Okay, tonight, it's an update on deadbeat dads, and a report on the roads where one is supposedly most likely to encounter a drunk driver. I just want to make a few notes about the latter. It did something that I noticed last night too. The reports are incredibly self-referential. "We tracked him down." "It took a lot of effort." "We searched for three weeks." Who cares? This stuff serves two apparent functions. First, it sensationalizes the story by creating a phony drama and suspense over whether the investigation will be successful. This is Geraldo outside Capone's vault. It's entertainment and it follows the strictures of entertainment. Nothing the I-Team does is newsworthy. They make the story about themselves to inject entertainment value into stories that would otherwise be simply news. Second, it's a big advertisement for the station -- look at us! Look see how hard we worked. This took a lot of effort. Be impressed. Now that I think about it, there's a third function: distract from the story so you won't see how deeply flawed it is.
Speaking of which, okay. The newsguys tallied reports of traffic arrests and noted the drunk driving arrest hotspots. Here's the big surprise -- the busiest major highways tended to be the source of the most arrests. One thing the report didn't ask anyone was, "Mr. Expert, is our methodology sound?" I'd have asked that before doing all that work. I suspect the answer would be, no.
Sections of the city that are more dense with roads are correspondingly likely to have more traffic and hence more arrests. Highways with higher speed limits and no stoplights simply see more traffic, even though the highways tend to be better lit, better maintained, and easier to drive (no intersections, constant speeds) than city streets. Some areas may have more arrests simply because they are better patrolled. Areas near police stations are likely to be more patrolled. One high arrest area is close to a part of the city that has late night traffic jams due to large public events -- unsafe, or just better patrolled?
A better methodology would be to compare number of accidents with city engineers' estimates of traffic flow. If a high ratio of cars on the road are involved in accidents, this is a sign of unsafety, rather than, "we counted more drunk driving arrests within a mile radius of the huge highway interchange near downtown than in any other circle with an area of pi miles." Duh!
Another thing which I neglected to mention last night is that within the report, they keep throwing in teasers: "you'll see" this, or "we'll show you" that, or "just wait until you see what we found." Just tell us, dammit. Don't make a 45-second report into a 3-minute report by telling us three times that you're going to show us something before you do. If you don't have a full report, then it isn't soup yet. Stick it back on the burner until it's ready.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Thursday, November 16, 2006
More Stupidity from WTMJ
It's one thing after another. Tonight, the worst of the worst, John Mercure, left, had an expose on two "deadbeat dads." This is a recycled theme that they run every once in a while, it seems, because it's dear to their hearts, and, after all, they don't have many original ideas. Again, please note, I don't mean to defend categorically real deadbeat dads, but so bad is the reporting from Channel 4, that when Mercure or one of his imitators accuse someone, I instantly begin to doubt. If they accused O.J. Simpson of being black, I'd start to wonder if he weren't really Chinese or something.
So this time, two guys. One -- and I admit this was clever -- they got to brag about all their successful enterprises in real estate, making tons of money. They confronted him and he denied everything. Later, they presented testimony that he was a big liar. So, if he's a liar, doesn't that undercut his claims of being such a bigshot, with all this money? It sounded all pretty vague to me. If there really was a big pot of money this guy had, couldn't Johnnie find it? Has he ever heard of research -- go down to the Register of Deeds, or just check on the City's website. If he had no evidence to support his claims other than the braggery of a known liar, it's premature to report. Adding his opinion that the guy is "deplorable" does nothing to change that. John's opinion is not news. In fact, it's utterly predictable.
Go to guy number two. This guy was depicted as a gambling addict who probably burns through every cent he earns and is left with nothing. This makes him a deadbeat? Yes, but the guy should have his wages garnished and get some treatment. It doesn't sound like he's concealing any big money from his kids. It doesn't sound like he's laughing his way to the bank. More to the point, John left in the segment a telling retort from this guy, something like, "shit, man, I just explained that to you!" This has happened before. We never seem to get this side of the story. If the guy's story is preposterous, let us hear it. If it's reasonable, let us hear it. If it's checkable, check it. Don't just hide it from us.
Beyond all this, the report is just disgustingly manipulative and one-sided. Once again, Johnny has confused law enforcement for journalism: "We're tracking them down, and authorities could soon be locking them up." Note to John: quit your job and enroll in the police academy. Our culture can withstand one more bad cop better than it can withstand one more hack reporter taking up our precious airwaves.
Last night, the expose was on Arturo Jimenez. Read and listen here. Here I have the usual complaints and some new ones. Among the usual, interview technique. Here are the questions News 4's "I-Team" cleverly asked Jimenez to gain his trust and elicit his version of the story: "You have taken people's money and not done the work," we said to him. All he could say was no. "No, no.""Talk to me about it," we tried again. "I'm going to give you a chance. You have taken people's money and not done the work.""I have nothing to talk about," he said.... "Why are you ripping people off in your own community?" we asked him. See how the interviewer slyly elicits the most informative comments from Jimenez by shouting accusations at him and simply rejecting anything he answers? It takes years of journalism school to master that. I smell another award!
Among the more special, I liked the I-Team's suggestion that because Jimenez was dishonest, he should not work at all but maybe just steal outright, or sponge off friends or the state:
"Courts have ruled against Jimenez. The Better Business Bureau has complaints on file. Yet, he keeps working..."
Mostly, though, I noticed how they focused not on the allegation that Jimenez was a crook, or that his victims were Hispanic, but that he was Hispanic, and this is what made him a louse. One talking head said he was someone who "takes advantage of their heritage." (Lazy minorities have all the breaks. How unfair that white people can never manage to prey on nonwhites.) Another guy said he made all Latinos look bad to Anglos. Some truth to this, but only because 1) Channel 4 is there to make sure all the white people know about this guy who previously had a bad name mainly among his own, and 2) people make racist generalizations, but Channel 4 never says they shouldn't -- it puts the entire blame for their racism on Jimenez. How ironic. Channel 4 is doing just what they accuse Jimenez of -- purveying a stereotype of Hispanics as lazy and corrupt.
Another report, this one not an I-Team report, but a "Special Investigation." The supposed problem, long lines at the DMV. It starts with an anecdote from some guy who waited two hours. I was at the DMV recently and waited about 20 minutes. Not great; I wish they'd hire more people. Still, it leads me to doubt that 2 hours is typical. The report had no average wait times, it just reported how long the lines were, and again just with anecdotes, not real data: 77 at one place. So what? Is that 77 waiting with one person on duty and each person has 15 minutes worth of business? (That would be a 19-hour wait for the last person in line, which is essentially like having an appointment for the next day.) Or maybe there are 12 checkout aisles, they take care of you in three minutes, which comes out to a 19-minute wait.
After inventing or exaggerating a big problem (which I say because they reported that customers at the DMV had an 80% satisfaction rate -- painting this as a horrible, horrible thing), they turn to the solution... privatization!
Privatization is not a solution. It does not magically make things better. Anything private businesses can do, governments can do just as well, except for screw over workers and rip people off, and they're getting pretty good at those things too. The only plus for privatization is that it can lead to a greater nimbleness and incentive to implement solutions. But once those solutions are identified, government can copy them. So, if Ohio went private and it was a huge success, I would want to know how that private company does things so much better. What did they do? Hire more people? Invest in technology?Allow people to make appointments? Allow more tasks to be done online? Cut corners on accuracy or security? Correct some unique Ohio problem that Wisconsin corrected 20 years ago? Take advantage of some unique Ohio characteristic we don't have? It would make a sound piece of reporting to find out these things and then ask whether they would work here.
That was not done. There was a reference to one possible solution to some problems -- allow customers to take care of some of their business online. Sounds like a great idea. A FAQ could answer your questions. You could download the forms and submit them, rather than waiting in line to hand them in. The computer could check for missing blanks. Even things that required you to be there, like having your picture taken, or take a vision test, could be shortened -- set up everything in advance and make an appointment. This would take most of the people out of the line, making it shorter for everyone else. Also mentioned, better technology. Stop walking back to the row of filing cabinets for a record, get it from the computer in a second. That should speed things up. In all likelihood, this is what Ohio did.
However, the reporter dismissed this with a wave of the hand: "Their solution is more online services and better technology. But that's little comfort for people losing hours of their lives at the DMV." No? Why not? Listen, Mike Trevey, if you don't understand it, ask a question. Don't seek to impose your own ignorance on viewers.
The best part of the report came after it was over. Carole Meekins asks, so, is there any downside? Oh, yeah, Mike neglected to mention that in Ohio privatization worked, but elsewhere it's been an abysmal failure. Thanks, Carole, for shooting that suggestion entirely to hell with one question the answer to which Mr. "Special Assignment" decided he shouldn't bother to tell us.
Before I go back to last week, let me also mention the repeated reports on "fainting goats" and where you can get them. Why are they running and re-running livestock advertisements disguised as news? Do they get a cut from every goat sold?
Now back to the I-Team. Their commercials talk about how when you investigate, you get to take on the powerful. Usually, it’s people who park illegally. They just did another one of those. Or you get divorced dads with gambling convictions, or Hispanic contractors who don't perform. So last week it’s…student loan deadbeats!
Now, don’t get me wrong. As usual, the story is half true. There are folks out there who have the money and should be doing a better job of servicing their student loans. Many were improvident in having borrowed. A very few may be scammers. But as usual, many of not most of the “powerful” whom the station seeks to afflict are themselves victims.
The station goes to great lengths to tell us over and over that when student borrowers default, the taxpayers wind up paying.
But who’s really responsible? Here are some things the broadcast doesn’t tell you:
1) Some schools are frauds, designed to suck up student loan money, without actually preparing their students with the marketable skills needed to pay back their loans. These schools can sometimes be spotted by the fact that most of their students default on their loans.
2) Even legitimate schools consciously overcharge because they know the government, by subsidizing loans and grants, will take up the slack. The formula is need-based, which means the higher the tuition, the more students need, and hence the more they get – which they immediately give to the schools. Hence tuition has overall grown at several times the rate of inflation.
3) The banks make money off making these loans, charging both interest and extra charges like administration and origination fees, despite the fact that they bear zero risk on the investment. (Remember, when students default, the government insures the loans, so the banks never pay, the taxpayers do.)
4) Student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. So there are graduates out there who can’t keep ahead of the interest, and can’t start over.
The story focused on doctors. Student loans for medical school can be enormous. If you don't finish, you'll just have this huge debt and no profession to show for it that can help you pay that off. The interest on that mountain of debt can by itself overwhelm any income that you can get from half a medical degree, which is to say minimum wage.
So what does TV-4 propose? Throw them in jail? That'll save the taxpayers a lot of money. (Actually, it may discourage people from going to medical school. But that would also hurt medical schools and cause a shortage of doctors, which is already a problem.)
Thanks, WTMJ. With you on the air, at least we'll never face a shortage in stupidity.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Reagan Stamp
I was having a conversation with friends about last year's Ronald Reagan stamp. One friend was sent the stamp on a SASE and, despising Reagan, was horrified at having to use it, but not so horrified as to spend 39 cents on another stamp. After all, it's just a stamp.Another friend said he liked the stamp. He also thought Reagan sucked, but liked the idea that a machine would be pounding into his face, smearing it with ink as the stamp as cancelled.
Another potential view, I remarked, although impolite, might be to recall that by federal law, no stamp or coin can bear the likeness of anyone still alive -- a law, by the way, which I think has been violated by the Ohio state quarter, since no one can honestly argue, I think, that the "astronaut" on the back is not simply John Glenn -- anyhow, one might recall that law and look upon the Reagan stamp and look at it as reassurance that "that f**ker's finally DEAD."
Photo Retouching 101
Well, I'm a little nonplussed by the way blogger lets you add photos. It took me a few tries to get the photo on the left to be on the left.In any event, what you see us the before and after pictures from a photo retouching job I did. I wanted to post this because it's not something I do a lot of and I'm proud of this result. On the left is the original photo of a friend of mine. On the right, the adjusted product. The changes include changing the saturation and color balance to make the complexion a bit less ashen, thinning the face, moving the right jowl inward and eliminating the bulge a the neck, lowering the forehead, evening out the hairline, making the stubble less obvious and less grey, eliminating the veins on the forehead, darkening the eyebrows, and, of course, covering my tracks so the retouching job isn't totally obvious. I left plenty of clues for FBI laboratory staff if they ever wanted to test the authenticity of this photo, but with limited time for the project, I think I made it look pretty convincing to the naked eye.
So, beyond that bragging, I did have a retouching thread that I've been wanting to post for a while. Remember that Reuters photographer who retouched some of his photos of Israeli strikes in Iraq, Adnan Hajj? He basically added some dark smoke to a photo depicting an Israeli airstrike.
He also did a crappy job. You can see that he basically copied a billow of smoke on photoshop and repasted it at intervals to add additional volume.But of course the issue is not that he's an unskilled manipulator. Nor is it that there was any material misrepresentation involved. While supporters of the Israeli attacks screamed bloody murder and got Hajj suspended, let's be clear. The attack was real. It did make smoke. The photo was not fabricated out of whole cloth. Nor was the amount of smoke an important issue for which the photo provided evidence. Opponents of the attacks objected on the grounds that they killed, injured, or displaced a million people, mostly innocent people, violated international law, inflicted huge damage on the economy of Lebanon, and were counterproductive to their own stated goals. I don't recall a lot of people saying, Israel should stop its war because it makes too much smoke and that's really affecting air quality in the region.
No, the issue was, or supposedly would be, that any manipulation threatens the credibility of the publisher, so there is a need to be circumspect with respect to the integrity of photos regardless of whether they are used as evidence of a material point, or merely seek to entertain the eye and illustrate an event. But if that is true, what about all the other manipulation that takes place?
Take for example, the famous occasion of Time magazine darkening the mug shot of O.J. Simpson, making him look more African and at the same time, more sinsiter and obscure. This was done reportedly for asthetic reasons rather than editorial ones. The cover was conceived as an illustration rather than a photo attesting to reality, and it was assembled with a symbolic black-and-white theme. You can see that an iris effect was added to the background, the colorsaturation was reduced, and even the color balance changed to be more reddish. The slate reading "BK4013970 061794 Los Angeles Police Jail Div" was also shrunk, and everything unrelated to the article is kept off the cover. So I get that the idea was conceived as being artistic rather than racist, but I think the manipulation was consequential and rightly criticized.
Other examples are, contempraneous to the Lebanon manipulation story, slimming down Katie Couric as she was slated to become CBS' new anchor, in CBS magazine, which was arguably an effort to sell the CBS Nightly News based on her looks. In this case, it's a matter of both false advertising, and debasing both the news and Couric by treating her as eye candy and the evening newscast as a form of entertainment whose essential quality is represented by the looks of its anchor.
More serious, though it involves a pretty standard photo trick requiring less sophisticated manipulation.
This was the April 9, 2003 toppling of the statute of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. Although the initially released photos appeared to show a substantial crowd of cheering Iraqis spontaneously pulling down the statue and celebrating, photos available at the time and later released showed that the crowd was insubstantial, concentrated entirely within the visual field of the cropped photo that appeared in countless papers.Outside of that field, cropped off the bottom and sides of the picture, were two things:
1) the emptiness of a mostly deserted square, and
2) a U.S. military presence, which included the tank which actually pulled down the statue.
