Jeopardy! for Thursday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Suriname?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Odes and Ends for $400
In a John Keats classic, this "is truth, truth" this; "that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know."
==
Jeopardy! for Friday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is beauty?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Odes and Ends for $1200
This lyrical balladist of the Lake District wrote on "the sovereignty of May."
==
Jeopardy! for Saturday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is William Wordsworth?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Odes and Ends for $2000
"O, let me steal on liquid kiss! For O! my soul is parched with love" wrote this Scot in "Delia, an Ode."
==
Jeopardy! for Sunday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Robert Burns?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
Religion
This group first met out of doors in England in the 1650s waiting to receive God's light and tremble from it.
==
Jeopardy! for Monday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who are the Quakers? (Acceptable: Society of Friends)
JEOPARDY!
The Planets for $200
One of the brightest of this sixth planet's over 1,000 rings is only 500 feet thick.
==
Jeopardy! for Tuesday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Saturn?
JEOPARDY!
The Planets for $600
This planet was named in 1930 by an eleven-year-old British girl, Venetia Burney, who won a "Name Planet X" contest.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Bad news good news
A few days ago, Reuters reported, a young man named Alfred Dreyling was arrested when he tried to board a Delta Airlines flight out of Oklahoma City. It seems he had a pipe bomb in his carry-on bag.
It was interesting seeing how different sources covered this: In a number of them, it wasn't a bomb at all, it was "an explosive device" or even "a small explosive device." Dreyling even got the support of a former mayor of Oklahoma City, who called it a "glorified firecracker."
The bad news for him is that he was brought into federal court where he was released on $10,000 bail. Conviction carries a possible penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The good news for him is that he's not a dark-skinned Muslim. If he was, he'd already be in Gitmo.
An Oklahoma man told federal investigators he forgot a pipe bomb he built for fun was in his luggage when tried to board an airplane, according to court documents released on Thursday.You read that right: He "forgot" he was carrying a bomb. He claimed he makes them for fun and has been doing it for some years.
It was interesting seeing how different sources covered this: In a number of them, it wasn't a bomb at all, it was "an explosive device" or even "a small explosive device." Dreyling even got the support of a former mayor of Oklahoma City, who called it a "glorified firecracker."
The bad news for him is that he was brought into federal court where he was released on $10,000 bail. Conviction carries a possible penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The good news for him is that he's not a dark-skinned Muslim. If he was, he'd already be in Gitmo.
It's been hot lately
I'm beginning to become convinced that by the time the corporate honchos and their sock puppet scientist skeptics are forced to accept the fact of global warming, it will be too late. New Scientist for last Thursday has the latest:
You know those little "my present mood" thingies some bloggers have? If I had one, it would now say "We're doomed."
The world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.And that may not be the worst of it: If we're lucky, the bogs will dry as they warm, in which case the methane will oxidize and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. If we're not lucky and the bogs stay wet,
The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.
[Sergei] Kirpotin[, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia,] describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".
What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across.
as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide.In either case but worse in the second, the greenhouse gases enhance the warming trend which then accelerates the melting which releases more gases in the sort of feedback loop about which climate scientists have been increasingly concerned.
You know those little "my present mood" thingies some bloggers have? If I had one, it would now say "We're doomed."
Creepiest recent news
But of course it has such great potential and is perfectly innocent and what's more, it can have wonderful humanitarian benefits! Or so some folks in this New Scientist article from August 10 tell us:
I, of course, started thinking about the ways this could be misused: The article only refers to people going left or right under the control of this device, but balance also involves forward and backward. So if you can make someone turn left by making them feel they're off-balance to the right, can you make them move forward by making them feel they're falling backward? If so, you could hypothetically take some unwilling person, surgically implant the electrodes, and them force them to walk wherever you wanted them to.
Admittedly, that may not be realistic; the people who demonstrated the effects were volunteers uninterested in fighting the experience. It might be easy or at least possible to overcome it with conscious effort and an unwilling participant could possibly defeat the intent, if not the feeling, by dropping to their knees and then to the ground. Still, the idea of radio-controlled people creeps me out.
By remotely stimulating a person's vestibular system - the fluid-filled tubes in the inner ear that guide their sense of balance - with electrodes placed on the skin just below the ear, researchers at NTT's research laboratories in Kanagawa[, Japan,] have found a way to turn humans into oversized radio controlled vehicles.The developers say the primary use would be to add an illusion of real motion to a computer game. James Collins, an expert in GVS at Boston University, said it might have a medical use in helping patients with an impaired sense of balance.
The technique, known as galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), unbalances a person so that they automatically veer left or right in an attempt to rebalance themselves. The NTT team developed a headset and a control unit similar to that used with remote-controlled toy cars.
The research project went on public display at the 2005 SIGGRAPH, in Los Angeles, US from 2 August. Volunteers were given a chance to experience GVS and, to the amusement of other visitors, were seen careening around the show floor under demonstrators' control.
I, of course, started thinking about the ways this could be misused: The article only refers to people going left or right under the control of this device, but balance also involves forward and backward. So if you can make someone turn left by making them feel they're off-balance to the right, can you make them move forward by making them feel they're falling backward? If so, you could hypothetically take some unwilling person, surgically implant the electrodes, and them force them to walk wherever you wanted them to.
Admittedly, that may not be realistic; the people who demonstrated the effects were volunteers uninterested in fighting the experience. It might be easy or at least possible to overcome it with conscious effort and an unwilling participant could possibly defeat the intent, if not the feeling, by dropping to their knees and then to the ground. Still, the idea of radio-controlled people creeps me out.
Déjà voodoo
I know you've seen or at least read about the Washington Post article from Sunday saying that, despite its public happy face, the
Daily violence surrounds ordinary Iraqis: roadside bomb ambushes; drive-by hijackings and ambushes; kidnappings; mortar and rocket bombardments; suicide car bombings; sabotage of infrastructure, notably oil pipelines; assassinations of government officials and political and religious figures; the list goes on.
Oh, but wait: That actually didn't come from the Post article, it came from a post of mine more than a year ago. It's easy to understand the confusion, though, since this is what the article did say:
Now:
STDD/GTHO
Footnote: The Post also reported that
A federation is what the Kurds have been insisting on all along. As far back as January, 2004 I said that the Kurds "seem in no mood to compromise," a notion I repeated as recently as last month. Coming on all "gee, we didn't think they actually meant it" now displays nothing short of willful ignorance.
I remember some years ago learning that a reason why the US was caught off guard by the Islamic revolution in Iran was that the CIA had for some time been operating under instructions to avoid contacting any opposition groups for fear of "embarrassing" the Shah, who denied any such opposition existed. I can't help but wonder, if indeed the ignorance was that deep, if there was something of that sort going on here, some sort of "we don't want to know" occurring.
[t]he Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq....The article mentions some painful "realities of daily life," including the fact that electricity supply, the judicial system, unemployment, and overall security are all worse than before the war began.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
Daily violence surrounds ordinary Iraqis: roadside bomb ambushes; drive-by hijackings and ambushes; kidnappings; mortar and rocket bombardments; suicide car bombings; sabotage of infrastructure, notably oil pipelines; assassinations of government officials and political and religious figures; the list goes on.
Oh, but wait: That actually didn't come from the Post article, it came from a post of mine more than a year ago. It's easy to understand the confusion, though, since this is what the article did say:
Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.So yeah, I think the confusion was easy to understand. Especially given that -
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. ... Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent. ...
Oil production is estimated at 2.22 million barrels a day, short of the goal of 2.5 million. Iraq's pre-war high was 2.67 million barrels a day. ...
"State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. ...
Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.
Now:
[T]he administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations....Then:
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz ... said Tuesday that the Pentagon had underestimated the violent tenacity of an insurgency that formed after Baghdad fell, and he acknowledged that the United States may be forced to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq for years to come.It seems we are still "learning the lessons" and "lowering the expectations" that we were learning and lowering more than a year ago.
STDD/GTHO
Footnote: The Post also reported that
U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. ...At least when it comes to the Kurds, if US intelligence really was surprised at their stubbornness, they truly have not been paying attention.
"We didn't calculate the depths of feeling in both the Kurdish and Shiite communities for a winner-take-all attitude," said Judith S. Yaphe, a former CIA Iraq analyst at the National Defense University.
A federation is what the Kurds have been insisting on all along. As far back as January, 2004 I said that the Kurds "seem in no mood to compromise," a notion I repeated as recently as last month. Coming on all "gee, we didn't think they actually meant it" now displays nothing short of willful ignorance.
I remember some years ago learning that a reason why the US was caught off guard by the Islamic revolution in Iran was that the CIA had for some time been operating under instructions to avoid contacting any opposition groups for fear of "embarrassing" the Shah, who denied any such opposition existed. I can't help but wonder, if indeed the ignorance was that deep, if there was something of that sort going on here, some sort of "we don't want to know" occurring.
Okay, so it's not tomorrow
This is actually not going to be as long or as detailed as I first thought; it's more of an addendum to my previous post.
About a week ago, Digby at Hullabaloo posted about a series of focus groups run by the Democracy Corps "in an effort to find out how we can win back the independent rural and red state Bush voter." The report of the findings said that
But interestingly, an article to which he links gets it righter than he does. Christopher Hayes, writing in the wake of the November election, considers his experience campaigning among undecided voters in Wisconsin. He opens by noting that the "political class" can't understand such voters. How can it be that they can't make up their mind? (He lost me momentarily when he emphasized "this year's election, when the choice was so stark and the differences between the candidates were so obvious." In addition to the fact that there were those of us who weren't sure the differences were so "stark" - I'm still not sure just what the real as opposed to rhetorical difference was between Bush's Iraq policy and Kerry's, for example - can you think of a single election when we weren't told of "stark" and "obvious" differences?) The answer from that political class, he suggests, is that undecided voters either don't know or don't care.
But his experience told him there is a deeper malaise: It's not that people don't care, it's that they don't connect political action with the issues they face in daily life.
As I was trying to suggest last time, the more things people feel are out of their control, the more firmly they will try to control what is left. The more pressured, the more threatened, they feel in their daily lives, the more they will resist change in what is familiar. Put in more political terms, people under stress tend to become more conservative and will look to "moral" or "character" issues because those are the only things left to them where it seems what they think matters.
The comparison is not exact by any means, but I just flashed on the old civil rights chant that would go like "I may be black - but I am somebody. I may be poor - but I am somebody. I may not have a job - but I am somebody." And so on. The idea was to get people thinking and keep them thinking that yes, you are somebody. You have worth. To break down the sense of helplessness and inferiority that had been drummed in over scores, hundreds, of years. Maybe that's what we need now: A way to tell people, to convince people that yes, you matter, that yes, you can do something to change the world around you, that yes, together with your neighbors you can make the powers listen to you. Too many of us have given up believing we can do anything to make a difference - and as long as that doesn't change, little else will, at least for the better.
I suspect there is still more to say here but I'll leave it for another time.
About a week ago, Digby at Hullabaloo posted about a series of focus groups run by the Democracy Corps "in an effort to find out how we can win back the independent rural and red state Bush voter." The report of the findings said that
[p]articularly among non-college voters, cultural issues not only superceded other priorities, they served as a proxy for many voters on those other issues. [emphasis in original]Digby concludes from this that even trying to approach red state voters, or at least the cliche red state voters, is a waste of time: The GOPpers
are building an impermeable, corrupt political machine made up of cronies, employees and hangers-on the likes of which we haven't seen since the 19th century. ...However, some of the very quotes he pulls from the report don't square with his assessment: Some complain that the Dummycrats simply don't show enough backbone and don't seem to have core convictions.
Trying to court their most borg-like constituency is really beside the point.
Quit criticizing so much and have a little bit more of your own direction. Whether it's right or wrong, pick a direction and go. Be on the offense instead of the defense.With some minor modifications, that notion - have the courage of your convictions and don't back down - could have come right out of Digby's archives. Or even mine.
