Nota bene on Ahmadinejad

A couple of posts ago, I talked about Juan Cole and Virginia Tilley discussing how Iran's threat to us is far, far overblown. New J-friend S' (S prime, to distinguish from the heretofore unmentioned dear and good J-friend S) knows someone who is actually a refugee from Iran, who strongly feels the Prez IS a mad, anti-semitic all-around bad guy posing a threat to Israel, Iraq, and the US, and cites first-hand many instances of oppression against the Iranian people who, she says, are not in step with the extremist views of their leader but are kept from positive stances for the US by violent means. Even though I feel that anecdotal evidence is almost never conclusive evidence, I did want to make clear that I don't disbelieve that Pres. Ahmadinejad is an all-around scary or bad guy. I guess the two points I wanted to make were: A) I staunchly disbelieve the US media's portrayal of him, and doubt that they've taken him in context on many occasions, and B) that it seems at least possible given (A), that the characterizations of Ahmadinejad have been inaccurate. Of course, the true rulers of Iran (from what I understand), the Mullahs, certainly do not seem like nice guys or, you know, advocates of freedom or anything else I believe in. I think whatever the case, they're pulling Big A's strings (tired of spelling out his name), and whether or not he is truly so anti-semitic becomes somewhat moot seeing as how the true leadership may very well be -- and is certainly tyrannical. S' pointed this out, that even if it isn't Big A but the mullahs who are the crazy violent bad guys, does it matter in terms of Iran's threat? Thinking on this, the answer is of course no... even if Big A is actually and quietly the most liberal and open-minded person ever, but he's following their orders, well, the result's the same. BUT, as the Juan Cole article I linked to in my other post reinforces, there's not particular good reason to think that they'd pose a nuclear threat. For one thing, it's unclear if they even ARE making weapons-grade uranium rather than, as is their international treaty-ratified right, making power generation uranium (light water nuclear reactors have different enrichment needs than nuclear weapons). If they are, it seems almost certain their capacity is only such that they could make a weapon years and years from now. And even if they DID have "The Bomb," I think an important question is: are the mullahs REALLY crazier than Kim Jong-Il, the Cold War Russians, or the Pakistanis and Indians in regards to their feud with each other? I mean people said that we just didn't understand, Pakistanis and Indians hated each other so much, they were WILLING to face mutual annhilation, and so a nuclear attack WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. Just cuz it hasn't yet doesn't mean it won't, but... I simply do not believe that the mullahs, any more than Hussein, Kim, Gorbachev, Brezhnev, or Pervez care so little for their own comforts or lives that they accept mutually assured destruction, or even just the destruction of their country (where would they go to be dictator, ruler, and/or wealthy statesman?). They are, as our president calls them, irrational -- but only if you are so humanistic as to regard the intentional mistreatment and oppression of any person or peoples irrational. It is horrible and reprehensible, of course, but the fact is that they're getting material benefits -- it's not irrational. Causing (as they must know it would) the destruction of their power base, their home, their resources -- I have yet to see anything, anything that proves the mullahs or Ahmadinejad are on that road.

I rant inexplicably about free will...

In response to Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, here (or more accurately, his post here). I also saw many other lucid refutations, or at least, bones of contention, many of them more cogent than mine, or at least shorter...

As some have commented, this argument is somewhat futile, not necessarily because one cannot determine whether free will exists or not, but rather because if you accept personal responsibility as real (as Adams has it), then whether or not there is free will changes *nothing.* Nada. Zip. I've just been told that my sequence of actions, including writing this post instead of working on my dissertation was, I suppose, an inevitable result of the chain of events before it. But, for the purposes of living my life in a satisfying and orderly way, I cannot therefore use that as an excuse to never work again because I "can't help it." I suppose by Adams' reasoning, my previous experiences, my biology, etc. will drive me to spend (slightly) more time working than posting to achieve various things important to me.

BUT: despite this futility, I am compelled nevertheless to rebut a little bit of Scott's reasoning.

The more interesting (I think) rebuttal is that free will as Adams' describes it doesn't seem to be possible in a universe with rational laws (not rational actors, just laws of reality). He describes it as doing something breaking the chain of causal events before it. As I'm going to explain below, there's good reason to believe that many, many things in human society actually ARE indeterminate to some extent (based on the same finding in ecological systems). Meaning: if you wound history up somehow and replayed it, events might happen differently even with the exact same starting conditions. You could call this the vagaries of probability -- because behavior at least is, I think, probablistic -- a given person may choose differently in the same situation with, again, all the same starting conditions. That is, when faced with a big mac, a given person as a dieter may have a 95% chance of eating it, and a 5% of not. Or a newly-minted vegan a 50/50 chance. Mathematically, even given a complex model of decision making, the most you could get would likely be a probablistic answer. So is falling into probablity free will? I don't know. It doesn't break the chain of causal events...

...but then, really, what does? Adams' definition of free will requires people to act at random, it would seem -- that is, at odds with their own experience or circumstance. I guess it would be something like me getting up right now and killing myself -- when I have no reason to do so. Or does it have to be more crazy? A glass of water combusting? A person becoming a bird out of choice? If it is simply that I won't jump out a window because I'm a product of all the causal factors before now, well then, non-free will is a call for an irrational universe. I mean, given free will and all other things being equal, you'd think people would act according to their will in order to satisfy themselves the most in their lives -- monetarily, sexually, etc. So this system would seem to exactly emulate our system. The only way to have a system PROVING Scott's idea of free will would seem to be people running around setting themselves on fire, deciding to become a homeless person for the rest of your life, eating poisonous food for not reason, slapping your loved ones unprovoked -- I mean, only these things seem out of line of what a person with free will would choose, if you still assume people would want to make themselves happy. The only alternative I see is if you relax that assumption, and people don't want to make themselves happy nor successful. This, in turn, is very unlikely to happen in a universe with rational laws simply because such an population of entities without any sense of self-preservation would quickly become extinct. So, as Adams' defines it, free will is impossible unless the laws of the universe themselves are variable -- similar to my ex-girlfriend's believing that altruism isn't altruism if you enjoy, or at least feel emotional rewards for, helping people . One may define true altruism as only cases where you help people, at a cost to yourself, AND not liking it/thinking it's a stupid or horrible idea, but that's such a ridiculous definition as to not be useful. Same with this.

(now, the boring part... or at leat, MORE boring part)

For, though quantum mechanics do not, as a rule, trickle up into indetermination in the macro-world, chaos mathematics creates similar indetermination to quantum mechanics. There are two forms of chaos: determinate and stochastic. The second is easier to explain: it's "noise," it's all the bunches of little chances and changes that make, say, weather, hard to predict. But famous scientist (ecologist/theoretical physicist/mathematician) Robert May showed decades ago you could also have chaos from a simple equation and a time lag. To sum up, let's compare "conventional math" to "chaos math" -- in conventional math, the underlying assumption of ALL of it is that an incredibly small change in the "inputs" of an equation will lead to proportionally small change in the output -- or more precisely, that as the change in input goes to 0, the change in output also goes to 0. Chaos math turns that around, saying that in some systems, as the input change goes infinitely close to zero, the output can change unpredictably. It turns out that this can happen even in a simple mathematical system; imagine if you have bunches of these overlayed on each other? There simply IS no determinate result. There can be probabilistic results (as in quantum physics), and people may obey these as other systems do (i.e in a large enough sample, people will come out as the stats -- 70% doing A, 30% doing B). Is that free will? I don't know.

The Massacring Civilians to save Civilians Merit Badge: Haditha Marine was recommended for a medal?

You know, it's funny to joke that the Bush Administration gives its highest honors to its most incompetent cronies. George Tenet, L. Paul Bremer and Gen. Tommy Franks were awarded medals of honor for their work in Iraq. That's right, George "Slam Dunk" Tenet, L. Paul "De-Baathification and a misplaced $9 billion" Bremer, and Gen. Tommy "We don't need any more soldiers on the ground, thank you" Franks, medals of honor. Greeeeeeat. Well, that's old news. New news to file under "WTF?":

The Marine Sergeant who led the Haditha assault where they killed two dozen Iraqi civilians was recommended for a medal for his heroism by the only Marine officer present, Lt. William T. Kallop. Sergeant Frank Wuterich has since been promoted to Staff Sergeant, and Lt. Kallop is now 1st Lt. Kallop. So even though it was only a "recommendation" (meaning it didn't get farther in the formal awarding process), both of them have been promoted since Haditha. And Kallop's description of Wuterich's "heroism" ignores, oddly enough, the entire issue of civilian deaths, instead focusing on the now-likely-to-be-fictional insurgent attack. ("There was no IED.") While established details may change as the investigations continue, it still sort of beggars belief that Wuterich was nominated for a medal, and the Lt. Kallop's report doesn't mention any civilian deaths.