(Observers also noted that some of the members of the crowd were apparently plants, since the same individuals appeared in other crowd photos around the country and at least one was photographed as part of Ahmed Chalabi's entourage as they arrived in the country.)
Here the manipulation was not any sophisticated retouching, but merely cropping. Another common device is foreshortening. When a long lens is used, the viewer seems to be close to the action, because the image is large, but the sense of perspective is diminished, as when a scene is viewed from far away. The effect is that objects in the foreground and background appear to be separated by little distance along the axis of viewing, though they may in fact be a considerable distance apart.
Of course the point with Couric and OJ and Firdos Square is that, to my knowledge, none of these tricks prompted anyone to be suspended, or have their entire portfolio scanned for deceptions. A story on the Couric affair had a CBS exec laughing the whole thing off and treating it as trivial. It may be, simply given how common manipulation is in one form or another.
One could itemize other forms of manipulation, such as the mere decision to cover staged pseudo-events, which comprise perhaps a majority of all news, or helping to stage photos, or selecting subjects or angles or filters that make photographs dramatic and asthetic and thus fail to capure the boring reality that is their real subject.
Anyhow, the big deal over Hajj is overblown in relative terms, or perhaps all the other cases are simply underblown.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Potpourri, again
Once more I have a lot of ideas saved up. Here are some:
1. Blushing Bride. The local news had a story maybe 10 days ago, which again I'm in too much of a rush to link to, about a store that sold wedding dresses that suddenly shut its doors and declared bankrupcy. It featured, as might be expected, distraught brides to be, complaining about the awful situation they were in, because they trusted the company and then they suddenly closed, without notice.
I take the unpopular position that the news treated the bankrupt company unfairly. I don't hold them blameless, but from what little I know about business bankrupcy, the report failed to provide the context that would explain the company's actions. In doing this, it failed to point the way to possible solutions to keep this from happening in the future.
First of all, the company undoubtedly did not set out to go bankrupt. I haven't seen their business plan, but most companies want to make money, not lose it. As far as I know there have been no allegations of fraud, i.e. that the principals of the company overpaid themselves in order to rob the company as much as possible with bankrupcy on the horizon. It is pretty common for the owner of a small business to loan the business money to keep it afloat, hoping it will turn the corner and survive.
I don't know if the company's original plan was reasonable or whether it was reasonable for it to try to ride out the crisis as long as they did. It sounded like the company used a lot of shipping. When gas prices rise, shipping costs rise. That could help explain why things went awry. I do think it was piss poor to get into this situation. I think a company that undertakes an enterprise like this should make damn sure they're not undercapitalized, and there should be some insurance offered to customers to prevent the worst. But society has not set up a strict liability standard. The law and the culture encourage half-assed startups in the name of the market. So the entrepreneur cannot entirely be blamed.
The customers wish they had been informed in advance. My understanding is that there is no such thing. Once there is an announcement of an impending bankrupcy, any hopes of riding out the crisis pretty much go out the window. No one will put anything into the company anymore, because they're on notice they may not get it back. Fraudulent conveyance laws kick into place preventing the company from giving things out -- it's treated as creditor property even before the papers are filed. Basically, the company has no choice but to close its doors. Even to give out dresses kept on the premises would be considered stealing from the creditors.
I think it's shitty that the company did not leave their customers a longer note. It's not enough to say, sorry for the inconvenience, and let people presume the worst. They should have said, now that we're bankrupt, matters are mostly out of our control, but we will do our best working with the lawyers and creditors to get everyone their dresses if possible. That could have alleviated at least some of the stress.
Ultimately, everyone whose weddings were scheduled within two weeks of the bankrupcy were promised their dresses. As far as I know this promise was kept. It was reportedly kept for at lest the first bride with an upcoming wedding. I have no doubt this was the lawyers who worked this out, recognizing the potential for bad publicity against the creditors.
In sum, the company acted badly, but the news media's inept and misleading coverage made them the only culprit, and failed to explain how some of the complaints against them were really attributable to aspects of the law and culture that should have been questioned, but remained unquestioned after all the reporting was done, helping set this up to happen again.
2. McGruff. McGruff, the crime dog, is at it again, teaching the kiddies how to do crimes.
Cartoons are popular with three kinds of viewers: kiddies, the tragically ironic, and no-goods who bust into houses to rape, steal, and watch Tom and Jerry. Adults seeking serious information on how to prevent identity theft generally do not go to Blue’s Clues, Clifford the Big Red Dog or McGruff.
So here he is again on TV, showing us how you can take a picture of someone’s credit card discreetly with a cell phone, and use the numbers to make unauthorized purchases. Cool. Kids don’t have credit cards, though if the kid is over 12 he probably has his own cell number. So you know kids aren’t gonna run and tell their parents this new trick.
No-goods will be sitting in someone’s living room after a home invasion when McGruff comes on during Matlock, and reminds them how they can get a credit card out of the victim’s purse and order a pizza.
And of course, the tragically ironic just think it would be cool to commit a crime suggested to them by a misguided crime-prevention effort, so they order original artworks from the Banksy website and have them sent to the Whitney at Altria.
3. Yellow Ribbons. Yellow ribbons, it turns out, are a fascinating example of semantic drift. Part of the message of the ribbons has remained the same: I support you. But tracing their use backwards, it turns out that the rest of their meaning has reversed almost 180 degrees.
Today, the ribbons are an endemic outgrowth of the Iraq war, and they seem to signify something like, “I support you in your mission. You’re a hero.” Everyone is supposed to have one of the damn things. It’s considered patriotic to consider the mission heroic on the level of the individual soldier, even though most now see the war as a whole as stupid and counterproductive, if not simply wrong – one unnecessary atrocity spangled with smaller atrocities. It’s currently debated whether the ribbons also display support for the war.
I recall earlier uses of the ribbons. The previous Iraq war, or “Persian Gulf War,” then years before the current one, saw the ribbons. Their meaning was not support for the war so much, at least where I was. It was more, we love you and we want you back. Over the decade, the military aspect and even the location were unchanged, but there was a subtle change in tenor from expressing love and the pain of absence to support for the mission.
Ten years before that was the first use of the ribbons that I know of. We’re now back to the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-80, the “crisis” that became “America Held Hostage” and later NBC’s Nightline. The ribbons were for the hostages. Between the Hostage Crisis and Iraq I, the notion of “we want you safely home” remained intact, but shifted from diplomatic hostages to military personnel engaging in a hot war.
The first use was in 1974, when Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando, performed “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.” From some of the lyrics, you might think there was a hint of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war: it begins and ends with simply, “I'm comin' home…” Everyone knows the chorus:
Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak treeIt's been three long years. Do you still want me?If I don't see a ribbon round the old oak treeI'll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me.If I don't see a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
But the context is clear that the singer is actually much more like the hostages in Iran than like our troops. He’s a prisoner. An inmate at one of America’s fine penal institutions:
I'm comin' home, I've done my time…
I'm really still in prison, and my love she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free
So, the yellow ribbon used to say: Yes, it looks like you done wrong and landed in jail. But you’ve done your time, you’ve reformed yourself. You’re willing to accept responsibility and “put the blame on me.” That gives me faith in you to forgive you and take you back.
Appropriate for Lynddie England, perhaps. Certainly not the meaning the ribbons have today.
4. Other. Here is just a reminder to me of things I want to write for this space:
a) The Activism Amendment, b) Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council? c) Democrats criticize Chavez, d) Dogcross, e) Westphalia, f) The purported rights of nations to persist, g) 911 and immigarants, h) guns in schools and nukes for nations, i) Sex talk, j) God Talk, k) Cry Wolf, l) Eden.
1. Blushing Bride. The local news had a story maybe 10 days ago, which again I'm in too much of a rush to link to, about a store that sold wedding dresses that suddenly shut its doors and declared bankrupcy. It featured, as might be expected, distraught brides to be, complaining about the awful situation they were in, because they trusted the company and then they suddenly closed, without notice.
I take the unpopular position that the news treated the bankrupt company unfairly. I don't hold them blameless, but from what little I know about business bankrupcy, the report failed to provide the context that would explain the company's actions. In doing this, it failed to point the way to possible solutions to keep this from happening in the future.
First of all, the company undoubtedly did not set out to go bankrupt. I haven't seen their business plan, but most companies want to make money, not lose it. As far as I know there have been no allegations of fraud, i.e. that the principals of the company overpaid themselves in order to rob the company as much as possible with bankrupcy on the horizon. It is pretty common for the owner of a small business to loan the business money to keep it afloat, hoping it will turn the corner and survive.
I don't know if the company's original plan was reasonable or whether it was reasonable for it to try to ride out the crisis as long as they did. It sounded like the company used a lot of shipping. When gas prices rise, shipping costs rise. That could help explain why things went awry. I do think it was piss poor to get into this situation. I think a company that undertakes an enterprise like this should make damn sure they're not undercapitalized, and there should be some insurance offered to customers to prevent the worst. But society has not set up a strict liability standard. The law and the culture encourage half-assed startups in the name of the market. So the entrepreneur cannot entirely be blamed.
The customers wish they had been informed in advance. My understanding is that there is no such thing. Once there is an announcement of an impending bankrupcy, any hopes of riding out the crisis pretty much go out the window. No one will put anything into the company anymore, because they're on notice they may not get it back. Fraudulent conveyance laws kick into place preventing the company from giving things out -- it's treated as creditor property even before the papers are filed. Basically, the company has no choice but to close its doors. Even to give out dresses kept on the premises would be considered stealing from the creditors.
I think it's shitty that the company did not leave their customers a longer note. It's not enough to say, sorry for the inconvenience, and let people presume the worst. They should have said, now that we're bankrupt, matters are mostly out of our control, but we will do our best working with the lawyers and creditors to get everyone their dresses if possible. That could have alleviated at least some of the stress.
Ultimately, everyone whose weddings were scheduled within two weeks of the bankrupcy were promised their dresses. As far as I know this promise was kept. It was reportedly kept for at lest the first bride with an upcoming wedding. I have no doubt this was the lawyers who worked this out, recognizing the potential for bad publicity against the creditors.
In sum, the company acted badly, but the news media's inept and misleading coverage made them the only culprit, and failed to explain how some of the complaints against them were really attributable to aspects of the law and culture that should have been questioned, but remained unquestioned after all the reporting was done, helping set this up to happen again.
2. McGruff. McGruff, the crime dog, is at it again, teaching the kiddies how to do crimes.
Cartoons are popular with three kinds of viewers: kiddies, the tragically ironic, and no-goods who bust into houses to rape, steal, and watch Tom and Jerry. Adults seeking serious information on how to prevent identity theft generally do not go to Blue’s Clues, Clifford the Big Red Dog or McGruff.
So here he is again on TV, showing us how you can take a picture of someone’s credit card discreetly with a cell phone, and use the numbers to make unauthorized purchases. Cool. Kids don’t have credit cards, though if the kid is over 12 he probably has his own cell number. So you know kids aren’t gonna run and tell their parents this new trick.
No-goods will be sitting in someone’s living room after a home invasion when McGruff comes on during Matlock, and reminds them how they can get a credit card out of the victim’s purse and order a pizza.
And of course, the tragically ironic just think it would be cool to commit a crime suggested to them by a misguided crime-prevention effort, so they order original artworks from the Banksy website and have them sent to the Whitney at Altria.
3. Yellow Ribbons. Yellow ribbons, it turns out, are a fascinating example of semantic drift. Part of the message of the ribbons has remained the same: I support you. But tracing their use backwards, it turns out that the rest of their meaning has reversed almost 180 degrees.
Today, the ribbons are an endemic outgrowth of the Iraq war, and they seem to signify something like, “I support you in your mission. You’re a hero.” Everyone is supposed to have one of the damn things. It’s considered patriotic to consider the mission heroic on the level of the individual soldier, even though most now see the war as a whole as stupid and counterproductive, if not simply wrong – one unnecessary atrocity spangled with smaller atrocities. It’s currently debated whether the ribbons also display support for the war.
I recall earlier uses of the ribbons. The previous Iraq war, or “Persian Gulf War,” then years before the current one, saw the ribbons. Their meaning was not support for the war so much, at least where I was. It was more, we love you and we want you back. Over the decade, the military aspect and even the location were unchanged, but there was a subtle change in tenor from expressing love and the pain of absence to support for the mission.
Ten years before that was the first use of the ribbons that I know of. We’re now back to the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979-80, the “crisis” that became “America Held Hostage” and later NBC’s Nightline. The ribbons were for the hostages. Between the Hostage Crisis and Iraq I, the notion of “we want you safely home” remained intact, but shifted from diplomatic hostages to military personnel engaging in a hot war.
The first use was in 1974, when Dawn, featuring Tony Orlando, performed “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.” From some of the lyrics, you might think there was a hint of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war: it begins and ends with simply, “I'm comin' home…” Everyone knows the chorus:
Tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak treeIt's been three long years. Do you still want me?If I don't see a ribbon round the old oak treeI'll stay on the bus, forget about us, put the blame on me.If I don't see a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree
But the context is clear that the singer is actually much more like the hostages in Iran than like our troops. He’s a prisoner. An inmate at one of America’s fine penal institutions:
I'm comin' home, I've done my time…
I'm really still in prison, and my love she holds the key
A simple yellow ribbon's what I need to set me free
So, the yellow ribbon used to say: Yes, it looks like you done wrong and landed in jail. But you’ve done your time, you’ve reformed yourself. You’re willing to accept responsibility and “put the blame on me.” That gives me faith in you to forgive you and take you back.
Appropriate for Lynddie England, perhaps. Certainly not the meaning the ribbons have today.
4. Other. Here is just a reminder to me of things I want to write for this space:
a) The Activism Amendment, b) Venezuela or Guatemala for the Security Council? c) Democrats criticize Chavez, d) Dogcross, e) Westphalia, f) The purported rights of nations to persist, g) 911 and immigarants, h) guns in schools and nukes for nations, i) Sex talk, j) God Talk, k) Cry Wolf, l) Eden.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Republican Scandals
Well, it's been a month and I have a pile of items that I had planned to post that are all backed up in the pipeline. I'm going to continue that bout of laziness by being a lazy linker and not giving the hotlinks to a few references here, which is like filing a legal paper without the exhibits, but oh hell, maybe I'll find them later.
Crooks and liars has a video of some talking heads talking about the Foley scandal. It's a hoot because the Democrat guy spreads like a 1N debater, rattling off more than a dozen high-profile Republican scandals. I remember a great video they posted months ago with Howard Dean saying again and again how the Abramoff scandal had touched not one Democrat.
Counterpunch has an article with an analysis if why so many times Republicans get caught literally with pants down (With links to an about.com list of scandals that is redacted from Wikipedia).
My own thought is that this is at once a hard and an easy issue for the Democrats. It's hard because attention span is so short that any smart Republican can run out the clock listing Democratic scandals and make it look like a bipartisan failing. (Note however that the Crooks and Liars video shows that Republicans often aren't smart.) On the other hand, there must be some way to make the point that Republicans dominate in the area of scandal, because they do.