But interestingly, an article to which he links gets it righter than he does. Christopher Hayes, writing in the wake of the November election, considers his experience campaigning among undecided voters in Wisconsin. He opens by noting that the "political class" can't understand such voters. How can it be that they can't make up their mind? (He lost me momentarily when he emphasized "this year's election, when the choice was so stark and the differences between the candidates were so obvious." In addition to the fact that there were those of us who weren't sure the differences were so "stark" - I'm still not sure just what the real as opposed to rhetorical difference was between Bush's Iraq policy and Kerry's, for example - can you think of a single election when we weren't told of "stark" and "obvious" differences?) The answer from that political class, he suggests, is that undecided voters either don't know or don't care.
But his experience told him there is a deeper malaise: It's not that people don't care, it's that they don't connect political action with the issues they face in daily life.
The majority of undecided voters I spoke to couldn't name a single issue that was important to them. This was shocking to me. ...Put another way, these voters didn't see health care as something they could do anything about through political involvement - it was something beyond their control. And because it was beyond their control, it didn't figure in their political judgments.
But the very concept of the issue seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to. ... At first I thought this was a problem of simple semantics - maybe, I thought, "issue" is a term of art that sounds wonky and intimidating, causing voters to react as if they're being quizzed on a topic they haven't studied. So I tried other ways of asking the same question....
These questions, too, more often than not yielded bewilderment. As far as I could tell, the problem wasn't the word "issue"; it was a fundamental lack of understanding of what constituted the broad category of the "political." ... Often, once I would engage undecided voters, they would list concerns, such as the rising cost of health care; but when I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief - not in disbelief that he had a plan, but that the cost of health care was a political issue. It was as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.
As I was trying to suggest last time, the more things people feel are out of their control, the more firmly they will try to control what is left. The more pressured, the more threatened, they feel in their daily lives, the more they will resist change in what is familiar. Put in more political terms, people under stress tend to become more conservative and will look to "moral" or "character" issues because those are the only things left to them where it seems what they think matters.
The comparison is not exact by any means, but I just flashed on the old civil rights chant that would go like "I may be black - but I am somebody. I may be poor - but I am somebody. I may not have a job - but I am somebody." And so on. The idea was to get people thinking and keep them thinking that yes, you are somebody. You have worth. To break down the sense of helplessness and inferiority that had been drummed in over scores, hundreds, of years. Maybe that's what we need now: A way to tell people, to convince people that yes, you matter, that yes, you can do something to change the world around you, that yes, together with your neighbors you can make the powers listen to you. Too many of us have given up believing we can do anything to make a difference - and as long as that doesn't change, little else will, at least for the better.
I suspect there is still more to say here but I'll leave it for another time.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Romania?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $1000
You'll have to pay your builders in guilders in this former Dutch colony in South America.
What is Romania?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $1000
You'll have to pay your builders in guilders in this former Dutch colony in South America.
Jeopardy! for Tuesday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is peso?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $600
Jump bail in Transylvania in this country and you'll be skipping to the leu, its currency.
What is peso?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $600
Jump bail in Transylvania in this country and you'll be skipping to the leu, its currency.
Jeopardy! for Monday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Jim Thorpe?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $200
To buy chili in Colombia or a Columbia VHS in Chile, you'll spend currency called this.
Who is Jim Thorpe?
JEOPARDY!
Foreign Funds for $200
To buy chili in Colombia or a Columbia VHS in Chile, you'll spend currency called this.
Late night thoughts
This will wander a bit. More than a bit, I expect. Caveat lector.
Just yesterday, I read an exchange in the comments on an item about Rush Limbaugh at Media Matters for America. It began with someone citing what Paul Hackett, the Iraq War vet who narrowly lost election in Ohio for a seat in the House of Representatives, said in response to Limbaugh having called him a "staff puke." (He called Limbaugh a "fatass drug addict.")
We usually say that the "something else" is selfishness, a matter of "me first and devil take the hindmost." And there is indeed a good deal of that, but I think there is something underlying it. As here, so very often the attitude becomes "You lost. So shut up. You lost. You LOST! Loser!" For them, it's not about being correct, it's about the winning itself. It's about the power.
This is not a new thought for me. In a letter to a friend more than 10 years ago, I was considering the results of the 1994 Congressional elections. I noted that the actual shift in voting patterns was relatively small, on the order of a few percent, but it was
The shift, I said at the time, was driven by the Perot voters, the people I called the "a'ginners" - that is, whatever it is, they're a'gin it. The GOPpers knew (and still know) how to push their buttons better than the Dummycrats, so they won and have held that advantage since.
But, getting back on the main track here, as our commenting friend above demonstrates, for many ordinary right wingers, the kind we deal with in day-to-day life and in comments on various blogs, the issue comes down to winning. Period. With so little in their political and economic lives under their control, this provides a sense of power, of dominance even. I honestly think that in the '60s these same people would have been on the wild-eyed left fringe rattling on at length about "the workers' revolution" that was coming any day - because then it was the left that was the winning side. You could call it a political version of the Stockholm Syndrome, of achieving a sense of control over your circumstances by identifying with your oppressor - except in this case it's not an oppressor per se, it's just whoever appears to be on top. (I suppose another way to phrase that would be to call them sycophants except in this case their servility makes them feel they have some degree of power and influence rather than actually gaining for themselves any of either.)
Or, since so many of these folks are males, it could be an expression of masculine overcompensation:
What I suspect is that we are still seeing a version of the "angry white male" of the 1990s. I said in that same letter quoted above that
I don't think a lot has changed in that regard in the years since I wrote that. Despite all we hear from Dummocratic Party partisans, the Bill Clinton years were not all that great for the average family, nor have those ensuing been any better. Just as in the '80s, the bulk of the benefits of whatever economic growth we saw went to the rich. For example, based on Census Bureau figures, over the 15-year period from 1988 to 2003, the real median income
- of the poorest fifth of households went up by only 2.8% (and in 2003 was below where it was in 1989).
- of the next fifth went up 5.3% (and in 2003 dropped for the third year in a row).
- of the middle fifth went up 6.9%.
- of the next fifth went up 12%.
- of the richest fifth went up 25%
- of the richest 1% went up 36%.
Put another way, while the median (middle case) household income went up 6.5% over that 15 years, the mean (average) household income went up 16% - meaning that most of the gain came in households with above-median income.
Meanwhile, the percentage of the population living below the official (too low) poverty line has gone essentially nowhere (it was 13.0% in 1988, 12.5% in 2003); ditto for those with an income no more than 125% of the poverty line (17.5% in 1988; 16.9% in 2003) and those "living" on an income no more than 50% of the poverty line, which never dropped below 4.5% and in 2003 stood at 5.3% - essentially the same as it was fifteen years earlier (5.2%). A real shocker as far as I'm concerned is that each year during that time, an average of about 40% of poor people worked and around 10% worked full-time, year-round and still lived in poverty.
What all this means is that, to quote that letter one more time because it remains true, people are coming to believe "that work gets you nowhere and more work gets you more nowhere." And the Cornell study gives us reason to believe that men in particular - and they do seem to be, overall, the most vociferous wingers - are going to have this affect their attitudes toward other topics.
The bottom line, if you will, here, is that with so much seemingly beyond their control - gas prices, the economy, health care, a future for their children, the list of everyday concerns fitting the description is long - people are going to look for what they can control. And dammit, some things may be going to hell but some things can damn well be kept the way they've always been! So no, gays can't get married and yes we're going to wave the flag at every opportunity and no those foreigners can't come here and yes we're going to "protect" the pledge of allegiance and no....
Constant stress turns people in on themselves and away from what someone once called "the deserving stranger." And certainly we've seen enough of that, i.e., stress, over the past few decades.
I'm going to cut myself off here. Digby over at Hullabaloo has a post quite relevant to all these meandering thoughts; I intend to make some comments on it tomorrow as a way of continuing (and perhaps even focusing) my thinking here. Stay tuned. (Or tune out, if you are of the mind.
Just yesterday, I read an exchange in the comments on an item about Rush Limbaugh at Media Matters for America. It began with someone citing what Paul Hackett, the Iraq War vet who narrowly lost election in Ohio for a seat in the House of Representatives, said in response to Limbaugh having called him a "staff puke." (He called Limbaugh a "fatass drug addict.")
If I'm not mistaken[, someone replied], Paul lost. So his points would be important to about nobody. Now if he could only design a better golf ball...... [length of ellipsis as per original]Someone else came back with
[a]s a resident of the district in which he ran, his comments are important to me. Is this your typical attitude? That the opinions of a slim minority (48%) have no worth at all?To which the original poster declared
In the political world, yes, they have no worth. Slim minority = lost.I just found that so typical, almost archetypical. It is precisely the attitude of so many rightwingers - and in this instance I consciously distinguish them from honest conservatives (and there are some), those who take conservative stands because they honestly no matter how wrongly believe them to be the best course, "the greatest good for the greatest number" and all that. But for rightwingers of the sort on display here, the sort who have been in the ascendancy over the past couple of decades, it's about something else entirely.
We usually say that the "something else" is selfishness, a matter of "me first and devil take the hindmost." And there is indeed a good deal of that, but I think there is something underlying it. As here, so very often the attitude becomes "You lost. So shut up. You lost. You LOST! Loser!" For them, it's not about being correct, it's about the winning itself. It's about the power.
This is not a new thought for me. In a letter to a friend more than 10 years ago, I was considering the results of the 1994 Congressional elections. I noted that the actual shift in voting patterns was relatively small, on the order of a few percent, but it was
enough to change enough elections to change Congress - putting the Senate in the Dole-drums and subjecting us to the spectacle of a bunch of Newt-wits stomping around Washington, verbally wiggling their asses in a touchdown taunt, conceitedly smug in their condescension, who seem less excited about what they can do with their new-found power than they are by the simple fact that they have it. It's the power itself that's getting them off, far more than any notions of some good (even for themselves) they might accomplish by wielding it.I maintain that that, in fact, was a big part of the reason why the "Gingrich Revolution" didn't come off as predicted: While he had a number of wily generals, too many of his troops were snot-nosed egoists more adept at the campaign equivalent of schoolyard taunts than at the actual mechanisms of government and a good deal more interested in strutting than in legislating - fortunately for us.
The shift, I said at the time, was driven by the Perot voters, the people I called the "a'ginners" - that is, whatever it is, they're a'gin it. The GOPpers knew (and still know) how to push their buttons better than the Dummycrats, so they won and have held that advantage since.
But, getting back on the main track here, as our commenting friend above demonstrates, for many ordinary right wingers, the kind we deal with in day-to-day life and in comments on various blogs, the issue comes down to winning. Period. With so little in their political and economic lives under their control, this provides a sense of power, of dominance even. I honestly think that in the '60s these same people would have been on the wild-eyed left fringe rattling on at length about "the workers' revolution" that was coming any day - because then it was the left that was the winning side. You could call it a political version of the Stockholm Syndrome, of achieving a sense of control over your circumstances by identifying with your oppressor - except in this case it's not an oppressor per se, it's just whoever appears to be on top. (I suppose another way to phrase that would be to call them sycophants except in this case their servility makes them feel they have some degree of power and influence rather than actually gaining for themselves any of either.)
Or, since so many of these folks are males, it could be an expression of masculine overcompensation:
Ithaca, NY, August 2 - Threaten a man's masculinity and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher.(Thanks to AmericaBlog for the link.)
"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle," said Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell. ...
Willer administered a gender identity survey to a sample of male and female Cornell undergraduates in the fall of 2004. Participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback that their responses indicated either a masculine or a feminine identity. While women's responses were unchanged regardless of the feedback they received, men's reactions "were strongly affected by this feedback," Willer said.
"Masculinity-threatened men also reported feeling more ashamed, guilty, upset and hostile than did masculinity-confirmed men," states Willer's report, "Overdoing Gender: Testing the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis." ...
The study produced "the predicted results," he said. "The intention of the study was to explore whether masculine overcompensation exists and where. But the point isn't to suggest these are the only factors that can explain these behaviors. Likewise, there may be a wide variety of other behaviors that could increase when men are concerned about their levels of masculinity."
