, more than anything else reflects his personal psychology. It's sadism, only sadism. There really isn't any argument there unless one believes that for some the laws should not or do not apply.
September 16, 2006
Ethnic Cleansing: Constructive, Benign, and Nefarious (Kafka Era Studies, No. 1)
By Edward S. Herman
[Published on ZNet August 9, 2006. Posted here with a small revision by and the kind permission of the author.]
Some years ago Noam Chomsky and I found it useful to distinguish between three categories of terrorism—constructive, benign and nefarious—the classification based strictly on the utility of the terrorism to U.S. interests as perceived by the ruling political elite. [1]
Thus, when terrorism is seen by U.S. officials as highly advantageous to U.S. interests, it is treated by those officials, and hence by the media, as a positive development and hence "constructive." This was the case with the vast massacres by Suharto and colleagues in Indonesia in 1965-1966, that wiped out the base of a communist party and cleared the ground for an open door to foreign investment and a realignment of Indonesian foreign policy in favor of the West. In this instance not only was there no moral indignation expressed at the mass murder of many hundreds of thousands of civilians, it was treated as a "dividend" from our policy of military aid to the Indonesian army (Robert McNamara), and a "a gleam of light" in Asia (James Reston). [2]
Papal Nonsense
Not being Catholic, I was something of an anomaly at the Jesuit boarding school I went to, but I liked the Jesuits. In particular I remember Father Beatty, a very kind, decent, and learned man who took a genuine interest in the boys' education. Some years after I'd left I found out he'd passed away—a loss keenly felt. As I remember him from time to time he still provides inspiration. He should be a saint. Anyhow, from my outsider's sense of Catholicism it was with more than a little dismay that I read the Pope's recent controversial speech. No substitute for reading the original text, is there? There're a lot of efforts now being made to wave away Muslim outrage, but reading the text it's quite clearly a mean swipe at Islam, dressed up, perhaps, in academese, but for all that a clumsy, bigoted, snarl of superiority. What the Pope needs, I thought (based on my extensive experience with such particulars), is a bucket of hot water, a mop, some bleach, and a few lavatories to scrub down, to get his priorities straight.
September 14, 2006
Dollars and Yuan
Quite a bit of interesting news today. Note also this report comes from the IHT directly—it isn't copied from its older brother the NYT. (Which the latter continues its slide into oblivion.) Of course the Chinese will keep the yuan low despite US jawboning. It's not just about trade, per se, but capturing markets and long-term technological advantage. Meanwhile we'll continue to run enormous current account deficits until the rest of the world gets sick of accepting our green paper in exchange for real goods. At that point (next year, five years out, who knows?) the US economy will take a massive hit. It seems unavoidable, to me, but I may be wrong.
Rummy The Peacenik
When did Martin Walker become an "editor emeritus"? He's not that old—I knew him slightly when I was working on Yugoslavia. Anyhow, if you overlook many of his preconceptions about things he's actually a pretty good reporter. So if Martin says that Rummy and his civilian hirelings are balking at the nightmarish prospects of a US war against Iran, there's probably something to it. And, since both Rummy and Cheney are accomplished bureaucratic knife-fighters it should be a remarkable clash if they start to go at it. My money is on Rummy. Cartoon © Steve Bell (The Guardian), for fair use.
In Praise of Organic Yellow Corn Grits
Yes, it's my favorite breakfast. It's not as quick as pouring milk into a bowl of cereal, but most of the time milk doesn't agree with me anymore anyway. In a small, heavy saucepan mix the grits with water about 1:4 and add a pinch of salt. Stir until they start to boil. Turn down the heat and cover for slightly over five minutes. What you're looking for is a thick sludge that is slightly like a foamy cake at the bottom of the pan, just this side of browning or burning, which you won't know until you turn it out of the pan but with experience it's fairly easy to tell. Stir in organic butter and organic sugar to taste (which thin it out to the way you might think grits are supposed to look). It will stick to your ribs all day. If you want to be completely decadent cook some fresh sausage to have on the side. Don't forget to put water and soap into the pan immediately—dried cooked grits forms a kind of natural concrete, difficult to clean without later soaking, and even then. Oh, and larger batches of grits are also good poured from the pan into something deep you can put in the fridge, then when cold, sliced, fried in a heavy skillet until nicely crisp, and eaten with butter and maple syrup.