Beyond the lists you could make from this administration, one could compare the relatively clean Clinton, Carter, and Johnson white houses with the corrupt administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. (Ford was apparently not so bad.) For Johnson you had, what, a petty scandal regarding a Supreme Court appointee? Compare to Nixon: president resigned and pardoned, top advisors sent to jail. Ford restored and Carter restored some of the reputation the government had lost. Then recall when Time magazine presented its "Wall of Shame" showing a hundred-odd Reagan officials who'd been indicted or left under a cloud. Bush I had his own set of pardons of a half dozen of his top people right before leaving office. Clinton, in spite of being impeached and ultimately surrendering his law license for a misleadingly captious denial about sex with Monica Lewinsky, had a relatively clean house. Now Bush II and you have numerous investigations reaching into the White House, with various spy scandals, Plamegate, Abramoff, etc...
You read about the slimy environment in which young Republicans are trained to fight dirty, and I've seen these shenanigans in student politics. Anything goes, because the issues are always black and white to the authoritarian personality. John Dean has recently discovered this and written a book about it. It's no accident that the new breed of Republicans includes a disproportionate share of grifters, liars, and pedophiles.
Foleygate has been amusing and disturbing in part because of the lack of unified Republican spin. Of course, many want to shoot the messenger. Wonkette caught Fox News letting the Republicans off the hook by labeling Foley a Democrat. The FRC Christians have blamed the scandal on the Republican's coddling of gays. Drudge blames the kid victims for going along. Boehner blames Hastert. Foley blames alcohol. Hannity invented the fact that the twentysomething Lewinsky was actually still a tender child while servicing the Presidential staff, a comparison that O'Reilly had said only an extremist lunatic would make (but in Hannity's defense, you would only be a lunatic to compare the real facts of the cases, and as a Fox News pseudojournalust, he was dealing in made-up facts). How many different stories and scapegoats are we up to? Oh yeah, Stephen Colbert blames himself. Thanks for owning up.
Locally, we have a governor's race that is all about scandals. The Democratic governor, running for reelection, received a lot of campaign money from people who benefited from his policies, making him exactly like 100% of other politicians. He has not been the target of any investigation and exactly one person in state government, a minor functionary, has left under a cloud. This is the substance of all the negative Republican adds. Plus, they've added a new charge -- he tried to rig the election.
Now, I'm no great fan of this guy but I defend people who are attacked with stupid arguments. How did he attempt to rig the election? His lawyer lobbied the elections board to make a ruling favorable to him concerning his opponent's illegal activities. Scandalous -- a lawyer presenting an argument to a legal body. The Journal-Sentinel, only mass daily paper of the state's largest city, ran this "scandal" on page 1; it reported later on page 6B that the lawyer for the Republicans did the same thing, apparently not a scandal. The elections board voted along party lines, but a judge affirmed its ruling.
The substance of that ruling, as I understand, was that the Republican candidate, who is currently in Congress, transferred his entire Congressional campaign warchest into his budget for election to the statehouse. A bit over 1/3 of that money was raised from national donors who had never complied with the restrictions for giving to a state campaign. Its transfer violated federal law. The television station owned by the Journal's parent company covered the story last night in a condescendingly simple manner, apparently because it presumes its viewers are idiots who would not otherwise understand. They treated the whole warchest as suspect, and said that a Democratic congressman had done something similar in the last election -- but no word on whether his actions were significantly different in legal terms. It's like saying that a cop is partisan because he pulls over the Republican for driving drunk, but not the Democrat, even though the Democrat is also driving (and not mentioning that maybe he's sober). I believe about 10% of what this station airs as news.
Crooks and liars has a video of some talking heads talking about the Foley scandal. It's a hoot because the Democrat guy spreads like a 1N debater, rattling off more than a dozen high-profile Republican scandals. I remember a great video they posted months ago with Howard Dean saying again and again how the Abramoff scandal had touched not one Democrat.
Counterpunch has an article with an analysis if why so many times Republicans get caught literally with pants down (With links to an about.com list of scandals that is redacted from Wikipedia).
My own thought is that this is at once a hard and an easy issue for the Democrats. It's hard because attention span is so short that any smart Republican can run out the clock listing Democratic scandals and make it look like a bipartisan failing. (Note however that the Crooks and Liars video shows that Republicans often aren't smart.) On the other hand, there must be some way to make the point that Republicans dominate in the area of scandal, because they do.
Beyond the lists you could make from this administration, one could compare the relatively clean Clinton, Carter, and Johnson white houses with the corrupt administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes. (Ford was apparently not so bad.) For Johnson you had, what, a petty scandal regarding a Supreme Court appointee? Compare to Nixon: president resigned and pardoned, top advisors sent to jail. Ford restored and Carter restored some of the reputation the government had lost. Then recall when Time magazine presented its "Wall of Shame" showing a hundred-odd Reagan officials who'd been indicted or left under a cloud. Bush I had his own set of pardons of a half dozen of his top people right before leaving office. Clinton, in spite of being impeached and ultimately surrendering his law license for a misleadingly captious denial about sex with Monica Lewinsky, had a relatively clean house. Now Bush II and you have numerous investigations reaching into the White House, with various spy scandals, Plamegate, Abramoff, etc...
You read about the slimy environment in which young Republicans are trained to fight dirty, and I've seen these shenanigans in student politics. Anything goes, because the issues are always black and white to the authoritarian personality. John Dean has recently discovered this and written a book about it. It's no accident that the new breed of Republicans includes a disproportionate share of grifters, liars, and pedophiles.
Foleygate has been amusing and disturbing in part because of the lack of unified Republican spin. Of course, many want to shoot the messenger. Wonkette caught Fox News letting the Republicans off the hook by labeling Foley a Democrat. The FRC Christians have blamed the scandal on the Republican's coddling of gays. Drudge blames the kid victims for going along. Boehner blames Hastert. Foley blames alcohol. Hannity invented the fact that the twentysomething Lewinsky was actually still a tender child while servicing the Presidential staff, a comparison that O'Reilly had said only an extremist lunatic would make (but in Hannity's defense, you would only be a lunatic to compare the real facts of the cases, and as a Fox News pseudojournalust, he was dealing in made-up facts). How many different stories and scapegoats are we up to? Oh yeah, Stephen Colbert blames himself. Thanks for owning up.
Locally, we have a governor's race that is all about scandals. The Democratic governor, running for reelection, received a lot of campaign money from people who benefited from his policies, making him exactly like 100% of other politicians. He has not been the target of any investigation and exactly one person in state government, a minor functionary, has left under a cloud. This is the substance of all the negative Republican adds. Plus, they've added a new charge -- he tried to rig the election.
Now, I'm no great fan of this guy but I defend people who are attacked with stupid arguments. How did he attempt to rig the election? His lawyer lobbied the elections board to make a ruling favorable to him concerning his opponent's illegal activities. Scandalous -- a lawyer presenting an argument to a legal body. The Journal-Sentinel, only mass daily paper of the state's largest city, ran this "scandal" on page 1; it reported later on page 6B that the lawyer for the Republicans did the same thing, apparently not a scandal. The elections board voted along party lines, but a judge affirmed its ruling.
The substance of that ruling, as I understand, was that the Republican candidate, who is currently in Congress, transferred his entire Congressional campaign warchest into his budget for election to the statehouse. A bit over 1/3 of that money was raised from national donors who had never complied with the restrictions for giving to a state campaign. Its transfer violated federal law. The television station owned by the Journal's parent company covered the story last night in a condescendingly simple manner, apparently because it presumes its viewers are idiots who would not otherwise understand. They treated the whole warchest as suspect, and said that a Democratic congressman had done something similar in the last election -- but no word on whether his actions were significantly different in legal terms. It's like saying that a cop is partisan because he pulls over the Republican for driving drunk, but not the Democrat, even though the Democrat is also driving (and not mentioning that maybe he's sober). I believe about 10% of what this station airs as news.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Potpourri
Here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking of. Most is from the last couple of days. One or two are of longer gestation.
Pluto
I like the IAU’s decision to reclassify Pluto. Since the issue of designation is essentially arbitrary, I would have been satisfied with any number of outcomes. The one thing that really annoys me is the repeated assertion, and I mean repeated, over and over, in AP service reporting, that Pluto fails to meet the definition of a planet because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune. (I also was annoyed by the recent protest over Pluto’s demotion where signs read, “size doesn’t matter,” the implication being that Pluto was rejected for being too small.)
The new definition of a planet has three criteria. A body is a plant if it 1) orbits a star; 2) is sufficiently massive that gravitational forces have rendered it approximately spherical in shape; and 3) it is sufficiently massive and stable in its orbit that debris in its orbital path has been cleared or captured. Each criterion has some fuzziness. Satellites of planets do orbit stars, and planets orbit the centers of gravity of their planet-moon systems, so that some moons might be regarded as more star-orbiting than planet-orbiting. How spherical is spherical? How clear of debris is clear enough?
Pluto orbits the sun, though it has a big moon, Charon, and their mutual center of gravity is between the two planets. This is not considered a disqualification. The Pluto-Charon-Nix-Hydra system still orbits the sun, and since Charon has been locked into that system, it does not constitute unswept debris in Pluto’s path. Pluto is small, but it’s small planet-sized and basically round. The fact that the orbit is extremely tilted relative to the ecliptic, and highly eccentric, and that its motion is retrograde, are all oddities that do not effect its definition as a planet. Pluto’s orbital is not cleared, however.
But the idea that Neptune is in Pluto’s path is bullshit. If it were, Neptune could not be considered a planet either. Because Pluto’s orbit is tilted, it only intersects the orbital plane of Neptune at two points. If Pluto and Neptune were to cross that plane at the same time, they would be about 1.8 billion miles apart. When you see Pluto’s and Neptune’s orbits drawn in 2-D as they are projected onto the ecliptic, they appear to cross, but at the crossing point, Pluto is maybe 700 million miles above the ecliptic. Moreover, Pluto and Neptune’s orbits are synchronized: they “resonate” at a 2:3 ratio – a pattern that is stable over time. They never get closer than 1.8 billion miles apart, and that’s not at the ecliptic.
By comparison, Pluto will at some point come closer than 1.8 billion miles from both Uranus and Saturn, also considered to still be planets.
Poppy Crop
Well, another measure of US success in Afghanistan – they’ve reported a record harvest of poppies this year. I look forward to a few cents off those yummy poppyseed muffins.
Reading Quiz
Bush has been reading Macbeth and L’Etranger, which I dare say are a step up from The Pet Goat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But does he comprehend anything he reads? Here’s a quiz he should take.
Both Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar have ambitions or appetites. Where do these ambitions or appetites come from? Do they stem from deep within the nature of the individual, or from somewhere else? Do Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar each have a clear vision of what it is they want?
Mersault and the Pet Goat both face the judgment of society. Would you say that Mersault goes from approval to disapproval, while the Pet Goat undergoes the opposite transformation? Are the motives for their actions clear? Does society judge them on their motives or on the outcomes? Who or what in these stories is existentially “absurd?”
The Pet Goat and the Very Hungry Caterpillar both eat a lot of things. How do their diets differ? How are they the same? Is different food wholesome for different eaters? Should the Pet Goat and Very Hungry Caterpillar have eaten differently? What do these stories tell you about the consequences of bad choices?
Mersault and Macbeth both engage in socially disapproved acts of violence, but for different reasons. Is there anything redeeming for either of these characters in the motives for their acts? How would we think of these characters if they had continued in their tracks and not committed the transformatory acts in their stories?
Castro's Death Date
Just learned that Ho Chi Minh died on the anniversary of the declaration of Vietnamese independence, much like Jefferson and Adams died on July 4. I predict Castro will die on January 1, 2067 (at age 140).
Missing Flag
The flag first erected on the 9/11 WTC rubble is lost. The story would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Well, it is funny. The firefighters came to a commemorative event and when the flag was brought out, which has been toured and worshipped like a religious icon, it turned out to be the wrong flag. Three times too big. Comment: what an incompetent country we’ve become. File under Katrina.
Can the First Responders Talk to Each Other Yet?
When Katrina came, one of the problems that was highlighted at the time was that emergency first responders could not talk to each other. Incompatible communications equipment. That was a problem on 9/11. It was going to be fixed. Katrina hits, it’s still not fixed, so everyone said again, now we’ll fix it.
I haven’t been able to find any news: on the anniversary of Katrina, when nothing else seems to have been fixed, have the communications problems at least been resolved? No one seems to say.
Survivor
Survivor is having the battle of the races. Ordinarily I might agree that this was a stupid, sensationalist, racially inflammatory tactic. But, as one local civil libertarian and fan of the show has pointed out, the normal course of the show when teams are integrated by force and left without any race-sensitive rules for the remainder of play is that the black people get kicked off the teams right way, and by mid-season it’s an all-white game. That was a telling social experiment. The battle of the races at least offers all races the opportunity to succeed, and it may be an interesting social experiment now that the lessons of the old formula have been absorbed.
Birth Pangs
It should be widely agreed that there was something callous in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s stating that she viewed the systematic destruction in Lebanon, with its accompanying loss of life, as hopefully representing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."
Of course, what was so appalling about Rice’s statement was not the mere notion in itself that some good can arise out of bad things. One can find millions of examples of the "silver lining" motif – whole cosmologies are built upon the analogy of slash and burn agriculture – the fire that destroys the last generation fertilizes the ground for the new.
What really makes the comment crass is the seeming failure to recognize that in this case, the metaphor suffers from Pollyanna optimism and a gross disproportionality. On one side, the hell of war, the wailing of men, women and children over the loss of loved ones to Israeli bombs, a society shattered, and jackboots approaching. On the other, what? Another showpiece of U.S.-certified Middle East Democracy a la Iraq?
For precedents, compare the following quotes, one from World War I, the other from World War II:
"The old world order died with the setting of that day’s sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow."
That was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University President and leading figure in the Republican Party, looking back in 1915 to the start of World War I. It’s the same metaphor, but Butler at least does not sound cheerful. The pain of loss begins and ends the quote. Butler later received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to "outlaw war."
Now here’s another quote, much closer in tone to Condi:
"There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily life when we suddenly are struck by the feeling that everything before us is history, and that a new world is now being born. We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and realize that this new world is replacing the old and sinking one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice."
Here we have the model for Condoleeza’s optimism. Peculiarities and prejudice will be abolished in the glorious new age to be ushered in by worthy bloodshed. How fortunate we are to be witness to it!
The speaker is Josef Goebbels, giving his annual speech praising Hitler on the event of his birthday. When "Our Hitler" was delivered, it was 1941, and German casualties alone stood at perhaps a quarter million, with 40 times that yet to come. That Rice would come speaking the same words as Hitler’s propagandist, as a defender of Israel, strikes an additional, though not unfamiliar, chord of distaste.