At our current rate of rewarding incompetence, Clarence Thomas will be named King Regent of the World next.

Iran: Can't get fooled again?

Fool me once, shame on President Bush.

Juan Cole, U of Michigan professor and Middle East expert (and lightning rod for Rightist backlash against "experts" and their "facts") takes down the recent report on Iran's level of threat to the US -- pointing out, correctly, that there is no known evidence that they have the near-term capability to produce nuclear weapons, that many of those hyping their danger are, you know, the same types who hyped Iraq's dangers, and that the report misuses work from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which apparently said, as of last January, that "Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency, and to act as if the Additional Protocol is in force, including by providing in a timely manner the requisite declarations and access to locations." Not to mention that Iran has every legal right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy (not weapons), under treaties that it is still in compliance with (unlike the several nuclear treaties the US has opted out of under Bush II, and Israel, which has never signed the Nonproliferation Treaty -- Iran has).

Further, political scientist Virginia Tilley makes the argument that Iranian Prez Ahmadinejad hasn't been saying what you think he's saying. She makes the very believable argument that his comments on Israel and its destruction have been mistranslated and his aggressiveness towards that state and denial of the Holocaust therefore misrepresented. She cites Juan Cole, among other Middle East experts, and it is at least plausible, given that CNN did mistranslate him (and apologized for it) as saying that Iran wanted nuclear arms, when he in fact said nuclear energy. She also argues that his Holocaust comments are not denials of its existence, but rather that he has questioned its use as a rhetorical tool for Israel's aggressive "offense is the best defense"-ive reactions. Additionally, she says that knowledge on the Holocaust is less widespread than we might imagine, and that this is hardly unbelievable given, say, US citizens' ignorance (and occasional outrage) over the observably true fact that two million Vietnamese were killed in the Vietnam war -- certainly, a horrific event for the population of Vietnam, whatever you think of that particular inadvisable war. I'd also cite US ignorance over the thousands of Nicaraguans dead from Iran-Contra, the general repression of the US-supported Somoza regime there before that, Pinochet's crimes, and even our likely ignorance over the scale of the current crisis in Darfur. I, for one, can't name numbers -- only reiterate sound bites that it is/was a genocide and, you know, large and bad. So, point is, it is certainly plausible that Ahmadinejad has been nowhere near as militant as he's been portrayed. Soemthing never quite seemed right to me about the reporting on him, perhaps this is why. He's portrayed as a Kim Jong-Il type, but he really doesn't seem THAT kind of insane to me. I, as some of you, have a counter-reaction of "is she just an apologist for him, or at best taking the rosiest possible translations?" I mean, the broad point that we can't afford to underestimate dangers to us when the stakes may be substantially high is not invalid -- but we still need to have proof for things, imho. (None of the formalized insanity of the One percent doctrine for me, thank you.) So while I'm not capable of evaluating Prof. Tilley's evidence, I'm also not capable of providing any concrete evidence she's incorrect. Think about it -- is there any evidence Ahmadinejad is as militant as he's portrayed? Any proof he is crazy enough to want to attack countries that certainly can then wipe his country off the map? (I.e. the US or Israel.) Nuclear weapons have been in existence for decades, and still have only been used by... us, the US. We had our reasons (whose conclusions I question, but that's a different story). But nonetheless, in the issue of the insanity of destroying millions of people, only we have enaged in that. In the insanity of mutually assured destruction, well -- no one has ever engaged on that with nukes, and need we say that WE had the same posture on that as the USSR? Dr. Strangelove notwithstanding, we've not proved we're necessarily saner than self-concerned despots with nukes who refuse to use them so as to save their own hides. SO -- I'm just sayin', while it's too early to assume Ahmadinejad doesn't mean us harm and indeed is not the "Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who has threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map'" he's been said to be, it's also way too early to determine he IS, barring the "truthiness" we feel of an Iranian head of state being antagonistic, messianic, anti-semitic, and dangerous. Just because we looked Iran up in our gut and found it under "danger" doesn't mean that we're on our path to not being fooled again...

"Even women can have tiny dicks."

What the hell? you ask.

This the hell. In an unusually light-hearted J-post, I point to this article by Slate Ad Report Carder Seth Stevenson. Apparently, Hummer is trying to sell to the tofu set. Seth reports that new TV spots from Hummer for its H3 are aiming specifically to say, "Feel wimpy because you're the dude at the supermarket buying tofu and tempeh instead of the Fred Flintstone Brontosaurus Prime Rib? Buy a big fucking car! Now, less fucking big than before!" (It's now-shrinkaged size is I guess a selling point to tofuers: destroy the world somewhat slower than otherwise! Buy a Hummer, you Dirty Hippy! It's GOOD for the environment cuz it's SMALLER!) Seth reasonably points out that calling attention to the "I have a small penis" aspect of Hummer pop psychology may not be the best of ideas. The "women with tiny dicks" (now there's a rock band name if there ever was one) line comes from one of Seth's readers who suggests that this is the (unifying?) message of the she-version of the commercial, where a mom doesn't stand up for herself and her kid when they're pushed out of line by another kid and obnoxious mom on the playground. What does she do? Goes to buy an H3! As Seth implies, this confusing vein of you-go-girlness has apparently failed to run afoul of feminist takes as of yet. This in comparison to the rather quick backlash, apparently, to the male version that originally ended with the tagline "Restore your manhood." (Now it's "Restore the balance" -- apparently tofu shrinks your penis, but the Hummer will pump it up again like SPAM-email Cialis. Balance restored. Without the direct implication that you're a short dicked man -- or woman.)

I don't have any idea what to think about this other than "Um... ok," but I think the reader's line "Even women can have tiny dicks, and the Hummer is the cure" deserves to be repeated.

Sen. "Mentum" Lieberman: Using Bush'shit Dirty Tricks

I haven't seen much news of this in other places: Lieberman using DC Lobbyists to pose as average citizen-supporters. I found it thanks to Tom Tomorrow. Of course, MyDD's Matt Stoller (he of the first link) acknowledges that MyDD's Aldon got there first.

It has run in a story by Jennifer Manes in Connecticut's Record-Journal (at least a trial subscription necessary). As Stoller asks, will the mainstream media pick it up, though?

My guess: judging from the oh-so-extensive coverage of Bush's use of this tactic in 2000 (documented, according to journalist Eric Alterman in his book What Liberal Media?, in the Bush campaign's tax documents as they hired entertainment for their out-of-town "average Florida citizen" protesters), I'm gonna say... um, no.

Though, on The Coffee House, Nathan Newman points out that there's no particular guarantee that Lamont is a super-progressive member of Left Blogistan -- actually, there's significant evidence against this. He is, however, better tha Lieberman, and perhaps can be considered a minor good instead of lesser of evils (my words, not Newman's).

To wrap all this up, Billmon points out the Lamont still pretty much falls into the rest of the Dipshit Dems as far as the conflagration and tragedies in the Middle East, a disappointment in this area like Howard Dean, who recently took the opportunity with other Dems to chide the Iraqi Prime Minister over his critique of Israel's role in the conflict with Lebanon for insufficiently blame the Lebanese, who are rather busy getting blown up. (Hezbollah is of course acting criminally as well and busy blowing up swaths of Israel, but when 300 or so civilians have died on one side, and something like 12 on the other, well... my sympathies in general lie with the heavier civilian casualties, the people of Lebanon, who are seemingly being collectively punished by Israel. A scan of the linked document shows that both sides are perpetrators of war crimes, but the greater capacity of Israel to destroy and deprive civilian entities indiscriminately places, in my opinion, a greater burden on them -- this is a burden they themselves have taken on through their choices of targets. (Not to mention that it doesn't seem to be, you know, WORKING.) To synthesize Billmon and Newman, Lamont should be supported -- as I blogged earlier, NYT's endorsement of Lamont over Lieberman points out the nature of his actions antithetical to, in my opinion, democratic dissent and Democractic dissent -- but Lamont also should not be viewed as a great white hope. Which, you know, I don't.

If you want to be crazy, crazy like a fox, there's also the Green, Ralph Ferrucci.