Sleepless Persephone
An innovative NASA measure of "perennial" Arctic sea ice found that it declined by 14% between 2004 and 2005. More not-so-surprising evidence that the rate of Arctic melting is speeding up. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: I think it would be sensible to chuck conservative, straight-line projections out the window and seriously speculate about the possibility of very rapid, drastic climate changes that may take place in a matter of decades.
More – And More Serious – Problems With Diebold Machines
Will all those people who keep saying that electronic vote fraud isn't happening please pay attention? Here's an excellent, brand-new report from Princeton University showing just how easy it is to hack a Diebold machine—in some cases in less than one minute—with software that steals votes but leaves no trace of itself after the election is complete. Viral forms of this software add the possibility that a single machine could infect large numbers of others (making criminal access easier). Note that the Princeton team, wrongly, does not think electronic vote fraud has happened, but are merely pointing out the ease with which it is possible. On their site they provide a detailed write-up and a helpful streaming video.
September 13, 2006
We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us
Apologies to Walt Kelly for applying his aphorism to this ridiculous bit of news. According to the AP, the Air Force Secretary, Michael Wynne, said Tuesday that non-lethal military technology should be used on American civilians first, before being used on a battlefield abroad. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," according to Wynne. What is he talking about? What is this supposed to mean? Where could the idea have possibly come from? It's mind-boggling, and impossible to speculate about—some responsible reporter should track down the story and explain Wynne's statement, even if it was only brain-fog on his part. Notwithstanding what we don't know, I find it astonishing that the mainstream has not reported (and in this case it would seem fair to assume that what's not reported didn't happen) any objections to Wynne's statement from Republican lawmakers. Indeed, I'm speechless!
September 12, 2006
Ah, Cunégonde!
If life is like a box of chocolates, then the Democratic Party must be the pink peppermint cream. Astringent, cloying, unnatural—vaguely reminiscent of a real plant that, perhaps, once grew wild by the garden gate. Having Democrats run things would be less bad than the Republicans, of course, except that in their chasing after cash the Dems have consistently sought to disencumber themselves of policy at the expense of the poor, workers, and the middle class. Now, however, given the hierarchical leveling effects of the internet, and the Dems' unquestioned advantage over Republicans in using it to raise money and to organize, policy, inter alia, should stand a better chance. If only old habits don't get in the way.
September 11, 2006
9/11, Treason, and Common Sense
Notwithstanding that alternative 9/11 explanations have captured the interest of large minorities in the US and Europe, arguments against, from both establishment sources and alternative gatekeepers, tend towards the ad hominem while avoiding substance. That only takes the gatekeepers so far, since many 9/11 skeptics are reasonable, accomplished, and very public individuals. Not that the opposite of ad hominem is an indicator of truth either, but it is a common-sense test of whether a proposition deserves attention. To the list of 9/11 skeptics—and this is specially worth noting—we can now add a very senior former CIA officer, Bill Christison, who is well and favorably known in progressive circles for his political essays. While I don't know exactly what happened it does seem to me that, given what we've learned subsequently about the facts, at the very least the burden of proof now decidedly rests on proponents of the standard story and that 'known facts' which are inconsistent with other well-established facts and principles should be hashed out. Skepticism is the only prudent course.
September 10, 2006
Sic Semper Tyrannis
"Kidnapping people and torturing them in secret—however tempting the short-term gain may appear to be—is what criminals do, not democratic governments," said Council of Europe President Rene van der Linden, reacting to the Tyrant's disclosure of secret prisons. A good deal has been written about the disclosure already: it resolved a debate within the administration; it's an indication the Tyrant is launching a new offensive against his critics; it's a concession to the Geneva conventions; it's a half-step for human rights advocates; pentagon lawyers are still not satisfied. To be honest, I don't have a very clear notion what the Tyrant is up to, and I wish I had an inside track on how the decision was made.