In a separate study, Willer verified that support for the Iraq War, homophobia and interest in purchasing an SUV were all considered masculine by study participants.
What I suspect is that we are still seeing a version of the "angry white male" of the 1990s. I said in that same letter quoted above that
Bill Clinton, of all people, expressed it well in a speech on April 8[, 1995]: Referring to middle-aged white men who when they were 20 looked forward to a "good life" of sending their kinds to college followed by a secure retirement, he said "Now they've been working for 15 years without a raise and they think they could be fired at any time. And they go home to dinner and they look across the table at their families and they think they let them down. They think somehow, what did I do wrong? It's pretty easy for people like that to be told by somebody else in the middle of a political campaign with a hot 30-second ad, you didn't do anything wrong, they did it to you."After noting the economic stagnation of the preceding decades ("Of the six primary ethnic-gender groupings in the US - black, white, and Hispanic men and women - only one of them, white women, has made a clear gain in real median income over the last 20 years. The others have either stagnated or declined."), I wrote that
And who, according to those bastards, are "they?" Intrusive big government. Irresponsible poor people. Environmental elitists/extremists/doomsayers. Selfish minorities. Pushy women. And what is it they "did?" Taxes that take away your money. Laze about on those taxes - your taxes - while you work harder than ever. Environmental laws that take away the job you have. Affirmative action programs that take away the job you deserve.
[p]erhaps never before in our history, certainly never before in this century, has such a large portion of our population (and not just those proverbial angry white guys, either) looked at their children and felt that those children will wind up worse off than they themselves are - felt, that is, like failures.And it made a lot of men, for most of who their sense of self-worth, of value, is strongly wrapped up in their ability to provide for a family (it's said that the worst insult you can hurl at a man is to tell him he'll never amount to anything; whether that should be the worst is irrelevant to the fact that it is), to feel vulnerable, to question themselves and their abilities.
What has this has done to us? It's made us a little colder, a little harder, a little more inured to others' suffering, and a lot angrier. It's prompted us to regard as "unfair" anything (such as affirmative action) that we don't see as benefitting us, personally and immediately. It's propelled us toward isolation from our own communities, fragmentation of any sense of mutual responsibility, and condemnation of anyone different or "other."
I don't think a lot has changed in that regard in the years since I wrote that. Despite all we hear from Dummocratic Party partisans, the Bill Clinton years were not all that great for the average family, nor have those ensuing been any better. Just as in the '80s, the bulk of the benefits of whatever economic growth we saw went to the rich. For example, based on Census Bureau figures, over the 15-year period from 1988 to 2003, the real median income
- of the poorest fifth of households went up by only 2.8% (and in 2003 was below where it was in 1989).
- of the next fifth went up 5.3% (and in 2003 dropped for the third year in a row).
- of the middle fifth went up 6.9%.
- of the next fifth went up 12%.
- of the richest fifth went up 25%
- of the richest 1% went up 36%.
Put another way, while the median (middle case) household income went up 6.5% over that 15 years, the mean (average) household income went up 16% - meaning that most of the gain came in households with above-median income.
Meanwhile, the percentage of the population living below the official (too low) poverty line has gone essentially nowhere (it was 13.0% in 1988, 12.5% in 2003); ditto for those with an income no more than 125% of the poverty line (17.5% in 1988; 16.9% in 2003) and those "living" on an income no more than 50% of the poverty line, which never dropped below 4.5% and in 2003 stood at 5.3% - essentially the same as it was fifteen years earlier (5.2%). A real shocker as far as I'm concerned is that each year during that time, an average of about 40% of poor people worked and around 10% worked full-time, year-round and still lived in poverty.
What all this means is that, to quote that letter one more time because it remains true, people are coming to believe "that work gets you nowhere and more work gets you more nowhere." And the Cornell study gives us reason to believe that men in particular - and they do seem to be, overall, the most vociferous wingers - are going to have this affect their attitudes toward other topics.
The bottom line, if you will, here, is that with so much seemingly beyond their control - gas prices, the economy, health care, a future for their children, the list of everyday concerns fitting the description is long - people are going to look for what they can control. And dammit, some things may be going to hell but some things can damn well be kept the way they've always been! So no, gays can't get married and yes we're going to wave the flag at every opportunity and no those foreigners can't come here and yes we're going to "protect" the pledge of allegiance and no....
Constant stress turns people in on themselves and away from what someone once called "the deserving stranger." And certainly we've seen enough of that, i.e., stress, over the past few decades.
I'm going to cut myself off here. Digby over at Hullabaloo has a post quite relevant to all these meandering thoughts; I intend to make some comments on it tomorrow as a way of continuing (and perhaps even focusing) my thinking here. Stay tuned. (Or tune out, if you are of the mind.
Footnote to Sunday
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that
But not surprisingly, the 6-4 anti-knowledge majority on the board went ahead and voted in the new substandards anyway. Still, it's clear that they were bruised enough to want some backup, thus the "academic review." Either way, they can cover themselves: The review says "Great!" they say "See? We were right" and roll merrily along; the review says "Yuck!" and they have an out by demonstrating their so very sincere devotion to true science by announcing the need for further "refinement of the standards," which they will undertake in due course.
[t]he Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 Tuesday to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote.I suspect that last part was some run of the mill CYA after the kangaroo court "hearings" the board held in May didn't go as planned because scientists didn't get suckered into playing against a stacked deck by attending and because one local pro-science attorney volunteered to cross-examine the board's witnesses and proved to be more than up to the task.
But not surprisingly, the 6-4 anti-knowledge majority on the board went ahead and voted in the new substandards anyway. Still, it's clear that they were bruised enough to want some backup, thus the "academic review." Either way, they can cover themselves: The review says "Great!" they say "See? We were right" and roll merrily along; the review says "Yuck!" and they have an out by demonstrating their so very sincere devotion to true science by announcing the need for further "refinement of the standards," which they will undertake in due course.
The standards are used in developing state tests for fourth, seventh and 10th-graders, though local schools have the final say on what is taught in their classrooms. Students will be tested on the new standards in the 2007-08 school year.Which is clearly too late to implement them for 2005-2006. I can't help but suspect that the board's majority wouldn't be at all upset if this whole business faded into the background no matter which way it goes. The thing people such as these like least is close attention.
The board is expected to vote on final approval of the standards in October.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Sherlock Holmes?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
Athletes
He was an Olympian, played pro baseball for the Reds, and was a charter member of pro football's hall of fame.
Who is Sherlock Holmes?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
Athletes
He was an Olympian, played pro baseball for the Reds, and was a charter member of pro football's hall of fame.
Jeopardy! for Saturday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Silence of the Lambs?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $2000
Judie Angell's book The Case of the Ruby Ring features Shirley Holmes, great-grandniece of this sleuth.
What is Silence of the Lambs?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $2000
Judie Angell's book The Case of the Ruby Ring features Shirley Holmes, great-grandniece of this sleuth.
Okay, it's Sunday
Updated So what the heck, it's a slow traffic day, I figured why not. I came across something this morning, an old item it would seem, since it makes reference to a book published over three years ago as if it was recent, but no matter. It's just such a wonderful illustration of the kind of logical fallacies people fall into when they try to "scientifically" prove their religious beliefs that it's worth taking a few moments to examine.
The math, at least to the points listed, seems, well, a little off. If the "probability of God's existence is one in two," that means the odds of God existing are 50-50, i.e., there's a 50% probability. Same for "the probability that God became incarnate." Point 3 offers no figure to calculate and I take point 4 to mean that if God does exist and did take on human form, and was resurrected, there's a 90% probability that latter event would be reported in the Gospels. Simply taking Swinburne's figures at face value makes the probability all three things happening, necessary for the proof to be valid, to be .5 x .5 x .9 = .225 or a 22.5% chance of the resurrection. And that doesn't include a probability for this "incarnate" God to have been resurrected after an Earthly death. If we use Swinburne's logic and say there's a 50% probability (it either happened or it didn't) the figure drops to 11.25%. How that becomes a "one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true" - that is, a 99.9% probability that it is true - must be another of those religious mysteries we are simply supposed to accept as Truth.
Now, I haven't seem the book so I'm prepared to give Swinburne the benefit of the doubt that the "complex calculations" in his book are rather more involved that the nonsense being peddled here. But no matter the cleverness or "complexity," nonsense it remains. Let's go beyond the numbers for a second of two.
"The probability of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't." Wrong, wrong, wrong! A completely non-logical argument. While you can certainly make the banal observation that "God either exists or doesn't," the probability of that is one in two only if there is an equal chance of either case occurring. But there is absolutely no reason to say there is. As an example, consider that I have voted in every national and state level election for where I was living ever since I became of voting age. (I have missed a few local ones.) Come the 2006 Congressional elections, you can certainly say that either I will vote or I will not. But based on my record so far, it would clearly be ridiculous to say that I'm as likely not to vote as I am to vote. Swinburne's assumption of a 50% probability is just that: an assumption. For his proof to proceed, he must first establish a probability of God's existence. Since that is something philosophers have been trying to do for quite some time now (and the fact that they're still trying shows how much success they've had), there would seem to be a major problem right at the start. Even if you get past that, you are of course faced with the same argument applying to his point 2.
Point 3 is an absurdity. "Evidence for God's existence" is certainly a prerequisite for any "proof" of the resurrection (no God, no resurrection) but it is not an argument for it. Evidence for God's existence is evidence for God's existence, period. It is not evidence for anything beyond that. It is entirely possible to argue for the existence of God without endorsing even by implication the resurrection or even the possibility of it. Or is Swinburne saying that Islam, Judaism, native American religions, and every other non-Christian belief or philosophy that includes a god is actually arguing for a belief in the resurrection of Jesus?
There have been many attempts to logically prove the existence of God; among Christians at least, those of Anselm, Aquinas, and Augustine are likely the best known. They share common flaws in that they contain hidden assumptions and of necessity ignore the ability of the human mind to create irreconcilable contradictions (For example, is the following sentence true or false: "I am lying.") - but that's truly neither here nor there. The point is that what we have here is not proof or even argument, but foolishness.
Okay, so what's the point of this whole exercise? I said at the top it's another example of how faith rarely if ever can be upheld by logic. But a more accurate rendition of that idea is that it's another illustration of how logic so often breaks down in the face of faith. (Anselm even argues that without faith, we can't hope to understand God - but once we believe, we can come to understand the logic of God's existence and actions. Which reminds me of what the old fortunetellers on the boardwalk used to say: If you don't believe it, it won't come true.)
That inability of logic or scientific proof to penetrate dense walls of faith that would deny them can be seen in a more recent, more relevant incident.
And oh my word, wasn't the Discovery Institute, the scientifically-illiterate nitwits for who "intelligent design" is merely a fall-back position for their actual creationist views, delighted. Bush was "defending free speech on evolution," they enthused, and "supporting the right of students to hear about different scientific views." Oh yes, indeed, that's what it's about: free speech. Maybe they argue it that way because they know full well that, despite their bravado, scientifically, they haven't got a single leg to stand on.
"Intelligent design," the notion that, as the Discovery Institute itself says, "proposes that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause" rather than by evolution or physical laws, is a farce. A farrago of unfounded assumptions and negative proofs leading to conclusions that are nothing more than religion-driven speculation, it is a disgrace to attempt to label it "science." More: It's an embarrassment to the English language to associate it with the word "intelligent."
Speaking of embarrassment, perhaps the most embarrassed person in Washington this week was
In fact, ID is so much of a fake that even Rick Santorum is on the other side: "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom," he said. And the usually reliably wacko Charles Krauthammer worries that this may be going too far:
I've posted before about "intelligent design" on January 27, 2004,, March 26, 2004, November 28, 2004, December 1, 2004, January 13, 2005, February 1, 2005, and March 31, 2005.
Updated with a few additional comments and some minor edits for clarity.