For Goebbels, the war was a good thing, and Hitler deserved the credit: "We are experiencing the greatest miracle that history offers: a genius is building a new world." The Nazis absorbed and believed this lesson. Even after the war, Rudolf Hess wrote from Spandau prison that the rise and fall of Hitler were the "birth pangs of a new age" of Naziism. That theme is not alien to this administration. Bush’s defenders, confounded by the horrible disasters of Iraq and the Bush Presidency itself, have turned like Hess for comfort in a redemptive future: If Bush succeeds in remaking the Middle East, he will be remembered as a great president.
One final source for Rice’s statement can’t be overlooked. In the King James Bible, Matthew 24: 7-8 reads like this:
"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."
Jesus’ disciples have asked for the signs of the end times, and he describes the lead up to Armageddon. The word with which he concludes, "sorrows," is translated in some versions of the Bible as "birth pangs." The posters at end-time-obsessed websites like Rapture Ready all understand that "the birth pangs" are the signs of the last days of the elect on Earth and debate each new event in the Middle East as to its position in the run-up to the rapture. The Armageddon theme is echoed by the right’s hopeful-sounding inclusion of the Israel-Lebanon war as part of World War III.
We know that Bush’s speeches are peppered with Christian Right inside references, whether these are secret messages or comfort words. It hardly seems coincidental that John Bolton insists he is "not the Alpha and Omega" just as Condoleeza is quoted saying that indeed, these are (the?) "birth pangs."
If this is the inspiration for Condoleeza’s quote, then she has much in common with Goebbels, only it is Bush rather than Hitler, who occupies the position of a Messianic figure, so certain in his inspired path to a new order that he wants the credit for war and for everyone to think positively about what it may bring.
Or rather, Rice has much in common with Hess, who clung to the vision, cherry ripe in 1941, long after its rotten core lay exposed.
Suicide March
The Republican phrases of the year are “cut and run” and “overall war on terror.” There is a subtle contradiction in they way they are used. If one wants to withdraw from Iraq, this could only constitute a “surrender” in the war if the Iraq war were a stand-alone adventure. If it is not a mindless filibuster but really just one of myriad fronts in a larger war, then abandoning it would be something akin to, say, retreating from the Phillipines five months into World War II. History has sustained the judgment that tossing forces fruitlessly into the Japanese meat grinder was less important than husbanding resources for the next phase of war, reinforcing lines of resistance further south and east, and allowing forces to be allocated to the European theater, where it was vital to keep Russia from being lost. Lose the Phillipines for a while, keep Europe and Russia and win the war. Good trade.
If Iraq is not the war but a mere front in the war, then “cut and run” does not mean “surrender.” It just means “redeploy.” The idea that you never retreat or never redeploy implies some kind of last stand or suicide march – by an army that only knows how to move forward or die. Is that the policy?
Not that we’ve been told. We train our armies to go forward and to retreat. We send along enough fuel and supplies for a round trip. The troops expect to come back someday. Our generals are taught orderly retreat as a valid military option. Taking away that option limits choices and generally limits the means available to be effective.
Historically, units have sometimes been ordered to never retreat. Some of these armies fought through to victory, motivated by the knowledge that this was their only hope of survival. Most were annihilated.
I think if a poll were taken and people were asked, “Should generals who can no longer obtain their military objectives have the discretion to order tactical retreats when necessary to save their forces from annihilation?” the answer would be yes close to 100% of the time.
Sheriff Bozo
Why David Clarke is even running for re-election for Milwaukee County Sheriff baffles me. He has shown a stunning disregard for the rule of law. He has demonstrated arrogance and incompetence while unethically abusing his apartment to aggrandize himself and his own political ambitions.
I received a campaign flier which: 1) featured a glaring typo in a headline featuring Clarke’s ironic slogan about being above politics (or “politices”); 2) featured laudatory quotes without any attribution; 3) bragged about all the remedial on-the-job training Clarke has received; 4) listed 150 citizen endorsers, all no-names because no one with any reputation is willing to endorse him; and 5) cites his record as a beat cop, a job from which he was fired for incompetence and insubordination. I wonder how many of the listed endorsers have criminal records?
Actually, I’ve run a few of these names. Michael Lutz was the cop who shot Timothy Nabors, a black man, in a controversial episode a couple of years ago. Michel Jurkovich has some jail time on his record. Paul Kopornik is under an injunction in what looks like a domestic violence case.
My brother is a deputy, and boy does he have some tales. Clarke is a laughingstock among his men. He must go.
More Potpourri to come later if I have time:
Cows with Accents
Katie Couric Retouched
Patriot Missles
Mouse Fur
Activism Amendment
Crying Wolf
The Rapture
Pluto
I like the IAU’s decision to reclassify Pluto. Since the issue of designation is essentially arbitrary, I would have been satisfied with any number of outcomes. The one thing that really annoys me is the repeated assertion, and I mean repeated, over and over, in AP service reporting, that Pluto fails to meet the definition of a planet because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune. (I also was annoyed by the recent protest over Pluto’s demotion where signs read, “size doesn’t matter,” the implication being that Pluto was rejected for being too small.)
The new definition of a planet has three criteria. A body is a plant if it 1) orbits a star; 2) is sufficiently massive that gravitational forces have rendered it approximately spherical in shape; and 3) it is sufficiently massive and stable in its orbit that debris in its orbital path has been cleared or captured. Each criterion has some fuzziness. Satellites of planets do orbit stars, and planets orbit the centers of gravity of their planet-moon systems, so that some moons might be regarded as more star-orbiting than planet-orbiting. How spherical is spherical? How clear of debris is clear enough?
Pluto orbits the sun, though it has a big moon, Charon, and their mutual center of gravity is between the two planets. This is not considered a disqualification. The Pluto-Charon-Nix-Hydra system still orbits the sun, and since Charon has been locked into that system, it does not constitute unswept debris in Pluto’s path. Pluto is small, but it’s small planet-sized and basically round. The fact that the orbit is extremely tilted relative to the ecliptic, and highly eccentric, and that its motion is retrograde, are all oddities that do not effect its definition as a planet. Pluto’s orbital is not cleared, however.
But the idea that Neptune is in Pluto’s path is bullshit. If it were, Neptune could not be considered a planet either. Because Pluto’s orbit is tilted, it only intersects the orbital plane of Neptune at two points. If Pluto and Neptune were to cross that plane at the same time, they would be about 1.8 billion miles apart. When you see Pluto’s and Neptune’s orbits drawn in 2-D as they are projected onto the ecliptic, they appear to cross, but at the crossing point, Pluto is maybe 700 million miles above the ecliptic. Moreover, Pluto and Neptune’s orbits are synchronized: they “resonate” at a 2:3 ratio – a pattern that is stable over time. They never get closer than 1.8 billion miles apart, and that’s not at the ecliptic.
By comparison, Pluto will at some point come closer than 1.8 billion miles from both Uranus and Saturn, also considered to still be planets.
Poppy Crop
Well, another measure of US success in Afghanistan – they’ve reported a record harvest of poppies this year. I look forward to a few cents off those yummy poppyseed muffins.
Reading Quiz
Bush has been reading Macbeth and L’Etranger, which I dare say are a step up from The Pet Goat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But does he comprehend anything he reads? Here’s a quiz he should take.
Both Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar have ambitions or appetites. Where do these ambitions or appetites come from? Do they stem from deep within the nature of the individual, or from somewhere else? Do Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar each have a clear vision of what it is they want?
Mersault and the Pet Goat both face the judgment of society. Would you say that Mersault goes from approval to disapproval, while the Pet Goat undergoes the opposite transformation? Are the motives for their actions clear? Does society judge them on their motives or on the outcomes? Who or what in these stories is existentially “absurd?”
The Pet Goat and the Very Hungry Caterpillar both eat a lot of things. How do their diets differ? How are they the same? Is different food wholesome for different eaters? Should the Pet Goat and Very Hungry Caterpillar have eaten differently? What do these stories tell you about the consequences of bad choices?
Mersault and Macbeth both engage in socially disapproved acts of violence, but for different reasons. Is there anything redeeming for either of these characters in the motives for their acts? How would we think of these characters if they had continued in their tracks and not committed the transformatory acts in their stories?
Castro's Death Date
Just learned that Ho Chi Minh died on the anniversary of the declaration of Vietnamese independence, much like Jefferson and Adams died on July 4. I predict Castro will die on January 1, 2067 (at age 140).
Missing Flag
The flag first erected on the 9/11 WTC rubble is lost. The story would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Well, it is funny. The firefighters came to a commemorative event and when the flag was brought out, which has been toured and worshipped like a religious icon, it turned out to be the wrong flag. Three times too big. Comment: what an incompetent country we’ve become. File under Katrina.
Can the First Responders Talk to Each Other Yet?
When Katrina came, one of the problems that was highlighted at the time was that emergency first responders could not talk to each other. Incompatible communications equipment. That was a problem on 9/11. It was going to be fixed. Katrina hits, it’s still not fixed, so everyone said again, now we’ll fix it.
I haven’t been able to find any news: on the anniversary of Katrina, when nothing else seems to have been fixed, have the communications problems at least been resolved? No one seems to say.
Survivor
Survivor is having the battle of the races. Ordinarily I might agree that this was a stupid, sensationalist, racially inflammatory tactic. But, as one local civil libertarian and fan of the show has pointed out, the normal course of the show when teams are integrated by force and left without any race-sensitive rules for the remainder of play is that the black people get kicked off the teams right way, and by mid-season it’s an all-white game. That was a telling social experiment. The battle of the races at least offers all races the opportunity to succeed, and it may be an interesting social experiment now that the lessons of the old formula have been absorbed.
Birth Pangs
It should be widely agreed that there was something callous in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s stating that she viewed the systematic destruction in Lebanon, with its accompanying loss of life, as hopefully representing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."
Of course, what was so appalling about Rice’s statement was not the mere notion in itself that some good can arise out of bad things. One can find millions of examples of the "silver lining" motif – whole cosmologies are built upon the analogy of slash and burn agriculture – the fire that destroys the last generation fertilizes the ground for the new.
What really makes the comment crass is the seeming failure to recognize that in this case, the metaphor suffers from Pollyanna optimism and a gross disproportionality. On one side, the hell of war, the wailing of men, women and children over the loss of loved ones to Israeli bombs, a society shattered, and jackboots approaching. On the other, what? Another showpiece of U.S.-certified Middle East Democracy a la Iraq?
For precedents, compare the following quotes, one from World War I, the other from World War II:
"The old world order died with the setting of that day’s sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow."
That was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University President and leading figure in the Republican Party, looking back in 1915 to the start of World War I. It’s the same metaphor, but Butler at least does not sound cheerful. The pain of loss begins and ends the quote. Butler later received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to "outlaw war."
Now here’s another quote, much closer in tone to Condi:
"There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily life when we suddenly are struck by the feeling that everything before us is history, and that a new world is now being born. We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and realize that this new world is replacing the old and sinking one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice."
Here we have the model for Condoleeza’s optimism. Peculiarities and prejudice will be abolished in the glorious new age to be ushered in by worthy bloodshed. How fortunate we are to be witness to it!
The speaker is Josef Goebbels, giving his annual speech praising Hitler on the event of his birthday. When "Our Hitler" was delivered, it was 1941, and German casualties alone stood at perhaps a quarter million, with 40 times that yet to come. That Rice would come speaking the same words as Hitler’s propagandist, as a defender of Israel, strikes an additional, though not unfamiliar, chord of distaste.
For Goebbels, the war was a good thing, and Hitler deserved the credit: "We are experiencing the greatest miracle that history offers: a genius is building a new world." The Nazis absorbed and believed this lesson. Even after the war, Rudolf Hess wrote from Spandau prison that the rise and fall of Hitler were the "birth pangs of a new age" of Naziism. That theme is not alien to this administration. Bush’s defenders, confounded by the horrible disasters of Iraq and the Bush Presidency itself, have turned like Hess for comfort in a redemptive future: If Bush succeeds in remaking the Middle East, he will be remembered as a great president.
One final source for Rice’s statement can’t be overlooked. In the King James Bible, Matthew 24: 7-8 reads like this:
"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."
Jesus’ disciples have asked for the signs of the end times, and he describes the lead up to Armageddon. The word with which he concludes, "sorrows," is translated in some versions of the Bible as "birth pangs." The posters at end-time-obsessed websites like Rapture Ready all understand that "the birth pangs" are the signs of the last days of the elect on Earth and debate each new event in the Middle East as to its position in the run-up to the rapture. The Armageddon theme is echoed by the right’s hopeful-sounding inclusion of the Israel-Lebanon war as part of World War III.
We know that Bush’s speeches are peppered with Christian Right inside references, whether these are secret messages or comfort words. It hardly seems coincidental that John Bolton insists he is "not the Alpha and Omega" just as Condoleeza is quoted saying that indeed, these are (the?) "birth pangs."
If this is the inspiration for Condoleeza’s quote, then she has much in common with Goebbels, only it is Bush rather than Hitler, who occupies the position of a Messianic figure, so certain in his inspired path to a new order that he wants the credit for war and for everyone to think positively about what it may bring.
Or rather, Rice has much in common with Hess, who clung to the vision, cherry ripe in 1941, long after its rotten core lay exposed.
Suicide March
The Republican phrases of the year are “cut and run” and “overall war on terror.” There is a subtle contradiction in they way they are used. If one wants to withdraw from Iraq, this could only constitute a “surrender” in the war if the Iraq war were a stand-alone adventure. If it is not a mindless filibuster but really just one of myriad fronts in a larger war, then abandoning it would be something akin to, say, retreating from the Phillipines five months into World War II. History has sustained the judgment that tossing forces fruitlessly into the Japanese meat grinder was less important than husbanding resources for the next phase of war, reinforcing lines of resistance further south and east, and allowing forces to be allocated to the European theater, where it was vital to keep Russia from being lost. Lose the Phillipines for a while, keep Europe and Russia and win the war. Good trade.
If Iraq is not the war but a mere front in the war, then “cut and run” does not mean “surrender.” It just means “redeploy.” The idea that you never retreat or never redeploy implies some kind of last stand or suicide march – by an army that only knows how to move forward or die. Is that the policy?
Not that we’ve been told. We train our armies to go forward and to retreat. We send along enough fuel and supplies for a round trip. The troops expect to come back someday. Our generals are taught orderly retreat as a valid military option. Taking away that option limits choices and generally limits the means available to be effective.
Historically, units have sometimes been ordered to never retreat. Some of these armies fought through to victory, motivated by the knowledge that this was their only hope of survival. Most were annihilated.
I think if a poll were taken and people were asked, “Should generals who can no longer obtain their military objectives have the discretion to order tactical retreats when necessary to save their forces from annihilation?” the answer would be yes close to 100% of the time.
Sheriff Bozo
Why David Clarke is even running for re-election for Milwaukee County Sheriff baffles me. He has shown a stunning disregard for the rule of law. He has demonstrated arrogance and incompetence while unethically abusing his apartment to aggrandize himself and his own political ambitions.
I received a campaign flier which: 1) featured a glaring typo in a headline featuring Clarke’s ironic slogan about being above politics (or “politices”); 2) featured laudatory quotes without any attribution; 3) bragged about all the remedial on-the-job training Clarke has received; 4) listed 150 citizen endorsers, all no-names because no one with any reputation is willing to endorse him; and 5) cites his record as a beat cop, a job from which he was fired for incompetence and insubordination. I wonder how many of the listed endorsers have criminal records?