Sigh. It's too bad the Greens imploded over 2004....

As the poet Bono said, "Fucking Brilliant!"

Go here: www.robmoore.com or YouTube it here.

JoeMo Lieberman: Even the Liberal New York Times Rejects Him

Even the Liberal New York Times has endorsed Ned Lamont, the Connecticut Democratic Primary challenger to Even the Liberal Joe "Mentum" Lieberman. While Lieberman, and many others in the MainStreamMedia and other outlets, characterize this as reasonable, moderate, respect-wielding Human Being aka Centrists, versus the angry, pitchfork-wielding half-feral villagers of Left Blogistan rising up against the spectre of their caricatured portrayal of "President" Bush as an evil undead monster (clearly they're one off) out of pure hatred and not, say, substantive and heart-felt moral and policy differences, the NYT lays out a series of good reasons, said in quiet tones, calmly, over breakfast with Grandma. Finally, the cowed, financially poor, set-upon Moderates can come out of hiding and return to the light of day from the heartless exile we in Left Blogistan have sent them into.

To whit, the Grey Lady says:

"As Mr. Lieberman sees it, this is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party — his moderate fair-mindedness against a partisan radicalism that alienates most Americans... That’s far from the issue. Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. And there is a reason that while other Democrats supported the war, he has become the only target. In his effort to appear above the partisan fray, he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies as the president tries to turn the war on terror into an excuse for radical changes in how this country operates... Mr. Bush continually tries to undermine restraints on the executive branch: the system of checks and balances, international accords on the treatment of prisoners, the nation’s longtime principles of justice. His administration has depicted any questions or criticism of his policies as giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. And Mr. Lieberman has helped that effort. He once denounced Democrats who were “more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq” than on supporting the war’s progress... this is no time for a man with Mr. Lieberman’s ability to command Republicans’ attention to become their enabler, and embrace a role as the president’s defender."

Let me just say: Damn straight! As quoted in the the Washington Post today, Sen. (joe)Mentum is approaching "...the final days before the Aug. 8 primary [by] summing up his message to voters this way: "Mr. and Mrs. Connecticut, I hope you'll respect me, even if you don't agree with me."

This is possibly the second-most inane thing Sen. Mentum has said. (Ok, maybe it's in a 3-way tie for third-most.) Why? BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE WANT TO VOTE FOR A SENATOR THAT AGREES WITH THEM. I respect my high school english teacher. I don't want him to be my Senator. That is to say -- it is of course important to respect your Senator, or, at least, it'd be nice to -- but to equate "respect" with "vote for" and imply that "agreeing with" him is unimportant to the voting for part... well, that's pretty fucking inane (where inane = stupid). Respect is an important first cut, but the list of people I respect is much longer than the list of people I'd vote for, and really, I neither trust nor respect nor would vote for Lieberman. He has taken many notable and important liberal positions, but his cravenness, ignorance, or megalomania -- whatever is pushing him to support Bush -- is completely unacceptable. As the NYT points out, bipartisan compromise is good and important, but in supporting a President whose policies are anathema to almost everything I stand for, he's not only compromised his values (in my opinion) but compromised mine, and those enshrined in our Constitution. I don't just disagree with Bush; I don't just really really really dislike Bush; I think he's bad for America. Respect is irrelevant to whether or not I think we're on a path to hell, pushing the rest of the world before us. I'm not a Connecticut voter, but nonetheless, let me say this: If Lieberman believes this path is the correct one and does not, in fact, lead to hell, in my opinion he deserves neither respect nor my consideration as a Democratic Senator. And by "my consideration" I mean "your consideration", assuming "you" are a "Connecticut voter."

For other Sen. Mentum-related critiques, try here, the sort of amateurish but mildly informative time-to-go-Joe here, and another NYT article about him outlining his cluelessness on how everyone DOESN'T actually like him and that he actually has to address the concerns of his Democratic constituency here.

Joe seems to have forgotten that the point of a primary is to pick someone you think has, in general, the right policies. He seems to think there's no possible reason not to vote for him other than irrational hatred of Bush. He clearly has forgotten what a small-d democracy is.

A Farcical Take on the UN

A reposting from my Slate Fray alter ego, HopefulCynic. In response to an article by the usually good John Dickerson, Good Shit: Why Bush Should Swear More. Elaboration (and fixed links) to come. For now:

Mr. Dickerson should certainly already know that the UN is most often hampered by the large amount of influence the US exerts, hampering many good perogatives even as it pushes others. Bush saying "I should tell Kofi..." is a telling phrase. Kofi Annan was made to eat his hat in the matter of Haiti (the US, from a fair few reports, was not a purely helpful partner [iamj.blogspot.com] there, for penance in his opposition to the US' position on Iraq. (And indeed, the more cautious approach advocated by many in the UN (see, i.e., France [www.carnegieendowment.org]) seems to have been warranted given the aftermath, the foreseeable [www.house.gov] lack [www.carnegieendowment.org] of threat [www.carnegieendowment.org] and "WMDs" [en.wikipedia.org].)

The UN can and should expect more monetary support and more from "Old Europe", but the fact is the US holds the pursestrings, and in many (but not all) cases, it essentially holds the UNs metaphorical balls in its hands. Clearly an intermediary between us and Syria and/or Lebanon would likely be advisable given our current popularity in the Middle East, but there was no implication given that the UN had rebuffed Bush's idea, but rather that he hadn't pushed it yet. And without the power of the US, the UN is a paper tiger (sadly, in that it depends so heavily on one country that isn't overly fond of it), so them telling Syria and Hezbollah to "cut this shit out" clearly won't happen before given the unambiguous imprimatur of the US, and likely some extensive pressure given the UN's (to my mind) more even-handed position towards Israel and its antagonists and attackers. (See my former avatar [www.slate.com] and AM-2's [www.slate.com] take on the UN and US rel'nship more generally.)

And it's disturbing, though utterly surprising, to me that Bush and Dickerson both failed to mention the very valid other side to this: Hezbollah clearly attacked and provoked Israel; Israel clearly has a right to defend itself, but: is any scale of response acceptable? And would it be in any other ally? Clearly, somewhere between "nothing" and "using the nukes it doesn't officially have" is where the most reasonable response for Israel lies. So those (like Bush and most of the media establishment) who brush off Israel's reponsibility for proportionality are essentially saying that anything between a nuke (or several) and nothing is ok. This utterly callous stance is a large reason we're not seen well in the ME, or indeed, in many other parts of the world.

Between our utter lack of concern for civilian lives in the Middle East, or more accurately, our utter lack of effective concern (saying you're trying hard is not the same as addressing failures and flaws in the trying), and the havok WE have created in Iraq, we have sent a clear message to the Arab and Muslim "street" that we don't care about their puny little lives in the scale of larger conflicts supposedly in their name, and that we will invade and occupy their states at will, our broken promises and unfulfilled visions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, that not only will armed resistance and, frankly, terrorism stymie us, but that it is perhaps the only way to stop us from doing what we will in their sovereign states or neglecting valid calls for help.

Hezbollah is not going to "cut this shit out", nor is the "street" in Lebanon going to stop supporting them, before they see some proof that collaboration with the US in this Bush era will bring some advantage, some hope, some lasting commitment, rather than forgotten promises, [www.tompaine.com] chaos, and death [www.iraqbodycount.net].

JoeMo Lieberman continues to vie for "Most Useless Person Ever"; plus, An Inconvenient Blogghorea!

See Joe fabricate and obfuscate the Karl Rovian way here, in an attempted take-down of his anti-war Democratic competitor, Ned Lamont. He accuses him of being against the Kerry Amendment before he was for it.

Not only Rovian, but apparently untrue. Sigh. What bullshit.

IN OTHER JOE-MENTUM NEWS...

...kind of, that is. His former Presidential running-mate, more precisely.