PBU32
Oxford University professor Richard Swinburne, a leading philosopher of religion, has seemingly done the impossible. Using logic and mathematics, he has created a formula that he says shows a 97 percent certainty that Jesus Christ was resurrected by God the Father, report The Age and Catholic News.Okaaaayyyy....
This stunning conclusion was made based on a series of complex calculations grounded in the following logic:
1. The probability of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't.
2. The probability that God became incarnate, that is embodied in human form, is also one in two.
3. The evidence for God's existence is an argument for the resurrection.
4. The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.
The math, at least to the points listed, seems, well, a little off. If the "probability of God's existence is one in two," that means the odds of God existing are 50-50, i.e., there's a 50% probability. Same for "the probability that God became incarnate." Point 3 offers no figure to calculate and I take point 4 to mean that if God does exist and did take on human form, and was resurrected, there's a 90% probability that latter event would be reported in the Gospels. Simply taking Swinburne's figures at face value makes the probability all three things happening, necessary for the proof to be valid, to be .5 x .5 x .9 = .225 or a 22.5% chance of the resurrection. And that doesn't include a probability for this "incarnate" God to have been resurrected after an Earthly death. If we use Swinburne's logic and say there's a 50% probability (it either happened or it didn't) the figure drops to 11.25%. How that becomes a "one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true" - that is, a 99.9% probability that it is true - must be another of those religious mysteries we are simply supposed to accept as Truth.
Now, I haven't seem the book so I'm prepared to give Swinburne the benefit of the doubt that the "complex calculations" in his book are rather more involved that the nonsense being peddled here. But no matter the cleverness or "complexity," nonsense it remains. Let's go beyond the numbers for a second of two.
"The probability of God's existence is one in two. That is, God either exists or doesn't." Wrong, wrong, wrong! A completely non-logical argument. While you can certainly make the banal observation that "God either exists or doesn't," the probability of that is one in two only if there is an equal chance of either case occurring. But there is absolutely no reason to say there is. As an example, consider that I have voted in every national and state level election for where I was living ever since I became of voting age. (I have missed a few local ones.) Come the 2006 Congressional elections, you can certainly say that either I will vote or I will not. But based on my record so far, it would clearly be ridiculous to say that I'm as likely not to vote as I am to vote. Swinburne's assumption of a 50% probability is just that: an assumption. For his proof to proceed, he must first establish a probability of God's existence. Since that is something philosophers have been trying to do for quite some time now (and the fact that they're still trying shows how much success they've had), there would seem to be a major problem right at the start. Even if you get past that, you are of course faced with the same argument applying to his point 2.
Point 3 is an absurdity. "Evidence for God's existence" is certainly a prerequisite for any "proof" of the resurrection (no God, no resurrection) but it is not an argument for it. Evidence for God's existence is evidence for God's existence, period. It is not evidence for anything beyond that. It is entirely possible to argue for the existence of God without endorsing even by implication the resurrection or even the possibility of it. Or is Swinburne saying that Islam, Judaism, native American religions, and every other non-Christian belief or philosophy that includes a god is actually arguing for a belief in the resurrection of Jesus?
There have been many attempts to logically prove the existence of God; among Christians at least, those of Anselm, Aquinas, and Augustine are likely the best known. They share common flaws in that they contain hidden assumptions and of necessity ignore the ability of the human mind to create irreconcilable contradictions (For example, is the following sentence true or false: "I am lying.") - but that's truly neither here nor there. The point is that what we have here is not proof or even argument, but foolishness.
Okay, so what's the point of this whole exercise? I said at the top it's another example of how faith rarely if ever can be upheld by logic. But a more accurate rendition of that idea is that it's another illustration of how logic so often breaks down in the face of faith. (Anselm even argues that without faith, we can't hope to understand God - but once we believe, we can come to understand the logic of God's existence and actions. Which reminds me of what the old fortunetellers on the boardwalk used to say: If you don't believe it, it won't come true.)
That inability of logic or scientific proof to penetrate dense walls of faith that would deny them can be seen in a more recent, more relevant incident.
Washington (AP, August 2) - President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.(Sidebar: I wish the reporter had followed up with "Uh, no, Mr. President, I wasn't asking about 'schools of thought.' I was asking if intelligent design should be taught as science." Of course, that didn't happen, which is not surprising, given the state of our media - but that's a different post.)
During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.
"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."
And oh my word, wasn't the Discovery Institute, the scientifically-illiterate nitwits for who "intelligent design" is merely a fall-back position for their actual creationist views, delighted. Bush was "defending free speech on evolution," they enthused, and "supporting the right of students to hear about different scientific views." Oh yes, indeed, that's what it's about: free speech. Maybe they argue it that way because they know full well that, despite their bravado, scientifically, they haven't got a single leg to stand on.
"Intelligent design," the notion that, as the Discovery Institute itself says, "proposes that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause" rather than by evolution or physical laws, is a farce. A farrago of unfounded assumptions and negative proofs leading to conclusions that are nothing more than religion-driven speculation, it is a disgrace to attempt to label it "science." More: It's an embarrassment to the English language to associate it with the word "intelligent."
Speaking of embarrassment, perhaps the most embarrassed person in Washington this week was
Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, [who] was quoted in The New York Times this week [before Bush's statement] as saying intelligent design was not a scientific concept, and [after it] that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean he thinks the concept should be taught as part of the "social context" in science classes.Perhaps, but I doubt it. Some accounts have indicated that Bush was caught off-guard by the question, and I'm convinced his answer was sincere and did not refer to any "social context" but to the agenda of the radical pseudo-Christian right and reflected his own faith-based ignorance of science and scientific method.
In fact, ID is so much of a fake that even Rick Santorum is on the other side: "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom," he said. And the usually reliably wacko Charles Krauthammer worries that this may be going too far:
"Religion is back out of the closet. But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion," Krauthammer wrote in Time Magazine.In discussing John Roberts in comments on another blog, I noted that the ever-present strains between the corporate and pseudo-religious wingnut factions in Bush's base were starting to show. They just opened a crack more. I suspect that those who have tried to straddle that gap - such as Santorum - are at some point going to have to decide which side they are on. Which one they choose will tell us a great deal about which battles we're going to have to fight.
I've posted before about "intelligent design" on January 27, 2004,, March 26, 2004, November 28, 2004, December 1, 2004, January 13, 2005, February 1, 2005, and March 31, 2005.
Updated with a few additional comments and some minor edits for clarity.
PBU32
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Footnote to the preceding
I just thought I'd include this; it's part of the text of a leaflet a group I was with gave out to commemorate Hiroshima Day some years ago. Red Bank was the name of the town where we were doing the leafletting.
Two years ago, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated the world's nuclear arsenal at 27,600 weapons with a total explosive force of about 5,000 megatons. That is roughly the equivalent of 385,000 Hiroshimas.
We may have forgotten the nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation, but they haven't forgotten us.
Imagine a one-megaton nuclear bomb has exploded over Red Bank. Out to a distance of six miles from the center of the explosion:Today, eight nations have nuclear weapons: the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. North Korea is developing them and Iran is accused, possibly accurately, of doing likewise. The possibility of a nuclear-armed North Korea is encouraging some in Japan to press for that nation to join the "nuclear club."
- all human skin exposed to the blast has been charred through;
- human eyeballs have melted;
- bushes, trees, and wooden buildings have burst into flames;
- most structures have been leveled;
- burning ashes, hot coals, and other flammable materials have been scattered.
Result: a fire storm. Something that killed over 100,000 people in Dresden in World War II. Something that was responsible for most of the deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Something that would kill millions in a nuclear war.
A fire storm: A column of fire one mile wide reaches one and one-half miles into the sky. Two-thirds of standing structures are on fire. The rising hot air generates winds of over 100 mph, strong enough to uproot trees three feet in diameter and toss cars around. The fire burns up all available oxygen, suffocating people in open air. The temperature in the center rises to 800 degrees Centigrade. People are blasted to death, burned to death, suffocated. The ways are different, the end is the same: They die.
In World War I, 5% of the killed were civilians.
In World War II, 48% of the killed were civilians.
In the Korean War, 84% of the killed were civilians.
In World War III, 90-95% of the killed will probably be civilians.
Now remember the people of Hiroshima. Over 100,000 killed by a bomb a fraction of the size of the bombs available for use today. People permanently scarred - mentally and physically - by the most shocking experience in the history of humankind. Discovering for the first time the legacy of nuclear war. A legacy of disease, death, and anguish.
For most of the dead will not die at once. Theirs will be a lingering, painful death of radiation poisoning, hunger, and disease.
"At Hiroshima and Nagasaki," a medical report states, "the population three months later was found to be apathetic and profoundly lethargic. Leaking water pipes all over the city. No garbage or sewage collection organized - people living often in their own filth in total dejection and inertia."
Malnutrition. Scurvy. Bubonic plague. Dysentery. Tuberculosis. Typhus. Hepatitis. Gastro-enteritis.
This, too was the legacy of Hiroshima. The legacy of nuclear war.
Two years ago, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace estimated the world's nuclear arsenal at 27,600 weapons with a total explosive force of about 5,000 megatons. That is roughly the equivalent of 385,000 Hiroshimas.
We may have forgotten the nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation, but they haven't forgotten us.
60
This week marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the week there will be, if past experience is any guide, a few news stories recalling the events, a few photographs of paper cranes showered over the monument in Hiroshima's Peace Park, and a few "it must not happen again" editorials all expressing with appropriate regret the "necessity" of the bombings. It will, in short, be a week of comforting, reinforcing, oft-told tales - that is, of myths.
That is perhaps more fitting than we realize, because the nuclear weapons age was born in a myth: the myth of the Nazi bomb. Most people date the start of the American nuclear arms effort to a famous 1939 letter to President Roosevelt, written by Dr. Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein (because it was thought his name would be more impressive), noting the possibility of developing an atomic bomb. By the time of Pearl Harbor, the US already had a small nuclear bomb project going that had made real progress.
The political argument given for building the atomic bomb, for investing the enormous amounts of time, money, resources, and scientific talent in what became known at the Manhattan Project, was that some intelligence reports said that Nazi Germany may have been working on one. If so, we had to have one and we had to have it first. Although it must in fairness be noted that it may not have been known at the time, the fact is that although the Germans were indeed doing some experiments in that direction, they were going about it in an extremely inefficient way and it would've taken them decades to develop a bomb - if it was possible at all.
Some of late have tried to resuscitate that threat by claiming the Germans were "closer than we knew." The argument, however, is based on their progress in enriching uranium and relies on the supposition that in the 1940s scientists working on the project could have suddenly changed gears and adopted a different approach - that is, do exactly what they had decided against doing years before. At least one writer added the argument that a commando raid that destroyed a enrichment facility in occupied Norway set back the project significantly. That undoubtedly slowed production, but it didn't affect the problems with the process itself. That is, the "closer than we knew" assertion in based on a series of "what ifs," which makes for interesting speculation but not a persuasive argument.
But no matter what you think of that point, what's important here is that it was the claimed threat from Germany that supposedly provided the logic, the argument, the purpose of the Manhattan Project. And yet, and yet....
By late 1944 US intelligence knew that the German nuclear experiments had failed. The Manhattan Project didn't even slow down.
Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 - 10 weeks before the first successful test explosion of an atomic bomb. (Code-named Trinity, it took place at Alamogordo Testing Range, 230 miles south of Los Alamos, NM on July 16, 1945.) With the surrender, the entire founding logic of the Manhattan Project evaporated. But instead of stopping or even slowing down, the project accelerated, in part because some on the staff were afraid the war would end before they got the bomb built. We simply switched myths: from the myth of Nazi atomic bombs to the myth of the fanatical Japanese. The weapon that was supposedly designed for defense against Germany now "had" to be used on Japan.
And here is what's probably the most important myth of all, because it provided the logical (if you can call it that) underpinnings for actually carrying out the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for actually vaporizing tens of thousands of human beings in the flash of an instant and opening the door of the atomic age, a myth that gets replayed, reproduced, repronounced, reproclaimed every time Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned, a myth that people continue to believe today, as a Gallup poll shows 57% of Americans approving of the bombings: the myth that the Japanese were so fanatical that the only possible alternative to the devastation of those cities was a bloody land invasion of Japan.