Actually, I’ve run a few of these names. Michael Lutz was the cop who shot Timothy Nabors, a black man, in a controversial episode a couple of years ago. Michel Jurkovich has some jail time on his record. Paul Kopornik is under an injunction in what looks like a domestic violence case.
My brother is a deputy, and boy does he have some tales. Clarke is a laughingstock among his men. He must go.
More Potpourri to come later if I have time:
Cows with Accents
Katie Couric Retouched
Patriot Missles
Mouse Fur
Activism Amendment
Crying Wolf
The Rapture
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Update on Lebanon
On Meet the Press, Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman asked what the US would do if it frequently suffered rocket attacks from Cuba:
"What would the United States do if Miami was bombed from Cuba, or if Chicago, which is your third largest city, would be bombed the way Haifa, our third largest city is, from Canada?" (source)
Great argument, Dan, only you got it backwards, as always.
"What would the United States do if Miami was bombed from Cuba, or if Chicago, which is your third largest city, would be bombed the way Haifa, our third largest city is, from Canada?" (source)
Great argument, Dan, only you got it backwards, as always.
Plan B
Gee, I haven't posted in over a month. Well, I did have a run of busy-ness at my job. Anyhow, just one brief comment. I saw this report on how the right is complaining about Plan B. What I found most interesting was the repeated claim that Plan B should be banned because it helps rapists and pedophiles get rid of evidence. Apparently, in the perfect world, nine year old rape victims would all become pregnant.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
War in the middle east
Here is a useful device for anyone seeking to clear-headedly assess foreign policy matters: switch around the identities of the players so that one is not biased by the identities of the parties. On many occasions, one does not even need to look to hypotheticals, because history will provide minimal pair cases for you. But for this technique to work you don't need real facts, just a set of facts, true or not, that someone believes and wants to argue from.
Today we look at a situation with the following elements:
1. Country A and Country B are neighbors with a history. They are not peacefully inclined toward one another, but we start the scenario at a juncture of relative peace.
2. Country A is the home to a group of people who are utterly and violently opposed to the regime of Country B. Among these people are some who claim land within Country B for themselves, and others who are in solidarity with those aspirations.
3. These people in Country A do not run Country A but they hold seats in its highest legislative body and are a potent political force. Many people in Country A think they're crazy, but when you consider what it would take to neutralize them as a political force, few in government have the will to stand up to them, and it's not uncommon that the executive overtly favors them.
4. These people launch small attacks on Country B. Nothing huge, because they're not really a significant military force, but people in Country B can sometimes expect their territory to be violated, particularly from the air, and people in Country B have been killed as a result of these attacks. (The number of actual attackers is small, but their base of support is broad.)
5. Country A does almost nothing to stop it. It continues to provide safe haven, while people move through its streets with signs lauding the attackers, hold parades for their most violent leaders, even as they are denounced around the world as terrorists. (But in defense of Country A, it's frankly a disaster and its government has shown almost complete inability to help its own people in the event of a serious crisis.)
6. Country B practices restraint, lodges formal protests. It has taken defensive military action in the past over these violations, but it seems they will continue until the terrorists and their supporters that want to completely eliminate B's government are dealt with decisively. Country B has a legitimate right to defend itself, of course. How far may it legitimately go to eliminate the threat of the people sheltered by Country A?
Given what's in the news these days, one might guess that country A is Lebanon, Country B is Israel, and the people operating unmolested from Lebanese territory are Hizbollah. The mainstream press accounts the facts above, and generally asserts that Israel may pulverize South Lebanon until Hizbollah either surrenders or is obliterated.
An alternative scenario has A as the United States, B as Cuba, and violent anti-Castro groups operating mainly out of Miami, but also out of New Jersey and some other places, in the Hizbollah role. One should not forget that some of these exile groups were identified by the U.S. government as domestic terrorists (when they bombed and assassinated political opponents in Miami), that they are blamed for thousands of Cuban deaths, and that their bloodiest representatives, like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles are given pardons or asylum by the federal govermnment and openly feted in Miami.
There are differences, but they do not generally favor the U.S. Unlike Lebanon, which was invaded, the U.S. has never been attacked by Cuba but itself launched an abortive invasion of Cuba, using its exile army. And the support for the Cuban exiles, including massive amounts of money, plus training, weapons, and intelligence, is tracable to the U.S. government, not some outside meddling state like Syria or Iran. These differences make average Americans more culpible in the deaths of innocent Cubans than average Lebanese are in the deaths of Israelis.
So by the logic of the media majority, Israel supporters and most of Congress, it should be legitimate for Cuba to seek to wipe out the terrorist exile groups and their supporters by mercilessly bombing Miami and Trenton. If Israel is right in all that it's doing, then Cuba should be free to destroy American bridges and hospitals first, target U.N. and Red Cross facilities, and, having rendered the civilian population incapable of medical aid or escape, rain down illegal phosphorous munitions. Once a few major U.S. cities have been turned into massive graveyards by the aerial assault, the ground troops would be expected to come in and round up the remaining anti-Castro terrorists and sympathizers.
There are two logical positions. Either:
(1) one determines that Cuba would be justified in committing massive violence to eliminate the bed of opposition it faces from its exiles in the U.S., or
(2) one determines that Israel has, at very least, gone to far in its effort to curb Hizbollah.
I choose the second.
Today we look at a situation with the following elements:
1. Country A and Country B are neighbors with a history. They are not peacefully inclined toward one another, but we start the scenario at a juncture of relative peace.
2. Country A is the home to a group of people who are utterly and violently opposed to the regime of Country B. Among these people are some who claim land within Country B for themselves, and others who are in solidarity with those aspirations.
3. These people in Country A do not run Country A but they hold seats in its highest legislative body and are a potent political force. Many people in Country A think they're crazy, but when you consider what it would take to neutralize them as a political force, few in government have the will to stand up to them, and it's not uncommon that the executive overtly favors them.
4. These people launch small attacks on Country B. Nothing huge, because they're not really a significant military force, but people in Country B can sometimes expect their territory to be violated, particularly from the air, and people in Country B have been killed as a result of these attacks. (The number of actual attackers is small, but their base of support is broad.)
5. Country A does almost nothing to stop it. It continues to provide safe haven, while people move through its streets with signs lauding the attackers, hold parades for their most violent leaders, even as they are denounced around the world as terrorists. (But in defense of Country A, it's frankly a disaster and its government has shown almost complete inability to help its own people in the event of a serious crisis.)
6. Country B practices restraint, lodges formal protests. It has taken defensive military action in the past over these violations, but it seems they will continue until the terrorists and their supporters that want to completely eliminate B's government are dealt with decisively. Country B has a legitimate right to defend itself, of course. How far may it legitimately go to eliminate the threat of the people sheltered by Country A?
Given what's in the news these days, one might guess that country A is Lebanon, Country B is Israel, and the people operating unmolested from Lebanese territory are Hizbollah. The mainstream press accounts the facts above, and generally asserts that Israel may pulverize South Lebanon until Hizbollah either surrenders or is obliterated.
An alternative scenario has A as the United States, B as Cuba, and violent anti-Castro groups operating mainly out of Miami, but also out of New Jersey and some other places, in the Hizbollah role. One should not forget that some of these exile groups were identified by the U.S. government as domestic terrorists (when they bombed and assassinated political opponents in Miami), that they are blamed for thousands of Cuban deaths, and that their bloodiest representatives, like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles are given pardons or asylum by the federal govermnment and openly feted in Miami.
There are differences, but they do not generally favor the U.S. Unlike Lebanon, which was invaded, the U.S. has never been attacked by Cuba but itself launched an abortive invasion of Cuba, using its exile army. And the support for the Cuban exiles, including massive amounts of money, plus training, weapons, and intelligence, is tracable to the U.S. government, not some outside meddling state like Syria or Iran. These differences make average Americans more culpible in the deaths of innocent Cubans than average Lebanese are in the deaths of Israelis.
So by the logic of the media majority, Israel supporters and most of Congress, it should be legitimate for Cuba to seek to wipe out the terrorist exile groups and their supporters by mercilessly bombing Miami and Trenton. If Israel is right in all that it's doing, then Cuba should be free to destroy American bridges and hospitals first, target U.N. and Red Cross facilities, and, having rendered the civilian population incapable of medical aid or escape, rain down illegal phosphorous munitions. Once a few major U.S. cities have been turned into massive graveyards by the aerial assault, the ground troops would be expected to come in and round up the remaining anti-Castro terrorists and sympathizers.
There are two logical positions. Either:
(1) one determines that Cuba would be justified in committing massive violence to eliminate the bed of opposition it faces from its exiles in the U.S., or
(2) one determines that Israel has, at very least, gone to far in its effort to curb Hizbollah.
I choose the second.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
The Beesting of Terrorism
Whereas terrorist attacks on the US get a lot of attention and a lot of rhetoric about changing the world forever, they have killed an average of something like 50 Americans per annum over the last 40-50 years, roughly comparable to the number of people killed by bee stings. Yet the attention paid to the bee sting epidemic is minimal. It has not promoted any secret wiretap programs, any massive government restructuring, or any $1.3 trillion foreign military adventures. The government is basically sitting on its hands as, insidiously, person by person, we are fallen by bees at the rate of 1 a week.
Where is our sense of perspective?
For that matter, bee stings are not even the leading cause of death in the U.S., which I know is surprising considering that they've killed more people here than international and domestic terrorism combined. Here are some other causes of death, given in BSEs (bee-sting equivalents):
Mauled by bears: 1/50
Poisoned by snakes: 1/10
Killed in deep sea diving accidents: 1/9
Electrocuted at work: 6
Plane crashes: 24
Gun accidents: 30
Killed while riding a bicycle: 48
Accidentally fall down and die: 100
Fatal asthma attack: 100
Atrial fibulation: 800
Murdered by a non-terrorist: 800 -- no, wait -- 799 (the other 1 is by a terrorist)
AIDS finally gets you: 800
Second-hand smoke: 1060 (conservative estimate)
Killing yourself intentionally (other than by smoking): 1100
Auto accidents: 1400 (not including the 48 hit while riding bikes)
Killed by doctors trying to help you: 2400
Killed by some kind of violent accident: 3000
Killed by your own dumb smoking: 7000
Got the "Big C": 12000 (overlaps the last one)
It's nice to see the government actually spening money on some of these things, even if it's chicken feed compared to the anti-terrorism investment. I mean, a trillion dollars would buy a lot of airbags and bicycle helmets, keep a few of those planes up in the air, even stop a few murders, doctors, or smokers from killing you.
Don't get me started on international comparisons, you know, all those kids that could get a cup of edible gruel and a malaria shot for 20 cents. You could really buy a lot of BSEs for a cool trillion if you could spend it anywhere in the world.
There's only one possible conclusion. It's not about lives to save. It's something else...
Where is our sense of perspective?
For that matter, bee stings are not even the leading cause of death in the U.S., which I know is surprising considering that they've killed more people here than international and domestic terrorism combined. Here are some other causes of death, given in BSEs (bee-sting equivalents):
Mauled by bears: 1/50
Poisoned by snakes: 1/10
Killed in deep sea diving accidents: 1/9
Electrocuted at work: 6
Plane crashes: 24
Gun accidents: 30
Killed while riding a bicycle: 48
Accidentally fall down and die: 100
Fatal asthma attack: 100
Atrial fibulation: 800
Murdered by a non-terrorist: 800 -- no, wait -- 799 (the other 1 is by a terrorist)
AIDS finally gets you: 800
Second-hand smoke: 1060 (conservative estimate)
Killing yourself intentionally (other than by smoking): 1100
Auto accidents: 1400 (not including the 48 hit while riding bikes)
Killed by doctors trying to help you: 2400
Killed by some kind of violent accident: 3000
Killed by your own dumb smoking: 7000
Got the "Big C": 12000 (overlaps the last one)
It's nice to see the government actually spening money on some of these things, even if it's chicken feed compared to the anti-terrorism investment. I mean, a trillion dollars would buy a lot of airbags and bicycle helmets, keep a few of those planes up in the air, even stop a few murders, doctors, or smokers from killing you.
Don't get me started on international comparisons, you know, all those kids that could get a cup of edible gruel and a malaria shot for 20 cents. You could really buy a lot of BSEs for a cool trillion if you could spend it anywhere in the world.
There's only one possible conclusion. It's not about lives to save. It's something else...
Monday, June 26, 2006
The Hussein Trial Dictionary
Kangaroo court. noun. The tribunal is formed under occupation and without the benefit of a "fully constitutional government." The judge is a neighbor of the alleged victims. The defense team is replaced on a whim by the judge with potted plants who make no objections during key testimony. Members of the defense team are frequently assassinated. Even if we'll never really know what happened, we can all feel happy that the man we most associated with these crimes was condemned by a kangaroo court.
Mistrial. noun. Order by the presiding judge at a judicial proceeding that the proceeding cases and be voided for incurable errors. I wonder how many defense lawyers would have to be assassinated in a U.S. court proceeding before the judge would declare a mistrial?
Hobbesian. adjective, from Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), political philosopher who outlined the need for a powerful sovereign to overcome the natural state of war of all against all. The imposition in Iraq of a weak and ineffective central government that cannot control rampant internecine violence seems almost like a demonstration of a Hobbesian argument for the restoration of Hussein.
Mistrial. noun. Order by the presiding judge at a judicial proceeding that the proceeding cases and be voided for incurable errors. I wonder how many defense lawyers would have to be assassinated in a U.S. court proceeding before the judge would declare a mistrial?
Hobbesian. adjective, from Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), political philosopher who outlined the need for a powerful sovereign to overcome the natural state of war of all against all. The imposition in Iraq of a weak and ineffective central government that cannot control rampant internecine violence seems almost like a demonstration of a Hobbesian argument for the restoration of Hussein.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Venezuela in USA Today
The June 5 USA Today featured a short article ("Chavez looms over Peru's runoff vote," page 8A) which described Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala as a "firey nationalist" who, if elected, would assure that Peru "tilts into Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' orbit." How can this be? Certainly, your editors must have spotted the paradox: a "firey nationalist" would assure that his country is not the satellite of anyone.
I suspect your writer and editors were blinded by their own nationalism. If the United States is the center of your political universe, as it has been for Latin American governments for most of the last century, then Peru doing what's best for Peru might seem too independent from Washington, and look like its trying to "help Chavez expand his anti-U.S. influence." But there's no chance that Peru will become a puppet of its sister Venezuela. Independence from Washington does not necessarily mean dependence on Caracas, Havana, Moscow, Beijing, or anywhere else. (In Monroe's era, it would have been London, Paris or the Hague.) Latin America is seeking to do more for itself and diversify its outside sources.
This is rational self interest, not irrational anti-Americanism. It should be also noted that Venezuela, while "anti-U.S." in the sense of opposing U.S. policy (as do most of the American people), has been a great friend to America by offering its people low-cost heating oil, hurricane relief, and free medical care, consistent with Chavez' characterization of himself and his country as pro-American.