Went to see the Al Gore biopic, I mean documentary, I mean concert tour film, An Inconvenient Truth, last week. Good to see a high-profile Global-Warming-is-Real movie out there, and to see Gore coming into his own. BUT, for dear goodness' sake: this movie is as much or more about Al Gore as it is about Global Climate Change (GCC for short). Fully half the movie is about Gore's personal journey to discovering the urgency of GCC. This might be an ok approach if Gore were an "everyman", or could even play one on TV. But he goes through anecdotes of college professors and scientist friends and personally traveling to Antarctica as part of his discovery of the facts of GCC. Even this could be palatable, if it were in a journalist-type style, that is, fact-finding and questioning of experts. But in this movie, AL GORE is the "expert." Which he is, of course, for a layperson and a politician. We get action clips of him interviewing people in Congressional Hearings about Global Climate Change from the 80s. Bally for him, well done, but two questions: 1) why don't we get to hear the actual climate change experts talk about or explain some of the science? As informed as Gore may be, he's not a climatologist, and to have a hour-and-a-half long movie with little or no direct conversation with the scientists who have developed the knowledge Gore uses -- it's immodest of him (his contribution is popularizing it, not discovering it, give the workers "in the trenches" a little screen time) and unnecessary -- why have Gore explain it in a documentary when the people who have done the work themselves could easily be interviewed? (Because the movie isn't about them, it's about Al Gore, plainly, but that doesn't make it any less annoying for being obviously at cross-purposes with his vision for the movie.) Question 2) Where are the clips of the crusading Gore from between Congressional Gore and Former Next President of the United States Gore? They seem to be not there; that is to say, I'm pretty sure that among the reasons I didn't vote for the Former Next President was because none of this passion, charisma, or more importantly, chutzpah was present during his campaign. If he had been the "Global Warming Candidate" in 2000, I almost certainly would've voted for him. If he'd been the Sound Environmental Policy candidate, or the Ending US Imperialism candidate (less popular but just as important in 2000, before the Iraq invasion), or the Reforming Government Candidate, or Helping the Poor candidate, or the Sound Foreign Policy Candidate -- any of these things! But his 2000 Campaign was near content-less, and like Kerry, we, progressive Democrats, were simply meant to understand he couldn't politically afford to come across as Progressive or strongly pro-environment during the campaign, but wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know-what-I-mean-guv, if we voted for him, once in office, SURE, he'd do these things, we had to trust that his triangulating pansy-ass campaign was a Kerry-like convenient lie. Like I said of Kerry in 2004, "Don’t candidates actual policies usually reflect a thin-gruel version or even a reneging on their [campaign] promises? Is that our hope, that in John Kerry’s case, his promises really are the opposite of what he plans to do?"

This brings me to the point I was really trying to make, that being STOP WITH THE DRAFT AL GORE BULLSHIT. Al Gore the environmentalist and passionate speaker seems a great guy. I'd be fine with this guy as President -- or at least hopefuly. BUT THIS IS NOT AL GORE THE CANDIDATE. Not only has he said he's not running, he's only become this "fiery" speaker 6 years after he last ran. He did start getting pretty kick-ass about 3 years ago in acting more progressive, but even that is a substantial remove from holding or running for public office. This is not the Al Gore we saw as Vice or as Candidate, the guy who had Joe "Mentum" Lieberman, recently a plausible choice for a SecDef successor, as his running mate. HE HAD JOE LIEBERMAN AS A RUNNING MATE. I'd almost forgotten that until he showed him & Lieberman in 2000 during the movie -- why remind us, Al? Geez, I was just starting to like you.

Bottom line, pesos'll get you dollars the Gore the Re-Candidate wouldn't be ANYTHING like Gore the Former Next President. Like I said, people who are running campaigns tend to embellish their stances and make promises they have little intention of keeping. What kind of follow-through would you expect from someone who is making promises while they're not even running? Sorry, I just don't buy that Gore was a stealth progressive in 2000, or would run as a true progressive in 2008. He runs again, I guarantee you, he'll be running away from An Inconvenient Truth as youthful folly or something.

(deep breath)

Ok, sorry, I just have ZERO confidence that Gore-the-now-Entertaining-Public-Speaker and Crusader is anything like Gore the candidate.

And lastly, in terms of my problems with the movie -- not only does Al not talk to any experts other than himself (with many clips of him greeting and welcoming cheering crowds worldwide), he uses his family farm to illustrate the tragedies of global warming. Now, the part where he talks about his family growing tobacco until his sister Nancy died (a skeptical take on this move here, but I'm going to give Gore a benefit of a doubt here anyawy) was a beautiful illustrative story about the hard choices "normal" people have to make in supporting a larger flawed commercail system. But when he keeps coming back to the farm, talking about how the river is going down, the effects global warming is having there... his transition to clips of Hurricane Katrina just makes all the more stark the spoiled, navel-gazing aspect of this part of the movie. That is, why show us your river going down? Why not talk to people of less material means than the Gore family about what their experiences are? When you talk about Katrina, why not ask Katrina victims what they think about global warming and the problems it may be causing them and others on the coast in the future? See if they see the connection, what they think of the proof? Why you talk about typhoons in Asia, why not ask Asians about it? And why not interview some people like those where I do my work, in Brazil, who have noticed that the rainy season is getting later and later and later in the year (it used to be expected to start September/October-ish; now, November/December is not uncommon, and the rains are less predictable. They tell me it was a record difficult year this year, with little regular rain between November and March, with not really so much a rainy season as a drought with heavy, sometimes-damaging downpour at unpredictable times. While not in the same league of tackiness, Gore's self-focused take on this smacks a bit too much of Bush's take on Katrina for me: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." Oh yes, horrible tragedy, but I look forward to fixing the problems of rich people like my friend Trent Lott, who lost stuff in this disaster. 'cuz everyone there can afford to rebuild, right? My mom says they're better off this way.

Sigh. In conclusion, don't draft Al Gore. Nothing'll make him run away from being an outspoken national figure faster.

-J

Something New This General Direction Comes...

Five points to anyone who recognized that horribly mangled quote, used really for the opposite of its original sense. (Hint: IV 1.45.)

That is, rather than wickedness, a general goodness is on its way in the form of my article getting published -- well, my group article, I'm fifth author. Still exciting. The title is "Can Organic Agriculture Feed the World?" (The short answer is yes. The long answer -- read the article.) It's in press, meaning god knows when it'll be in print. Look for it in your next issue of "Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems" (which despite the hippy title is a very well-established journal, formerly the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture. ISI puts its Impact factor at 0.595, which is in the top ten of its category -- "Agriculture, Multidisciplinary"). This may seem extremely arcane to the outsider -- and that's only because it is. Sort of. That is, this is not the type of thing one would stumble across as a lay person, but it's not an out-of-the-way journal, and a story of this importance (not to be aggrandizing) will hopefully be picked up by the MSM [mainstream media]. For those interested, it's already been mentioned prominently in an article in the May/June 2006 edition of WorldWatch Magazine by J-acquaintance Brian Halweil.

The fact that it's arcane to the layperson is, to me, one of the profound tragedies (and flaws) of academia. I seem to be one of the few quasi-aspiring academics who view it as an essential duty to reconnect their work to the actual community-at-large. Or, perhaps "few" is misleading -- vanishingly small percentage. Lots of us do see this essential, but not the vast majority. As my friend Dan and I once commented, if Chemical Engineering professors were forced to explain their work clearly to lay people on a regular basis in order to continue receiving support, they'd have to kill themselves. Chemical engineering is arcane to chemical engineers. It seemed to be a truism in undergrad ChemE that it required a graduate level understanding of chemical engineering to understand undegraduate chemical engineering. That would seem to me to be a pretty profound pedagogical failure...

Anyway, future rants on academia notwithstanding, I'll let it be known when our article is actually published by giving forth a great hue and cry of wonder and delight. And, by adding a blog entry.

-J

Well, that's good. Er, bad. I mean, good... No, ok, definitely bad.

So it appears that a Yale study forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics finds evidence that White Republican voters are 25% more likely to vote for a Democratic Senatorial candidate when the Republican candidate is black, assuming, of course, that the Dem. candidate is White, too.

At first glance, I was like, "Well, good! If you're going to be seemingly racist, it's best that this at least helps the party I marginally prefer!" Of course, thinking about it further, I think if I had all-powerful choices over time, space, and reality, that I would choose instead to live in a world where they were, seemingly, 0% more likely to vote for white Democratic guy or gal just because, they're, you know, white. This tendency strikes me as a bad thing.

And to stop me from taking any kind of schadenfreude from this, "In House races, white Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black," the Washington Post story says. Wellllll, I'm not seeing any upside for any part of society here, except perhaps the Prussian Blue sisters.

(P.S. The Prussian Blue sisters: Geeeeeeaaaaachhhh. Fucking disTURBING.)

Meanwhile, on page two of the WaPo story, apparently Las Vegas is a haven for sexual de-humanization of women. Who knew? But seriously, this article sounds much more troubling with the use of the word "decapitation"...

