November 28, 2007
If You Say So
"Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have things your way." A slogan for a coffee mug, but nevertheless true. When "your way" doesn't — strictly speaking — exist, however, it's not actually diplomacy but mediation, counseling, social work, a photo op ...something else entirely. Case in point: Annapolis. If the U.S. has any kind of policy regarding the Palestinians (other than to slavishly follow the government of Israel) it must be the best kept secret in Washington. How, then, can any reputable news organization take Annapolis seriously? For that matter, what's the point of anybody paying any attention? As far as I can tell the one thing worth noting is the fact Annapolis is happening at all suggests that the administration is running out of ideas for things to do on the international stage. Hardly news.
November 26, 2007
The U.S. Aggression Process and Its Collaborators: From Guatemala (1950-1954) to Iran (2002-)
By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
We are living in a very dangerous period in which a predatory superpower has embarked on a series of aggressive wars in rapid succession — three on two different continents during the past decade alone. Not only have these wars violated the UN Charter, and constituted what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson declared at Nuremberg to be "the supreme international crime;" not only has it gotten away with its wars, despite their increasingly destructive and murderous nature; but in waging them, the United States has been able to enlist leaders of the "international community" and United Nations in support of its assaults on distant lands. [1] As the world's preeminent multilateral organization, the central purpose of which was purportedly to save humankind from the scourge of war, and to ensure that armed force not be used except for the common defense, we find the UN's role here to be troubling indeed.
November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving ☺
Due to its ecumenical character and turkey-laden menu Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. This year I roasted some Italian chestnuts and added them to the mashed sweet potatoes, and I put a dash of cognac in my homemade candied ginger cranberry sauce, but otherwise kept things fairly simple. Turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green beans, and cornbread. A store-bought pumpkin pie for dessert. Oh, and organic turkeys always taste better. Nevertheless, the holiday does have a sordid past, of which it's proper to be mindful. The following is from Mark Twain's Autobiography:
November 20, 2007
Scary New World
Now the IPCC's fourth, synthesis report has been released it's fair to say several things. First, the report doesn't go nearly far enough. This was to be expected as the main value of having the report at all involves its sweeping international consensus, which took time putting together. (And note that although Washington could not avoid signing on, the White House is digging in its heels regarding policy implications.) Nevertheless, while the IPCC dilly-dallied, refining its consensus, the data has continued to march on. Indeed, every new data point shows the problem of climate change worsening, eclipsing, one by one, every scientific prediction to date. An educated non-scientific observer can only conclude that IPCC scientists deliberately erred by the widest of margins on the conservative side. Surprisingly, perhaps, a range of mainstream outlets noticed, from Der Spiegel to the NYT, though their critical analyses also have certain limits.
November 14, 2007
Ni Hao, Shuishou
∗ 11/28/07 I cannot confirm the linked report below, nor have editors at the Daily Mail replied to my questions about it — best chalk it up as 'interesting, if true.'
Here's a short squib that seems to have escaped the attention of both the mainstream and bloggers across the board, which nevertheless is extremely interesting and potentially rather important. Recently a Chinese attack sub popped up unexpectedly in the middle of a U.S. naval exercise in the Pacific, uncomfortably close to the USS Kitty Hawk, one of our oldest supercarriers. Thus proving, once again, that supercarriers are nothing but large floating targets to their principal potential adversaries. And why is this interesting? Because it looks like the Chinese are stealing a page from Reagan's play book, where he spooked the Soviets into more military spending than they could afford, thus hastening the fall of the Soviet empire. It's an excellent bet that the Pentagon won't learn the appropriate lesson but instead insist on additional monies to try to make carrier groups invulnerable (rots of ruck). A few hundred billion wasted here, a few hundred billion wasted there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. Cost in diesel fuel to the Chinese: negligible.
November 9, 2007
Government Sanctioned Torturers
Maybe it's unfair of me, but based on the Michael "I don't know if waterboarding is torture" Mukasey vote I hope that the Democrats lose control of the Senate, for at least one election cycle. And that Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — the only one of the six renegade Democrats voting for Mukasey who's up in 2008 — definitely loses. Odds are probably close to zero on either score, but you never know. Now that Mukasey is in, however, he should be called up to testify about waterboarding. And what I want to know is: Does the U.S. government waterboard American citizens? It's not a frivolous question, because we know (from the earlier EP guest Joe Margulies) that the U.S. is holding American citizens in Iraq. Out of reach, or so their captors think, of the American legal system (and for all we know there could be other Americans held at black sites, perhaps on our behalf by foreign governments). And we know from the top State Department lawyer, John Bellinger, participating in a recent debate in the UK, that the U.S. would not automatically object to other countries waterboarding American citizens. Put two and two together, it's a question, perhaps even a question that involves violations of U.S. criminal statutes. But at this point I very much doubt whether any Democratic Senator has the intestinal fortitude to ask...
