I'd heard this was coming, but I just yesterday learned for certain it had actually happened. The Cincinnati Enquirer for March 10 lets us know that the bunch of scientifically-illiterate blockheads who make up the majority of the Ohio State Board of Education have approved new lesson plans for 10th grade science classes that introduce so-called "intelligent design" into the schools under cover of "critical thinking."
"Intelligent design" is the latest fall-back attempt by those who consider the Bible to be a science textbook to undermine the theory of evolution. It argues, at bottom, that a "higher power" must have had a hand in the development of life - while claiming it's not in any way religious because the nature of that "higher power" remains undefined. (Of course, by failing to address the question of the nature of the very driving force it describes, it's also not in any way scientific, but leave that aside for now.)
Anywhere it's been introduced, courts have recognized its religious foundations and struck down the effort. So now, in a fall-back from the fall-back, the trick is to hide it inside "modern critiques of evolution" which are to be "debated" as an exercise in "critical analysis." (Evolution - surprise! - is apparently the only area to get this treatment.) The net effect (and the intent), of course, especially in any sort of "debate" format, is to set such "critiques" on an equal footing with the theory, whereby evolution becomes just one idea among many.
Now, when I say "theory" there, I'm using it in the scientific sense. When someone says "evolution is just a theory," the proper answer is "you're right, except there is nothing 'just' about a theory." Observations obtain data. An educated guess based on data is a hypothesis. A hypothesis successfully tested by verifiable predictions is a theory.
Evolution - genetic change over time in response to environment - is a theory. It's not a guess, not "just an idea," not a hypothesis. It's a theory. Not one easily tested in a laboratory, obviously, but one whose agreement with an enormous number of observations from biology, geology, and paleontology is overwhelming.
Oh, yes, there are arguments about the details, about the exact nature of the process, was it incremental change or punctuated equilibrium for example, how much of a feedback loop is involved (that is, as organisms change, how much do they then affect their environment, creating pressure for more change) - there is good healthy debate about all that and more. And it's true that strict, classic Darwinism is no longer generally accepted. But the basic principle of evolution remains and has withstood every scientific assault on it. And the more we learn about self-organizing systems - the tendency of any sufficiently complex system to spontaneously organize itself into patterns - and therefore the less evolution involves the "random change" on which its critics charge it depends, the stronger it becomes. Bluntly, while the details are still argued, evolution itself simply is no longer a matter of scientific debate and hasn't been for some time.
The drive to change that physical reality, or, more accurately, our understanding of it, comes from a collection of scientific know-nothings backed by a handful of "scientists" - almost none of who are from relevant fields - who have, sadly, allowed their personal ideologies to trump their science training. What's being advanced in Ohio is not critical thinking but a political agenda, a social and political agenda promoted by those who don't even have the courage to openly advocate what they really hope to achieve.
Shameless. That's what they are: shameless.
Footnote: Now, if the intent was really to stimulate critical thinking, the lesson plans could have been devoted to the question of analyzing why inanities such as "intelligent design" and its first cousin, creationism, both accurately described as "answers in search of a question," fail as science and why people embrace them anyway.
The very fact that the natural and immediate reaction to such a suggestion is "fat chance" indicates what's really going on.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Star Geek: The Next Generation
All right class, how many states of matter are there?
Three! Solids, liquids, and gases. Just like we all learned in school.
Except actually there are four. Plasma is an extremely energetic state of matter where atoms have been ripped apart into ions and free electrons. Stars are plasma.
Whoops, I'm sorry, there are five. The strange form called a Bose-Einstein condensate only exists at extremely low temperatures, when members of a class of particles called bosons start to act as if they were one big particle which has a number of strange properties, including that light travels through it very slowly.
Oh, darn, sorry again. There are now six.
The partner to the group of particles called bosons is the group consisting of fermions. And scientists have now formed fermionic condensates - a type of matter so new that most of its basic properties are unknown. They're very cold and probably have zero viscosity (that is, absolutely no resistance to flow). Beyond that is the unknown.
The trick in making such a condensate is that fermions are, if you will, unsociable. They tend to repel each other - unlike bosons, which join easily. A finely-tuned magnetic field was used to get around that to build up a condensate.
So what? Well, because such condensates may be "superfluids," they might tell researchers a lot about a related phenomenon: superconductivity, in which electricity flows with zero (or at least near-zero) resistance. Long offering dreams of incredibly efficient electricity generation, superfast computers that would make today's supercomputers seem like Model Ts, and more, the warmest temperature at which any material now displays superconductivity is, unfortunately, a chilly -135 degrees Celsius. Rather impractical.
But "the strength of pairing in our fermionic condensate, adjusted for mass and density, would correspond to a room-temperature superconductor," notes [lead researcher] Jin. "This makes me optimistic that the fundamental physics we learn through fermionic condensates will help others design more practical superconducting materials."
Three! Solids, liquids, and gases. Just like we all learned in school.
Except actually there are four. Plasma is an extremely energetic state of matter where atoms have been ripped apart into ions and free electrons. Stars are plasma.
Whoops, I'm sorry, there are five. The strange form called a Bose-Einstein condensate only exists at extremely low temperatures, when members of a class of particles called bosons start to act as if they were one big particle which has a number of strange properties, including that light travels through it very slowly.
Oh, darn, sorry again. There are now six.
The partner to the group of particles called bosons is the group consisting of fermions. And scientists have now formed fermionic condensates - a type of matter so new that most of its basic properties are unknown. They're very cold and probably have zero viscosity (that is, absolutely no resistance to flow). Beyond that is the unknown.
The trick in making such a condensate is that fermions are, if you will, unsociable. They tend to repel each other - unlike bosons, which join easily. A finely-tuned magnetic field was used to get around that to build up a condensate.
So what? Well, because such condensates may be "superfluids," they might tell researchers a lot about a related phenomenon: superconductivity, in which electricity flows with zero (or at least near-zero) resistance. Long offering dreams of incredibly efficient electricity generation, superfast computers that would make today's supercomputers seem like Model Ts, and more, the warmest temperature at which any material now displays superconductivity is, unfortunately, a chilly -135 degrees Celsius. Rather impractical.
But "the strength of pairing in our fermionic condensate, adjusted for mass and density, would correspond to a room-temperature superconductor," notes [lead researcher] Jin. "This makes me optimistic that the fundamental physics we learn through fermionic condensates will help others design more practical superconducting materials."
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Star Geek
For years, particle physicists working to understand the most fundamental principles on which all matter is based have relied on what's called the Standard Model, which groups fundamental particles into families based on symmetries. One of the reasons it's become, as it's name implies, the standard has been its ability to make successful predictions about then-unknown particles.
But a change may - emphasize may - be in the works. Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have been observing disintegrations of a short-lived particle called a K-meson, or kaon. According to the model, in very rare cases - about one out of seven billion - a kaon will disintegrate into three particles called a charged pion particle, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino.
But after watching more than seven trillion such disintegrations, they saw that particular pattern occur at twice the predicted rate, a significant difference.
At present, it's unknown if this is an experimental fluke. But if it's not, if it's a real result, it would challenge current thinking in a way that could point to an even deeper hypothesis about the most basic nature of matter.
Footnote: For anyone interested, when a charged pion, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino combine, they do not make a kaon. The reaction only happens one way, which arguably is experimental proof of the existence of an "arrow of time."
But a change may - emphasize may - be in the works. Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have been observing disintegrations of a short-lived particle called a K-meson, or kaon. According to the model, in very rare cases - about one out of seven billion - a kaon will disintegrate into three particles called a charged pion particle, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino.
But after watching more than seven trillion such disintegrations, they saw that particular pattern occur at twice the predicted rate, a significant difference.
At present, it's unknown if this is an experimental fluke. But if it's not, if it's a real result, it would challenge current thinking in a way that could point to an even deeper hypothesis about the most basic nature of matter.
Footnote: For anyone interested, when a charged pion, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino combine, they do not make a kaon. The reaction only happens one way, which arguably is experimental proof of the existence of an "arrow of time."
This is just pathetic, Part 2
At least this one is a little original. It's from the International Herald Tribune's Thursday edition.
To see how utterly silly this argument is, just consider that it effectively says that the US would have been safer if Al Gore had been elected because that would have avoided a major transition (well, yes, actually he was elected, but you know what I mean). Somehow I don't think that's what those who raise "the transition problem" had in mind.
More significantly, even though the claim is laughable, the act of advancing it is an admission that the White House didn't take al-Qaeda seriously, since it apparently preferred having no policy on whatever threat bin Laden's organization presented to continuing a previous policy until a new one (if one was desired) could be formulated.
I'll say it again: Is this really the best they can do?
Amid anguished debate here over whether the Clinton or Bush administration was more at fault for failing to preemptively crack down on Al Qaeda terrorists, a central vulnerability of the U.S. system remained largely unexamined: slips, lapses and lags inherent to the handover of power from one administration to the next.Original, yes, but no less pathetic for that, especially when offered on behalf of an administration that still tries to justify the invasion of Iraq by insisting it was merely slavishly following Clinton administration policy. I mean, first off, that's what transition teams are for: making transitions. Doesn't this just suggest that the Bush team was particularly incompetent at the task? (Significant sidebar, just in case you didn't know: Among the members of the Bush transition team was Philip Zelikow - who is now executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, better known as the 9/11 Commission.)
Even as Al Qaeda militants continued preparing in late 2000 and through 2001 for the calamitous attacks on U.S. targets of Sept. 11, the transition from one administration to another was slowing U.S. intelligence and military efforts to press Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts.
To see how utterly silly this argument is, just consider that it effectively says that the US would have been safer if Al Gore had been elected because that would have avoided a major transition (well, yes, actually he was elected, but you know what I mean). Somehow I don't think that's what those who raise "the transition problem" had in mind.
More significantly, even though the claim is laughable, the act of advancing it is an admission that the White House didn't take al-Qaeda seriously, since it apparently preferred having no policy on whatever threat bin Laden's organization presented to continuing a previous policy until a new one (if one was desired) could be formulated.
I'll say it again: Is this really the best they can do?
This is just pathetic, Part 1
Is this really the best they can do? From Wednesday's Toronto Star:
U.S President George W. Bush responded yesterday to allegations that he ignored a gathering threat from the Al Qaeda terrorist network before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by insisting he "would have acted" had he known what was coming. ...So they're off the hook because Osama bin Laden didn't send them a telegram with the exact date and place of a planned attack? Ooooh, sorry we ever doubted you, Mr. President.
Bush said CIA Director George Tenet briefed him "on a regular basis about the terrorist threat to the United States of America," adding: "And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11, we would have acted."
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Ding-Dong?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Dear John for $400
He was actress Drew's famous grandfather.
What is Ding-Dong?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Dear John for $400
He was actress Drew's famous grandfather.
Pre-emptive strikes
Back on Sunday, the New York Times reported that US officials say prisoners at Guantanamo
I predict that government mouthpieces will as part of their arguments point to these statements as proof of the "vital necessity" of the interrogations to "defending the homeland."
have provided a stream of intelligence to interrogators during the past two years, including detailed information about Al Qaeda's recruitment of Muslim men in Europeand other al-Qaeda operations. The Times suggests that
sweeping assertions about the value of the detention center at Guantanamo respond to criticism of the operation, in the United States and abroad. Released detainees have also made allegations of mistreatment.But since claims of value obtained do not refute claims of abuse - particularly since such "cooperation" as these officials cite can be the result of such abuse - what do you want to bet that this isn't a response to those charges but a pre-emptive strike against the suit before the Supreme Court about the legality of the imprisonments at Gitmo?
I predict that government mouthpieces will as part of their arguments point to these statements as proof of the "vital necessity" of the interrogations to "defending the homeland."
Three items to help you sleep tonight
1) From the New York Times for March 19:
To cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war: fallout analysis.2) From the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, March 19:
The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options for striking back. ...
Most experts say the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack is low but no longer unthinkable, given the spread of material and know-how around the globe.
Dr. Jay C. Davis, a nuclear scientist who in 1999 helped found the Pentagon's part of the governmentwide effort, said the precautions would "pay huge dividends after the event, both in terms of the ability to identify the bad actor and in terms of establishing public trust."
In a nuclear crisis, Dr. Davis added, the identification effort would be vital in "dealing with the desire for instant gratification through vengeance."