Which would be much more troubling in its classic meaning, but in this case (and still troubling, just, less so) it refers to the practice of portraying scantily clad women on billboards as headless bodies -- that is, their head is "off-screen" off the top of the billboard I imagine, so they become only some tits and an improbably flat stomach. And my quasi-namorada (yes, another J-quasi) here thought sexism was mostly gone in the US... Of course, besides any other methodological hitches, it may be that Las Vegas is not the best representative, generalizable sample pool, given its being home to the most excessive of American excess.

Meanwhile, apparently Republicans have gotten ensared in another dust up where the White House is seemingly involved in illegal chicanery. Apparently, a Republican operative who played a key role in jamming the phones of a Democratic call center and an (assumedly) non-partisan Firepersons get-out-the-vote mission during elections in New Hampshire in 2002, also made a flock of phone calls to President Por Vida, Herr GW Bush. The Rep. National Committee (RNC) is paying for the legal bills for this guy, James Tobin, even though it has no technical obligation to. RNC Chair Ken Mehlman says that it wasn't on his watch that this shady decision was made, but he does feel the honorable thing to do is to continue paying the bills. It's unclear from the WaPo article exactly who did what, but it seems that the Regional Director for the RNC has already been convicted of something, and this Tobin fellow and two others have already plead guilty in the case. It's also unclear whether or not this was a felony case (a Democratic attorney implies it is, but this is not the best-written article I've ever seen).

What IS clear: Ken Mehlman's standing up for this pack of convicted and admitted criminals. What a mensch.

Shnikey!

It's hard to believe this many US ex-generals are chewing Rummy out, and seemingly publicly.

Of course, this, and the continued revelations about Bush and him being a lying scumbag apparently still isn't enough to convince politicians other than Russ Feingold, or a majority of Americans, to consider impeaching Bush (though a majority do now support censuring him in some way, according to WaPo). (Washington Post.) Sweet goodness and light, preserve the fuck out of us.

In other news, in my continuing "Where da ladies at?" series, featuring shout-outs to countries who've actually managed to achieve statutory equality to the point of electing a female head of state, big ups to South Korea, though apparently, I'm somewhat unique in, you know, giving a shit about this, judging from the number of big news organizations popping up in my Google Search. (In-post correction lazily made instead of changing post: Seemingly, Ms. Han has only been nominated and is not yet confirmed as PM, though she is expected to be. I'm sure that explains the lack of news splash in the MSM...)

Now the US is just looking ridiculous.

Liberia has its first elected woman head-of-state, Chile this year, too, and of course countries like the UK, Ireland and India (off the top of my head) have had us beat for decades.

What set me off on this again? Yah, mon, it's Jamaica.

Hopefully she's not actually an evil corporatist -- the predominant identification of Jamaica's past PMs, IMHO.

I've got your Muslims condemning violence RIGHT HERE. No really, I do.

Thanks to everyone in reader-land who kept the faith and has checked this poor, benighted blog. Understandably, "ratings" have slumped -- no more of the heady days of over 100 people per month for me!!! -- but I welcome you back to the teeniest of a tidbit, hopefully, the beginning of, you know, more posting in the future.

Viva la Revolución!

Now, read this, cited most excellently and with my thanks, to this.

This stems from an excellent article by Amartya Sen on Slate (link to come) and many idiots (and a few thoughtful-but-wrong people) and my responses during what should be ant identifying time.

Ta everyone! Happy Pagan Renewal Festival! I mean Easter!

J

US, what's that behind your back?

"Oh, it's Haiti and a number of other countries..."

Wow, even the liberal New York Times has reported about the US shenanigans in Haiti now ("Mixed US Signals Helped Tilt Haiti to Chaos"). Democracy Now carried a similar story not too long ago on how Canada and the US had no intention of helping support democracy in Haiti, and certainly not an Arisitide-headed democracy, and therefore helped push that government off the cliff.

What's shocking (in the since of moral outrage, not in the sense of surprising) about all this is not so much that US talk of fostering democracy is bunk, and doesn't even extend too far beyond our own southern shores into the Carribean, but that the continued outrages and failures of Haiti are the epitome of the fault of the colonial empires. It was the second country in the Americas to declare independence from colonial powers, after the US. Yet did we help our poorer, blacker partner in the principles of liberty? Did we support their attempts at self-rule then? No, of course not -- they remained politically isolated for decades, in an attempt to kill and quell the independence of a predominately-black nation. The first and oldest free black nation in this hemisphere, and it is also the poorest, the most downtread and mal-used.

Haiti deserves so much more from each and every one of us -- and more attention by the Black American Cogniscenti, too. It followed us in independence, and we tried to starve, drown, dominate, subjugate, ignore, and now subvert them. It's shameful if unsurprising that the US wouldn't support a free black nation in the centuries past. It is shameful and horrible and a betrayal of our supposed principles beyond belief that we do not truly do so today. It is our closest sibling in independence; we treat it like our bastard Negro step-child on a plantation of old.

Also in keeping...

...With last year, we present a bouquet of non-resource intensive atypical non-clichéd flowers for L's birthday.

Aka: reposted web flowers.








Flowers are from (respectively):
Stellenbosch writer Jim Holmes and Monique Twine, © Jim Holmes

Ian Leslie Harr from Exotic and Ecologic Photography

Vivian and Erhard, from a German webpage of the same name

Dorothy Berg of the Florida Council of Bromeliad Species

Rhett Butler of his Brasil section of Mongabay.com

And, this last beautiful shot which is not a flower at all, from Sue Wren at Mongabay.com.

Happy Belated B-Day. I wasn't on time, but I'm putting my heart into it.

A Post for An Audience of One, Part Two

Following in the steps last year's belated birthday wish for J-Friend L, this year we wish to offer a happy birthday to dear L a little less belatedly, though nonetheless inadeuqately punctually. That is to say: I am an ass.

Happy Birthday!!!!

This year's happy stuff (as opposed to last year's post-MLK day MLK information): Violence in the world is down. This being a trend of the past couple decades, as large regional conflicts are ceding way -- perhaps the UN really IS successful, contrary to all the naysayers????? Exciting thought -- I have absolutely no proof, but it can't hurt that it's more fully dedicated itself to peacekeeping and humanitarianism of a different type and region since post WWII reconstruction, and for the last two decades, exactly the type of large scale wars the UN is (in theory) meant to prevent are declining.

Also, of course, evolution & science won in Dover.

Jon Stewart will host the Oscars. (This may end up not being a good thing, but for the sake of attempting to find mitigating cheerfulness to counter recent J-assishness, we'll ignore that and assume he'll be scathing, topical, humble, and correct, and a dazed Hollywood will find itself caring about something besides itself on Oscars night.)

The whole Citgo/Venezuela thing where Hugo Chavez (prez of Venezuela) has been donating heating oil to our nation's poor.

Um, and, oh yeah, the Colbert Report (finally viewed on J-Parents' overpriced cable rather than the overpriced home cable J refuses to pay): funnier and much more well-directed than expected; completely as scathing as expected. Nice.

Oh, and last, school vouchers were deemed unconstitutional in Florida. Assuming L shares some of J's distaste for vouchers, then yay.

Soooo... these are no MLK kick-ass quotes for the 2006, but they're somethin'.

Happy Birthday, dear friend.

-J

David Letterman Teabags Bill "60% Crap" O'Reilly

Calloo, callay, take a look at this today (requires RealPlayer; general Late Show clippage here). From David Letterman's Late Show, the apolitical sarcastic ass of a host (I mean that in the nicest possible way) gets fed up with the partisan, unintentionally ironic, literal-minded conservative ass (I mean this in the viciousest possible way), Bill O'Reilly. (And if you want a link to O'Reilly's stuff, go find it yo dayyam self.)

You have to give this to O'Reilly: in this case, he reacted much better to criticism than, say, against Al Franken (or to B-O'R, "Stuart Smalley") or Jeremy Glick.

Feliz Ano Novo, Feliz Ano Nuevo, Happy New Year!

Hey All,

Sorry to end last year on a bit of a down note -- though it's really good that violence in the world is down, really really good! Even if I was smart-assedy about it and used it to explore the Bush Administration's continued Iraqi * pogrom.

So some news in a similar vein -- some profound quotes from J-fave 2 Political Junkies. The first is from atrios via 2PJ, concerning our new democracy under dear leader GW:

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative... By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn't (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability... 2005 was the year the president declared he was the law, and few of our elite opinion makers and shapers bothered to notice, or care.