November 8, 2007
The Silver Lining
I must be getting rusty. A friend yesterday pointed out to me an obvious fact I hadn't been considering but which, as a good former bureaucrat, I should have: The Pakistan mess will distract White House war-mongers from pursuing Iran. And to that we can add the banking sector melt-down, the continuing fall of the dollar, stock market malaise, and the steady rise of oil prices. These are, I believe, all somewhat connected.
November 7, 2007
Leopard — A Qualified Yes
If you're on a Mac and haven't yet upgraded to Leopard it's worth doing at some point but I wouldn't rush unless you have a good reason to adopt early. Leopard, with lots of rough edges, seems more like an advanced Beta than a final build. You may well be better off waiting for the 10.5.1 release. From a GUI perspective there's hardly any improvement over Tiger, indeed, many reviewers argue that in several key areas it's a step back and I would agree. Speaking of reviews, the best I've seen is over to Ars Technica, by John Siracusa. Technically oriented, but gets the perspective about right. My experience was that once I got my applications working as they should I've noticed a slight improvement in overall responsiveness. So far, knock on wood, Leopard seems perfectly stable. If you do upgrade, be sure first to back up your drive (I recommend Super Duper).
November 6, 2007
Our Man In Islamabad
Let's review: A military dictator tightens the screws on his country, imposing martial law. He says it's about crushing Islamist extremism. He gets Washington's support. Those he proceeds to round up are such dangerous types as Supreme Court Justices, lawyers, human rights workers, and intellectuals generally. Conspicuously absent, any round up of Islamist extremists. The mainstream media, and for the most part the blogosphere, concludes, OK, this is how a coup within a coup happens. What about stability vs. democracy, blah, blah, blah. To me — knowing next to nothing about Pakistan — there's still an interesting dog that doesn't bark question: Could it be that Islamist extremists haven't been rounded up because, in fact, they've so thoroughly penetrated Musharraf's government that they're pretty much calling the shots? Dunno, just asking... And while I'm wondering about Pervez Musharraf, I can't help but think what the Tyrant's pet name for him must be...
November 2, 2007
BHL and the Zombie Left
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — The most discussed political book in France this autumn is Ce grand cadavre à la renverse, literally, "this big corpse lying on its back"), by Bernard-Henri Lévy (Grasset, Paris, 2007). It is supposed to be a book about the French left. But oddly enough, it is not really about the left, and it is not even really a political book.
Bernard-Henri Lévy is by far the most notorious of the small coterie of propagandists who, some thirty years ago, under the label of "New Philosophers", began a highly publicized campaign to reverse the anti-imperialist sentiment that had become dominant worldwide in reaction to the U.S. war in Vietnam. The war was over, and the French left was weakened by sectarian fragmentation and the collapse of unrealistic "revolutionary" expectations. The Khmer Rouge, who took power in Cambodia in the wake of US bombing and a US-backed coup d'état, engaged in the sort of "bloodbath" that had been wrongly forecast to happen in Vietnam if the United States left. By a highly publicized and emotion-laden "discovery" of the Soviet gulag over twenty years after the death of Stalin, and by focusing on the murderous aberrations of the Khmer Rouge, the New Philosophers undertook to stigmatize all left aspirations toward radical social change as inevitably "totalitarian". Against the ever-present "totalitarian threat", the United States was restored as the necessary savior of democracy and defender of human rights.
November 1, 2007
Waterboarding: A Legislative Calculation
Quiz time! What, exactly, does waterboarding entail? Looking at the preponderance of media reports I think it's fair to say that an intelligent member of the public is left with the impression that waterboarding creates a simulation of drowning. That's it. But that would be wrong. As helpfully explained by Malcolm Nance, waterboarding is carefully controlled drowning in which the victim's lungs slowly fill with water such that excruciating pain and, eventually, unconsciousness results, but where death — through attentive interventions of the operator — can be averted. The process may be repeated as necessary.
Here, administration lawyers have noticed that experts on torture have a very difficult time saying exactly what torture is, and is not. According to the experts most of the definition, most of the time, depends upon subjective conditions. But not always. Taking advantage of what ambiguity they can, nevertheless, the administration thinks it can push the definition where it wants. This may not turn out to be strictly true.
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