It's just not true. It's more than a myth, it's a damned lie. A 60-year old damned lie.
To begin with, the yearly claims, sure to be heard again this week, that such an invasion would've cost 250,000 or 500,000 or 1,000,000 American lives (the numbers vary unpredictably) is utter nonsense. Even President Truman originally cited an estimate of 250,000 casualties (not deaths) - although in later years he doubled it, then doubled it again. More to the point, the War Planning Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff never expected more than 40,000 American deaths, and thought they might've been as low as 20,000 because they thought it a fair likelihood that Japan would surrender during the first part of the campaign.
Which in turn raises the more important question of whether such an invasion was necessary at all.
It wasn't.
By the spring of 1945 Japan was already a defeated nation. It no longer had any navy to speak of, its air force had been decimated, its army driven back to its own shores. It was incapable of mounting any offensive action or even of defending itself against US air raids. Critical materials and even food were in short supply. The situation was so bad that even attempts to justify the bombings wind up confirming Japan's desperate condition: Several years ago I had an email debate with a man who tried to project the classic image of a well-defended Japan bristling with military forces. At one point, trying to show the determination of the Japanese to defend the homeland no matter what the cost, he said "Japan pulled some 500 loaded ships out of China and not one of them made it back to Japan," because of attacks by high-altitude bombers. In response, I noted that he had thereby agreed, if unintentionally, that Japan's air force was so thoroughly destroyed that it couldn't even provide air cover to get its own retreating troops back safely.
In fact, the situation was so bad that before - before - the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan had already made secret overtures to the United States through Sweden and the Soviet Union stating that it was ready to surrender. All of this was known to the US military, all of this was known to Truman, who rejected the offer because it wasn't unconditional: Hirohito would've kept his throne.
What was also known to Truman was the USSR's intent to declare war on Japan and its likely impact: In his journal about his meetings with Stalin at the Potsdam conference, Truman wrote on July 17, 1945, "He'll be in Japan War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about." (Sidebar: Truman stalled at the beginning of the conference because he wanted to know that the Trinity test had been a success before he dealt with Stalin.)
The atomic bombings were simply unnecessary. But we refused to accept the idea, refused even to accept surrender - because by then peace was not enough, even victory was not enough: It had to be utter, smashing, devastating, total victory.
So we destroyed Hiroshima and then Nagasaki when Japan didn't surrender fast enough. We destroyed them even though military leaders, including "Hap" Arnold and Dwight Eisenhower (who at the time called nuclear weapons "those awful things," even though he himself was later to give serious consideration to their use during the Korean War), declared it unnecessary. That judgment was proved correct by US analysts sent to Japan in 1946 who concluded it would've surrendered before November 1, 1945 "even if atomic bombs hadn't been dropped, Russia hadn't entered the war, and no invasion was planned."
And just as victory had to be total to satisfy our national psyche, our pride and arrogance, it had to be now - now to hold off the demon of our postwar mythology: the Soviet Union. Truman's note about "fini Japs" when the Soviets entered the war against Japan was not enthusiasm; it was a reflection of concern about Soviet influence in the post-war world. We had to finish the war in the Pacific so Stalin could take none of the credit. And for one other reason:
Before the bombings, some officials urged that we stage a "demonstration" blast on a deserted island or in an uninhabited area of Japan to show the Japanese the power of the weapon we had and to give them a chance to surrender before we actually used it. (Among those pushing such an idea was Leo Szilard, who, perhaps having second thoughts about his role in all this, pleaded with Secretary of State James Byrnes not to use the bomb on people and circulated a petition to Truman to rule out its use because it would open the "door to an era of devastation of an unimaginable scale.")
The idea of a "demonstration" blast was supposedly shelved. But, in fact, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were demonstration blasts. They were intended to show the awesome power we held in our arsenal - only the target of the demonstration wasn't Japan. It was the Soviet Union. US officials, including Byrnes, presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, and top military leaders, had urged the bombings as a means of warning the Soviets not to challenge American plans for a postwar world dominated by US interests, to make them "more manageable," as Byrnes put it, by showing both our power and our willingness to use it.
Which means, ultimately, that hundreds of thousands of Japanese were destroyed, disintegrated, as sacrificial lambs at the start of a decades-long campaign to "contain" the Soviets if not to bully them into submission. From Nazi bomb scientists through wild-eyed Japanese fanatics to intractable Soviet deceivers, the mythmakers had constructed an image of the United States as appointed to protect and shape the world, with the atomic bomb, as President Truman put it, the weapon given us by God that we were to use "for His purposes and His ends." The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the last shots of World War II, they were the first shots of the Cold War, and the Japanese the first of its many victims.
PBU31
That is perhaps more fitting than we realize, because the nuclear weapons age was born in a myth: the myth of the Nazi bomb. Most people date the start of the American nuclear arms effort to a famous 1939 letter to President Roosevelt, written by Dr. Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein (because it was thought his name would be more impressive), noting the possibility of developing an atomic bomb. By the time of Pearl Harbor, the US already had a small nuclear bomb project going that had made real progress.
The political argument given for building the atomic bomb, for investing the enormous amounts of time, money, resources, and scientific talent in what became known at the Manhattan Project, was that some intelligence reports said that Nazi Germany may have been working on one. If so, we had to have one and we had to have it first. Although it must in fairness be noted that it may not have been known at the time, the fact is that although the Germans were indeed doing some experiments in that direction, they were going about it in an extremely inefficient way and it would've taken them decades to develop a bomb - if it was possible at all.
Some of late have tried to resuscitate that threat by claiming the Germans were "closer than we knew." The argument, however, is based on their progress in enriching uranium and relies on the supposition that in the 1940s scientists working on the project could have suddenly changed gears and adopted a different approach - that is, do exactly what they had decided against doing years before. At least one writer added the argument that a commando raid that destroyed a enrichment facility in occupied Norway set back the project significantly. That undoubtedly slowed production, but it didn't affect the problems with the process itself. That is, the "closer than we knew" assertion in based on a series of "what ifs," which makes for interesting speculation but not a persuasive argument.
But no matter what you think of that point, what's important here is that it was the claimed threat from Germany that supposedly provided the logic, the argument, the purpose of the Manhattan Project. And yet, and yet....
By late 1944 US intelligence knew that the German nuclear experiments had failed. The Manhattan Project didn't even slow down.
Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 - 10 weeks before the first successful test explosion of an atomic bomb. (Code-named Trinity, it took place at Alamogordo Testing Range, 230 miles south of Los Alamos, NM on July 16, 1945.) With the surrender, the entire founding logic of the Manhattan Project evaporated. But instead of stopping or even slowing down, the project accelerated, in part because some on the staff were afraid the war would end before they got the bomb built. We simply switched myths: from the myth of Nazi atomic bombs to the myth of the fanatical Japanese. The weapon that was supposedly designed for defense against Germany now "had" to be used on Japan.
And here is what's probably the most important myth of all, because it provided the logical (if you can call it that) underpinnings for actually carrying out the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for actually vaporizing tens of thousands of human beings in the flash of an instant and opening the door of the atomic age, a myth that gets replayed, reproduced, repronounced, reproclaimed every time Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mentioned, a myth that people continue to believe today, as a Gallup poll shows 57% of Americans approving of the bombings: the myth that the Japanese were so fanatical that the only possible alternative to the devastation of those cities was a bloody land invasion of Japan.
It's just not true. It's more than a myth, it's a damned lie. A 60-year old damned lie.
To begin with, the yearly claims, sure to be heard again this week, that such an invasion would've cost 250,000 or 500,000 or 1,000,000 American lives (the numbers vary unpredictably) is utter nonsense. Even President Truman originally cited an estimate of 250,000 casualties (not deaths) - although in later years he doubled it, then doubled it again. More to the point, the War Planning Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff never expected more than 40,000 American deaths, and thought they might've been as low as 20,000 because they thought it a fair likelihood that Japan would surrender during the first part of the campaign.
Which in turn raises the more important question of whether such an invasion was necessary at all.
It wasn't.
By the spring of 1945 Japan was already a defeated nation. It no longer had any navy to speak of, its air force had been decimated, its army driven back to its own shores. It was incapable of mounting any offensive action or even of defending itself against US air raids. Critical materials and even food were in short supply. The situation was so bad that even attempts to justify the bombings wind up confirming Japan's desperate condition: Several years ago I had an email debate with a man who tried to project the classic image of a well-defended Japan bristling with military forces. At one point, trying to show the determination of the Japanese to defend the homeland no matter what the cost, he said "Japan pulled some 500 loaded ships out of China and not one of them made it back to Japan," because of attacks by high-altitude bombers. In response, I noted that he had thereby agreed, if unintentionally, that Japan's air force was so thoroughly destroyed that it couldn't even provide air cover to get its own retreating troops back safely.
In fact, the situation was so bad that before - before - the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan had already made secret overtures to the United States through Sweden and the Soviet Union stating that it was ready to surrender. All of this was known to the US military, all of this was known to Truman, who rejected the offer because it wasn't unconditional: Hirohito would've kept his throne.
What was also known to Truman was the USSR's intent to declare war on Japan and its likely impact: In his journal about his meetings with Stalin at the Potsdam conference, Truman wrote on July 17, 1945, "He'll be in Japan War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about." (Sidebar: Truman stalled at the beginning of the conference because he wanted to know that the Trinity test had been a success before he dealt with Stalin.)
The atomic bombings were simply unnecessary. But we refused to accept the idea, refused even to accept surrender - because by then peace was not enough, even victory was not enough: It had to be utter, smashing, devastating, total victory.
So we destroyed Hiroshima and then Nagasaki when Japan didn't surrender fast enough. We destroyed them even though military leaders, including "Hap" Arnold and Dwight Eisenhower (who at the time called nuclear weapons "those awful things," even though he himself was later to give serious consideration to their use during the Korean War), declared it unnecessary. That judgment was proved correct by US analysts sent to Japan in 1946 who concluded it would've surrendered before November 1, 1945 "even if atomic bombs hadn't been dropped, Russia hadn't entered the war, and no invasion was planned."
And just as victory had to be total to satisfy our national psyche, our pride and arrogance, it had to be now - now to hold off the demon of our postwar mythology: the Soviet Union. Truman's note about "fini Japs" when the Soviets entered the war against Japan was not enthusiasm; it was a reflection of concern about Soviet influence in the post-war world. We had to finish the war in the Pacific so Stalin could take none of the credit. And for one other reason:
Before the bombings, some officials urged that we stage a "demonstration" blast on a deserted island or in an uninhabited area of Japan to show the Japanese the power of the weapon we had and to give them a chance to surrender before we actually used it. (Among those pushing such an idea was Leo Szilard, who, perhaps having second thoughts about his role in all this, pleaded with Secretary of State James Byrnes not to use the bomb on people and circulated a petition to Truman to rule out its use because it would open the "door to an era of devastation of an unimaginable scale.")
The idea of a "demonstration" blast was supposedly shelved. But, in fact, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were demonstration blasts. They were intended to show the awesome power we held in our arsenal - only the target of the demonstration wasn't Japan. It was the Soviet Union. US officials, including Byrnes, presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, and top military leaders, had urged the bombings as a means of warning the Soviets not to challenge American plans for a postwar world dominated by US interests, to make them "more manageable," as Byrnes put it, by showing both our power and our willingness to use it.
Which means, ultimately, that hundreds of thousands of Japanese were destroyed, disintegrated, as sacrificial lambs at the start of a decades-long campaign to "contain" the Soviets if not to bully them into submission. From Nazi bomb scientists through wild-eyed Japanese fanatics to intractable Soviet deceivers, the mythmakers had constructed an image of the United States as appointed to protect and shape the world, with the atomic bomb, as President Truman put it, the weapon given us by God that we were to use "for His purposes and His ends." The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the last shots of World War II, they were the first shots of the Cold War, and the Japanese the first of its many victims.