Second, a nice bit by Kurt Vonnegut on 2PJ:

... I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human reace at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the First World War. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people, too. I am a veteran of the Second World War and I have to say this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse."

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

Ok... not so cheery... but profound.

Go with Goodness, my friends. With God, with Good, or whatever you believe in, go with righteousness and humility, compassion and reason, humanity and activism, into the new year, dear fellow travelers.

Good News! We've got Peace on Earth. Next: Goodwill towards all.

A nice little year-end piece by Timothy Noah of Slate outlines the "Peace Epidemic." (His words, not mine, or at least, his editor's.) Unlike, say, a bird flu epidemic, this is a very pleasant thing. Apparently, violence in the world has gone down! (Linked Refs: Washington Post, Human Security Report 2005.) This, of course, belies the impression we can't help but get from the Bush Administration, that these are uniquely perilous times. Danger is eminent, real, and can only be stopped by sacrificing our civil liberties -- according to our Dear Leader.

As Noah points out: Terrorists, yes, bad, potentially very deadly. BUT: war, genocide, state-sponsored killings: also bad and potentially deadly, and on the decline. In point of fact: these things are MORE deadly, historically, than terrorism. There have been around 3,000 deaths from terrorism since 9/11. These deaths are to be mourned, certainly. But considering the perhaps 100,000 Iraqis killed in our War on Iraq -- Bush himself has admitted as many as 30,000 likely have died -- well. We've likely killed ten times more civilians in our war on terror as was lost in 9/11. Are these lives to be discounted because they are Iraqi? Are they to be discounted because we're pursuing a goal that may save, erm, one tenth the number of lives it's costing? Are they somehow discounted by the thousands dying in Sudan while we pursue our ambiguous goals in Iraq to the exclusion of stopping genocide in Africa?

In other words: EVEN IF WE WERE STOPPING TERRORISM BY FIGHTING IN IRAQ, WE'RE GOING AFTER THE WRONG GOAL. The world is safer, and terrorism, while not to be ignored, is still at its worst a minute part of the preventable deaths going on in the world.

When over a billion people are malnourished in the world, and six million children dying each year from hunger, why in goodness's name is our focus on terrorism? When the equivalent of most of New York City dies each year in terms of children only, should our money go primarily towards averting terrorism (where the most deadly attacks to date have killed thousands, and the most deadly imaginable, nuclear attacks, are not being address at all by our current program/pogrom), or should it go towards feeding children in a world where there's enough food per capita and children are certainly starving in conditions that even the most uncompassionate conservative must admit are not of their own fault or making?

Happy New Year, World. Unless we stop Bush's madness, our increasing Peace On Earth is Dead.

Long Live Peace on Earth.

Virginity Fraud???

File under Useless Things You Probably Wish I Hadn't Told You. William Saletan of Slate.com in his Human Nature column today highlights the growing Re-hymenation industry:

Business is booming in "revirgination," i.e., hymen reattachment. Cost: $2,000 to $5,000. Unmarried immigrant women are getting it to avoid family disgrace by hiding the fact that they've lost their virginity. Married women are getting it (along with vagina-tightening surgery) to thrill husbands on their anniversaries. Objection from the left: It's female genital mutilation. Objection from the right: It's virginity fraud.

I think this calls for a Patented J-AHHHHHH.

AHHHHHHH.

As far as I can tell, there's no free way to get to the Wall Street Journal article on-line without subscribing (i.e. in this case, paying). Using the magical power of being a grad student I got to the article.

Take it from me and J-Friend Lindsay, under no account should you get to the article.

Here's a preview that the sane among you should take as warning enough:

It's the ultimate gift for the man who has everything," says Ms. Yarborough, 40 years old, a medical assistant from San Antonio.

Gynecologists are marketing hymenoplasty in magazines, local newspapers and online. They report business is booming.

Religious groups that value abstinence until marriage say hymen repair is a deception. (Their frickin' problem with hymenoplasty is HONESTY? Not, i.e., the fact that "Some feminists liken hymenoplasty to female genital mutilation." Gee, who knew religious groups weren't tapped into deconstructionist post-modern feminism? --ed.)

"Revirgination" costs as little as $1,800 at Ridgewood Health and Beauty Center, a spa and cosmetic-surgery center in the New York City borough of Queens. To promote the procedure, the center's owner, Cuban-born Esmeralda Vanegas, has given away hymenoplasties on a Spanish-language radio station.

"Losing your virginity is like losing a member of your family," Ms. Vanegas says. "We can make it seem like nothing ever happened."

"I thought it would add that extra sparkle to our marriage," says the woman.

Ok, so maybe those don't appear so bad. But I warn you: we didn't get to the part about how "midwives used to disguise a broken hymen with a needle and thread, sometimes using membrane material from goats and other animals."

Need I say more? GOAT HYMEN.

This sounds almost like a cautionary tale against pre-marital sex by itself. "'Don't give yourself to your man until you are married, or else the GOAT HYMEN will get you,' my old Aunt Baruska warned me before we came to the New World, fire in her eyes, as animals whickered and whinnied and stirred in the night."

So, my readers, go forth and sin no more, else this Old World Terror come claim you late in the night.






P.S. Is anyone else reminded of the Sneetches?

“My friends”, he announced in a voice clear and clean, “My name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean. And I’ve heard of Your troubles. I’ve heard you’re unhappy. But I can fix that I’m the Fix-It-Up Chappie. I’ve come here to help you. I have what you need. And my prices are low. And I work with great speed. And my work is one hundred per cent guaranteed!”

Perhaps that's Dr. Sylvester McMonkey McBean?

On reflection, probably not a name that would inspire hymenoplastic-trust.



Ok.

I'm done now.



P.P.S. Someday real blogging will resume. Really. Honestly.

Some day.

Never suck this man's carrot.

A scary, scary travelogue here with a prominent California resident as a lecherous Rio de Janeiro tourist (sadly, playing the role of "Himself").

Also: never, ever, vote this man into high elective office, and not just because of his Farrah hair.

Oh, wait, too late.

A Brief Bit of Mega-blogging

I'm a pretty meager blogger right now. And the amount of work a PhD requires (who knew?) seems to preclude me resuming my previous productivity any time soon. (The time then was debatably better otherwise spent, as well.)

Until such time as I can resume my own trenchant, highly relevant, witty, urbane, and modest commentary and analyses, I return to my old standby, Slate.com.

First, from today's Today's Papers, we find out that the US Gov't, not content to buy commercials and hire (psuedo-) intellectuals to hype itself at home, but now it's spreading santorum, er, US democracy's vital dubious government-funded propaganda in Iraq as well!!! Yay!!! Go, Democracy!

In other (bad, what else?) news, also from Slate.com, Fred Kaplan has cogently analyzed the new(ish) Bush strategery for Iraq, and found it wanting.

"Let's put it this way: If the war in Iraq truly were as serious as the wars against Nazism and Communism, then where is the military draft, where is the trillion-dollar defense budget, where are the steps to put the entire economy on war footing, where is the all-out effort to train thousands of officers and intelligence analysts in the relevant foreign languages? Bush cannot equate the war in Iraq with the 20th century's wars for Western civilization—and yet insist that it requires no sacrifice except from the brave members of our all-volunteer armed forces." (emphasis added)

"The American occupation itself is strengthening, legitimizing, and radicalizing the insurgency. This fact—acknowledged by nearly everyone but the president—is what makes the issue of troop levels so complex: Our troops are, in one sense, fighting the insurgents and making Iraq more secure; but in another sense they're bolstering the insurgents and making Iraq less secure. The net effect—both of the continued occupation and of a withdrawal—is debatable, but the president will fail to engage the debate as long as he pretends the dilemma doesn't exist."

Ahhhh.

Finally, in addition to ignoring problems and trying to hire people to say those same problems are actually pluses, the government (and the media) is returning to the fact that we have/have not/have/have not/well, ok, we have used chemical weapons in Iraq. Specifically, what is essentially Napalm II (note that this story is from over a fucking YEAR ago!!), and we've used white phosphorus, usually used for illumination, to much the same effect. Jesus H. Christ, people, when will Joann and Joe Average stand up and say THIS is NOT OK???? (warning: 2nd link refers to extremely graphic proof of our use of person-melting incendiaries in Iraq -- and on what one has a hard time believing are not primarily -- if not solely -- civilian, human "collateral damage" beings).