Tajikistan's Plutonium Scare: Police foil an attempt to smuggle weapons-grade nuclear material for sale in Afghanistan or Pakistan3) From AP for March 21:
The arrest of three men arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle plutonium through Tajikistan has highlighted concerns about the security of the republic's borders. ...
According to Vladimir Echouprov, a coordinator with Greenpeace's energy department in Moscow, this amount of plutonium is far too small to make a nuclear bomb, but it is more than sufficient to make a so-called dirty bomb, in which radioactive material is spread by conventional explosives. ...
Defence analysts have long considered Tajikistan to be the weakest link on the long-established smuggling route linking Afghanistan with Russia and western Europe. A recent series of attacks blamed on Islamic extremists has heightened fears that a "dirty bomb" could be constructed using plutonium smuggled through Central Asia. ...
This is not the first time that weapons-grade material has been confiscated from would-be smugglers in Tajikistan. However, the plutonium in those cases originated within the republic - a legacy of the uranium mines and enriching factories built by the Soviets but now decommissioned.
This time there seems little doubt that the plutonium came from Russia. According to Major Avaz Yuldashev of the DCA, "The container holding the plutonium had special marking signs which identify it as having been produced at one of Russian nuclear plants."
Sydney, Australia - Osama bin Laden's terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.Speaking of sleeping tonight: Considering that the US developed nuclear weapons, remains (at least so far) the only force to have used them, promoted nuclear power during the Eisenhower administration as a means of ensuring a sufficient supply of enriched uranium for the nuclear weapons then planned, continues to promote nuclear power, undermined nuclear weapons nonproliferation efforts by its failure to restrain its own arsenal (by far the largest in the world), and failed to provide assistance to the former Soviet states (including Russia) in efforts to dismantle their weapons and dispose of the nuclear materials, this may be a case of "you made your bed, now lie in it." A very uncomfortable bed, indeed.
In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that "smart briefcase bombs" were available on the black market.
Worth noting
1) An Agence France Press report for March 18, quoted by Daily news Online, says Italy's European affairs minister, Rocco Buttiglione, told the daily newspaper Il Messaggero in an interview published Thursday that the war on Iraq
2) This one is from CNN for March 21.
"may have been a mistake. Perhaps there were ways it could have been avoided." ...thus breaking ranks from the pro-Bush administration of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"What is certain is that it wasn't the best thing to do," he added,
2) This one is from CNN for March 21.
The United Nations' top two weapons experts said Sunday that the invasion of Iraq a year ago was not justified by the evidence in hand at the time.As they did with everyone else in the world.
"I think it's clear that in March, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart," Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency's investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
Blix described the evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 as "shaky," and said he related his opinion to U.S. officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"I think they chose to ignore us," Blix said.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
No particular reason, just felt like mentioning it
From the Toronto Globe & Mail for Sunday.
The Netherlands' beloved Princess Juliana died Saturday of pneumonia. She was 94. ...She was not without controversy in her life and some questionable associations (personal, not political) - but she always had class in the best sense of the term.
A monarch with self-effacing manners, she was a popular figure during her 32-year reign, from 1948 to 1980, and is credited with nudging her country's governments toward progressive social policies. ...
While she lived in Ottawa, Juliana had an unpretentious lifestyle. She did her own shopping, lined up with others at movie theatres and offered to baby-sit a neighbour's children. Back in her native country, she was known for riding her bicycle in public, dressing like a commoner, sending her children to public schools and visiting hospitals, schools and disaster areas. ...
In 1980, citing her age, the 71-year-old sovereign abdicated in favour of Princess Beatrix. She declined the title of queen mother, and chose to be called princess.
It's deja vu all over again
Just a reminder of how the Bush team deals with honest opinions.
From a statement by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, via BuzzFlash:
- Larry Lindsay, fired as the President's Economic Advisor because he spoke honestly about the costs of the Iraq War
- US Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, suspended when she disclosed budget problems that mean our nation's parks are less safe
- Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, replaced on the Council on Bioethics because of her scientific views on stem-cell research.
- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, immediately ridiculed by the people around the President and his credibility attacked.
From Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times for March 23:
- Gen. Eric Shinseki, his military career ended for telling Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force than the White House claimed
- Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her career destroyed when she was outed as a CIA operative in retaliation for his revealing that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false
- Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, threatened with being fired if he told Congress the real cost of Bush's prescription drug plan.
Richard Clarke is in good company.
From a statement by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, via BuzzFlash:
- Larry Lindsay, fired as the President's Economic Advisor because he spoke honestly about the costs of the Iraq War
- US Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, suspended when she disclosed budget problems that mean our nation's parks are less safe
- Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, replaced on the Council on Bioethics because of her scientific views on stem-cell research.
- Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, immediately ridiculed by the people around the President and his credibility attacked.
From Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times for March 23:
- Gen. Eric Shinseki, his military career ended for telling Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force than the White House claimed
- Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her career destroyed when she was outed as a CIA operative in retaliation for his revealing that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false
- Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, threatened with being fired if he told Congress the real cost of Bush's prescription drug plan.
Richard Clarke is in good company.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is (a) TicTac?
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $1000
Hostess product or Avon signal.
What is (a) TicTac?
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $1000
Hostess product or Avon signal.
Unusual Supreme Court case #2
This little-known case carries serious implications for privacy rights in a time of increasing government encroachments. From Tuesday's New York Times:
What happened in a nutshell is that Nevada police had received a report from a passing motorist that a man was hitting a woman in a car. A deputy sheriff found Larry Hiibel standing by his pickup truck on the side of the road. His adult daughter was in the driver's seat.
The deputy demanded Hiibel identify himself. Hiibel, saying he had done nothing wrong, refused. The deputy kept repeating the demand, Hiibel kept refusing, inviting the deputy to arrest him if he was so sure Hiibel had done something. The deputy did.
Hiibel was charged under a Nevada law that requires people to identify themselves to the police if they are stopped "under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime." No other charges were ever filed. He was convicted of a misdemeanor but appealed on the grounds that the law was in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' guarantees against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination. The State Supreme Court rejected the argument and Hiibel went to federal court.
Now, the authority to make such a stop is not in question. In 1968, the Supreme Court
There are a couple of other points about this that I want to mention. First is that, as the Times notes, there was apparently no argument over whether this was a Terry stop. Frankly, I would have challenged that contention.
There is a videotape of the incident taken by the police from inside the squad car. You can watch it on a website Hiibel set up about the case. Recall that this arose because of a report of a man hitting a woman. When the police arrived, they found nothing happening. So what were the activities leading to "reasonable suspicion?" In the tape, the deputy never asks anything about what's going on. He never approaches the truck to ask Hiibel's daughter, clearly visible in the video in the driver's seat, if she was all right - or anything else. That is, he never made any attempt to determine if in fact anything had transpired. So where is the "reasonable suspicion?"
Perhaps Hiibel didn't raise that challenge because he wanted to focus on the constitutional issues. But there is another point which I think is clearly relevant but doesn't seem to be under consideration. In the video, the deputy does not ask Hiibel for his name, he tells Hiibel to show identification - and that is something quite different. I'm aware of no law that says we have to have personal identification with us at all times (this does not apply to things like having a driver's license while driving), but a finding in favor of Nevada would establish that as a de facto requirement.
Shall we slippery slope for a moment? The Court rules for Nevada. Someone gets stopped, gives their name when ordered to, but the police officer, questioning if that's their real name, relies on Terry to detain them to check. Then, relying on the (possible) Hiibel decision, the officer demands positive ID. The person shows them a driver's license with a picture. The police officer wants to take the license back to the their car. The person refuses, saying "You wanted to see ID. You have now seen a photo ID with an address. That's all you get." The officer arrests them, claiming their lack of cooperation has produced "reasonable cause." What does the Court say then?
You may think I'm jumping several steps ahead, but I have to ask: If Hiibel loses, how far are we from empowering police to require our cooperation in running full personal background checks on us whenever they think we're looking at them funny?
A Nevada rancher's refusal four years ago to tell a deputy sheriff his name led to a Supreme Court argument on Monday on a question that, surprisingly, the justices have never resolved: whether people can be required to identify themselves when the police have some basis for suspicion but lack the probable cause necessary for an arrest."The answer," the Times said, "appeared elusive."
What happened in a nutshell is that Nevada police had received a report from a passing motorist that a man was hitting a woman in a car. A deputy sheriff found Larry Hiibel standing by his pickup truck on the side of the road. His adult daughter was in the driver's seat.
The deputy demanded Hiibel identify himself. Hiibel, saying he had done nothing wrong, refused. The deputy kept repeating the demand, Hiibel kept refusing, inviting the deputy to arrest him if he was so sure Hiibel had done something. The deputy did.
Hiibel was charged under a Nevada law that requires people to identify themselves to the police if they are stopped "under circumstances which reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime." No other charges were ever filed. He was convicted of a misdemeanor but appealed on the grounds that the law was in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments' guarantees against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination. The State Supreme Court rejected the argument and Hiibel went to federal court.
Now, the authority to make such a stop is not in question. In 1968, the Supreme Court
gave the police the authority to briefly detain, question and conduct a pat-down search of someone whose activities ... gave rise to "reasonable suspicion," short of probable cause for a formal arrest.Such incidents are now known as "Terry stops" after the case, Terry v. Ohio. According to the Times, there was no dispute that this was a Terry stop. The issue is: asked for identification, could Hiibel refuse?
Robert E. Dolan, Nevada's deputy state public defender, told the justices that while the deputy "certainly had the right to ask" Mr. Hiibel for his name, "equally so, Mr. Hiibel had the right not to respond."As is usual, the justices appeared eager to avoid a sweeping decision, preferring to focus narrowly on the issues of the particular case. Yet there are serious possibilities that such a focus ignores. Particularly, Nevada contends that a name is "a neutral fact" and therefore neither incriminating nor an undue invasion of privacy. But as the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a friend of the court brief,
Justice Antonin Scalia was openly skeptical. "What is the meaning of Terry?" he asked. Did Mr. Dolan mean that the police were "allowed to ask questions but shouldn't expect answers?"
Yes, the public defender replied; the state should not be permitted to criminalize silence or to "extract data from a person."
Justice Stephen G. Breyer appeared to agree, suggesting a rule under which the police can ask but the citizen does not have to answer. "Everyone can understand that," Justice Breyer said, adding, "Why complicate this thing?" Several Supreme Court decisions over the years have suggested such a rule, but there has never been a formal opinion to that effect.
government databases were now of such "extraordinary scope" that "systems of mass public surveillance" could result from a ruling that authorized "coerced disclosure of identity."Between cases of identify theft and people being labeled terrorists based on a shared name (or, in some case, merely a similar one), no name can be considered "a neutral fact" but must rather be thought of as a potential doorway to a mass of personal - and sometimes seriously inaccurate - information.
There are a couple of other points about this that I want to mention. First is that, as the Times notes, there was apparently no argument over whether this was a Terry stop. Frankly, I would have challenged that contention.
There is a videotape of the incident taken by the police from inside the squad car. You can watch it on a website Hiibel set up about the case. Recall that this arose because of a report of a man hitting a woman. When the police arrived, they found nothing happening. So what were the activities leading to "reasonable suspicion?" In the tape, the deputy never asks anything about what's going on. He never approaches the truck to ask Hiibel's daughter, clearly visible in the video in the driver's seat, if she was all right - or anything else. That is, he never made any attempt to determine if in fact anything had transpired. So where is the "reasonable suspicion?"
Perhaps Hiibel didn't raise that challenge because he wanted to focus on the constitutional issues. But there is another point which I think is clearly relevant but doesn't seem to be under consideration. In the video, the deputy does not ask Hiibel for his name, he tells Hiibel to show identification - and that is something quite different. I'm aware of no law that says we have to have personal identification with us at all times (this does not apply to things like having a driver's license while driving), but a finding in favor of Nevada would establish that as a de facto requirement.
Shall we slippery slope for a moment? The Court rules for Nevada. Someone gets stopped, gives their name when ordered to, but the police officer, questioning if that's their real name, relies on Terry to detain them to check. Then, relying on the (possible) Hiibel decision, the officer demands positive ID. The person shows them a driver's license with a picture. The police officer wants to take the license back to the their car. The person refuses, saying "You wanted to see ID. You have now seen a photo ID with an address. That's all you get." The officer arrests them, claiming their lack of cooperation has produced "reasonable cause." What does the Court say then?
You may think I'm jumping several steps ahead, but I have to ask: If Hiibel loses, how far are we from empowering police to require our cooperation in running full personal background checks on us whenever they think we're looking at them funny?