September 9, 2006
The Agony And The Ecstasy
For over thirty years I've been a huge fan of Jacques Tati. Thus it was a signal pleasure to learn that Playtime (1967), a film I hadn't ever seen, was re-released this month on DVD. Of course I snapped up a copy. Tati, for those of you not familiar, is probably something of an acquired taste. People love him or hate him. I locate him firmly in the tradition of failed comic geniuses like Buster Keaton—failed because they could not figure how to work with the money side of movie-making. Playtime all told took about ten years to put together, it was, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made in France, and it bankrupted Tati, who lost everything including his house and rights to his earlier films. Though Playtime could not recoup its costs, after its release it did nevertheless score a mild critical success. In retrospect it gains ground: for some, it is a spectacular, magical work of inspiration, a one-of-a-kind oeuvre.
September 6, 2006
Synaesthesia
Way back when, Kandinsky wanted to paint music. At the time few understood what he was trying to get at although more recently our understanding of synaesthesia has been on the upswing. And research reported a couple days ago takes us to the next level: it seems that even those of us—that is, most people—who are not synaesthetes do, at some unconscious level, appreciate synaesthetic images in similar ways. So why not other as-yet-to-be-explained perceptual phenomena? The British Association for the Advancement of Science dipped its toe in the water yesterday, sponsoring a controversial session on anomalous research at their annual conference. Telepathy, life after death—the sort of stuff lots of people experience in one way or another but that science generally shies away from. Kudos to the BA for keeping an open mind!
September 5, 2006
Zogby Poll: Republicans Lean Authoritarian
Well, in fact most are crypto-fascists. We already know that, but it's interesting to see the differences between Dems and Republicans when it comes to questions of civil liberties. Republicans favor random searches of your person, of your vehicle at roadblocks, and random monitoring of your phone calls and opening of your mail. If Zogby had asked about required RFID implants I'm sure he would have found comparable differences between groups. Which is all another marker of the kind of phenomenon we're dealing with: it's the madness of crowds expressed in a particular form—not the ordinary jockeying of rational political interests.
September 4, 2006
Gaia
We've had a slew of high-profile warnings on the environment recently. First there was the incoming President of the AAAS, John Holdren, who warned that the pace of change seems to be happening much faster than predicted (remember I made a similar but even more emphatic point here myself) and that in particular the Greenland Ice sheet, if melted away, would swamp many areas. Then his British counterpart, Frances Cairncross, opined that it's too late to stop major climate change so we should do more in the way of planning for adaptation while we can. Adding to the angst, the latest ice core studies indicate that carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than they've been at any time in the past 800,000 years. And, of course, Dr. James Lovelock reckons in his new book that Gaia, throwing off the human infection, has developed a fever that will take thousands of years to break. If we're lucky, he says, some humans may successfully migrate to the arctic and start over.
September 2, 2006
The Blue Eyed Grandmother From Duluth and Other Potential Terrorists
By Werther*
We were recently apprised by an acquaintance who works for the Federal government of yet another example of how your tax dollars are put to work. He and a colleague were in a U.S. airport, attempting to catch an international flight. Both were long-time government employees, with official passports, and traveling on government business. Both were selected by TSA for additional screening. He told us this was a common experience; uniformed military personnel on orders were also frequently given more intensive screening.
Intrigued, I inquired about this seeming waste of resources with a friend who has recently retired from the Department of Homeland Security. He instantly and unhesitatingly replied that such people are selected so that TSA screeners can more easily meet their quota. A government employee is less likely to burden the screeners, because he is likely to be more docile, less problematic in terms of personal possessions, and less likely to have a panic attack or become confrontational. Other classes of people who would fit those categories will also have a greater likelihood of having to patiently suffer through undignified manhandling by TSA's squad of Phi Beta Kappas.
Continue reading "The Blue Eyed Grandmother From Duluth and Other Potential Terrorists"...
September 1, 2006
Shadows In A Cave
Scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, have found something unexpected about the Big Bang. Or rather, not found something expected. I love it when experimental measurements fail to validate conventional wisdom. In this case, it seems the Huntsville team was looking to test, for the second time, predictable consequences of the Big Bang theory which, it now appears, do not occur. If mainstream science weren't so wedded to the notion of the Big Bang these results would be taken as moderately strong evidence that the theory is wrong—as it is, people are scratching their heads and trying even harder to make the theory fit the facts. Nevertheless, the worry is palpable: this news has not been widely linked or commented on within the mainstream media, probably on the assumption that if difficult facts are ignored they may go away. But it seems to me that a steady-state theory of the universe still has lots of life in it, and just possibly may start picking up some new adherents.