[end letter]
What's amazing to me is the contradiction. It's just like the Washington Post article that I blogged about earlier. The conclusions directly contradict the evidence, but no matter. I will post something soon on another revealing anomaly: Chavez visits Qadaffi in Libya. The report of his visit notes the damage from U.S. airstrikes and emphasizes Qadaffi's history as an enemy of the U.S., tarnishing Chavez by association. The day before, an article on Qadaffi quotes Condoleeza Rice lauding Qadaffi as a model for other nations to follow. (Just not Venezuela, apparently.)
I suspect your writer and editors were blinded by their own nationalism. If the United States is the center of your political universe, as it has been for Latin American governments for most of the last century, then Peru doing what's best for Peru might seem too independent from Washington, and look like its trying to "help Chavez expand his anti-U.S. influence." But there's no chance that Peru will become a puppet of its sister Venezuela. Independence from Washington does not necessarily mean dependence on Caracas, Havana, Moscow, Beijing, or anywhere else. (In Monroe's era, it would have been London, Paris or the Hague.) Latin America is seeking to do more for itself and diversify its outside sources.
This is rational self interest, not irrational anti-Americanism. It should be also noted that Venezuela, while "anti-U.S." in the sense of opposing U.S. policy (as do most of the American people), has been a great friend to America by offering its people low-cost heating oil, hurricane relief, and free medical care, consistent with Chavez' characterization of himself and his country as pro-American.
[end letter]
What's amazing to me is the contradiction. It's just like the Washington Post article that I blogged about earlier. The conclusions directly contradict the evidence, but no matter. I will post something soon on another revealing anomaly: Chavez visits Qadaffi in Libya. The report of his visit notes the damage from U.S. airstrikes and emphasizes Qadaffi's history as an enemy of the U.S., tarnishing Chavez by association. The day before, an article on Qadaffi quotes Condoleeza Rice lauding Qadaffi as a model for other nations to follow. (Just not Venezuela, apparently.)
Venezuela Poster
I did this flier design for an upcoming event in Milwaukee; the final version has additional text overlaid giving the details of the program. What you see below is a low-quality rendering that gives the basic idea but loses a lot of detail.
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Thursday, June 01, 2006
Upcoming Posts
1) Immigration IV
2) Voluntary Prisons
3) Drunk School
4) The Media Campaign Against Venezuela
5) Draft Excerpt Series No. 2
6) Guns for Prisoners
2) Voluntary Prisons
3) Drunk School
4) The Media Campaign Against Venezuela
5) Draft Excerpt Series No. 2
6) Guns for Prisoners
Immigration III
Thought of the moment: if unlawful presence in the US is made a crime punishable by prison, and millions of immigrants are tossed into freshly built jails (who will be left to build them?), then will they be forced to work in low-paying prison sweatshop jobs? Wouldn't that mean they were still in competition for US jobs?
I think if we put all the immigrants in prison, they should have special prisons for people whose only crime is coming to the US without papers. They shouldn't be made to live with violent criminals. Anyone in the immigrant prison who committed a violent crime would be sent to a different prison. Immigrant prisons would be as nice as possible, with juvenile and adult facilities combined and families kept together. The prisons should have bilingual schools, parks and trees, superior medical facilities, and a prisoners' union whose elected representatives work together with the correctional officers to resolve problems. Prisoners who didn't commit any other offenses could go on work release to jobs in the city. The prisoners should have their own credit union to set aside money to buy nice houses after their release, and to facilitate efficient payment of remittances. The credit union would also manage the building funds for the main prison churches. Everyone would be crossing the border trying to get into one of the nice immigrant prisons. After a while, if everything worked out well, we'd experiment with making attendance at the prison voluntary. The guards' job would then just be to keep the prison-goers safe from crime. They won't let any of the riff raff inside the prisons.
I think if we put all the immigrants in prison, they should have special prisons for people whose only crime is coming to the US without papers. They shouldn't be made to live with violent criminals. Anyone in the immigrant prison who committed a violent crime would be sent to a different prison. Immigrant prisons would be as nice as possible, with juvenile and adult facilities combined and families kept together. The prisons should have bilingual schools, parks and trees, superior medical facilities, and a prisoners' union whose elected representatives work together with the correctional officers to resolve problems. Prisoners who didn't commit any other offenses could go on work release to jobs in the city. The prisoners should have their own credit union to set aside money to buy nice houses after their release, and to facilitate efficient payment of remittances. The credit union would also manage the building funds for the main prison churches. Everyone would be crossing the border trying to get into one of the nice immigrant prisons. After a while, if everything worked out well, we'd experiment with making attendance at the prison voluntary. The guards' job would then just be to keep the prison-goers safe from crime. They won't let any of the riff raff inside the prisons.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
More on sex offenders
Been watching more sex offender stings on TV. Dateline and the local station with John Mercure. I really feel sorry for the wannabe sex offenders who have to get lectured on air by that fatuous scumbag. To lose a battle of wits to John Mercure -- how humiliating!
Some observations:
1) You really have to wonder whether these stings are reeling in real perps or just creating new criminals by their existence. You constantly hear of the NIH study claiming that child sex offenders are super-recidivists who on average claim scores and scores of victims. If the sting operations dipped their lure in this pool, then they should be coming up with a high proportion of repeat offenders. After the sting, the cops should be able to get warrants and find out that the internet hookup represented by the sting was, for the average person caught, number thirty in a series of attempts, of which a dozen were successful, and that the sting is leading to multiple charges. It appears, however, that this is almost never the case. The broadcasts loudly exclaim that one or two of their captures appear to have previous records, while the fact that they trumpet these exceptions so loudly itself suggests that scores apparently do not. Add this to the fact that the captures are often young and contrite, and that the bait is exceptionally alluring, and you really wonder how many of these guys, if nature had been left to its natural course, would have gone about their lives without ever being tempted to arrange a hookup with an underage girl. Don't mistake me -- some of these guys are clearly creeps. But as to the proportion that would actually, left to their own, have committed criminal acts? It may be under fifty percent.
2) Some of these guys travel hundreds of miles for the date. What does that say about the logic of laws that require past sex offenders not to live within 2000 feet of a school? The real threat is coming from farther away, right?
3) A friend of mine observed that not a lot, but a significant minority of sting victims appeared to be younger men of foreign background who seemed genuinely confused about what they had done wrong. Recall that the age of consent at common law was 10, that it remains in the low teens in many places (and under certain conditions in the U.S. -- locally, for example, I believe the law is that with parental consent, a 13-year-old can marry and have intercourse). Most cultures have a taboo against going after extremely young boys or girls sexually, but their view of teenage sexuality is not as ostrichlike and they have nothing approaching the current mass hysteria over supposed sexual predators (and neither did we a few short decades ago). Whether or not as a matter of law these captures can be prosecuted, they clearly lack any real felonious intent. You almost expect these guys to ask the pretty face from Dateline, "What, you never had sex with a 15 year old? And also, at what age did you lose your virginity?"
Also, just a little more on that smug asswipe Mercure. When he says, "what he said on the internet then was so graphically disgusting, we can't say it on TV," well, first of all, I don't trust that it's even true. You can say a lot on TV. In part, I think the failure to air the details is an acknowledgement that Mercure is a hack whose tone is too cheap and sensational to let him air what could be aired in a tone of seriousness. In court room dramas, you hear sex crimes described in graphic detail, but the censors let it go because the presentation is so fraught with high tension and seriousness. Mercure smirks through every broadcast like a corrupt hawker of patent remedies, which essentially he is. Also, is it "disgusting?" I doubt that, too. Throughout his broadcasts, he feels he has to remind the audience, "Remember, he thinks he's talking to a 14-year-old girl." If you're prone to forget that the subject of a sex act is a juvenile, then what is left from the description of a sex act that supposedly makes it so disgusting? Is the guy into scat or something? My bet, based on how they treat other sexual descriptions on these broadcasts, is there's nothing particularly gross about what was said online. Probably Mercure is just titillated himself and has to remind himself, "John, this girl is 14." In fact, it's somewhat ironic that with his plump goofy face, Mercure looks like the stereotype of the kind of guy who would lure little girls or boys with free cotton candy. He's actually quite creepy. If I were as into the whole pedophile panic as the rest of the country seems to be, I'd worry about his little boy. Anyhow, the claim that what was said was so disgusting looks to me like a way of sensationalizing and inserting Mercure's protesting-too-much value judgments instead of just telling us the facts, which as I noted, if they were really graphic, would force John to stop smirking and seeming to almost giggle through his broadcasts. I can't believe this bozo pulls in journalism awards for his crap spectacles. The awards judges could be collectively ashamed. What happened to journalism?
Some observations:
1) You really have to wonder whether these stings are reeling in real perps or just creating new criminals by their existence. You constantly hear of the NIH study claiming that child sex offenders are super-recidivists who on average claim scores and scores of victims. If the sting operations dipped their lure in this pool, then they should be coming up with a high proportion of repeat offenders. After the sting, the cops should be able to get warrants and find out that the internet hookup represented by the sting was, for the average person caught, number thirty in a series of attempts, of which a dozen were successful, and that the sting is leading to multiple charges. It appears, however, that this is almost never the case. The broadcasts loudly exclaim that one or two of their captures appear to have previous records, while the fact that they trumpet these exceptions so loudly itself suggests that scores apparently do not. Add this to the fact that the captures are often young and contrite, and that the bait is exceptionally alluring, and you really wonder how many of these guys, if nature had been left to its natural course, would have gone about their lives without ever being tempted to arrange a hookup with an underage girl. Don't mistake me -- some of these guys are clearly creeps. But as to the proportion that would actually, left to their own, have committed criminal acts? It may be under fifty percent.
2) Some of these guys travel hundreds of miles for the date. What does that say about the logic of laws that require past sex offenders not to live within 2000 feet of a school? The real threat is coming from farther away, right?
3) A friend of mine observed that not a lot, but a significant minority of sting victims appeared to be younger men of foreign background who seemed genuinely confused about what they had done wrong. Recall that the age of consent at common law was 10, that it remains in the low teens in many places (and under certain conditions in the U.S. -- locally, for example, I believe the law is that with parental consent, a 13-year-old can marry and have intercourse). Most cultures have a taboo against going after extremely young boys or girls sexually, but their view of teenage sexuality is not as ostrichlike and they have nothing approaching the current mass hysteria over supposed sexual predators (and neither did we a few short decades ago). Whether or not as a matter of law these captures can be prosecuted, they clearly lack any real felonious intent. You almost expect these guys to ask the pretty face from Dateline, "What, you never had sex with a 15 year old? And also, at what age did you lose your virginity?"
Also, just a little more on that smug asswipe Mercure. When he says, "what he said on the internet then was so graphically disgusting, we can't say it on TV," well, first of all, I don't trust that it's even true. You can say a lot on TV. In part, I think the failure to air the details is an acknowledgement that Mercure is a hack whose tone is too cheap and sensational to let him air what could be aired in a tone of seriousness. In court room dramas, you hear sex crimes described in graphic detail, but the censors let it go because the presentation is so fraught with high tension and seriousness. Mercure smirks through every broadcast like a corrupt hawker of patent remedies, which essentially he is. Also, is it "disgusting?" I doubt that, too. Throughout his broadcasts, he feels he has to remind the audience, "Remember, he thinks he's talking to a 14-year-old girl." If you're prone to forget that the subject of a sex act is a juvenile, then what is left from the description of a sex act that supposedly makes it so disgusting? Is the guy into scat or something? My bet, based on how they treat other sexual descriptions on these broadcasts, is there's nothing particularly gross about what was said online. Probably Mercure is just titillated himself and has to remind himself, "John, this girl is 14." In fact, it's somewhat ironic that with his plump goofy face, Mercure looks like the stereotype of the kind of guy who would lure little girls or boys with free cotton candy. He's actually quite creepy. If I were as into the whole pedophile panic as the rest of the country seems to be, I'd worry about his little boy. Anyhow, the claim that what was said was so disgusting looks to me like a way of sensationalizing and inserting Mercure's protesting-too-much value judgments instead of just telling us the facts, which as I noted, if they were really graphic, would force John to stop smirking and seeming to almost giggle through his broadcasts. I can't believe this bozo pulls in journalism awards for his crap spectacles. The awards judges could be collectively ashamed. What happened to journalism?
The State Capitols Test (English Only)
I've taken down the text of this post to see if I can get it published elsewhere. It'll come back if I can get permission from the publisher. Nobody reads this blog but me and the NSA anyway.
©2006 by
Pholidote, all rights reserved.
©2006 by
Pholidote, all rights reserved.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Resign, already!
George Bush should resign.
Duh.
I should mention that many options have been floated. Plenty of others favor impeachment, which might take place under a wide variety of grounds. A few outposts of the blogosphere have raised suspicions of Bush suffering from brain damage, alcoholic relapse, or other debilitating mental conditions that cause him to act erratically, cling monomaniacally to filed positions and attribute his policies to divine instruction, which would justify a petition to have him removed for mental incompetence by the cabinet. Kevin Phillips thinks impeachment or 25th Amendment removal is inappropriate to this circumstance and we should have a Constitutional Amendment to allow a recall election. Still another proposal, which I've not actually seen, but must be out there is to radically reverse the policy of 1 USC 3, eliminating the safe harbor to protect the finality of votes for electoral college, and actually allowing the college to be reconstituted now to un-elect the President. Unelection, impeachment, psychiatric removal, recall, all have their logic.
I have a great idea for a petition. At the top is a title and general description and a place for signatories to print their full names and contact information. The petition then says: "whereupon I have signed my name next to each step which I favor in this regard." Then in three columns are about 150 provisions set out in fine print: president to be impeached for this reason, that reason, another, and another. Vice president to be impeached. To be recalled, unelected, removed on psychiatric grounds, censured. Secretary of defense to be fired or resign, etc. The great thing is, you could circulate 500 petitions at an event and wind up with 75,000 signatures. It may be my best cockeyed organizing innovation since the "secret protests" I organized against the Patriot Act. The sponsors and locations were undisclosed, but bases on the press they received, they were very effective!
Anyhow, beyond the obvious reasons of criminality, corruption, incopetence and political extremism, we have a new basis to ask Bush and his lackeys and cronies to vacate their positions of authority -- unpopularity.
There are plenty of fictional stories of presidents, and one real life story -- that of Richard Nixon -- where the protagonist has been mortally politically injured and decides that the only path is to leave for the good of the country. Of course Nixon had the incentive that he was destined to go in any event, but within that context, he still had a decision whether to fight to the end or give it up. In the premiere episode of Commander in Chief, Geena Davis' character Mackenzie Allen is set upon resignation (until she isn't). Where the leader is a noble hero, nothing seems to better display that nobility than the willingness to sacrifice the personal holding of the office for the protection of the office itself.
A president with a 29% overall approval rating is severely hampered in ability to govern. Those whose support is necessary to govern are inclined to distance themselves from whatever the leper of the White House says or does. What used to be a reverse Midas touch only for implementation of policy (the cronies placed in charge can't make anything work) has become a reverse Midas touch politically. Since the problem is personal unpopularity, the obvious solution is to lose the face-in-chief and let someone else use the bully pulpit.