PBU31
Friday, August 05, 2005
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Mr. Spock?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $1200
FBI trainee Clarice Starling gets help from a killer to solve Buffalo Bill's grisly crimes in this novel.
Who is Mr. Spock?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $1200
FBI trainee Clarice Starling gets help from a killer to solve Buffalo Bill's grisly crimes in this novel.
Jeopardy! for Thursday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Loch Ness Monster? (Acceptable: Nessie)
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $400
The first of hundreds of Star Trek novels was James Blish's this first officer "Must Die!"
What is the Loch Ness Monster? (Acceptable: Nessie)
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Books for $400
The first of hundreds of Star Trek novels was James Blish's this first officer "Must Die!"
Code yellow! No, orange! No, yellow! No, red! No, ....
So now we're supposed to be all a-flutter with concern and steeled with determination to Stamp Out Evil, letting no civil liberty bar our way! Al-Qaeda has threatened us! Again.
From AP for Thursday:
Others have noted that al-Qaeda never used to take credit for attacks until after it had been established by others that they were responsible. (Which is why even some politically well-informed people were unfamiliar with the group prior to 9/11.) Put another way, they let their work speak for itself.
But that was then. In more recent times - December, to be precise - al-Qaeda tried to reassert itself not by action but by identifying itself with the actions of another: Abu al-Zarqawi, who Osama bin Laden dubbed his "prince" in Iraq. At the time, I said this was a sign of bin Laden's
That doesn't mean that the, if you will, idea of al-Qaeda, the concept of al-Qaeda, its existence as an ideology rather than an organization, is spent. It means that if we're going to worry about terrorist acts, we need to worry about the quiet ones, the ones interested in striking a blow rather than striking a pose, the ones whose hatred, whose anger, grows with each new humiliation, each new assault on their national and ethnic dignity, most immediately, each day the occupation of Iraq continues. As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, author of a book on suicide bombings, Dying to Win, notes, the common thread uniting suicide bombers is not religion but pursuit of the strategic objective of compelling foreign forces to leave what they feel is their homeland.
And, as the Christian Science Monitor reported last month,
This, as I wrote in the weeks following 9/11, "doesn't mean excusing the terrorists who brought such ruin and pain to the streets of New York" - or Madrid, or London, or Sharm el-Sheik.
From AP for Thursday:
Al-Qaida's No. 2 embraced the London suicide bombings Thursday, warned Britain that more destruction lies ahead and promised tens of thousands of U.S. casualties in Iraq in a brazen assertion of the terror group's global reach. ...Okay, frankly I have to say I'm not impressed. These kinds of statements sound less like ominous threats than bombast trying to recapture past glory.
In the tape, parts of which were broadcast by Al-Jazeera, [Ayman] al-Zawahri made no direct claim that al-Qaida carried out the July 7 attacks in the British capital, but sought instead to blame the carnage on Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to deploy and keep troops in Iraq.
Others have noted that al-Qaeda never used to take credit for attacks until after it had been established by others that they were responsible. (Which is why even some politically well-informed people were unfamiliar with the group prior to 9/11.) Put another way, they let their work speak for itself.
But that was then. In more recent times - December, to be precise - al-Qaeda tried to reassert itself not by action but by identifying itself with the actions of another: Abu al-Zarqawi, who Osama bin Laden dubbed his "prince" in Iraq. At the time, I said this was a sign of bin Laden's
weakness, a sense that he is out of the loop, that he is in fact becoming "Osama bin Forgotten." He's not trying to keep the initiative, he's trying to regain it - and I don't mean the initiative against the US, I mean in leadership battles among violent Islamic fundamentalists.And now this, a truly sad attempt to grab onto the coattails of someone else's "success."
Jeremy Bennie, a terrorism analyst for Jane's Defense Weekly, said al-Zawahri appeared to be trying to put an al-Qaida stamp on the July 7 attacks on the London transit system. ...Exactly. Truth be told, I am as unimpressed with Zawahri's words as I am those of any other PR flack. I say al-Qaeda as an organization is a spent force.
"He has tacitly taken responsibility by claiming al-Qaida is in control of the situation, even as most people aren't really sure bin Laden and al-Zawahri still are capable of organizing such an attack," Bennie said by telephone.
That doesn't mean that the, if you will, idea of al-Qaeda, the concept of al-Qaeda, its existence as an ideology rather than an organization, is spent. It means that if we're going to worry about terrorist acts, we need to worry about the quiet ones, the ones interested in striking a blow rather than striking a pose, the ones whose hatred, whose anger, grows with each new humiliation, each new assault on their national and ethnic dignity, most immediately, each day the occupation of Iraq continues. As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, author of a book on suicide bombings, Dying to Win, notes, the common thread uniting suicide bombers is not religion but pursuit of the strategic objective of compelling foreign forces to leave what they feel is their homeland.
And, as the Christian Science Monitor reported last month,
[t]wo new studies, one by the Saudi government and one by an Israeli think tank, which "painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States" have found that most foreign fighters in Iraq were not terrorists before the Iraq war, but were "radicalized by the war itself."Terrorists, suicide bombers, radical fighters, the whole lot - they are not born, they are not artificially generated by some kind of hyper-fundamentalist brainwashing, they don't result from a "hatred of our freedoms," they are created by a genuine sense of a wrong inflicted on them. Those are the people we need to be concerned about: People who feel, who have legitimate cause to feel, wronged, oppressed, attacked by the policies of such as us.
This, as I wrote in the weeks following 9/11, "doesn't mean excusing the terrorists who brought such ruin and pain to the streets of New York" - or Madrid, or London, or Sharm el-Sheik.
We are all responsible for what we do[, I said,] and their acts deserve nothing but condemnation: Understanding does not mean approving.It still seems like sound advice to me.
What it does mean is that our best targets for "attack" in this "extended campaign" are not the actual terrorists (who likely number no more than a few thousand) but the tens of thousands, the millions, among who they recruit and from who they draw their strength. Our best weapons are bread and butter, not bombs; our best tactic reconstruction, not retaliation; our best strategy justice, not jingoism. The best way to minimize terrorism is to ensure that the dispossessed have a genuine stake in the world and don't see us as grasping bullies - and the best way not to be seen as a grasping bully is not to be one.
The shocking truth
Every time there is an incident involving an injury caused by a Taser, the company vociferously denies any connection between its oh so safe device and its results. No matter what happens, it's always someone or something else's fault. But the cases keep trickling in. The Indianapolis Star for last Friday reported that
Taser International jumped on the autopsy's conclusion that Hasse had an extremely high level of methamphetamines in his blood; a company PR flack said he was "bewildered" that the drugs weren't listed as the cause of death. But
[a] Taser stun gun used on an Indiana man by a Chicago police officer this year caused the 54-year-old man's death, though drug use was also a contributing factor, the Cook County medical examiner's office said.A 57-second charge? A 57-second charge? That's not "stunning" someone, that's not "subduing" someone, that borders on, if it doesn't cross the line right over into, outright torture.
Ronald Hasse received a five-second electrical burst from the Taser, followed by a 57-second charge, Dr. Scott Denton, a deputy medical examiner, said Thursday.
Taser International jumped on the autopsy's conclusion that Hasse had an extremely high level of methamphetamines in his blood; a company PR flack said he was "bewildered" that the drugs weren't listed as the cause of death. But
[t]he drug probably would not have killed Hasse without getting "pushed over the edge" by the stun gun jolts, Denton said.And the simple fact is that despite the high level of speed, Hasse didn't die until he was shocked.
Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline stopped the distribution of an additional 200 Tasers after Hasse died. He did not halt the use of the weapons by police, however. ...Good for them and let's hope they are able to carry this through to victory.
Meanwhile, officials in the suburban Chicago community of Dolton initiated a federal class action lawsuit alleging Taser misled them with campaigns emphasizing the stun gun's safety.
The lawsuit filed in Chicago last week contends the device has never been "adequately or independently tested" and has been involved in deaths around the nation.
The village wants a refund of the $8,572 it spend on the Tasers, the lawsuit says.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $1000
The first recorded sighting of this Scottish monster goes back to St. Columbia in 965.
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $1000
The first recorded sighting of this Scottish monster goes back to St. Columbia in 965.
Footnote to both of the preceding
Bush was speaking to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which
Bush
Footnote to the footnote: Bush also called for a quick confirmation of John Roberts because "he will not legislate from the bench."
In all the times I've read that, I still wonder one thing: Just what the hell does that mean? I mean, Clarence Thomas has shown himself to be the current Justice most willing to overturn acts of Congress and most willing to ignore precedent - that is, the most willing to inject his personal views into the decisions of the Court. Doesn't that make him the most "activist" member of the Court? Or does the fact that his personal views tend to favoring property and corporate rights over the general and working public and executive power over the Constitutional rights of individuals somehow change the meaning of the word?
was gathered to exchange ideas and work toward what is described as "a limited government that promotes free markets and individual liberties."More bluntly, a bunch of right-wing crackpots for who "limited government" means "cutting taxes on my fat cat campaign contributors," "free markets" means "consumers, workers, and families can go to hell," and "individual liberties" means the government will interfere neither in the right of corporations to profit any way they can nor the right of the poor to starve.
Bush
encouraged lawmakers, when they return from their August recess, to address the future of Social Security, a centerpiece of his domestic agenda that is languishing.What I want to know is how he can look the American people in the eye and continue to lie through his goddam teeth, since Social Security isn't going broke or anything like it. What I'd also like to know is how he can with a straight face - well, okay, never mind that part, he's such an accomplished liar that should be easy - but how the media can continue to report what he's saying without gagging on their persistent Edward R. Murrow fantasies? Without even making the banal observation that he's "proposing" to avoid a non-existent threat of reduced benefits by a program of reduced benefits?
"My first question to members of Congress is 'How can you go back to your districts, when you look at the facts, and stand up in front of young workers and look 'em in the eye and say the future's bright for you knowing full well somebody's going to be paying payroll taxes in the system that's going broke?'" Bush said.
Footnote to the footnote: Bush also called for a quick confirmation of John Roberts because "he will not legislate from the bench."
In all the times I've read that, I still wonder one thing: Just what the hell does that mean? I mean, Clarence Thomas has shown himself to be the current Justice most willing to overturn acts of Congress and most willing to ignore precedent - that is, the most willing to inject his personal views into the decisions of the Court. Doesn't that make him the most "activist" member of the Court? Or does the fact that his personal views tend to favoring property and corporate rights over the general and working public and executive power over the Constitutional rights of individuals somehow change the meaning of the word?
You want grim? I'll give you grim
How about this from Wednesday's Washington Post:
John McCain got up off his knees long enough to propose a couple of amendments to the War Department authorization bill
McCain and his partners in crime John Warner (R-VA) (whose position as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee doubtless adds some clout to the group) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wouldn't back off, forcing Bill Frist (R-Stem Cell) to postpone consideration of the bill after a failed vote to limit debate.
Unlimited, unrestricted power is what these goons want. The Congress is not to be involved, the courts are not to be involved, and the public certainly is not to be involved except as a cheering backdrop for El Leader. So what happened with Mowhoush? Simple: It went a little further than they wanted and they wound up with an unwanted body they couldn't easily explain until a couple of low-on-the-feeding-chain grunts of the sort who serve both as cannon fodder and as useful idiots for the higher-ups could be tossed to the wolves in an orgy of self-congratulation about our higher morality.
Remember when it was just, what was the phrase, a "few bad apples" or something like that, at Abu Ghraib?
Oh, yeah, Abu Ghraib. Whatever happened with that?
However, in what was released it quoted
Footnote: There is one way in which the McCain amendments would change the White House's current practice: One would end the legal limbo of "enemy combatants," a category created out of whole cloth by the Shrub gangsters specifically for the purpose of evading legal requirements related to their confinement and treatment. McCain's motion would create a legal description of what constitutes such a "combatant," in return for which, it would write into law the current procedure of tribunals, the very ones under challenge as not meeting the requirements for access to the courts for such prisoners as laid down by the Supreme Court. Even that was not enough; the WHS* want it all. These are not well people.