Unusual Supreme Court case #1
The Supreme Court is to decide whether the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance is an endorsement of religion.
The suit was brought against the Sacramento County, California, school district by
Michael Newdow,
David Souter said that
In fact, that was the basis of two Supreme Court decisions during the Vietnam War that expanded the basis for declaring conscientious objector status in the draft. That status was available to those who showed "by religious training and belief" that they were opposed to warfare. In Seeger v. US (1965) the Court found that any belief, even if unorthodox, fit the description if it occupied the same sort of central place in a person's life that traditional religions did. In Welsh v. US (1970), the Court made explicit what was implicit in Seeger, that even philosophical and moral beliefs that were expressly non-religious could still qualify for CO status if sincerely held. To do otherwise, the Court reasoned, would be to favor one sort of belief, one based on a "higher power," over another sort, which was not. That, the Court found, was an affront to the First Amendment.
So how is it that the phrase "under God" does not offer that same kind of affront? The issue here is not whether or not a student can be forced to say it (or say the pledge at all, for that matter); they can't. The question, it seems to me, is whether a "civic exercise" that expressly favors a belief in a singular deity over nonbelief can fail to be regarded as government endorsement of religion, and whether it "sounds like a prayer" or not - you'll pardon the expression - be damned.
What the Court will do is of course unknown. Antonin "I'm here for my friends" Scalia has recused himself because he earlier expressed the opinion in a speech that it's not a matter for the courts, raising the possibility of a 4-4 tie. That would leave the decision standing in the 9th Circuit but not affect other areas. I really, really doubt that will happen, one because I don't imagine half of this crew agreeing to challenge the expression "under God" and two because if there is any chance of that, they have the easy out of a lack of legal standing on Newdow's part: He never actually adopted the girl so there is a serious and legitimate legal question of his right to sue on her behalf.
In the immediate case, what I think the Court will do is overturn the lower court decision, much to the relief of the right wing (and many liberals terrified of the notion of any other decision being used to brand them "anti-religion," no matter their actual thoughts on the case). What I think it should do is declare the phrase "under God" unconstitutional and order its removal.
And I'll say one other thing here: In one sense, despite this lengthy post, on a purely personal level it doesn't matter to me one way or the other, because I reject the pledge altogether. I do not pledge my allegiance to flags. And I do not pledge my allegiance to nation-states or the governments that run them. I pledge my allegiance to principles, to ideals, and to the people those principles and ideals are to serve. "I pledge allegiance to liberty and justice for all." Everything in between should be dumped.
The suit was brought against the Sacramento County, California, school district by
Michael Newdow,
claiming public recitation by students violates [his] 10-year-old child's religious liberty. While legal precedent makes reciting the pledge a voluntary act, Newdow says it becomes unconstitutional for students to be forced to hear it, arguing the teacher-led recitations carry the stamp of government approval.The Justices seemed skeptical. Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the pledge "doesn't sound anything like a prayer." Sandra Day O'Conner referred to "so many references to God" in the public arena, running down the classic list of coins and so on.
David Souter said that
even if the words "under God" represented religion "in actual practice, it's an affirmation in the mindset of a civic exercise."It seems to me that the Justices have missed - or perhaps ignored - their own point. The phrase "under God" was inserted in the pledge in 1954, specifically and avowedly to declare the US a theist nation in opposition to the official atheism of the Soviet Union. How is that not a government endorsement of religion? Indeed, the comments reflect that, when they insist that the phrase "under God" is simply "a civic exercise." The famed "wall of separation" between church and state is not only supposed to prevent government from favoring one religion over another, it's supposed to prevent government from favoring religion over non-religion.
Souter added the Pledge "is so tepid, so diluted, far from a compulsory prayer."
"God is so generic in this context as to be a neutral" expression of belief, continued Justice Stephen Breyer.
In fact, that was the basis of two Supreme Court decisions during the Vietnam War that expanded the basis for declaring conscientious objector status in the draft. That status was available to those who showed "by religious training and belief" that they were opposed to warfare. In Seeger v. US (1965) the Court found that any belief, even if unorthodox, fit the description if it occupied the same sort of central place in a person's life that traditional religions did. In Welsh v. US (1970), the Court made explicit what was implicit in Seeger, that even philosophical and moral beliefs that were expressly non-religious could still qualify for CO status if sincerely held. To do otherwise, the Court reasoned, would be to favor one sort of belief, one based on a "higher power," over another sort, which was not. That, the Court found, was an affront to the First Amendment.
So how is it that the phrase "under God" does not offer that same kind of affront? The issue here is not whether or not a student can be forced to say it (or say the pledge at all, for that matter); they can't. The question, it seems to me, is whether a "civic exercise" that expressly favors a belief in a singular deity over nonbelief can fail to be regarded as government endorsement of religion, and whether it "sounds like a prayer" or not - you'll pardon the expression - be damned.
What the Court will do is of course unknown. Antonin "I'm here for my friends" Scalia has recused himself because he earlier expressed the opinion in a speech that it's not a matter for the courts, raising the possibility of a 4-4 tie. That would leave the decision standing in the 9th Circuit but not affect other areas. I really, really doubt that will happen, one because I don't imagine half of this crew agreeing to challenge the expression "under God" and two because if there is any chance of that, they have the easy out of a lack of legal standing on Newdow's part: He never actually adopted the girl so there is a serious and legitimate legal question of his right to sue on her behalf.
In the immediate case, what I think the Court will do is overturn the lower court decision, much to the relief of the right wing (and many liberals terrified of the notion of any other decision being used to brand them "anti-religion," no matter their actual thoughts on the case). What I think it should do is declare the phrase "under God" unconstitutional and order its removal.
And I'll say one other thing here: In one sense, despite this lengthy post, on a purely personal level it doesn't matter to me one way or the other, because I reject the pledge altogether. I do not pledge my allegiance to flags. And I do not pledge my allegiance to nation-states or the governments that run them. I pledge my allegiance to principles, to ideals, and to the people those principles and ideals are to serve. "I pledge allegiance to liberty and justice for all." Everything in between should be dumped.
Sometimes any comment ruins things
King George has nominated William Haynes II, architect of the "enemy combatant" doctrine, to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Virginia.
After noting his trial experience is meager, a New York Times editorial says that his
Never mind.
After noting his trial experience is meager, a New York Times editorial says that his
10 "most significant" cases, as reported to the Senate, include one in which his team argued that bombing an island in the Northern Marianas did not violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The bombing can enhance bird-watching, his team said, because people "get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one."I just.... I....
Never mind.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is King Kong?
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $600
It's "the one-and-a-half-calorie breath mint."
What is King Kong?
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $600
It's "the one-and-a-half-calorie breath mint."
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Bad news on Cyprus
The Prime Ministers of Greece and Turkey will join with Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos and representatives of Turkish Cypriots this week near Lucerne, Switzerland amid increasing gloom about the prospects for success in talks about the island's future.
The first sign of truly serious trouble was the decision of Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to refuse to attend the conference. His hard line was backed by Abdullah Gul, foreign minister of Turkey, who said Cyprus should be exempted from the European Union's "primary laws," which allow freedom of movement and the right to own property anywhere in the EU. Gul and Denktash want requirements for the Greek and Turkish communities to be kept separate, which would have the effect of legitimizing a separate Turkish regime on Cyprus.
Additionally, recent polls among both Greek and Turkish Cypriots suggest each side would reject a plan unless changes are made which the other side would find unacceptable.
It just seemed it was so close.
The first sign of truly serious trouble was the decision of Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to refuse to attend the conference. His hard line was backed by Abdullah Gul, foreign minister of Turkey, who said Cyprus should be exempted from the European Union's "primary laws," which allow freedom of movement and the right to own property anywhere in the EU. Gul and Denktash want requirements for the Greek and Turkish communities to be kept separate, which would have the effect of legitimizing a separate Turkish regime on Cyprus.
Additionally, recent polls among both Greek and Turkish Cypriots suggest each side would reject a plan unless changes are made which the other side would find unacceptable.
It just seemed it was so close.
Rockin' with Dick Clarke
There's an interesting thing about all the brouhaha about former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke's new book in which he excoriates the Bush administration for its failures in the "war on terrorism." The accusations that have been getting the most play are that 1)the Bush administration downplayed or ignored warnings about al-Qaeda because of an ideological blind spot that lead to an almost exclusive focus on Iraq, 2)a blind spot so profound that in the immediate wake of 9/11 it pushed for evidence of the non-existent link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and 3)in the months following, it politicized antiterrorism for its own gain.
The thing is, none of this is news. This has all been said before, been shown before, been known before. What Clarke provides is not a breakthrough but a confirmation.
So why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth both in the press corps and the White House? Why is it "shocking revelations" from a "disgruntled former employee?" Well, the Bush gang was right about one thing, part of it does have to do with the timing. Bush hack Dan Barlett called that timing "questionable," noting Clarke's friendship with Rand Beers, another former Bush adviser on terrorism who is now John Kerry's adviser on national security. But while it's unlikely the book was timed to help Kerry, the fact that it's coming out during a presidential campaign - particularly a campaign in which antiterrorism is supposedly Bush's strong suit - is part of the reason for all the attention. (Which means the timing very likely had more to do with promoting sales than promoting Democrats.)
Now, the good part of this is that the book is getting some attention. The bad part is that the media, afflicted as usual with selective amnesia and unwilling to rouse itself from its torpor, is failing to relate it to any earlier revelations (even the recent ones of Paul O'Neill, who also reported the blinkered focus on Iraq), instead reducing it to the old "he said she said" routine that leaves as victor the side that can shout the loudest the longest.
I'm not going to try to limn all the desperate deceptions that mark the Bushites' non-response to Clarke; if you want to get some real solid reportage and analysis along those lines, I suggest you check out the invaluable TalkingPointsMemo by Josh Marshall, who has been all over this. (The direct link to his first post on this, from March 20, is here; after that you'll have to go to the following week's archive to keep reading. Or just go to the main page and scroll down to the item datelined March 20 at 8:23pm.)
What I do want to do is to note just two things that caught my eye and my sense of the absurd. (The quotes are all via TPM; the link is above, so I won't link to them individually.)
- First, in the hours following Clarke's appearance on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the Shrub crew pursued two lines of attack. Jim Wilkinson, speaking for the National Security Council, told Paula Zahn on Monday night that "Dick Clarke was in charge of counterterrorism policy in the time preceding 9/11," trying to imply that 9/11 was therefore Clarke's fault. The same day, Dick "The Big Dick" Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's show (boy, that must have been one tough interview), said of Clarke "well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff ... he clearly missed a lot of what was going on."
Those arguments appear mutually contradictory - but what I love about it is that they're actually not. Clarke, in fact, was before 9/11 the counterterrorism coordinator at NSC. He wasn't out of the loop, he was the loop. But it was a loop that was getting the runaround, his warnings ignored and shunted to the side in the single-minded pursuit of "get Saddam."
- Second, appearing on 60 Minutes, White House rep Steve Hadley, as quoted by Marshall, said that
Book 'em, Rice-o.
Update, March 24: According to Scott McClellan at his White House press briefing today,
Gasp! Horrors! Outrage!
The thing is, none of this is news. This has all been said before, been shown before, been known before. What Clarke provides is not a breakthrough but a confirmation.
So why all the wailing and gnashing of teeth both in the press corps and the White House? Why is it "shocking revelations" from a "disgruntled former employee?" Well, the Bush gang was right about one thing, part of it does have to do with the timing. Bush hack Dan Barlett called that timing "questionable," noting Clarke's friendship with Rand Beers, another former Bush adviser on terrorism who is now John Kerry's adviser on national security. But while it's unlikely the book was timed to help Kerry, the fact that it's coming out during a presidential campaign - particularly a campaign in which antiterrorism is supposedly Bush's strong suit - is part of the reason for all the attention. (Which means the timing very likely had more to do with promoting sales than promoting Democrats.)
Now, the good part of this is that the book is getting some attention. The bad part is that the media, afflicted as usual with selective amnesia and unwilling to rouse itself from its torpor, is failing to relate it to any earlier revelations (even the recent ones of Paul O'Neill, who also reported the blinkered focus on Iraq), instead reducing it to the old "he said she said" routine that leaves as victor the side that can shout the loudest the longest.