There is moreover the simple fact that in a democracy, being vastly disliked signals illegitimacy. It's hard to justify remaining when departing would be viewed by the majority as a gift. The illegitimacy is also seen abroad and damages the credibility of the nation, just as foreign leaders see these numbers and can fairly presume that the President, speaking for the US in foreign policy matters, speaks only for a lame duck government and not for a nation.
As the Bush presidency unravels and new depths of incompetence and corruption are exposed, the office of the presidency takes some of the brunt of the exposure.
Bush's unpopularity misses the national record by only about the combined margins of error of the two polls. State by state, he retains his positive polarity only in Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah, which if I'm not mistaken, is three more states than those with majorities approving of Dead-Eye Dick.
More importantly, no president has been rated so low for so long. This is no temporary bump that can be fixed by perseverence. The presidency is dead in the water with no momentum, no credibility and no ideas. It's hard to imagine why anyone would stay in the job.
The press corps should be asking Bush 1) can you think yet of any mistake that you've made in office? 2) have you considered resigning for the good of the country? 3) have any of the members of your inside circle brought this option to your attention? 4) why on earth are you still in office when there's so much brush left to clear back at the ranch? 5) Is there anything you plan to do before January 2009 that someone else couldn't do better? 6) By staying, aren't you putting your own selfish interests ahead of the national interest and the wishes of more than 200 million Americans who do not support you?
Oh, just go already.
Duh.
I should mention that many options have been floated. Plenty of others favor impeachment, which might take place under a wide variety of grounds. A few outposts of the blogosphere have raised suspicions of Bush suffering from brain damage, alcoholic relapse, or other debilitating mental conditions that cause him to act erratically, cling monomaniacally to filed positions and attribute his policies to divine instruction, which would justify a petition to have him removed for mental incompetence by the cabinet. Kevin Phillips thinks impeachment or 25th Amendment removal is inappropriate to this circumstance and we should have a Constitutional Amendment to allow a recall election. Still another proposal, which I've not actually seen, but must be out there is to radically reverse the policy of 1 USC 3, eliminating the safe harbor to protect the finality of votes for electoral college, and actually allowing the college to be reconstituted now to un-elect the President. Unelection, impeachment, psychiatric removal, recall, all have their logic.
I have a great idea for a petition. At the top is a title and general description and a place for signatories to print their full names and contact information. The petition then says: "whereupon I have signed my name next to each step which I favor in this regard." Then in three columns are about 150 provisions set out in fine print: president to be impeached for this reason, that reason, another, and another. Vice president to be impeached. To be recalled, unelected, removed on psychiatric grounds, censured. Secretary of defense to be fired or resign, etc. The great thing is, you could circulate 500 petitions at an event and wind up with 75,000 signatures. It may be my best cockeyed organizing innovation since the "secret protests" I organized against the Patriot Act. The sponsors and locations were undisclosed, but bases on the press they received, they were very effective!
Anyhow, beyond the obvious reasons of criminality, corruption, incopetence and political extremism, we have a new basis to ask Bush and his lackeys and cronies to vacate their positions of authority -- unpopularity.
There are plenty of fictional stories of presidents, and one real life story -- that of Richard Nixon -- where the protagonist has been mortally politically injured and decides that the only path is to leave for the good of the country. Of course Nixon had the incentive that he was destined to go in any event, but within that context, he still had a decision whether to fight to the end or give it up. In the premiere episode of Commander in Chief, Geena Davis' character Mackenzie Allen is set upon resignation (until she isn't). Where the leader is a noble hero, nothing seems to better display that nobility than the willingness to sacrifice the personal holding of the office for the protection of the office itself.
A president with a 29% overall approval rating is severely hampered in ability to govern. Those whose support is necessary to govern are inclined to distance themselves from whatever the leper of the White House says or does. What used to be a reverse Midas touch only for implementation of policy (the cronies placed in charge can't make anything work) has become a reverse Midas touch politically. Since the problem is personal unpopularity, the obvious solution is to lose the face-in-chief and let someone else use the bully pulpit.
There is moreover the simple fact that in a democracy, being vastly disliked signals illegitimacy. It's hard to justify remaining when departing would be viewed by the majority as a gift. The illegitimacy is also seen abroad and damages the credibility of the nation, just as foreign leaders see these numbers and can fairly presume that the President, speaking for the US in foreign policy matters, speaks only for a lame duck government and not for a nation.
As the Bush presidency unravels and new depths of incompetence and corruption are exposed, the office of the presidency takes some of the brunt of the exposure.
Bush's unpopularity misses the national record by only about the combined margins of error of the two polls. State by state, he retains his positive polarity only in Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah, which if I'm not mistaken, is three more states than those with majorities approving of Dead-Eye Dick.
More importantly, no president has been rated so low for so long. This is no temporary bump that can be fixed by perseverence. The presidency is dead in the water with no momentum, no credibility and no ideas. It's hard to imagine why anyone would stay in the job.
The press corps should be asking Bush 1) can you think yet of any mistake that you've made in office? 2) have you considered resigning for the good of the country? 3) have any of the members of your inside circle brought this option to your attention? 4) why on earth are you still in office when there's so much brush left to clear back at the ranch? 5) Is there anything you plan to do before January 2009 that someone else couldn't do better? 6) By staying, aren't you putting your own selfish interests ahead of the national interest and the wishes of more than 200 million Americans who do not support you?
Oh, just go already.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Venezuela smeared in WaPo
Monte Reel’s May 10 article on the crime issue in Venezuela was enlightening, even if it took some reading between the lines to see just how well the facts support the government’s position, which was unrepresented by any quotes in the article. In fact the entire article was an interesting exercise in propaganda. The facts supporting the current government’s policy were mostly there, albeit buried in dependent clauses and otherwise disjointed over the span of the article.
As the article notes, opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which the article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. The United Nations figures cited in the article, readily available online, are restricted to gun homicides but show only 22.15 deaths per 10,000 capita-annum in 2005. Hence, though we are not told how much the homicide rate has come down, it is possible that Chavez has succeeded in reducing it by as much as half.
The article notes that Chavez has prosecuted police, promised reforms of corrupt police departments (which remain mainly holdovers from the pre-Chavez era), has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has committed his energies to attacking inequality, which is the single factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide (the second greatest factor is democracy, which has also increased, and the third is prominence of young males in the population, something beyond government control). It may also be noted that his government has covered the bases by also increasing sentences for most crimes.
The article quotes an expert, Rafael Muñoz, as saying that “historically,” Venezuela’s leaders have tolerated crime because it generated fear and made people easier to govern. Muñoz does not specifically name Chavez, however, since his presidency has apparently seen the first sustained decrease in violence in many years.
As a close student of the Americas in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I recall reading a 1996 report of how Venezuela’s homicide rate nearly doubled in the first half of the ‘90s – to less than it is now. Combining this information with that presented in the article, it appears that most of the current crime problem came into being well before Chavez was president, and has declined since. Specifically, the article states that the 1990s saw homicide rates that averaged less than half of the 37 per 10,000 capita-annum averaged over recent years. Assuming they came close to half, then for the ‘90s, which began with so little crime, to have reached this average, I estimate that it must have been about 30 in 1999. In other words, it had already reached crisis levels when Chavez came to power. It continued rising at first, but has since leveled off and has fallen to lower levels than seen in many years.
Chavez’s opponents also apparently believe according to the article that he has stimulated class violence against the rich; but the only named source which the article cites relating to this idea is a psychoanalyst for the rich who has noted the collective increased fear of class violence among the élite; the article presents no evidence that the fear are rational, and in fact its discussion of the fear as a treatable psychological problem suggests it isn’t, but then the article separates the accusation from the therapist’s account by several paragraphs, dissociating the irrational claim from the evidence of its irrationalism.
Finally, Chavez’s opponents argue that he needs to do more thoroughly revolutionize policing, taking on the police as an institution root and branch. The complaint is an odd and contradictory one: generally, the opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution have been negativists who favor the status quo ante. On this issue, however, they have suddenly, without any record of past advocacy, begun to demand revolutionary change. Anyone familiar with the problem of entrenched corruption in police departments, as we have in many American cities, knows just how intractable such problems can be. Chavez has shown more inclination and infinitely greater capacity to attempt such a Herculean task than any of his predecessors or opponents. Hence what his opponents demand is now ironically misguided and opportunistic. If they were serious about police reform, the best bet would be to move to strengthen Chavez, not tear him down.
Here's a drastically reduced version of this post to be sent as a letter to the Post:
Monte Reel’s May 10 article on the crime issue in Venezuela was enlightening, even if it took some reading between the lines to see how the facts support Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As the article notes, his opponents have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which your article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. (In fact, the United Nations figures cited in the article reflect only half as many deaths in 2005.) Chavez has prosecuted police – something expert Rafael Muñoz calls historically rare, promised reforms of the corrupt police departments left from the previous era, has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has attacked inequality, (the factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide). As facts in the article ironically demonstrate, Chavez is the leader best poised to execute the revolutionary reforms championed by his (misguided and opportunistic) opposition.
As the article notes, opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which the article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. The United Nations figures cited in the article, readily available online, are restricted to gun homicides but show only 22.15 deaths per 10,000 capita-annum in 2005. Hence, though we are not told how much the homicide rate has come down, it is possible that Chavez has succeeded in reducing it by as much as half.
The article notes that Chavez has prosecuted police, promised reforms of corrupt police departments (which remain mainly holdovers from the pre-Chavez era), has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has committed his energies to attacking inequality, which is the single factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide (the second greatest factor is democracy, which has also increased, and the third is prominence of young males in the population, something beyond government control). It may also be noted that his government has covered the bases by also increasing sentences for most crimes.
The article quotes an expert, Rafael Muñoz, as saying that “historically,” Venezuela’s leaders have tolerated crime because it generated fear and made people easier to govern. Muñoz does not specifically name Chavez, however, since his presidency has apparently seen the first sustained decrease in violence in many years.
As a close student of the Americas in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I recall reading a 1996 report of how Venezuela’s homicide rate nearly doubled in the first half of the ‘90s – to less than it is now. Combining this information with that presented in the article, it appears that most of the current crime problem came into being well before Chavez was president, and has declined since. Specifically, the article states that the 1990s saw homicide rates that averaged less than half of the 37 per 10,000 capita-annum averaged over recent years. Assuming they came close to half, then for the ‘90s, which began with so little crime, to have reached this average, I estimate that it must have been about 30 in 1999. In other words, it had already reached crisis levels when Chavez came to power. It continued rising at first, but has since leveled off and has fallen to lower levels than seen in many years.
Chavez’s opponents also apparently believe according to the article that he has stimulated class violence against the rich; but the only named source which the article cites relating to this idea is a psychoanalyst for the rich who has noted the collective increased fear of class violence among the élite; the article presents no evidence that the fear are rational, and in fact its discussion of the fear as a treatable psychological problem suggests it isn’t, but then the article separates the accusation from the therapist’s account by several paragraphs, dissociating the irrational claim from the evidence of its irrationalism.
Finally, Chavez’s opponents argue that he needs to do more thoroughly revolutionize policing, taking on the police as an institution root and branch. The complaint is an odd and contradictory one: generally, the opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution have been negativists who favor the status quo ante. On this issue, however, they have suddenly, without any record of past advocacy, begun to demand revolutionary change. Anyone familiar with the problem of entrenched corruption in police departments, as we have in many American cities, knows just how intractable such problems can be. Chavez has shown more inclination and infinitely greater capacity to attempt such a Herculean task than any of his predecessors or opponents. Hence what his opponents demand is now ironically misguided and opportunistic. If they were serious about police reform, the best bet would be to move to strengthen Chavez, not tear him down.
Here's a drastically reduced version of this post to be sent as a letter to the Post:
Monte Reel’s May 10 article on the crime issue in Venezuela was enlightening, even if it took some reading between the lines to see how the facts support Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As the article notes, his opponents have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which your article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. (In fact, the United Nations figures cited in the article reflect only half as many deaths in 2005.) Chavez has prosecuted police – something expert Rafael Muñoz calls historically rare, promised reforms of the corrupt police departments left from the previous era, has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has attacked inequality, (the factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide). As facts in the article ironically demonstrate, Chavez is the leader best poised to execute the revolutionary reforms championed by his (misguided and opportunistic) opposition.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Immigration II
So I was in a 70,000+ person protest Monday (Well, May 1 -- this post has been sitting in the hopper). But something really needs to be done to advance the message beyond the one that illegal aliens don't like the Sensenbrenner bill.
The Family Research Council, always a pseudo-Christian front for anti-Christian values, found it necessary to poll its members on the immigration issues, and found that its members hate undocumented Mexican laborers almost as much as they do gays who won't submit to curative electroshock therapy. Now that Christian Right leaders know what to think from the science of polling, they will work hard on fixing the intelligence to support the policy, reading new anti-immigration messages into the book of Romans, and making sure the apostles of questionable parentage have their papers in order. Exception: Immigrant fetuses can only be deported to countries allowing abortion once they have been brought to term and birthed; until then they are refugees making a continual, albeit silent scream for asylum.
What are the arguments we need to advance against stupid anti-immigrant legislation? Here's a start:
1) The burden of proof would be on those seeking change. If what we got ain't broke, don't fix it. If we convince people of this obvious fact, we can sit down, because dummies like Senselessbrenner shoot themselves in the brain every time they open their mouths.
2) Immigration benefits the receiving country in almost every measurable way. It's not us versus them. It's us versus stupid legislation. There are a few problems associated with illegal immigration, but they're small compared to the benefits. Immigrants promote and support the economy as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and innovators. Because they are disproportionately willing and able to work, they especially contribute to keeping social security solvent. They benefit us culturally and through their contribution of diversity. Capitalist economic theory supports the notion that the influx of immigrants is a net good to both the sending and receiving countries. To achieve maximum efficiency, labor must be able to flow freely to meet demand. Immigrants receive more than they would at home, and can send back surplus as remittances. But their contribution of productivity is to the receiving country, and they also generate part of its internal market.
3) Immigrants are people. Penalizing them arbitrarily is just harm for harm's sake. I would not reflexively call it racist, but if it has a rational basis it is the burden of advocates to state what that is. So far, they look pretty damned racist. The argument that they are here illegally and that alone should justify punishment is actually a pretty lame argument. Illegal immigration is a wink-wink crime, like speeding. The fact is, and I've said this before, prosecution of crimes is both discretionary and rare. If all crimes were enforced and punished, there would be no one left to keep the country going, because we'd all be in prison. There's always something. Most criminals don't even know they're criminals. Of course, in the case of immigration, we frequently enounter families, and we always encounter communities, whose members differ in status and would be arbitrarily sundered by enforcement. To the extent one is pro-family and pro-community, this is a particular value of staying the hand of enforcement. Moreover, immigrant status is already disadvantaged in so many ways, it seems bizarre to go out of one's way to attach additional disadvantages.