And you want a real fucking trip? Try searching Google News (or anywhere else) and see just how many publications you recognize reporting on this. Hmmm? How many prominent outlets have reported on this CONFIRMED story that's been exposed and still happening on the ground for over a YEAR? It's worth noting: we've (the US gov't) admitted to using these... see the links above, especially the one from Globalsecurity.org, which contains our government's convenient parsing our use of such vile weapons thusly:

"The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel.

Officials said that if journalists had asked about the firebombs their use would have been confirmed. A spokesman admitted they were 'remarkably similar' to napalm but said they caused less environmental damage.

But John Pike, director of the military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said: 'You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of any other country that uses it.' Marines returning from Iraq chose to call the firebombs 'napalm'."

There is, of course, a treaty against just this sort of thing, which, surprisingly, the US has signed AND ratified, but reserved for itself an exception to the rules when the party it's fighting against hasn't signed the treaty. (In this case: Hussein's Iraq, AND present-day Iraq. If I were them -- the Iraqi government -- I'd get signing.) I guess the argument is that our principles only attach if everyone follows our principles... which makes the idea of "bringing democracy" a little complicated, no? We'll bring it to you, not only at gunpoint, but using tactics illegal in countries with nominal democracies. That is: IF YOU'RE REPRESSED, WELL, SORRY, BUT YOUR POPULATION IS FAIR GAME FOR MELTING. (Of course, along with Somalia, the US also reserves for itself the privelege of not agreeing to the human rights of children. Even if one thinks it would redundant for us to ratify it (I don't), what is the possible point of joining Somalia in being the only ones in the world NOT TO?)

Well, folks, our time is up. I didn't even get to the death squads.

That's right.

DEATH. SQUADS. (Gee, I remember those. Surely a coincidence that Negroponte was ambassador to Iraq for a time, right....?)

Fuck.

Ok, I'm going to go lie down until my head stops spinning with horribleness. (And hope that J-Meta-Quasi-Girlfriend decides to drop two hyphenated adjectives.)

The Strangest Place

For racism, the last place I'd think to look would be PRI/BBC's The World. I'll get links up here to the specific stories in a couple days, but one was on aid from foreign countries for US and Hurricane Katrina. I guess in this case, "racist" isn't the right word, but rather perhaps Eurocentric or extremely BIASED towards junk propaganda, but in any case: talking about 3rd world countries donating money and resources back TO the US (since they are usually aid receivers), the host mentioned poor countries like Bangladesh giving some money to the US out of good will, and solidarity, and other feelings of bonhomie. But for countries we're politically unhappy with, in this case, Venezuela and Cuba, they said there may have been ulterior motives involved. Some expert they brought in gave offensive conjecture about Fidel Castro and his Foreign Secretary chomping on their cigars and laughing at the US because of the diplomatic conundrum Castro's offer of 1500 doctors put the Bush Admin in. (In case you're inclined to agree: Cuba's health system is so good, the hardly-communist World Bank has sent reps there to study how they dealt with AIDS, and the even-less-communist US itself sends, or at least sent until Bush II Term 2, medical school students to Cuba to observe their system frequently. In fact, crazy-craze John Bolton's allegations of bio-weapons in Cuba have almost universally been debunked, observing that international observers to a person say that what he claimed were weapons were indeed simply the advanced pharmaceutical facilities they said it was.) (Nota bene: Further, we turned down the doctors, presumably for political reasons, since Cuban doctors have been sent abroad many times and are, as I implied, well respected internationally for their prowess.) (Links to come, in spades.) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, against whom Crazy-Craze Pat Robertson recently issued a fatwa, offered to send oil (which I think we eventually accepted), and The World reported that he would simply love to curry favor from the US. (Not that this is not true, but it is insulting when pretending that this realpolitik somehow differs from Bangladesh or other countries' -- that is, as if those others gave from the heart and not out of desire for goodwill FROM the US into the future, whereas Chavez is just a lowlife giver hoping something in return.) Since our government has repeatedly charged him with being anti-democratic, when he's been democratically elected 3 TIMES (once a pleibiscite at our insistence eventually declared clean by international observers including ex-Prez Jimmy Carter's group) and after we lukewarmly SUPPORTED a coup against him that was clearly illegal and unconstitutional and what's more, undesired by most of the population i.e. the POOR PEOPLE.

The second example of The World's craziness was yesterday's story of mad defrauding of Iraq by some of its former pols, specifically, some $800 million from the Defense Ministry (if I remember correctly). The host asked if this was a unique case, or just like general "graft in the 3rd World." IN THE 3RD WORLD?!!????? aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. Beyond the fact that graft and greed aplenty occurs in the 1st World, they wondered at the size of this debacle, with NARY A MENTION OF THE LARGEST DEFRAUDINGS OF ALL TIME, WHICH WERE EXPOSED A SCANT FEW YEARS AGO -- they were in the private sector, but with publicly traded companies -- as much a violation of the people's rights as any government that was INSTALLED BY US undemocratically. (The Iraqi defrauding took place during L. Paul Bremer's late and unlamented Interim Coalition Authority and the Iraqis they appointed to lead the country -- no mention of it occurring on our watch, though!) To add heinous insult to subtle injury, the reporter said that much of the money ended up being defrauded through no-bid contracts. But surely, says the host, no-bid contracts have some pedigree as legitimate, after all, they were extensively used by the Coalition Authority to award contracts to Halliburton and others. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. This same Halliburton that has been widely reported to HAVE SWINDLED THE US GOVERNMENT, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND OUR TROOPS IN THE FIELD??!!!!???? This host must be: a) an incredibly biased ideologue (medialogue?) staying on message, b) really really dumb, and/or really, really uniformed, or c) tryiing to be weakly ironic by pointing out another case where fraud is KNOWN to have happened (and it seems to me likely it was on a similar scale) and hoping his guest would point it out so that his ass-covering "neutral" self wouldn't have to. It sounded to me, however, most like A or B. Ahh.

Just cuz the short memory of the American people has slipped past the numerous reports of Halliburton's malfeasance, DOESN'T MEAN IT NEVER HAPPENED. Ah P.S. Ahhhhhhhh.

Speaking of ideologues, I know that I've thought that David Brooks has lost his mind, but wow... Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson reportedly (reportedly since I can't find the primary source) said of the President's speech: "[Bush's] line that 'racism causes poverty,' and that federal spending is the solution to that" is "not conservative" and "to hear a purportedly conservative President say that is unreal." Racism of course is not the cause of modern poverty, at least, not in its blatant form, but rather in institutional racism, which some don't seem to believe, or which Tucker Carlson (and, sadly his liberal guests) don't appear to have heard of. Chuck D, Rachel Maddow (two Unfiltered alumni!) both were unable to answer his questions about how a predominately black city, with a black mayor and predominately black first responding force, and a governor elected with a lot of black votes, could possibly be racist. (Apparently he's never read Norm Stamper*.)

Sigh.

I hate it when people who agree with me, and, effectively, represent my views on the national media just don't seem well-informed on how things actually work (or at least are believed to actually work by us reality-based lefties).

*From a story about Norm Stamper, former Seattle Police chief:

"His voice gained credence on the San Diego force as a series of enlightened chiefs came to power that, with Stamper's help, made the department nationally famous. One, Bill Kolender, called for an investigation of racism in a troubled graveyard patrol squad. He assigned Stamper, then a captain, to the task. The year was 1976. What he found, as described in Breaking Rank, was shocking. Thirty out of 31 officers admitted to using racial epithets and demeaning terms. The use of the N-word was just the start. Officers said they radioed "no human involved" for a situation involving blacks, or used the code for an injured animal. One cop refused to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a black woman. Another sang, "Mammy's little baby loves shortnin', shortnin',"to a suspect in the back seat of his patrol car. The only black officer on the squad fell into a weeping jag when he admitted that he went along with it all."

From the The Seattle Weekly; see also Mr. Stamper on CSPAN's booknotes.