I'm not going to try to limn all the desperate deceptions that mark the Bushites' non-response to Clarke; if you want to get some real solid reportage and analysis along those lines, I suggest you check out the invaluable TalkingPointsMemo by Josh Marshall, who has been all over this. (The direct link to his first post on this, from March 20, is here; after that you'll have to go to the following week's archive to keep reading. Or just go to the main page and scroll down to the item datelined March 20 at 8:23pm.)
What I do want to do is to note just two things that caught my eye and my sense of the absurd. (The quotes are all via TPM; the link is above, so I won't link to them individually.)
- First, in the hours following Clarke's appearance on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the Shrub crew pursued two lines of attack. Jim Wilkinson, speaking for the National Security Council, told Paula Zahn on Monday night that "Dick Clarke was in charge of counterterrorism policy in the time preceding 9/11," trying to imply that 9/11 was therefore Clarke's fault. The same day, Dick "The Big Dick" Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's show (boy, that must have been one tough interview), said of Clarke "well, he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff ... he clearly missed a lot of what was going on."
Those arguments appear mutually contradictory - but what I love about it is that they're actually not. Clarke, in fact, was before 9/11 the counterterrorism coordinator at NSC. He wasn't out of the loop, he was the loop. But it was a loop that was getting the runaround, his warnings ignored and shunted to the side in the single-minded pursuit of "get Saddam."
- Second, appearing on 60 Minutes, White House rep Steve Hadley, as quoted by Marshall, said that
contrary to Clarke's assertion, Mr. Bush didn't ignore the ominous intelligence chatter in the summer of 2001.Suddenly I get this image of George Bush as Jack Lord on Hawaii 5-0, never wrong, instantly sizing up the most complicated and devious plots and penetrating to the heart of the matter before anyone else has a clue what's going on. "No, I smell the hand of Wo Fat - er, I mean a threat to the homeland - here."
"All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. He asked the intelligence community: 'Look hard. See if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland.'"
Book 'em, Rice-o.
Update, March 24: According to Scott McClellan at his White House press briefing today,
Dick Clarke could have released his book at any time, but the fact is he chose to release it at a time and in a way where he could maximize coverage to sell books, and at a time when he could have the impact to influence the political discourse.Gasp! Horrors! Outrage! Someone who, based on their own experiences, has a conviction about a matter chooses to speak on it when it might influence opinion! When everyone knows that the only proper time to express a view is when you think it will make no difference at all!
Gasp! Horrors! Outrage!
The butterfly effect
In a finding with major implications for the threat presented by global climate change (so-called "global warming"),
Combining computer modeling with modern satellite data to examine weather patterns during the last 100 years, researchers discovered that in the 1930s tropical temperatures were cooler than normal in the Pacific and warmer than normal in the Atlantic. That seemingly moderate change wreaked havoc with the Great Plains for eight years.
Rainfall in the Great Plains is driven by Gulf Stream winds carrying a supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The shifts in tropical temperatures caused that portion of the wind patters to shift south, taking the rainfall with it, and generating "the major climatic event in the nation's history," said researcher Siegfried Schubert of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Scientists hope to use this sort of model to predict future events such as droughts, but what's also notable about it is that it again shows how moderate changes in the overall climate can be devastating to particular regions. I already mentioned how a different small change could plunge northern Europe into a long period of frigid temperatures. This is just another example of the risks we run.
"If we don't change course, we'll end up where we're headed" is an old peace movement slogan. The changes needed are dramatic - but, since they would also involve reducing reliance on fossil fuels for power and thus reduce the urge to keep being an imperialist goon in the Middle East, they could improve our political security as well as our environmental security.
Gee, I thought those in charge of public policy liked win-win situations. What could be holding them back in this case, I wonder....
NASA scientists have an explanation for one of the worst climatic events in the history of the United States, the "Dust Bowl" drought, which devastated the Great Plains and all but dried up an already depressed American economy in the 1930's,according to an agency press release on March 19.
Combining computer modeling with modern satellite data to examine weather patterns during the last 100 years, researchers discovered that in the 1930s tropical temperatures were cooler than normal in the Pacific and warmer than normal in the Atlantic. That seemingly moderate change wreaked havoc with the Great Plains for eight years.
Rainfall in the Great Plains is driven by Gulf Stream winds carrying a supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The shifts in tropical temperatures caused that portion of the wind patters to shift south, taking the rainfall with it, and generating "the major climatic event in the nation's history," said researcher Siegfried Schubert of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Scientists hope to use this sort of model to predict future events such as droughts, but what's also notable about it is that it again shows how moderate changes in the overall climate can be devastating to particular regions. I already mentioned how a different small change could plunge northern Europe into a long period of frigid temperatures. This is just another example of the risks we run.
"If we don't change course, we'll end up where we're headed" is an old peace movement slogan. The changes needed are dramatic - but, since they would also involve reducing reliance on fossil fuels for power and thus reduce the urge to keep being an imperialist goon in the Middle East, they could improve our political security as well as our environmental security.
Gee, I thought those in charge of public policy liked win-win situations. What could be holding them back in this case, I wonder....
Trouble ahead, trouble behind; Paul Bremer you better watch your speed
In a letter to a senior adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has insisted that the world body must not endorse the Iraqi interim constitution.
Ultimately, Sistani's thinking seems to be "We're the majority, so let's have elections, the sooner the better, because we'll win and then everything will be fine." That's a narrow view of democracy - I wonder if the phrase "tyranny of the majority" ever comes up in discussions of Iraq's future political structure - but still one likely to prevail among Shiites.
And that carries tremendous risks. Some commentators downplay those risks; you will hear, for example, that Sunni Muslims might be persuaded that their influence in economic and technical areas would afford them a kind of social power that would provide an adequate counterweight to Shiite political power. Moreover,
There are, however, two problems I see with that sort of analysis. One is that while the thinking about what the Sunnis would accept undoubtedly has some validity, it still depends on that sense of unity - and "united" in this context means "united against the US." So the only way, by the very argument, to head off sectarian war in the longer term is by continuing indefinitely the selfsame occupation that has inflamed violence both inside and outside Iraq: the very definition of a Hobson's choice.
More importantly, it ignores - as often happens, it seems - the Kurds. I see no way that they will accept the vision of a single, unified, Shiite-dominated Iraq held by Sistani and, because held by him, held also by his followers, a vision that would require the Kurds to surrender all that they have gained over the last dozen years toward their long-held dream of independence or at minimum autonomy. That is, the biggest risk of ethnic conflict I see is not between Shiites and Sunnis but between Shiites and Kurds, or perhaps even Arabs and Kurds. I wonder if that's part of Sistani's vision.
The big tests are yet to come.
"The (Shi'ite) religious establishment fears the occupation authorities will work to include this law in a new U.N. resolution to give it international legitimacy. ...Sistani's followers said he agreed to the interim constitution to preserve national unity while Iraq remained under occupation. However, he remains sharply critical of several elements of it that would have the effect of diluting Shiite political dominance.
"We warn that any such step will not be acceptable to the majority of Iraqis and will have dangerous consequences."
Ultimately, Sistani's thinking seems to be "We're the majority, so let's have elections, the sooner the better, because we'll win and then everything will be fine." That's a narrow view of democracy - I wonder if the phrase "tyranny of the majority" ever comes up in discussions of Iraq's future political structure - but still one likely to prevail among Shiites.
And that carries tremendous risks. Some commentators downplay those risks; you will hear, for example, that Sunni Muslims might be persuaded that their influence in economic and technical areas would afford them a kind of social power that would provide an adequate counterweight to Shiite political power. Moreover,
"Iraqis are nationalists first, Shia and Sunni second," says Dilip Hiro, London-based author of several books on the Middle East....He doesn't see a Shiite-Sunni war coming soon, he told the Toronto Star - which makes sense from that perspective, since an occupation, de facto if not de jure, appears likely to continue for some time yet.
"So long as there is a foreign occupier, they will remain united."
There are, however, two problems I see with that sort of analysis. One is that while the thinking about what the Sunnis would accept undoubtedly has some validity, it still depends on that sense of unity - and "united" in this context means "united against the US." So the only way, by the very argument, to head off sectarian war in the longer term is by continuing indefinitely the selfsame occupation that has inflamed violence both inside and outside Iraq: the very definition of a Hobson's choice.
More importantly, it ignores - as often happens, it seems - the Kurds. I see no way that they will accept the vision of a single, unified, Shiite-dominated Iraq held by Sistani and, because held by him, held also by his followers, a vision that would require the Kurds to surrender all that they have gained over the last dozen years toward their long-held dream of independence or at minimum autonomy. That is, the biggest risk of ethnic conflict I see is not between Shiites and Sunnis but between Shiites and Kurds, or perhaps even Arabs and Kurds. I wonder if that's part of Sistani's vision.
The big tests are yet to come.
I blame women's pro tennis
Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, home for more than 30 years to the Phillies and Eagles, was demolished in a carefully-planned implosion on Sunday to make way for a 5,500-space parking lot.
The teams are not without a home: The Eagles now play at Lincoln Financial Field while the Phillies' home opener on April 12 will take place at Citizens Bank Park.
Oh jeez. I used to think the practice of naming everything under the Sun either Veterans This or Veterans Memorial That was irritating and self-centered on the part of veterans' organizations but also revealing about what we valued in our society. This, however, is if anything worse.
Back in the '30s, it was common for radio programs to be named for their sponsors, a practice that carried over into early television, with Kraft Music Hall and Hallmark Hall of Fame being among the last holdouts. Then for a time it seemed corporate names had been permanently banned from the marquee, and good riddance was thought to be the attitude.
The came the move, in 1970, to start a women's professional tennis tour. Short of money, the organizers found someone to back the effort: Philip-Morris; specifically, its women-aimed Virginia Slims brand. Apparently a cigarette was considered the perfect accompaniment to an athletic contest. In any event, thus was born the Virginia Slims Tour.
Without actually faulting Women's Tennis Association founder Billie Jean King, who had to find the bucks somewhere, what this did was indicate that consumers of entertainment would put up with the crap of identifying the events with their sponsors instead of their performers. The doors swung open wide and now it's ubiquitous.
I used to see the Boston Celtics play at the Boston Garden. Now it's the Fleet (Bank) Center. I used to go to concerts at Great Woods. Now it's the Tweeter (speaker company) Center. It's not even the Newport Folk Festival anymore; it's the Ben & Jerry's Newport Folk Festival.
And on April 12 the Philadelphia Phillies will inaugurate Citizens Bank Park.
And it's all irritating, self-centered on the part of corporations - but our passive acceptance of it is also revealing about what we value in our society.
Update: Slight edits for clarity.
The teams are not without a home: The Eagles now play at Lincoln Financial Field while the Phillies' home opener on April 12 will take place at Citizens Bank Park.
Oh jeez. I used to think the practice of naming everything under the Sun either Veterans This or Veterans Memorial That was irritating and self-centered on the part of veterans' organizations but also revealing about what we valued in our society. This, however, is if anything worse.
Back in the '30s, it was common for radio programs to be named for their sponsors, a practice that carried over into early television, with Kraft Music Hall and Hallmark Hall of Fame being among the last holdouts. Then for a time it seemed corporate names had been permanently banned from the marquee, and good riddance was thought to be the attitude.
The came the move, in 1970, to start a women's professional tennis tour. Short of money, the organizers found someone to back the effort: Philip-Morris; specifically, its women-aimed Virginia Slims brand. Apparently a cigarette was considered the perfect accompaniment to an athletic contest. In any event, thus was born the Virginia Slims Tour.
Without actually faulting Women's Tennis Association founder Billie Jean King, who had to find the bucks somewhere, what this did was indicate that consumers of entertainment would put up with the crap of identifying the events with their sponsors instead of their performers. The doors swung open wide and now it's ubiquitous.
I used to see the Boston Celtics play at the Boston Garden. Now it's the Fleet (Bank) Center. I used to go to concerts at Great Woods. Now it's the Tweeter (speaker company) Center. It's not even the Newport Folk Festival anymore; it's the Ben & Jerry's Newport Folk Festival.
And on April 12 the Philadelphia Phillies will inaugurate Citizens Bank Park.
And it's all irritating, self-centered on the part of corporations - but our passive acceptance of it is also revealing about what we value in our society.
Update: Slight edits for clarity.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is "Sense and Sensibility?"
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $200
In a 1933 film, this creature climbed the Empire State Building.
What is "Sense and Sensibility?"
JEOPARDY!