*WHS = White House Sociopaths
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.In short, they beat him to death. Then they tried to cover it up.
It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
Hours after Mowhoush's death in U.S. custody on Nov. 26, 2003, military officials issued a news release stating that the prisoner had died of natural causes after complaining of feeling sick.Then they classified his autopsy. And now, as two Army soldiers face murder charges,
court records have been censored to hide the CIA's involvement in his questioning, and reporters have been removed from a Fort Carson courtroom when testimony relating to the CIA has surfaced.This is what it's about. This is what the White House wants to be free to do. This is how that sleazy cabal of thugs and goons filling the upper reaches of the Executive Branch want to be able to act: no controls, no restrictions. No law, no regulation, no treaty should constrain them. They are not even to be limited by their own rules, their own declared standards. Nothing. They are tonton macoutes. They are secret agents with double-0 prefixes. They are generals with "execution authority." And none may question.
John McCain got up off his knees long enough to propose a couple of amendments to the War Department authorization bill
that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.That is, what the amendments would do - and pretty much all they would do - is require the members of the Shrub gang to follow their own regulations and international law expressed in treaties to which the US is a signatory. And in case you've forgotten, treaties are supposed to be the law of the land on an equal footing with the Constitution. From Article VI:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.But none of that mattered; the White House agents of darkness of course opposed them even though they were intended as alternatives to head off a more stringent measure being proposed by some Democrats. They actually said the measures would
usurp the president's authority and - in the words of a White House official - interfere with his ability "to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack"and declared the White House would
oppose any restrictions on the president's ability to conduct the war on terrorism,even to the point of vetoing the entire DOD authorization bill. Considering the nature of the amendments at hand, most of which the White House could embrace with a lot of happy talk about how superior is our morality to that of the "terrorists," the word "any" here is apparently to be taken quite literally.
McCain and his partners in crime John Warner (R-VA) (whose position as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee doubtless adds some clout to the group) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wouldn't back off, forcing Bill Frist (R-Stem Cell) to postpone consideration of the bill after a failed vote to limit debate.
Unlimited, unrestricted power is what these goons want. The Congress is not to be involved, the courts are not to be involved, and the public certainly is not to be involved except as a cheering backdrop for El Leader. So what happened with Mowhoush? Simple: It went a little further than they wanted and they wound up with an unwanted body they couldn't easily explain until a couple of low-on-the-feeding-chain grunts of the sort who serve both as cannon fodder and as useful idiots for the higher-ups could be tossed to the wolves in an orgy of self-congratulation about our higher morality.
Remember when it was just, what was the phrase, a "few bad apples" or something like that, at Abu Ghraib?
Oh, yeah, Abu Ghraib. Whatever happened with that?
Lawyers for the Defense Department are refusing to cooperate with a federal judge's order to release secret photographs and videotapes related to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal[, the New York Times for July 23 reported].The result, as the ACLU, which was one of the parties that filed the suit in question, noted in a press release last week, is not only that the DOD continues to "drag its heels on coming clean" but that
The lawyers said in a letter sent to the federal court in Manhattan late Thursday that they would file a sealed brief explaining their reasons for not turning over the material, which they were to have released by yesterday.
"it is also withholding its reasons for doing so," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney. "This exemplifies the government's disregard for democratic constraints on the use of executive power."In fact, not only did the government redact significant portions of its brief and supporting affidavits, it redacted the conclusion!
However, in what was released it quoted
a statutory provision that permits the withholding of records "compiled for law enforcement purposes," that "could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual."At issue here are some 87 photographs and four videos, generally believed to show abuse far worse than the photos released last year, which may well be why the DOD is fighting so hard to keep them hidden. But back on June 1, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan ordered their release after having
rejected arguments from the government that releasing the photographs would violate the Geneva Conventions because prisoners might be identified and "further humiliated," but he ordered any identifying features to be removed from the images.Now, claiming wildly that the photos and video were for "law enforcement purposes" and prattling on about their desire to protect the prisoners' "safety" - now there's a candidate for Absurdity of the Year - it sounds to me like the DOD is coming back with a rehashed version of exactly the arguments Judge Hellerstein already rejected. Disregard for democratic constraints, indeed - and arrogantly expressed.
A hearing has been scheduled in federal court in New York for August 15 to address two issues: whether the public has been improperly denied access to information as a result of the government's redacted briefs, and whether the government should be compelled to release photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib.Hopefully, Judge Hellerstein will be neither intimidated nor buffaloed. In fact, I hope he's downright pissed.
Footnote: There is one way in which the McCain amendments would change the White House's current practice: One would end the legal limbo of "enemy combatants," a category created out of whole cloth by the Shrub gangsters specifically for the purpose of evading legal requirements related to their confinement and treatment. McCain's motion would create a legal description of what constitutes such a "combatant," in return for which, it would write into law the current procedure of tribunals, the very ones under challenge as not meeting the requirements for access to the courts for such prisoners as laid down by the Supreme Court. Even that was not enough; the WHS* want it all. These are not well people.
*WHS = White House Sociopaths
Grimness
Updated AP tells us that speaking to a group of legislators gathered in Grapevine, Texas on Wednesday,
A couple of weeks ago, July 19 to be precise, Iraq Body Count, in association with the Oxford Research Group, published "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005." It
John Sloboda, one of the report's authors, noted that "on average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003. ... [N]early two and half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."
Not grim enough? How about the fact that Iraq Body Count, by its own acknowledgement (indeed, its own insistence) takes a very conservative, cautious approach to the numbers, relying on news reports and eyewitness accounts of deaths. Other methodologies, using a wider range of sources, including reports from Iraqi hospitals, and counting all deaths resulting from the invasion, not just noncombatants, come up with a far higher number. Shortly before the IBC report, UPI said that
That's actually true about most everything in Iraq: The Washington Post said last week that a GAO report revealed that
STDD/GTHO
Footnote: The GAO says that the government doesn't know how much it spends on private security contractors and the Inspector General's report says that more money than necessary may be going into the pockets of government contractors involved in reconstruction. Imagine what Shrub would be saying if this were a welfare program or environmental program with these kinds of accounting controls.
Updated to include the fact that the number from 'Iraqiyun includes all deaths, not just noncombatants, an important detail I inadvertently omitted.
President Bush lamented the deaths of 14 Marines in Iraq Wednesday, calling the deadly attack a "grim reminder" America is still at war.Beyond noting that he may have been the only adult in America who needed reminding, I'd have to say that while it was painful and sad, death almost always is, "grim" is not the word I'd use. If he wants "grim," maybe he should try this:
A couple of weeks ago, July 19 to be precise, Iraq Body Count, in association with the Oxford Research Group, published "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005." It
is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict[, the groups said in a press release]. The report ... is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005.It reported that nearly 25,000 civilians were reported killed and at least 42,500 wounded in the first two years following the invasion. Nearly twice as many were killed in year two (March 2004-March 2005) as in year one (March 2003-March 2004). US-led forces killed four times as many civilians (37% of the total) as insurgents (9%).
John Sloboda, one of the report's authors, noted that "on average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003. ... [N]early two and half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."
Not grim enough? How about the fact that Iraq Body Count, by its own acknowledgement (indeed, its own insistence) takes a very conservative, cautious approach to the numbers, relying on news reports and eyewitness accounts of deaths. Other methodologies, using a wider range of sources, including reports from Iraqi hospitals, and counting all deaths resulting from the invasion, not just noncombatants, come up with a far higher number. Shortly before the IBC report, UPI said that
[a]n Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003. ...It's worth noting that this figure tracks fairly well with the 100,000 "excess deaths" reported in the Lancet last October. However, the UPI story does say that the figure conflicts with that of the IBC - but also notes that
[The] chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under. ...
The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.
[t]he number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im,which could explain a good part of the difference: First, remember that IBC only counts civilian deaths, those that could be identified as noncombatants. The larger figure includes everyone killed in the wake of the invasion, combatants and noncombatant alike. Second, IBC, using its conservative approach, acknowledges its numbers about Fallujah in particular are incomplete: "The full human cost has yet to be calculated."
That's actually true about most everything in Iraq: The Washington Post said last week that a GAO report revealed that
[d]espite $5.7 billion committed to restoring electricity service in Iraq, power generation was still at lower levels as of May than it had been before the U.S. invasion in 2003. ...Oh, and remember all those wonderful videos of schools being repaired? In a separate report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said that
Crude oil production has also dropped in the past two years, even with more than $5 billion in U.S. and Iraqi funds available for rebuilding. Oil export revenue is needed to fund more than 90 percent of the nascent Iraqi government's 2005 budget, the State Department has said. [emphasis added]
[i]n 2004, USAID planned to build 286 schools by the end of the year, but because of contractor and security problems, it had finished only eight by September....Yes, that is grim.
STDD/GTHO
Footnote: The GAO says that the government doesn't know how much it spends on private security contractors and the Inspector General's report says that more money than necessary may be going into the pockets of government contractors involved in reconstruction. Imagine what Shrub would be saying if this were a welfare program or environmental program with these kinds of accounting controls.
Updated to include the fact that the number from 'Iraqiyun includes all deaths, not just noncombatants, an important detail I inadvertently omitted.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Bermuda Triangle? (Acceptable: Devil's Triangle)
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $600
Winston Churchill and Grace Coolidge are among those who're reportedly seen his ghost and not just in his "bedroom."
What is the Bermuda Triangle? (Acceptable: Devil's Triangle)
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $600
Winston Churchill and Grace Coolidge are among those who're reportedly seen his ghost and not just in his "bedroom."
Jeopardy! for Monday
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Mary Leakey?
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $200
In 1945, Flight 19, consisting of five torpedo bombers, disappeared in this infamous area of the Atlantic.
Who is Mary Leakey?
JEOPARDY!
Eerie for $200
In 1945, Flight 19, consisting of five torpedo bombers, disappeared in this infamous area of the Atlantic.
Trial of a Time Geek
Over the years, there have been numerous claims to have found a 10th planet in our solar system. They have been put aside one after the other because the bodies discovered were so small - clearly smaller than Pluto, the outermost and smallest planet - that astronomers couldn't accept the idea that they should be called planets.
No more.
2003 UB313 was first observed in October of 2003, but it's so far away - three times farther away than Pluto - that they couldn't detect its motion across the sky until January, 2005: 15 months later.
It has a highly-inclined orbit, set at an angle of 44o to the plane of the innermost eight planets. (Pluto also has an eccentric orbit but it's inclination is only 17o.) and right now is about 97 AU away. (AU = "astronomical unit," a measure of distance just about equal to the average distance of the Earth from the Sun, about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles. If you want a precise definition, NASA has one.)
Pluto and 2003 UB313 are both Kuiper Belt objects, as were the previous pretenders to 10th planet status. The new discovery, however, has raised the possibility that there are other larger-than-Pluto objects lurking out there yet to be discovered.
No more.
Astronomers in the United States have announced the discovery of the 10th planet to orbit our Sun[, the Beeb said on Saturday].Yep. Larger than Pluto. So if Pluto is a planet, which it's accepted it is, then this is definitely a planet. And then there were 10.
The largest object found in our Solar System since Neptune was discovered in 1846, it was first seen in 2003 but has only now been confirmed as a planet.
Designated 2003 UB313, it is about 3,000km across, a world of rock and ice and somewhat larger than Pluto.
2003 UB313 was first observed in October of 2003, but it's so far away - three times farther away than Pluto - that they couldn't detect its motion across the sky until January, 2005: 15 months later.
It has a highly-inclined orbit, set at an angle of 44o to the plane of the innermost eight planets. (Pluto also has an eccentric orbit but it's inclination is only 17o.) and right now is about 97 AU away. (AU = "astronomical unit," a measure of distance just about equal to the average distance of the Earth from the Sun, about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles. If you want a precise definition, NASA has one.)