Quick Bits: More Roberts and More

The aforementioned (previous post) article by Dahlia Lithwick of Slate Magazine, Humble Fie outlines how Judge Roberts, essentially, "sees almost no role for courts as remedial institutions. Judges should limit themselves to interpreting the law, parsing statutes, and nothing more. Anything else, he feels, is overreaching." This may sound staid and solid, but think about how often the courts ARE used remedially: to correct non-enforcement of environmental regulations, to promote and enforce civil rights (desegregation, Roe v. Wade, job discrimination, housing discrimination), to (hopefully) enforce limits on corporations who are legally people but seem to be held to lower standards (like the freedom of speech to lie), to enforce fair process for those illegally detained (i.e. the still largely-uncharged Guantanamo Bay prisoners, who despite supposedly being "bad people" contains many civilians and a number of children, none of whom have had evidence presented to back up their presumed badness) -- no roll for the courts? Some argue that the actions of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Topeka may have had a laudable result, but perhaps irresponsibly freed Congress from addressing race (presumably for a better result). This Congressional Supremacy of our elected officials is one of the more bizarre ideas that have come up in conservative discourse, in my opinion. This is because the judges are unelected and making decisions that effect us. But they're meant to be unelected, such that they are not affected by public swings of opinion but rather serve as an independent guarantor of our rights. And they can be impeached, by our elected officials, meaning if we have so much control over them that apparently they are a more perfect embodiment of our democratic desires than judges, if and when we want judges our our elected officials should get them out. A conservative (I'm guessing) argues here about too-expansive judicial powers, but concludes feebly that Congress simply have "no understanding of the proper use of impeachment." But I thought Congress was so responsive to citizen demands! The conservative also makes a silly argument about Congress being better than the judiciary on race relations, giving very real examples of Supreme Court fuck-ups -- but they were fuck-ups of course that I think on the whole represented the general feeling of the people in the US to some extent (i.e. the various rulings sustaining slavery by the court) and s/he ignores completely Congress' long-time fucking about with rights (the long, long process to finally get a civil rights bill passed during the flagrant CR violations of Jim Crow, much less John Quincy Adams fighting the gag rule against talking about slavery, or the simple fact that Northern Republicans proposed eliminating slavery in the Constitution, but instead were banned from eliminating slave trade for 20 years, and then of course it took about a century with trying to avoid Congress rarely the radical step abolitionists wanted before Independence. Meanwhile, in 1772, British courts ruled slaves escaped to Britain could not be deported back to the country where they were slaves against their will, and implied more generally that a slave had rights and personhood.

Anyway, that is to say, courts: not all bad. Roberts: pretty bad. Congress: not all good.

Roberts: Don't Be Fooled By the Lack of Substantive Information

Or, that is, lack of substantive information getting through the press.

Here's the J-take from a letter I've sent to my Senators:

I am writing as a constituent of yours to implore you to reject the nomination of John Roberts as Supreme Court Chief Justice, using a filibuster if necessary, based on not only disturbing, and outside-of-the-mainstream conservative views, but also on ethical grounds.

What troubles me the most about the Roberts nomination is his behavior in the Hamdan case. As he was deliberating this case in the D.C. Court of Appeals, he was also secretly meeting with one of the defendants in the case to interview for a job. That defendant, of course, was President Bush, and the job in question is that of Supreme Court justice -- a job offer that requires your consent to be final. And his ruling in Hamdan supported a far too expansive view of executive power, a view in my case that is unconstitutional and frankly, frightening, a view allowing un-American detentions and even severe human rights abuses.

If confirmed as chief justice, John Roberts would be the most powerful judge in America for decades to come. If he can't clearly understand and apply the ethical guidelines that mandate he recuse himself from a case concerning a potential future employer, how can we ever trust him as a fair and impartial arbiter of the nation's laws? This is beyond duck-hunting with the Vice President. Judge Roberts has already demonstrated that he will put his own interests -- and those of the Bush Administration -- above the impartial ethics required of someone in his position. Political expediency vs. impartial ethics
and rulings is a recurrent theme in the Supreme Court -- and he has made his stance on that clear.

I'm also deeply troubled by what I know about Mr. Roberts so far -- including his viewpoint on a "so-called right to privacy," his dissembling with regards to Federalist society membership, and apparent inclinations to strike down national environmental laws based on a narrow interpretation of the commerce clause.

As one can see here (link: http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/2005/09/bush-nominates-roberts-as-chief.html), or from Slate magazine's Dahlia Lithwick here (link: http://www.slate.com/id/2125469/?nav=ais) Judge Roberts seems to think that
civil rights, by and large, are not an appropriate area for the judiciary to intervene, when often it has been the last resort, or the only resort, for those overlooked in our society. From the Christian Science Monitor (link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0823/p02s01-uspo.html) he:

Believe[s] the Constitution empowers Congress to strip the US Supreme Court of jurisdiction in controversial areas such as desegregation, school prayer, and abortion. (Though he also wrote that any congressional effort to do so would be
"bad policy.") Nevertheless, such a broad view of Congress' power is startling in these days of a Republican-controlled Congress, willing to pass legislation to attempt to cut off the courts' repeated findings for _one_ person (Terri Schiavo) and with primarily the Court standing between the President and his claims of near absolute executive wartime powers.

? Was a strong advocate for presidential power, ranging from the commander in chief's ability to wage war without interference from Congress, to the president's authority to make recess appointments in in the face of congressional opposition.

? Consistently adopted narrow interpretations of civil rights and voting rights.

? Generally favored law enforcement over the rights of criminal defendants.

? Believed silent prayer in public schools did not necessarily violate the First Amendment's establishment clause.

Therefore, I ask that you oppose the nomination of Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. I ask that you communicate your views on this matter to me as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

This was adapted from a form letter from "Working for Change" -- or, I guess, technically ActForChange, a MoveOn-like group that allows one, like MoveOn and TrueMajority, to quickly send off letters to your Congresspeople, and encourages coordinated phone-calling drives to our Congresspersons when a necessarily urgent cause arises. (And for those of you who occassionally claim that none of this does anything, I'm told that they assume every caller represents X other people -- with numbers varying from 20 to 100 or so -- because others inevitably will feel the same but will not have called. I can't say this is true for sure, but it makes sense as a formula to keep tabs on your constituents as a rough estmation.)

Today in Slate, there are several new articles deserving of attention (for a change! Slate's been going downhill in my opinion for a couple years now), such as The Real World: Why Judicial Philosophies Matter by two professors of law (Goluboff and Schragger, if you were wondering). Their question: "The central debates of the nominations process mirror those concerning the government's response to Katrina: How much responsibility does the government, and in particular, the federal government, have in ensuring the safety and security of the inhabitants of this country?" They then analyze what they call "The Constitution in Exile" view, a prototypical conservative view. Highlights:

The answer to their question: "To conservative jurists who take a parsimonious view of federal power, the answer to that question is: not much. Their philosophy of limited government, states' rights, and local control belittles the place of the federal government in our system. To the conservative jurist, the federal government is inevitably something to be feared; they assume that centralized power only leads to a loss of liberty."

"The Constitution in Exile sees government as the enemy of individual rights. It insists that the preservation of such rights requires that government refrain from amassing power. And the individual rights it deems paramount are those of property and contract—" -- The rights of property and contract are not ones that J views as "natural" rights, or even the most paramount of human rights, if you recall. (In contrast to the views of Libertarians and Exilers.)

"The modern constitutional vision remembers that the purpose of the Constitution is to provide for the general welfare. The general welfare in turn requires the government to affirmatively ensure the safety and security of the person, to maintain the minimal material conditions necessary to sustain one's civil and political life."

"The outrage Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have expressed toward the sluggish federal response to Katrina suggests just how divorced the Constitution in Exile, and those who reify it, is from the expectations of the great majority of the population. Those left stranded in New Orleans felt acutely the absence, the national government's abdication of responsibility..."

"Were the Constitution in Exile to return to its allegedly rightful home in the Supreme Court, the national government would likely be prevented from taking on responsibility for any future Katrinas. After such a horrific display of what happens when the nation faces a disaster of national proportions and the national government falls short, it is clear that Judge Roberts, and Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement, should be asked if they endorse such a vision."

They go on to list a set of questions that Judge Roberts should be asked. I'll stretch Fair Use a little bit more to implore you to pass these along to your Senators, as well:
"Judge Roberts should be asked whether he believes in a Constitution that permits and even demands that national resources be brought to bear to protect the safety and security of the person.
He should be asked whether he believes that FEMA, or the Department of Homeland Security, for that matter, are constitutional.
He should be asked whether the notion of civil rights includes the right to a minimally competent federal presence in the lives of the people, and an affirmative duty on the part of government to ensure basic necessities.
And he should be asked whether the Constitution should be read as a document that has as one of its aims the promotion of the general welfare—as the Constitution's preamble states."

Go read the whole article, but first, write and/or call your Senators.