Change the Vowel for $200
In a 1933 film, this creature climbed the Empire State Building.
Just in case you had any lingering doubts as to what is going on there
US-anointed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue called the gangs that began the insurrection in Haiti "freedom fighters" in a rally in Gonaives over the weekend, reported the Toronto Globe & Mail on Monday.
In related notes from the same article:
- Latortue's reminder to the gangs in Gonaives that they had promised to surrender their arms produced "a grand total of 10 weapons, mostly inoperative M-16s and rifles."
- The new government intends to charge Aristide with human rights violations, but is not expected to prosecute the rebels.
- On Saturday, police arrested five young men of La Saline, a shantytown that was a stronghold of support for Aristide. On Sunday, they were found dead, "riddled with bullet wounds and hands bound together with wire." A community resident pointed to "a unit within the force that calls itself Pour l'enfer [For Hell]."
In related notes from the same article:
- Latortue's reminder to the gangs in Gonaives that they had promised to surrender their arms produced "a grand total of 10 weapons, mostly inoperative M-16s and rifles."
- The new government intends to charge Aristide with human rights violations, but is not expected to prosecute the rebels.
- On Saturday, police arrested five young men of La Saline, a shantytown that was a stronghold of support for Aristide. On Sunday, they were found dead, "riddled with bullet wounds and hands bound together with wire." A community resident pointed to "a unit within the force that calls itself Pour l'enfer [For Hell]."
The Emily Latella Award
A surprise in this category. The odds-on favorite was a repeat victory for the Shrub team with its "We never said 'imminent'" routine, but after a stumble by Donald "The Rummer" Rumsfeld, they tried to substitute the case of Capt. James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was arrested on suspicion of espionage - only to have the case more and more limited until finally all charges were dropped the end of the week.
But that proved to be not enough and Team Bush was overtaken by a last minute surge from our winner and new champion -
Pakistan!
What a year this has been for them! Already winners of the Sgt. Shultz "I see nothing! I hear nothing!" Award for their performance in the case of the sale of nuclear technology by Abdul Qadeer Khan, they have copped a second prize with an equally brilliant performance in their rendition of "Which way did they go? Which way did they go?"
First, in the immediate wake of a meeting with Colin Powell, they said on Friday that they believed they had Ayman al-Zawahiri, claimed to be the #2 man in al-Qaeda, surrounded in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan.
Then
Finally, on Monday, officials said "no evidence had emerged" that Zawahiri was ever there.
All in all, an outstanding performance that obtained a well-deserved award.
Footnote: The Pakistanis also announced on Monday that they had
But that proved to be not enough and Team Bush was overtaken by a last minute surge from our winner and new champion -
Pakistan!
What a year this has been for them! Already winners of the Sgt. Shultz "I see nothing! I hear nothing!" Award for their performance in the case of the sale of nuclear technology by Abdul Qadeer Khan, they have copped a second prize with an equally brilliant performance in their rendition of "Which way did they go? Which way did they go?"
First, in the immediate wake of a meeting with Colin Powell, they said on Friday that they believed they had Ayman al-Zawahiri, claimed to be the #2 man in al-Qaeda, surrounded in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan.
Then
on Saturday, Pakistani military officials began to back away from the possibility that the trapped leader was Dr. Zawahiri. ... Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the commander of Pakistani Army forces in the border area, broadened the range of possibilities, adding a senior Uzbek militant, Quaran Ata, or even a local Pakistani tribesman, Nek Muhammad.Later that same day, they said it was "unlikely" Zawahri was among those surrounded.
"It could be Quaran Ata," General Hussain said. "It could be Zawahiri. It could be Nek Muhammad. He could be very important for these people."
Finally, on Monday, officials said "no evidence had emerged" that Zawahiri was ever there.
All in all, an outstanding performance that obtained a well-deserved award.
Footnote: The Pakistanis also announced on Monday that they had
discovered a network of tunnels Monday inside the homes of tribesmen believed to be sheltering foreign militants. ...That is, there might not be anybody of any "importance" there at all, raising the possibility of a twofer. A truly exquisite effort.
Pakistani officials said the tunnels could have allowed militants to slip past army forces on the first night of fighting.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Scummiest Lead in a News Article Award
The clear winner is AP, with this brilliant entry:
I know, they'd be happier if the terrorists win.
War on Terror Is Suffering in CourtroomsYeah! How dare those courts get in the way of the War on Terrorism (copyright)(trademark)(pat. pending) with their stupid concerns about legalities and rights and innocent until proven guilty and all of that other crap. We're at war, have they forgotten?
By DAVID RISING
BERLIN (AP) - The post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism is suffering as much in the courts as in the streets with several legal setbacks involving suspected members of al-Qaida and other groups around the world.
I know, they'd be happier if the terrorists win.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the cradle?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
The Oscars
Emma Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for this 1995 film in which she costarred.
What is the cradle?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
The Oscars
Emma Thompson won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for this 1995 film in which she costarred.
That other June deadline may not be made, either
From the Toronto Globe & Mail for March 17.
"I know, you'd be happier if the Taliban was still in power."
"Uh, are you seriously telling me that, on the ground, not on paper, the current conditions are an improvement?"
Afghanistan's landmark national elections could be delayed until August, even if a UN plan to register millions of voters in troubled provinces succeeds, President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday.The UN agreed to undertake an effort at accelerated voter registration but only after receiving security guarantees from Karzai's government and the US.
Security and logistical problems mean only 1.4 million Afghans out of a total of 10.5 million eligible have registered for the elections, slated for June. ...
Still, Mr. Karzai said it had yet to be determined if presidential and parliamentary elections would be held together or "with some difference in time."
Holding both elections at the same time would be much more difficult, given uncertainty over district boundaries, the need to register hundreds of extra candidates and tougher security requirements.
The world body is also pressing for a new push to disarm the warlords and factional militias who still control much of the country in order to reduce the risk of intimidation of voters.Peace, freedom, and security, brought to you by the United States.
"I know, you'd be happier if the Taliban was still in power."
"Uh, are you seriously telling me that, on the ground, not on paper, the current conditions are an improvement?"
It's the 1920s all over again
Alan Greenspan, chair of the Federal Reserve Board, is floating a new economic trial balloon dismissing record-smashing levels of both federal and family debt as no big deal, giving the White House ammunition in its attempts to make their billionaire-friendly "temporary" tax cuts permanent. So says the New York Times for March 16, although not nearly so bluntly.
His thesis is that increases in personal wealth and growing sophistication of financial markets have allowed Americans and America to borrow much more today than might have seemed manageable just 20 years ago, when he was all but begging Bill Clinton to close a budget deficit a fraction of the one Bush is generating.
The argument for the first half of that is that even though
The argument for the second half is, as it seems is everything else these days, globalization. He argues that
Now, I admit I'm not an economist but it seems to me that this is a load of hooey. First,
What's more, those increases in wealth are being driven by extraordinarily low interest rates, which are at their lowest levels in 40 years. That keeps mortgage rates down, which supports a home-buying market and keeps prices up. Low interest rates also tend to drive buyers into stocks rather than instruments such as bonds whose yield depends on interest rates and thus now are low.
What that means is that Greenspan's sanguine view of debt and deficits, a view sure to be embraced by the Whitest House, works only so long as interest rates, rates which the Fed itself calls "unsustainably low," remain that way. If they rise, which they could easily do "if foreign lenders lose their appetite for American securities," we could be seriously screwed as consumer debt rises at the very same time that the value of assets is stalling or even falling.
And I guarantee you that at the first sign of upward pressure on interest rates, it will be blamed on "inflationary pressures within the economy" and coupled with a call for "wage restraint." And once again the very same people who are already suffering, already falling further behind, the ones who are now facing the foreclosures and the bankruptcies, will be the ones called on to actually make the "shared sacrifices" we'll be told are required.
Footnote: Why the title? Because this reminds me of the 1920s, a time of seeming economic boom that was to continue forever - and purely in theory could, so long as the delicate balance that kept it going was maintained. A bump, and it all came tumbling down, exposing the rot within that was hidden by the focus on the macroeconomic.
His thesis is that increases in personal wealth and growing sophistication of financial markets have allowed Americans and America to borrow much more today than might have seemed manageable just 20 years ago, when he was all but begging Bill Clinton to close a budget deficit a fraction of the one Bush is generating.
The argument for the first half of that is that even though
[a]djusted for inflation, the average family's debt, including a mortgage, has climbed from $54,000 in 1990 to $79,000 last year,families are in "good shape" because the value of their homes and stock portfolios have risen faster than their debts, leaving them with an increased net worth.
The argument for the second half is, as it seems is everything else these days, globalization. He argues that
investors have become far less wedded to their home countries. This declining "home bias," Mr. Greenspan said in a speech this month, "has enabled the United States to incur and finance a much larger current account deficit than would have been feasible in earlier decades."That is, we can borrow more because investors no longer care where their money is so long as it's profitable.
Now, I admit I'm not an economist but it seems to me that this is a load of hooey. First,
[m]ortgage foreclosure rates, personal bankruptcies and credit card delinquencies have been rising steadily and are at record levels. [But m]ost of that stress has taken place in lower-income families, which is why it has not made a big impact on aggregate data about national wealth,says Mark Zandi, an economist at Economy.com. That is, it's not that Americans are doing fine, it's that rich Americans are doing fine.
What's more, those increases in wealth are being driven by extraordinarily low interest rates, which are at their lowest levels in 40 years. That keeps mortgage rates down, which supports a home-buying market and keeps prices up. Low interest rates also tend to drive buyers into stocks rather than instruments such as bonds whose yield depends on interest rates and thus now are low.
What that means is that Greenspan's sanguine view of debt and deficits, a view sure to be embraced by the Whitest House, works only so long as interest rates, rates which the Fed itself calls "unsustainably low," remain that way. If they rise, which they could easily do "if foreign lenders lose their appetite for American securities," we could be seriously screwed as consumer debt rises at the very same time that the value of assets is stalling or even falling.
And I guarantee you that at the first sign of upward pressure on interest rates, it will be blamed on "inflationary pressures within the economy" and coupled with a call for "wage restraint." And once again the very same people who are already suffering, already falling further behind, the ones who are now facing the foreclosures and the bankruptcies, will be the ones called on to actually make the "shared sacrifices" we'll be told are required.
Footnote: Why the title? Because this reminds me of the 1920s, a time of seeming economic boom that was to continue forever - and purely in theory could, so long as the delicate balance that kept it going was maintained. A bump, and it all came tumbling down, exposing the rot within that was hidden by the focus on the macroeconomic.
Happy anniversary
So it's been a year. And we still ask what was the point? What was the cause? What was the gain?
And the only reasonable answers are none, certainly not the offered ones, and none.
The "threat" didn't exist. The so-called "weapons of mass destruction" didn't exist. The "ties to al-Qaeda" didn't exist. And what's more, the Bushites knew it all along, as journalist/activist John Pilger notes in the March 20 issue of the Australian newspaper The Age.
- Approaching 600 Americans have been killed in Iraq, 3200 more have been injured.
- We have no idea how many Iraqis have died, since the US has a deliberate policy of not keeping track. But independent estimates run to 55,000 Iraqis killed, including over 10,000 civilians. Every month, the war and its aftermath cause
- "According to the United States Agency for International Development," the New York Times notes, "Iraq has a third less drinking water than it did before the war." Only just over a third of people in Iraq report that their electricity supply is good, according to a survey commissioned for the BBC. Unemployment stands at around 45%; some estimates run to 60%.
- Even a generally upbeat, put-a-good-face-on-it report from the Christian Science Monitor, while saying the US would get "high marks in basic reconstruction," concedes that
Well, Iraq has been "liberated" in one sense: Saddam Hussein is no longer there. And there is - let's be honest here - some sense of hope among Iraqis. That BBC-commissioned survey found that 56% of people said they thought things are better now than they were a year ago, about 70% said things were going well for them personally, and 71% expected things to improve in the future.
Those are impressive numbers, even though it's hard to accept that things really are going well for 70% of the population of a nation with upwards of 60% unemployment. But how people feel about their present is often influenced by how they feel about their future: hope generates resilience and patience. And the fact that in some ways, things are measurably better than, or are at least back up to the level they were, at the outbreak of the war, provides a fair amount of succor in otherwise hard times.