Pluto and 2003 UB313 are both Kuiper Belt objects, as were the previous pretenders to 10th planet status. The new discovery, however, has raised the possibility that there are other larger-than-Pluto objects lurking out there yet to be discovered.
The Day of the Triffgeeks
Updated This is really cool. No pun intended. It's from the BBC for last Friday.
A giant patch of frozen water has been pictured nestled within an unnamed impact crater on Mars. ...Just to make sure we're clear her, this is ice. Regular water ice. Not frozen CO2, not anything else. Frozen water. On the surface of Mars. Not even underground, on the surface. Damn.
The ice disc is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars' far northern latitudes.
The highly visible ice lake is sitting in a crater which is 35 km (23 miles) wide, with a maximum depth of about two km (1.2 miles).It was found by the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board Mars Express, the probe launched by the European Space Agency which is now orbiting the planet.
Scientists believe the water-ice is present all year round because the temperature and pressure are not sufficient to allow it to change states.
The more we know, the better it gets. People are again raising the possibility of a human mission to Mars sometime in the future now that it's known the astronauts can find water there.
But of course, first we have to get the space shuttle back safely, something which at the moment is not altogether certain. The news (via PastPeak) that NASA had not been required to actually fix the problem of insulating foam coming off, the problem that lead to the previous disaster, because it cost too much, is not particularly comforting, either.
But this is what happens when you have an agency that's basically told "you don't get a budget to do it right, that costs too much - do it cheaper" and "you'd better get a media-friendly mission up there or your budget is in trouble" at the same time.
Updated to include the links to the Mars Express site and the ESA.
Don't sweat it
Matthew Yglesias, who for reasons mysterious to me is regarded as a great political analyst, is at it again.
A year ago I was on his case because he bewailed the fact that John Kerry said something to the effect that we were spending too much on prisons and would be better off instead spending that on education. That was "terrible politics" (emphasis in original) he groused, and "no reasonable person's idea of a winning political message." This, even though Yglesias said he agreed with Kerry. But oh no, don't say it! Don't say what you believe! That's not a "winning message."
That this wasn't a single oddity was shown by his post-election musing that overturning Roe v. Wade could well be "good for progressive politics overall." That was, he said, "the emerging conventional wisdom." The return of back-alley abortions as tactical maneuver.
And now, responding to a profile of anti-sweatshop activist Charles Kernaghan, he's telling people not to get too caught up in the effort to fight sweatshop and child labor overseas because, by gosh, the only reason sweatshops exist is because people are willing to work in them because the miserable wages and worse treatment they get there are better than the alternatives. So opposing sweatshops is condemning people to even worse misery, don't you get it, you "rich country liberals."
This is hogwash. First: I don't know of anyone who is advocating shutting down those sweatshops; they're talking about improving conditions and wages in them - improving them enough so that families can make a decent living without being treated like virtual slaves, without having to put their children to work for what are often 12-14 hour days, and without women being abused and subject to sexual harassment and even rape. Putting an end to their existence as sweatshops, yes - but not as factories.
Second: This is the same crap we always hear when someone wants to defend the status quo. "Oh, no, you can't do that! You'll only hurt the poor!" We heard it about the disinvestment campaign against the apartheid regime of South Africa. We heard it about economic sanctions against Haiti in the wake of the murderous coup of September, 1991. We hear it now about efforts to raise the minimum wage. It does not improve with repetition. But in fairness to Yglesias, he does propose an alternative to the "rich country liberal" indulgence of combatting sweatshops: Ending farm subsidies provided to their own by Western nations. This, he says, will improve the lot of farm workers in the developing world - farm labor being the worse alternative to working in a sweatshop - forcing sweatshop owners to improve conditions in order to keep a work force. It's the free market and all the glories of globalization and free trade in action! Okay, this brings up
Third: Say what? Ending subsidies is unlikely to make food, particularly imported food, more expensive; in fact, such subsidies began as a means to keep prices up. Eliminate them (and, as the usual corollary, open domestic markets to imported food) and you encourage farmers to produce more and more in hopes of selling enough to maintain themselves, which will tend to drive the price down, not up. Is there someone who can explain to me just how eliminating subsidies in the developed world will cause an improvement in the income of agricultural workers in the developing world? This is particularly so because
Fourth: Yglesias's argument implies a comparison between sweatshop work and subsistence farming - but that's bogus. You can't properly or at the very least easily compare factory wage income with non-market agriculture; there is no common reference point, at least no one broad enough to make such a comparison. But of course
Fifth: That's not really the comparison he expresses, even as it lurks throughout the argument. He says he's comparing factory labor and farm labor, and arguing that the former is what people are willing to put up with sweatshop conditions to do because it's an improvement on the latter. Significantly, that argument glides right over an important point, which is that
Sixth: Those farm laborers are not working for themselves, they're working for others, often large landowners, often farming for export. The agricultural sector of their nation's economy having been distorted either long ago by economic (and often enough military) dominance or more recently by the ungentle embrace of the World Bank and WTO, they in many cases have been driven off their land and forced into economic servitude and their countries changed from ones that could feed themselves, even if just barely, into net importers of basic foodstuffs. Which means
Seventh: Those workers are every bit as much in thrall to the demands of globalization as their factory-bruised brethren, every bit as much at the mercy of powerful economic forces reaching far beyond their communities, far beyond their borders. Even if a market for imported food in the West could be expanded and the price paid for it increased, the notion that such benefits will "trickle down" to the poor at the bottom of the pile without conscious, focused, outside pressure is bull. A glance at, for example, just how much Nike's expanding business improved the lot of its overseas employees, raising their wages and improving their conditions as business grew, should be proof enough of that. (Yes, Nike did pay more than the prevailing wage in its factories in the developing world. However, for Yglesias's argument to hold, that should have pulled up the wages paid to other factory workers and to farm laborers, whose employers now supposedly have to compete for labor. But it didn't. What's more, as Nike's business expanded, the wages and working conditions of those in its overseas plants should have improved along with it - assuming Yglesias was right. They didn't.)
Eighth: But that, of course, is precisely the point that Yglesias and his ilk can't acknowledge: Globalization has not improved the lot of the poor of the world. What it's done rather is set one nation's poor against another in a zero-sum game where the (touted) benefit to one is played off against the (ignored) cost to another. Who remembers, for example, South Korea's "economic miracle?" And who remembers how that miracle, built on low-wage labor working on goods for export, turned sour when transnational companies turned their attention to Indonesia in search of even lower-wage labor? But the idea of globalization as an inherent good, unquestioned and unquestionable, is so deeply set in the minds of some that they will engage in amazing mental gymnastics to avoid considering it.
Matthew Yglesias, who looks to globalization to solve a problem for which globalization is to a significant extent responsible, is among those people. And, if I may say so, in that sense he is exactly what he presents himself as: a good liberal Democrat.
A year ago I was on his case because he bewailed the fact that John Kerry said something to the effect that we were spending too much on prisons and would be better off instead spending that on education. That was "terrible politics" (emphasis in original) he groused, and "no reasonable person's idea of a winning political message." This, even though Yglesias said he agreed with Kerry. But oh no, don't say it! Don't say what you believe! That's not a "winning message."
That this wasn't a single oddity was shown by his post-election musing that overturning Roe v. Wade could well be "good for progressive politics overall." That was, he said, "the emerging conventional wisdom." The return of back-alley abortions as tactical maneuver.
And now, responding to a profile of anti-sweatshop activist Charles Kernaghan, he's telling people not to get too caught up in the effort to fight sweatshop and child labor overseas because, by gosh, the only reason sweatshops exist is because people are willing to work in them because the miserable wages and worse treatment they get there are better than the alternatives. So opposing sweatshops is condemning people to even worse misery, don't you get it, you "rich country liberals."
This is hogwash. First: I don't know of anyone who is advocating shutting down those sweatshops; they're talking about improving conditions and wages in them - improving them enough so that families can make a decent living without being treated like virtual slaves, without having to put their children to work for what are often 12-14 hour days, and without women being abused and subject to sexual harassment and even rape. Putting an end to their existence as sweatshops, yes - but not as factories.
Second: This is the same crap we always hear when someone wants to defend the status quo. "Oh, no, you can't do that! You'll only hurt the poor!" We heard it about the disinvestment campaign against the apartheid regime of South Africa. We heard it about economic sanctions against Haiti in the wake of the murderous coup of September, 1991. We hear it now about efforts to raise the minimum wage. It does not improve with repetition. But in fairness to Yglesias, he does propose an alternative to the "rich country liberal" indulgence of combatting sweatshops: Ending farm subsidies provided to their own by Western nations. This, he says, will improve the lot of farm workers in the developing world - farm labor being the worse alternative to working in a sweatshop - forcing sweatshop owners to improve conditions in order to keep a work force. It's the free market and all the glories of globalization and free trade in action! Okay, this brings up
Third: Say what? Ending subsidies is unlikely to make food, particularly imported food, more expensive; in fact, such subsidies began as a means to keep prices up. Eliminate them (and, as the usual corollary, open domestic markets to imported food) and you encourage farmers to produce more and more in hopes of selling enough to maintain themselves, which will tend to drive the price down, not up. Is there someone who can explain to me just how eliminating subsidies in the developed world will cause an improvement in the income of agricultural workers in the developing world? This is particularly so because
Fourth: Yglesias's argument implies a comparison between sweatshop work and subsistence farming - but that's bogus. You can't properly or at the very least easily compare factory wage income with non-market agriculture; there is no common reference point, at least no one broad enough to make such a comparison. But of course
Fifth: That's not really the comparison he expresses, even as it lurks throughout the argument. He says he's comparing factory labor and farm labor, and arguing that the former is what people are willing to put up with sweatshop conditions to do because it's an improvement on the latter. Significantly, that argument glides right over an important point, which is that
Sixth: Those farm laborers are not working for themselves, they're working for others, often large landowners, often farming for export. The agricultural sector of their nation's economy having been distorted either long ago by economic (and often enough military) dominance or more recently by the ungentle embrace of the World Bank and WTO, they in many cases have been driven off their land and forced into economic servitude and their countries changed from ones that could feed themselves, even if just barely, into net importers of basic foodstuffs. Which means
Seventh: Those workers are every bit as much in thrall to the demands of globalization as their factory-bruised brethren, every bit as much at the mercy of powerful economic forces reaching far beyond their communities, far beyond their borders. Even if a market for imported food in the West could be expanded and the price paid for it increased, the notion that such benefits will "trickle down" to the poor at the bottom of the pile without conscious, focused, outside pressure is bull. A glance at, for example, just how much Nike's expanding business improved the lot of its overseas employees, raising their wages and improving their conditions as business grew, should be proof enough of that. (Yes, Nike did pay more than the prevailing wage in its factories in the developing world. However, for Yglesias's argument to hold, that should have pulled up the wages paid to other factory workers and to farm laborers, whose employers now supposedly have to compete for labor. But it didn't. What's more, as Nike's business expanded, the wages and working conditions of those in its overseas plants should have improved along with it - assuming Yglesias was right. They didn't.)
Eighth: But that, of course, is precisely the point that Yglesias and his ilk can't acknowledge: Globalization has not improved the lot of the poor of the world. What it's done rather is set one nation's poor against another in a zero-sum game where the (touted) benefit to one is played off against the (ignored) cost to another. Who remembers, for example, South Korea's "economic miracle?" And who remembers how that miracle, built on low-wage labor working on goods for export, turned sour when transnational companies turned their attention to Indonesia in search of even lower-wage labor? But the idea of globalization as an inherent good, unquestioned and unquestionable, is so deeply set in the minds of some that they will engage in amazing mental gymnastics to avoid considering it.
Matthew Yglesias, who looks to globalization to solve a problem for which globalization is to a significant extent responsible, is among those people. And, if I may say so, in that sense he is exactly what he presents himself as: a good liberal Democrat.
Aargh!
Lots of lightning storms around Monday night. Power went out twice. So much for trying to get back to a regular schedule. More later, I promise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