But even here the question is liberated to what? And for what? In an interview with Greg Palast broadcast on BBC Newsnight on Friday,
The role of the Project for a New American Century is likely too familiar to require anything more than a reminder. Back in 2000, even before Bush was elected, they offered a proposal self-described as a "blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." It declared, among other things, the need for the US to have a "permanent role" in Gulf security and called "the unresolved conflict with Iraq" the "immediate justification" [emphasis added] for a "substantial American force presence" but added that the issue "transcends Saddam Hussein." Among those for who the paper was prepared were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, and Lewis Libby. The revelations by Paul O'Neill that the Bush team was thinking about ways to take our Saddam "from day one" simply represented moving that plan from the theoretical to the practical, from strategy to tactics.
Indeed, as I wrote just a year ago, just as the first bombs were falling,
And on January 20, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans said
Power and control. Power and control. And in pursuit of that end we have lied, invaded, bombed, killed, brutalized, and falsely imprisoned. We have increasingly turned our backs on civil liberties at home and shredded international law abroad, committing what, as Pilger points out, the Nuremberg judges in 1946 called "the supreme international war crime" - the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.
And what we have gotten for all our efforts is a tenuous grip on power in a nation constantly threatening to spin out of control, indeed into civil war, a possibility I have raised more than once.
The struggle over the interim constitution, which was almost torpedoed at the last moment, was only the beginning and was perhaps the easiest of the fights over Iraq's political future, because everyone knew at the end of the day that it still can be changed. It was, that is, the exhibition season. The real season is just beginning and already the visiting team is juggling its lineup.
Some more serious signs of the deeper trouble driving that supposedly non-existent impasse can be found in that BBC poll, the one usually reported as "good news" for the US because of the apparent optimism I mentioned above.
Ominously, while nearly 80% favoured a unified state with a central government in Baghdad, with only 14% supporting a "federalist" system of regional governments under a federal authority, 70% of Kurds preferred the latter system. And although four out of five Kurds say they were "liberated," only one out of three non-Kurds feels that way. That kind of aching, abiding ethnic divide was only temporarily papered over by the interim constitution. The real battle on this is yet to be fought and it may well not be limited to a political one. And one can at this point only speculate about how the Sunnis will feel about a unified state if "unified" appears to equal "Shiite dominated."
Other signs of deep dissatisfaction remain. Even after a year of "freedom" and "reconstruction" and "progress," 39% said the invasion was wrong and 41% felt it "humiliated Iraq." And while their confidence in their economic future may be improving, Iraqis' confidence in their political leaders is not:
- Over 40% have no confidence whatsoever in U.S. and British occupation troops. More than half oppose their presence and 15% want them to leave immediately.
- Over 60% express little or no confidence at all in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), expressing much more confidence in Iraq's religious leaders, the Iraqi police and the UN. Ahmed Chalabi had no support at all, while Saddam Hussein remains one of the six most popular politicians in the country.
- Among Arabs, 17% said attacks on coalition forces were acceptable and nearly that many said the same about attacks on the CPA. Those are clear minorities, true, but not insignificant numbers of people.
Lies and failures in pursuit of power and control leading to bloodshed, suffering, death, and potentially chaos on a level that would make Saddam's realms of butchery look like the good old days. This is what we've done, this is what we've spawned, this is what we've accomplished.
Happily, hopefully, gratefully, none of this has happened without resistance. On Saturday, well over a million people in hundreds of demonstrations around the world marked the anniversary of the start of the war. This is a far from complete list I put together from a couple of wire service stories. First, in the US:
- In New York City: upwards of 100,000
- "Thousands" in Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Augusta, Maine
- "Hundreds" in Crawford, Texas; San Francisco; Montpelier, Vermont; Cincinnati; Atlanta; and Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Even Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg, saw some action, along with over 200 other places across the country.
- Not to mention a spirited, multi-generational crowd of 50 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, carrying signs such as "Justice, Not War," "War is a Crime Against Humanity," and "Vote the Son of a Bush Out."
Around the world:
- Hundreds of thousands in central London
- A crowd estimated by journalists at 1,000,000 in Rome
- 150,000 in Barcelona
- Thousands in Paris, in Belgium, in Germany
- About 700 in Warsaw, 500 in Manila, 100 in Damascus
- Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, India, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Egypt, Hungary, and South Africa - all saw demonstrations.
Even the "coalition" is showing cracks in the wake of new Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero's apparent determination to keep his pledge to pull Spain's troops out despite US pressure.
One last thing: For those who would sneer "Oh, I know, you'd be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power," and leaving aside all facts as to just who it was that supported him and who it was that denounced him all those years he was our source of "stability" in the Middle East who was "taking steps in the right direction" on democracy, let me say this.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the tens of thousands of dead were still alive.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the tens of thousands more who have been maimed, who have lost limbs or eyes, were still whole.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the thousands now wrongly imprisoned were still walking the streets, talking with their families, sleeping in their own beds.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant we had not made ourselves a pariah in the eyes of the world.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant that the increased hatred, the increased violence, the increased terrorism, which we have spawned was still unborn.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant we valued justice over jingoism.
The simple fact is, the war on Iraq was not about our security and safety, it was about our power and privilege. There is a vast chasm, both practical and ethical, between those paired premises - and we as a nation have been on the wrong side. And frankly, yes! I would be happier, I would feel more hopeful for the future of the world and all its peoples - including those of Iraq - if Saddam Hussein still being in power meant that was not true.
And the only reasonable answers are none, certainly not the offered ones, and none.
The "threat" didn't exist. The so-called "weapons of mass destruction" didn't exist. The "ties to al-Qaeda" didn't exist. And what's more, the Bushites knew it all along, as journalist/activist John Pilger notes in the March 20 issue of the Australian newspaper The Age.
Ray McGovern, one of the CIA's most senior analysts and a personal friend of George Bush snr, told me: "It was 95 per cent charade. And they all knew it: Bush, Blair, Howard."Even our (literally) closest ally ultimately wasn't fooled.
Canadian officials say they challenged the U.S. to share secret intelligence showing that the Baghdad regime had dangerous weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war, but Washington failed to deliver....We've been lied to, tricked, deceived, misled, as even some of the "coalition of the bought and paid for" are now beginning to admit.
Washington's refusal to share raw intelligence with its close ally seemed puzzling at the time, one senior official said. But a year later, the reason now seems clear: "They didn't have any evidence."
Warsaw (AFP, March 18) - In a first sign of official criticism in Poland of the US-led invasion of Iraq, President Aleksander Kwasniewski said that his country had been "taken for a ride" about the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in the strife-torn country.And so were we. But we should have known better, we could have known better, but we didn't. Instead we were - we allowed ourselves to be - stampeded, buffaloed, by a morass of oozing, shifting justifications that played alternately on our post-9/11 fears and our conceit that because we are Americans, our cause is inevitably and unquestionably just. The result is that thousands upon thousands have paid and will continue to pay a price for our selfishness, our sort-sightedness, our insularity, our greed, our hubris.
"That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride," Kwasniewski said Thursday.
- Approaching 600 Americans have been killed in Iraq, 3200 more have been injured.
- We have no idea how many Iraqis have died, since the US has a deliberate policy of not keeping track. But independent estimates run to 55,000 Iraqis killed, including over 10,000 civilians. Every month, the war and its aftermath cause
the death and injury of 1000 children from exploding cluster bombs [and] has so saturated Iraqi towns and cities with uranium that American and British soldiers are warned not to go where Iraqi children play, for fear of contamination.- Thousands have suffered from suicide bombings,
a phenomenon unknown here until after the U.S.-led war toppled Saddam Hussein's regime nearly a year ago.- After a year of "rebuilding" and "infrastructure repair," Iraq has been brought back to something in some ways approaching where it was before the war started - that is, an economy devastated by 13 years of crippling, indeed murderous, sanctions.
The cycle began nine days after fighting erupted, and has claimed at least 660 lives - far more than in 3-1/2 years of Israel-Palestinian suicide attacks - according to U.S. military officials.
The majority of victims are Iraqis, the U.S. military said. Iraqi officials and police put the death toll higher by at least 100.
The UN's two senior officials in Iraq in the 1990s, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, both assistant secretaries-general of the UN, have described in detail a "genocidal embargo" imposed by America under a UN flag of convenience....Stricken as the result of sanctions that, as then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on May 11, 1996, were "worth it" to "contain" Saddam Hussein. "Worth it, yes, we say - as long as it's Arab children who are doing the dying," I wrote in October, 2001. (Oh, and let's not forget bombings - bombings that became so regular that in the summer of 2001 a Pentagon press representative referred to one such raid as "routine.")
"Almost a million Iraqis died as a direct result," Halliday told me, "including at least half a million children. The UNICEF studies are on the record. It was US policy to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, such as the water supply, which killed thousands of infants. By the time Bush invaded, a once prosperous country was a stricken nation."
- "According to the United States Agency for International Development," the New York Times notes, "Iraq has a third less drinking water than it did before the war." Only just over a third of people in Iraq report that their electricity supply is good, according to a survey commissioned for the BBC. Unemployment stands at around 45%; some estimates run to 60%.
- Even a generally upbeat, put-a-good-face-on-it report from the Christian Science Monitor, while saying the US would get "high marks in basic reconstruction," concedes that
in other critical subjects - security, religious and ethnic stability, employment, and building local democratic institutions - it would take home failing grades.Failure. Failure. Lies and failure. Lies we were told about "irrefutable evidence." Lies the tellers might even have believed themselves about cheering crowds strewing roses in our path. Lies that shifted to cover earlier lies, failures initially undertaken to conceal earlier failures. The war, we're now told was to "liberate Iraq" - "an argument," even the Times says, "that Mr. Bush offered after it became obvious that his original justifications for the war were vaporous." Vaporous and lies.
Well, Iraq has been "liberated" in one sense: Saddam Hussein is no longer there. And there is - let's be honest here - some sense of hope among Iraqis. That BBC-commissioned survey found that 56% of people said they thought things are better now than they were a year ago, about 70% said things were going well for them personally, and 71% expected things to improve in the future.
Those are impressive numbers, even though it's hard to accept that things really are going well for 70% of the population of a nation with upwards of 60% unemployment. But how people feel about their present is often influenced by how they feel about their future: hope generates resilience and patience. And the fact that in some ways, things are measurably better than, or are at least back up to the level they were, at the outbreak of the war, provides a fair amount of succor in otherwise hard times.
But even here the question is liberated to what? And for what? In an interview with Greg Palast broadcast on BBC Newsnight on Friday,
Jay Garner, the US general abruptly dismissed as Iraq's first occupation administrator after a month in the job, says he fell out with the Bush circle after he called for swift and free elections and rejected an imposed programme of privatisation. ...But that destiny could not include control of their own economy. In fact, the Coalition Provisional Authority created a number of laws - laws that by the proposed constitution cannot be revoked by any interim government - to forcibly open the Iraqi economy to international investment, i.e., forced globalization, and put strict and narrow limits on tax levels and the ability of the Iraqi government to regulate economic activity. Their liberation, is seems, is the freedom to become part of a global economy dominated by multinational corporate interests and the nations that serve and embrace them.
"My preference was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can, and do it with some form of elections ... I just thought it was necessary to rapidly get the Iraqis in charge of their destiny."
The role of the Project for a New American Century is likely too familiar to require anything more than a reminder. Back in 2000, even before Bush was elected, they offered a proposal self-described as a "blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." It declared, among other things, the need for the US to have a "permanent role" in Gulf security and called "the unresolved conflict with Iraq" the "immediate justification" [emphasis added] for a "substantial American force presence" but added that the issue "transcends Saddam Hussein." Among those for who the paper was prepared were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, and Lewis Libby. The revelations by Paul O'Neill that the Bush team was thinking about ways to take our Saddam "from day one" simply represented moving that plan from the theoretical to the practical, from strategy to tactics.
Indeed, as I wrote just a year ago, just as the first bombs were falling,
the notion that this war is unconnected to oil is ignorant, fatuous crap. The idea of the US occupying and controlling the oil of the Persian Gulf has been around for nearly 30 years, since the oil boycott of 1973-74. It was first proposed in 1975 (in a "deep backgrounder") by Henry Kissinger and policy has been moving in that direction since. But there is one way in which the slogan has it not wrong but not complete: The issue isn't oil profits (most oil companies have shied away from the war, fearing the repercussions) but oil control. Control of oil means control over major portions of the world economy. Taking over (excuse me, reconstructing) Iraq means American power, American dominance, American preeminence, exactly those things the people around (and including) Bush are after. So is the war about oil? Not directly. It's about what war is always about: Power and control.No, it wasn't about liberation. Especially not for the
more than 10,000 Iraqis [who] are in U.S. custody in Iraq. Entire families, including children as young as 11 and men as old as 75, have been swept into detention. Most are denied the right to lawyers or trials. Many are believed to be innocent. A recent U.S. review recommended that 963 of 1,166 detainees should be released.And neither was it about resisting terrorism, no matter how hard the Bushleaguers try to conflate the two, as our Liar-in-Chief did for example on Saturday when he said the war in Iraq proves that
terrorism suspects who are still at large "will know there is no cave or hole deep enough to hide from American justice."No, the world is not "safer now." The terrorism we have visited on Iraq has inflamed terrorism around the world. People in Iraq, in Turkey, now in Spain, can lay the blood of their people at the gates of the White House.
Paris (AP, March 19) The world is a more dangerous place because of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which may have toppled Saddam Hussein but also unleashed postwar violence and an upswing in terrorism, the French foreign minister said.That's neither an original nor a particularly controversial thought. Back on November 19 the Los Angeles Times reported that
''This is a belief that I have never stopped expressing,'' Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told Le Monde newspaper in an interview in its Friday edition.
''We have to look reality in the face: we have entered into a more dangerous and unstable world, which requires the mobilization of the entire international community,'' de Villepin said.
[t]he U.S. presence in Iraq is being used by extremist leaders to rally their followers to jihad, or holy war, around the world. ...(Note: The link is to my blog mention of the article; the actual article is now in a pay archive.)
The resurgent global menace leads critics to assert that the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have boomeranged by scattering Al Qaeda's forces, making them harder to detect, and inspiring like-minded extremists.
And on January 20, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans said
"In Iraq, the least plausible of all the reasons for going to war - terrorism - has now become the most harrowing of its consequences."And for us here - are we "safer" from another attack? (I note here that I'm completely leaving aside questions of domestic terrorism and hate groups and the administration's deceitful and despicable refusal to even admit their existence because of their right-wing source and I am for the sake of this argument accepting the unthinking equation of "terrorism" with "fundamentalist radical Islamic terrorism.") We live in a world where suspicion of us is growing and support for us is declining, especially in the Muslim world, a world where "yellow alerts" are the norm, where demands for increased police powers are matched by demands for decreased privacy, where enhanced government authority is matched by restricted civil liberties. We are told in one breath "we have made you safer" by the same smug, power-grasping bastards who will in the next breath tell us "you're in terrible danger, we need more control."
Power and control. Power and control. And in pursuit of that end we have lied, invaded, bombed, killed, brutalized, and falsely imprisoned. We have increasingly turned our backs on civil liberties at home and shredded international law abroad, committing what, as Pilger points out, the Nuremberg judges in 1946 called "the supreme international war crime" - the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.
And what we have gotten for all our efforts is a tenuous grip on power in a nation constantly threatening to spin out of control, indeed into civil war, a possibility I have raised more than once.
The struggle over the interim constitution, which was almost torpedoed at the last moment, was only the beginning and was perhaps the easiest of the fights over Iraq's political future, because everyone knew at the end of the day that it still can be changed. It was, that is, the exhibition season. The real season is just beginning and already the visiting team is juggling its lineup.
Mr. Powell's visit [to Iraq] came as the United States and its coalition allies have been working hurriedly to make a seamless transition to an Iraqi-led transition government that would replace the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. ...Which sounds suspiciously like the cliche brother-in-law who's always got "some big deals in the works."
Asked Friday about suggestions the transition is going poorly, Mr. Powell said, "I wouldn't say we're at an impasse or that anything is frozen. We are in a continuing process of moving toward an interim government."
Mr. Powell said officials "have not resolved yet ... its shape. But we have a number of ideas that are under consideration and we have time between now and then to put that government in place."
Some more serious signs of the deeper trouble driving that supposedly non-existent impasse can be found in that BBC poll, the one usually reported as "good news" for the US because of the apparent optimism I mentioned above.
Ominously, while nearly 80% favoured a unified state with a central government in Baghdad, with only 14% supporting a "federalist" system of regional governments under a federal authority, 70% of Kurds preferred the latter system. And although four out of five Kurds say they were "liberated," only one out of three non-Kurds feels that way. That kind of aching, abiding ethnic divide was only temporarily papered over by the interim constitution. The real battle on this is yet to be fought and it may well not be limited to a political one. And one can at this point only speculate about how the Sunnis will feel about a unified state if "unified" appears to equal "Shiite dominated."
Other signs of deep dissatisfaction remain. Even after a year of "freedom" and "reconstruction" and "progress," 39% said the invasion was wrong and 41% felt it "humiliated Iraq." And while their confidence in their economic future may be improving, Iraqis' confidence in their political leaders is not:
- Over 40% have no confidence whatsoever in U.S. and British occupation troops. More than half oppose their presence and 15% want them to leave immediately.
- Over 60% express little or no confidence at all in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), expressing much more confidence in Iraq's religious leaders, the Iraqi police and the UN. Ahmed Chalabi had no support at all, while Saddam Hussein remains one of the six most popular politicians in the country.
- Among Arabs, 17% said attacks on coalition forces were acceptable and nearly that many said the same about attacks on the CPA. Those are clear minorities, true, but not insignificant numbers of people.
Lies and failures in pursuit of power and control leading to bloodshed, suffering, death, and potentially chaos on a level that would make Saddam's realms of butchery look like the good old days. This is what we've done, this is what we've spawned, this is what we've accomplished.
Happily, hopefully, gratefully, none of this has happened without resistance. On Saturday, well over a million people in hundreds of demonstrations around the world marked the anniversary of the start of the war. This is a far from complete list I put together from a couple of wire service stories. First, in the US:
- In New York City: upwards of 100,000
- "Thousands" in Chicago, Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Augusta, Maine
- "Hundreds" in Crawford, Texas; San Francisco; Montpelier, Vermont; Cincinnati; Atlanta; and Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Even Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg, saw some action, along with over 200 other places across the country.
- Not to mention a spirited, multi-generational crowd of 50 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, carrying signs such as "Justice, Not War," "War is a Crime Against Humanity," and "Vote the Son of a Bush Out."
Around the world:
- Hundreds of thousands in central London
- A crowd estimated by journalists at 1,000,000 in Rome
- 150,000 in Barcelona
- Thousands in Paris, in Belgium, in Germany
- About 700 in Warsaw, 500 in Manila, 100 in Damascus
- Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, India, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Egypt, Hungary, and South Africa - all saw demonstrations.
Even the "coalition" is showing cracks in the wake of new Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero's apparent determination to keep his pledge to pull Spain's troops out despite US pressure.
Honduran officials said Tuesday that they would pull their 370 troops out of Iraq during the summer, and diplomats speculated that El Salvador and Guatemala might follow suit.And South Korea
has scrubbed plans to send troops to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, citing U.S. pressure to participate in "offensive operations" that are contrary to Seoul's mission of peaceful reconstruction, the defence ministry said today, adding it will still send troops to rebuild the country.Poland says it will keep its troops but is clearly unhappy with what it feels is the necessity, and the Netherlands is restive. Perhaps there is a change in the wind.
One last thing: For those who would sneer "Oh, I know, you'd be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power," and leaving aside all facts as to just who it was that supported him and who it was that denounced him all those years he was our source of "stability" in the Middle East who was "taking steps in the right direction" on democracy, let me say this.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the tens of thousands of dead were still alive.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the tens of thousands more who have been maimed, who have lost limbs or eyes, were still whole.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant the thousands now wrongly imprisoned were still walking the streets, talking with their families, sleeping in their own beds.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant we had not made ourselves a pariah in the eyes of the world.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant that the increased hatred, the increased violence, the increased terrorism, which we have spawned was still unborn.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant we valued justice over jingoism.
The simple fact is, the war on Iraq was not about our security and safety, it was about our power and privilege. There is a vast chasm, both practical and ethical, between those paired premises - and we as a nation have been on the wrong side. And frankly, yes! I would be happier, I would feel more hopeful for the future of the world and all its peoples - including those of Iraq - if Saddam Hussein still being in power meant that was not true.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is (the) crawl?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $2000
The support for an object set horizontally, as for the receiver of a telephone.
TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
The Oscars
What is (the) crawl?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $2000
The support for an object set horizontally, as for the receiver of a telephone.
TOMORROW'S FINAL JEOPARDY! CATEGORY
The Oscars
Friday, March 19, 2004
The raising of voices
It was hardly noticed - but the meaning will not be lost. In Vietnam, it took 10 years for it to happen in any significant way - this time it took one.
It was Gold Star families marching in protest of the war.
This past Sunday, over 250 members of military families who have lost children in Iraq protested at the US air base in Dover, Delaware, where the dead are returned to the states. On Monday, over 100 gathered at Walter Reed Army Hospital in DC, where the war's most seriously wounded recuperate, then marched to the White House.
"Anyone who has been killed over there has died in vain," said Sue Niederer of Pennington, NJ. "What are we there for?"
Not all the anti-war families make the same protests. Some want troops out now, some want to stay and "do it right" as a means to justify their loss. Others are angry about the lack of proper training and equipment. Most are frustrated by delays in providing causes of death or return of personal effects. But
I couldn't have said it better.
Footnote: And where did I first learn of this? ABC? NBC? CNN? The New York Times? Surely you jest. It was the Toronto Star. There was some coverage after the fact - which I had to dig for - but nothing before.
It was Gold Star families marching in protest of the war.
This past Sunday, over 250 members of military families who have lost children in Iraq protested at the US air base in Dover, Delaware, where the dead are returned to the states. On Monday, over 100 gathered at Walter Reed Army Hospital in DC, where the war's most seriously wounded recuperate, then marched to the White House.
"Anyone who has been killed over there has died in vain," said Sue Niederer of Pennington, NJ. "What are we there for?"
Not all the anti-war families make the same protests. Some want troops out now, some want to stay and "do it right" as a means to justify their loss. Others are angry about the lack of proper training and equipment. Most are frustrated by delays in providing causes of death or return of personal effects. But
[v]irtually all resent the fact they lost family members under false pretences because they are convinced no weapons of mass destruction will ever be found.Notably, Rosemarie Dietz Slavenas of Rockford, IL, called the search for banned weapons a "snipe hunt."
I couldn't have said it better.
Footnote: And where did I first learn of this? ABC? NBC? CNN? The New York Times? Surely you jest. It was the Toronto Star. There was some coverage after the fact - which I had to dig for - but nothing before.
Everything you need to know about federal concern for the working poor in about 90 seconds
The Earned Income Tax Credit is an IRS program intended to provide tax relief to low-income families with children. It now benefits about 21 million Americans.
As noted by the Christian Science Monitor this past Wednesday, standards for the program are confusing and difficult; even IRS Commissioner Mark Everson recently admitted "it is tough for a lot of people to figure out if they qualify or not."
As a result, when the IRS examined returns for 1999 they found an error rate of 30% in returns using the EITC. More shocking is the fact that
As for Congress, last week the Senate Budget Committee voted to cut the program by 10%, a vote, happily, reversed by the full Senate. The House has yet to act but it
Yep, everything is in order.
As noted by the Christian Science Monitor this past Wednesday, standards for the program are confusing and difficult; even IRS Commissioner Mark Everson recently admitted "it is tough for a lot of people to figure out if they qualify or not."
As a result, when the IRS examined returns for 1999 they found an error rate of 30% in returns using the EITC. More shocking is the fact that
some 25 percent of the people who are eligible for the program don't apply - perhaps because they don't know they are eligible.The answer to this has been to run what David Williams, the EITC director at the IRS, calls "a very robust" audit of people who use the program. In addition, the agency is conducting a pilot program requiring EITC participants to "prequalify" their dependents with records proving the child actually lives with them.
As for Congress, last week the Senate Budget Committee voted to cut the program by 10%, a vote, happily, reversed by the full Senate. The House has yet to act but it
"has said it would like $8 billion out of program cuts or tax increases," says John Wancheck, outreach coordinator for the earned-income credit at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington. "When you look at places for cuts, Medicaid and EITC are at the top of the list."So let's see. A program to help working poor taxpayers has problems. So we audit their returns, make it harder to participate, and look to cut the program, while doing absolutely nothing about the millions of people who are not obtaining the benefits to which they are entitled.
Yep, everything is in order.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is bib?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $1200
A swimming stroke consisting of alternating overarm strokes and a flutter kick.
What is bib?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $1200
A swimming stroke consisting of alternating overarm strokes and a flutter kick.
What's old is new again - or vice versa
US-installed Prime Minister Gerard Latortue of Haiti has announced his new 13-member cabinet.
Not a single member of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party was included.
In an interesting and perhaps revealing divergence of coverage, AP (a more American source) made much of the fact that members of Convergence, the opposition political coalition, likewise were not among those chosen to be ministers - but Reuters (a more European source) noted that among that number are "several members of the groups that led anti-government protests in the months before Aristide's fall," adding that
Meanwhile Dept.: Not everything is going according to plan.
Not a single member of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas Party was included.
In an interesting and perhaps revealing divergence of coverage, AP (a more American source) made much of the fact that members of Convergence, the opposition political coalition, likewise were not among those chosen to be ministers - but Reuters (a more European source) noted that among that number are "several members of the groups that led anti-government protests in the months before Aristide's fall," adding that
"the impression is that there is a concerted attempt to marginalize Lavalas," said Robert Fatton, chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia.On the other hand, AP did note that new defense minister Gen. Herard Abraham
said a commission will study how to recreate the army - a corrupt and brutal force before Aristide disbanded it in 1995.Not if, how. Haiti's future is increasingly looking like its past.
Meanwhile Dept.: Not everything is going according to plan.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said: "We don't recognise Haiti's new government. The president of Haiti is named Jean-Bertrand Aristide and he was elected by his people."CARICOM has called for an investigation of Aristide's claims that he was kidnapped by US forces and made to leave. The US denies any such thing and strongly opposes any investigation that would validate it's position.
Haiti's Caribbean neighbour, Jamaica, also said it would not recognise Mr Latortue's authority, at least until after a regional summit of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) scheduled for next week.
Passing up the goodies
On Saturday, I stated my belief
Here's a small possibility on the high-tech goodies front: How about giving up a few iterations of Moore's Law?
Moore's Law is the idea first enunciated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, now Chairman emeritus of Intel, that the memory capacity of computers will double roughly every two years. So far, despite several predictions of its imminent demise, it's pretty much held up.
That seems like a good thing at first glance but it comes with serious environmental costs. According to a new UN study discussed by columnist Stephen Strauss in the March 15 Toronto Globe & Mail, a
And if you do get a new machine, Williams says, "promptly selling old computers to the used-product market is also important." Don't get attached to it, stick it in the garage thinking that you'll do something with it someday, only to eventually toss it as trash, adding to solid waste.
In fact, don't even sell it, donate it. There are any number of charitable organizations that will take used computers. Here's a link that should get you started. Or check your phone directory.
that the only true answer to terrorism, ultimately the only effective "weapon" against terrorism, is justice, a justice that may well mean sacrifices on the part of the haves - and in terms of the world as a whole, that includes virtually all of us - in favor of the have-nots. Not sacrifices of freedoms or philosophies, but of finances.I figured it was obvious that the "us" in that sentence referred secondarily to Americans (even the poorest of who would be considered reasonably well-off by the standards of much of the world) and primarily to people reading this, but just in case it wasn't, there it is. I invited you "to ask yourself how much you would be prepared to inconvenience yourself, how many (for example) of our high-tech goodies we'd be willing to give up or pay more for, in order to bring that justice to others."
Here's a small possibility on the high-tech goodies front: How about giving up a few iterations of Moore's Law?
Moore's Law is the idea first enunciated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, now Chairman emeritus of Intel, that the memory capacity of computers will double roughly every two years. So far, despite several predictions of its imminent demise, it's pretty much held up.
That seems like a good thing at first glance but it comes with serious environmental costs. According to a new UN study discussed by columnist Stephen Strauss in the March 15 Toronto Globe & Mail, a
24 kilogram [roughly 50 pound] desktop computer requires ten times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture.Which means it's a good thing both in terms of the environment and resource depletion to resist the urge to get a new computer until upgrading the old one simply won't cut it any more - particularly because making the chips is the most energy-intensive part of the process. In short, do with less.
Conversely a car or a refrigerator requires only one or two times its weight in fossil fuels to make.
[Eric] Williams[, a professor at the United Nations University in Tokyo who did the study,] did some subsequent calculations and says it takes roughly 1.8 tonnes of raw material to make the world's indispensable information machine - a weight equal to that of a rhinoceros. What this means is that when people throw away their old computers because Moore's Law has made them obsolete, tonnes - literally - of material along with the energy to create them gets dumped. Not to mention the effects of dumped lead, mercury and a variety of noxious chemicals on the environment.
And if you do get a new machine, Williams says, "promptly selling old computers to the used-product market is also important." Don't get attached to it, stick it in the garage thinking that you'll do something with it someday, only to eventually toss it as trash, adding to solid waste.
In fact, don't even sell it, donate it. There are any number of charitable organizations that will take used computers. Here's a link that should get you started. Or check your phone directory.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is a four-leaf clover? (Acceptable: clover)
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $400
It's the part of a pair of overalls that is worn over the chest.
What is a four-leaf clover? (Acceptable: clover)
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Baby Talk for $400
It's the part of a pair of overalls that is worn over the chest.
So much for CAPPS II
The Toronto Globe & Mail reported on Tuesday that
The fact is, the reality of identity theft makes mincemeat of the fantasy of "keeping terrorists out" via invasions of our privacy. And as more information about more of us becomes circulated more widely, the risk of identity theft increases because a vulnerability anywhere in that web of connections can be a pathway to a wealth of information. While we're warned about cheap scams like someone looking over our shoulder at the ATM as if that was the answer, as the article notes, large-scale databases are increasingly a target of choice for sophisticated attacks. And, I'd suggest, outfits like organized crime are not going to be the only customers for that kind of information.
Which raises yet again the same question that has been asked before: Since programs like CAPPS II are such transparent failures at their claimed goals as must be obvious even to their most ardent supporters, what are the real goals for them?
Footnote: The New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times reported on Wednesday that BJs Wholesale Club, a discount warehouse chain with 150 stores in the eastern US, has admitted that the numbers of at least 100 credit cards and 100 debit card numbers of its customers have been stolen. The company said a "possible compromise of its computer system is to blame," while ruling our a system-wide breach.
(Unfortunately, I can't give a link since archived articles are available only to paid subscribers to the print edition.)
[c]riminals have gained access to the detailed, personal credit files of about 1,400 people, in a security breach that raises fears of a major identity theft. ...One of those kinds of things, one the article doesn't mention, is defeating security checks that are supposed to prevent terrorists from traveling freely across our borders.
By gaining access to the files, criminals have obtained social-insurance numbers, bank-account numbers, credit histories, home addresses, job descriptions, the names of spouses - enough information to take over bank accounts, open new accounts in the names of those whose identities have been stolen, or impersonate individuals to obtain loans or credit cards.
With that kind of information, a criminal could steal someone's identity, set up false accounts, obtain loans and credit cards as well as get passports and other documents, said RCMP Sergeant John Ward.
"It's frightening what they can do. It's a huge issue," he said. "Once you steal somebody's identity, you can set up all kinds of things."
The fact is, the reality of identity theft makes mincemeat of the fantasy of "keeping terrorists out" via invasions of our privacy. And as more information about more of us becomes circulated more widely, the risk of identity theft increases because a vulnerability anywhere in that web of connections can be a pathway to a wealth of information. While we're warned about cheap scams like someone looking over our shoulder at the ATM as if that was the answer, as the article notes, large-scale databases are increasingly a target of choice for sophisticated attacks. And, I'd suggest, outfits like organized crime are not going to be the only customers for that kind of information.
Which raises yet again the same question that has been asked before: Since programs like CAPPS II are such transparent failures at their claimed goals as must be obvious even to their most ardent supporters, what are the real goals for them?
Footnote: The New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times reported on Wednesday that BJs Wholesale Club, a discount warehouse chain with 150 stores in the eastern US, has admitted that the numbers of at least 100 credit cards and 100 debit card numbers of its customers have been stolen. The company said a "possible compromise of its computer system is to blame," while ruling our a system-wide breach.
(Unfortunately, I can't give a link since archived articles are available only to paid subscribers to the print edition.)
Stating the obvious
Or at least, stating what by now should be obvious. The International Herald Tribune said on Tuesday that
Footnote: In his book, Blix diplomatically elides the question of if intelligence was manipulated,
But exaggeration and deliberate misstatements are not the same. For example, saying "Saddam Hussein is the greatest danger we face!" (or, as an alternative example, "Global warming is the greatest danger we face!") is an exaggeration. There is no way to actually quantify threats, no scale to rank them, so in a philosophical sense, the statement should be taken the same way as an advertising claim, strictly in context and not necessarily literally.
That is, even if we were to assume claims about Saddam having had biochemical weapons were true, was that a greater threat than terrorism? Do you mean domestic or international? As a typical American, you are far more likely to be affected by unemployment than terrorism. But if terrorism does touch you, the consequences could be much more severe. So which is the greater threat? And over what time frame? In the longer term, isn't global climate change a greater threat than all of that? In the even longer term, what about an asteroid hit? None of this is meant to demean any of those or any other risks, but to point out the impossibility of actually ranking them in any agreed-on way that would allow one to be declared the "greatest."
But to take intelligence assessments, information to which only you have access, assessments that are full of "probably"s, "likely"s, and "we think so but we can be sure"s and present them as "definitely"s, "clearly"s, and "irrefutably"s is to distort the facts in a way that is intended to mislead your audience.
And, my friends, intentionally misleading someone is the very essence of lying.
Hans Blix, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector, said Monday that the Bush administration convinced itself of the existence of banned weapons on dubious findings before invading Iraq and was uninterested in hearing evidence to the contrary.With Hans Blix and David Kay now both firmly in the camp of the apostates, is there anybody left - anybody at all - outside the White twins (i.e., House and -hall) who maintains that there was sound intelligence of Iraq holding banned weapons before the war?
"I think they had a set mind," Blix said on NBC as he began a 10-day American book tour in the week marking the first-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion.
"They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons," he said. "Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
Speaking more assertively about the war than he does in "Disarming Iraq," his new book, Blix charged the administration with invading Iraq as retaliation for the terror strikes on the United States, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attackers.
Footnote: In his book, Blix diplomatically elides the question of if intelligence was manipulated,
saying only that it was "probable that the governments were conscious that they were exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had."Exaggeration and even hyperbole are in the nature of political argument. You expect them and, if you're an alert political consumer, allow for them. (And, if you're an alert politician, use them.)
But exaggeration and deliberate misstatements are not the same. For example, saying "Saddam Hussein is the greatest danger we face!" (or, as an alternative example, "Global warming is the greatest danger we face!") is an exaggeration. There is no way to actually quantify threats, no scale to rank them, so in a philosophical sense, the statement should be taken the same way as an advertising claim, strictly in context and not necessarily literally.
That is, even if we were to assume claims about Saddam having had biochemical weapons were true, was that a greater threat than terrorism? Do you mean domestic or international? As a typical American, you are far more likely to be affected by unemployment than terrorism. But if terrorism does touch you, the consequences could be much more severe. So which is the greater threat? And over what time frame? In the longer term, isn't global climate change a greater threat than all of that? In the even longer term, what about an asteroid hit? None of this is meant to demean any of those or any other risks, but to point out the impossibility of actually ranking them in any agreed-on way that would allow one to be declared the "greatest."
But to take intelligence assessments, information to which only you have access, assessments that are full of "probably"s, "likely"s, and "we think so but we can be sure"s and present them as "definitely"s, "clearly"s, and "irrefutably"s is to distort the facts in a way that is intended to mislead your audience.
And, my friends, intentionally misleading someone is the very essence of lying.
Arrrgggh!
On Monday I mentioned Donald Rumsfeld's appearance on Face the Nation where he was
Well - grrrrr - I have to correct the correction. That quote was Rumsfeld's, from September 18, 2002. A must-see video clip of the exchange, turned into an ad by MoveOn.org, can be seen here.
reduced to a stuttering boob after claiming that no one in the administration had said Iraq was an "immediate" threat only to be faced with a quote where he said exactly that.I later made a correction, saying that the quote was apparently from Cheney, not Rumsfeld.
Well - grrrrr - I have to correct the correction. That quote was Rumsfeld's, from September 18, 2002. A must-see video clip of the exchange, turned into an ad by MoveOn.org, can be seen here.
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