4) Various sources of hypocrisy. Apart from the real First Nations, we all came here from elsewhere, as settlers and invaders. We took 1/3 of Mexico, and many Mexicans migrated freely before the Mexican War between these lands, and those to the south, so that many immigrants have longer ties to the land than those born here. We have promoted immigration to America by propaganda claiming to offer greater wealth and opportunity and fewer social problems than is true. And we promoted it by NAFTA, which destroyed the Mexican agricultural economy, forcing Mexicans out of their traditional occupations, and homes.
Well, this is just a few points. Someone needs to do the research and come up with a big ten list of points. C'mon somebody, I wanna see it.
The Family Research Council, always a pseudo-Christian front for anti-Christian values, found it necessary to poll its members on the immigration issues, and found that its members hate undocumented Mexican laborers almost as much as they do gays who won't submit to curative electroshock therapy. Now that Christian Right leaders know what to think from the science of polling, they will work hard on fixing the intelligence to support the policy, reading new anti-immigration messages into the book of Romans, and making sure the apostles of questionable parentage have their papers in order. Exception: Immigrant fetuses can only be deported to countries allowing abortion once they have been brought to term and birthed; until then they are refugees making a continual, albeit silent scream for asylum.
What are the arguments we need to advance against stupid anti-immigrant legislation? Here's a start:
1) The burden of proof would be on those seeking change. If what we got ain't broke, don't fix it. If we convince people of this obvious fact, we can sit down, because dummies like Senselessbrenner shoot themselves in the brain every time they open their mouths.
2) Immigration benefits the receiving country in almost every measurable way. It's not us versus them. It's us versus stupid legislation. There are a few problems associated with illegal immigration, but they're small compared to the benefits. Immigrants promote and support the economy as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and innovators. Because they are disproportionately willing and able to work, they especially contribute to keeping social security solvent. They benefit us culturally and through their contribution of diversity. Capitalist economic theory supports the notion that the influx of immigrants is a net good to both the sending and receiving countries. To achieve maximum efficiency, labor must be able to flow freely to meet demand. Immigrants receive more than they would at home, and can send back surplus as remittances. But their contribution of productivity is to the receiving country, and they also generate part of its internal market.
3) Immigrants are people. Penalizing them arbitrarily is just harm for harm's sake. I would not reflexively call it racist, but if it has a rational basis it is the burden of advocates to state what that is. So far, they look pretty damned racist. The argument that they are here illegally and that alone should justify punishment is actually a pretty lame argument. Illegal immigration is a wink-wink crime, like speeding. The fact is, and I've said this before, prosecution of crimes is both discretionary and rare. If all crimes were enforced and punished, there would be no one left to keep the country going, because we'd all be in prison. There's always something. Most criminals don't even know they're criminals. Of course, in the case of immigration, we frequently enounter families, and we always encounter communities, whose members differ in status and would be arbitrarily sundered by enforcement. To the extent one is pro-family and pro-community, this is a particular value of staying the hand of enforcement. Moreover, immigrant status is already disadvantaged in so many ways, it seems bizarre to go out of one's way to attach additional disadvantages.
4) Various sources of hypocrisy. Apart from the real First Nations, we all came here from elsewhere, as settlers and invaders. We took 1/3 of Mexico, and many Mexicans migrated freely before the Mexican War between these lands, and those to the south, so that many immigrants have longer ties to the land than those born here. We have promoted immigration to America by propaganda claiming to offer greater wealth and opportunity and fewer social problems than is true. And we promoted it by NAFTA, which destroyed the Mexican agricultural economy, forcing Mexicans out of their traditional occupations, and homes.
Well, this is just a few points. Someone needs to do the research and come up with a big ten list of points. C'mon somebody, I wanna see it.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Reasons for Peace
About 20 years ago, when I was more involved than I am today with the problems of Central America, I put together a short list of 10 reasons to oppose U.S. intervention there. Recently I tried to reconstruct that effort and come up with a general list of arguments generally against armed conflict. Of course, the weight given to each argument can vary vastly with the particulars of a given situation. There are certainly occasions where armed struggle is a justifiable response to an oppressive regime, and for every unjustified aggressor there is a defender who can find justification in his defensive posture. That said, even the good guys in a war tend to underestimate at the outset the degree to which they are choosing a dark path for others who are innocent or neutral. Here's a revised version of the list, subject to further revision.
Presumption
1. It is war, not opposition to war, that requires justification. In public opinion, political science, anthropology, religion, and law, peace is assumed superior and normal and not requiring of justification, whereas war, by definition entailing organized campaigns of mutual destruction, is always undesirable of itself. (This argument holds most strongly against aggressive war, preemptive or preventive war, or any escalation in hostilities among parties at war; it holds least against the defenders who use force merely to survive or rescue, repel invasion, or liberate themselves from forceful captivity.)
Multiplier Effects
2. The party to a war who decides to initiate or escalate the conflict may anticipate that its action will be met tit for tat if its enemy has the power to do so, and a powerful enemy may respond tenfold or hundredfold. Because the enemy's response is a predictable consequence of the other side's decision, that side bears some degree of responsibility for it. (This is a difficult moral issue -- if a cause is righteous, one should not necessarily be held hostage by the fact that an opponent is prepared to resort to atrocities; nevertheless, what is said here is correct -- the initiator must bear some responsibility for even a disproportionate reaction, if it was foreseeable.)
3. Furthermore, this response may not be merely mutual, but may involve embroiling multiple parties on multiple sides in an expanding conflict.
4. At very least, the eruption of a conflict in one place makes leaders everywhere wary of the prospect of being attacked, leading them to focus on security and defense. (The exception to the rule is when a bully who is already feared gets bogged down fighting a challenger; then the whole world feels they have a period of relative security while the aggressor is preoccupied.)
5. At the end of a successful war the victor may garner a reward. When this happens it teaches the universal lesson that war pays.
6. Because wars are won by the strong, rather than the just, the outcomes tend to favor the strong, but be unjust. While victory by the strong tends to engender some stability, perpetuated injustice also creates a constant pressure to revive the conflict. The issues that led to the war may go unresolved. In many cases, the victor demands unfair reparations and humiliates the defeated, which especially tends toward revival of the conflict. The classic example is World War II.
7. The duration and expense of war is almost always underestimated by the aggressor; in cases where there have been historical exceptions to this, successful aggressors have frequently grown overconfident, been contained and rolled back.
8. A common outcome that extends the effects of war beyond original predictions is extended occupation.
9. The move to war generally elevates the status of the military. Military technology advances rapidly as new weapons are field tested, and needs are identified. Conversely, diplomatic skills and abilities atrophy. War is accompanied more often than we like to acknowledge by unshared sacrifice and profiteering, the ultimate result of which is the relative strengthening of those parts of society most willing to invest in the suffering of others.
Death and Injury
10. War kills. Loss of life is not only a loss to the individual, but to all who are bound to him or her by social connections, family, or affinity of varying degrees of intimacy. To the extent that war kills those of working age, it depletes the social investiment in rearing and training productive members of society. To the extent the victims have special gifts, there is the additional loss of their anticipated future creative production. Losses of life due to war are usually underestimated or undervalued and often deliberately concealed. In recent wars we've seen loss of civilian life on the opposing side minimized, loss of life by opposing forces either exaggerated or ignored, and, most strikingly, loss of friendly forces downplayed or concealed. Lowballing KIA tallies of U.S. forces has been noted in Vietnam, Panama, and the first Gulf War. In situations approaching genocide, birth rates also typically plummet, meaning further loss of potential life.
11. Alongside death run injury and sickness. It has been noted that in recent decades medical advances have sharply upset the ratio of dead to wounded, yielding many more maimed and dismembered survivors. Exposure to foreign climate and pathogens, shortages or contamination of rations, airborne smoke, and toxic munitions such as depleted uranium shells, the side effects of preventive measures, and chemical agents used for defoliation and illmnination have led to post-war syndromes affecting large numbers of veterans. Chemical agents, along with mines and unexploded ordinance, also pose a long-lasting problem for local populations.
12. Mental illness, including PTSS, affects a substantial portion of veterans. There is also the problem of secondary victimization: unlike natural forces of destruction, organized violence takes a psychological and spiritual toll on the aggressor, which alienates him from nonmilitary companions and family. Maladaption of veterans is one reason war is associated with increased rates of divorce and violent crime. The effect on soldiers is increased when they are placed in an environment where war crimes are being committed. The secondary effects there are profound -- many mothers would rather their children die or suffer torture than become torturers themselves.
Economic, environmental, and cultural losses.
13. Property destruction is of course vast. The scale of economic loss is enourmous and seldom appropriately measured. A billion dollar reconstruction contract is treated as an economic plus while infact its necessity is always a greater negative.
14. Environmental destruction, sometimes severe and long term. Oil fires set in the first Gulf War produced pollution and climate changes in China.
15. Loss of artifacts of historical, cultural and artistic significance, not including great artists who are killed. (A small recoupment of this loss comes from the inspirational effect of destruction -- without tragedy and atrocity we would not have Picasso's Guernica.)
16. Other economic costs, including production, maintenance and testing of weapons stockpiles between wars, pay to soldiers, fuel costs, research and development costs, opportunity cost, and the multiplier effect of lost yield on investment. (Although it's common to point to serendipitous discoveries emerging from military R&D, such research generally does not require war; war is seen perversely as a necessary goad to investment for those unwilling to support research for its peaceful benefits.)
17. There has been a long-demonstrated pattern of association between military presence and sexual ills -- harassment and domestic violence, forced prostitution, rape, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. This is not referring to the use of rape as a criminal tool of war, which is another matter of concern, but simply noting that with the male dominance of the military and its culture of fetishized violence, sexual abuses tend to accompany the military, whether it is AIDS in Honduras and the Philippines epicentered on US bases there, or the abuses at Tailhook.
Political degradation.
18. War is often conducted illegally. The U.S. has a long and terrible record of war crimes, and as a general matter of policy uses controversial weapons and standards of engagement. Troops perform "body checks" -- killing the wounded rather than taking them prisoner, classify journalists, broadcast centers, civilians, emergency medical vehicles, and other targets as legitimate, engage in torture and assassination campaigns, and massacres. Its current doctrine of engaging in unprovoked wars of aggression is clearly unlawful. War itself is always unlawful ab initio for one side (though in a domestic insurrection, the original crime may be only municipal). The occupation of Iraq is illegal, the imposition of Iraqi leaders and laws and the sponsorship of Constitutional referenda were all illegal.
19. War is accompanied by, and used to justify, domestic oppression.
20. War is accompanied by propaganda. Its first casualty is truth.
21. War is accompanied by campaigns of dehumanization and organized promotion of hatred of the "enemy."
22. It usually operates on either forced conscription, economic draft, or lies.
23. There is a substantial pattern of nations or groups at war tolerating or encouraging the cultivation of illegal narcotics in order to help fund clandestineor overt operations, or as a quid pro quo for the military support of local druglords.
24. Because anything goes in a state of war, allies are made who are as bad or worse than the enemies.
Unjust ends.
25. Because they are politically so useful, wars may seek to wag the dog, i.e., raise the standing of strongmen, dictators and commanders in chief, at the expense of democratic government.
26. By nature, wars seek to impose one will over another’s sovereignty. What is desired by that will is almost always in the "national interest" (really the interest of the segment of society controlling the state) of the aggressor nation, and not in the interest of the land attacked. Positive purposes are used as pretexts, but the conduct of the war generally undermines these pretexts. The most common goals of US wars are to maintain effective control of foreign resources and to punish independent development that might be emulated by neighboring states.
Presumption
1. It is war, not opposition to war, that requires justification. In public opinion, political science, anthropology, religion, and law, peace is assumed superior and normal and not requiring of justification, whereas war, by definition entailing organized campaigns of mutual destruction, is always undesirable of itself. (This argument holds most strongly against aggressive war, preemptive or preventive war, or any escalation in hostilities among parties at war; it holds least against the defenders who use force merely to survive or rescue, repel invasion, or liberate themselves from forceful captivity.)
Multiplier Effects
2. The party to a war who decides to initiate or escalate the conflict may anticipate that its action will be met tit for tat if its enemy has the power to do so, and a powerful enemy may respond tenfold or hundredfold. Because the enemy's response is a predictable consequence of the other side's decision, that side bears some degree of responsibility for it. (This is a difficult moral issue -- if a cause is righteous, one should not necessarily be held hostage by the fact that an opponent is prepared to resort to atrocities; nevertheless, what is said here is correct -- the initiator must bear some responsibility for even a disproportionate reaction, if it was foreseeable.)
3. Furthermore, this response may not be merely mutual, but may involve embroiling multiple parties on multiple sides in an expanding conflict.
4. At very least, the eruption of a conflict in one place makes leaders everywhere wary of the prospect of being attacked, leading them to focus on security and defense. (The exception to the rule is when a bully who is already feared gets bogged down fighting a challenger; then the whole world feels they have a period of relative security while the aggressor is preoccupied.)
5. At the end of a successful war the victor may garner a reward. When this happens it teaches the universal lesson that war pays.
6. Because wars are won by the strong, rather than the just, the outcomes tend to favor the strong, but be unjust. While victory by the strong tends to engender some stability, perpetuated injustice also creates a constant pressure to revive the conflict. The issues that led to the war may go unresolved. In many cases, the victor demands unfair reparations and humiliates the defeated, which especially tends toward revival of the conflict. The classic example is World War II.
7. The duration and expense of war is almost always underestimated by the aggressor; in cases where there have been historical exceptions to this, successful aggressors have frequently grown overconfident, been contained and rolled back.
8. A common outcome that extends the effects of war beyond original predictions is extended occupation.
9. The move to war generally elevates the status of the military. Military technology advances rapidly as new weapons are field tested, and needs are identified. Conversely, diplomatic skills and abilities atrophy. War is accompanied more often than we like to acknowledge by unshared sacrifice and profiteering, the ultimate result of which is the relative strengthening of those parts of society most willing to invest in the suffering of others.
Death and Injury
10. War kills. Loss of life is not only a loss to the individual, but to all who are bound to him or her by social connections, family, or affinity of varying degrees of intimacy. To the extent that war kills those of working age, it depletes the social investiment in rearing and training productive members of society. To the extent the victims have special gifts, there is the additional loss of their anticipated future creative production. Losses of life due to war are usually underestimated or undervalued and often deliberately concealed. In recent wars we've seen loss of civilian life on the opposing side minimized, loss of life by opposing forces either exaggerated or ignored, and, most strikingly, loss of friendly forces downplayed or concealed. Lowballing KIA tallies of U.S. forces has been noted in Vietnam, Panama, and the first Gulf War. In situations approaching genocide, birth rates also typically plummet, meaning further loss of potential life.
11. Alongside death run injury and sickness. It has been noted that in recent decades medical advances have sharply upset the ratio of dead to wounded, yielding many more maimed and dismembered survivors. Exposure to foreign climate and pathogens, shortages or contamination of rations, airborne smoke, and toxic munitions such as depleted uranium shells, the side effects of preventive measures, and chemical agents used for defoliation and illmnination have led to post-war syndromes affecting large numbers of veterans. Chemical agents, along with mines and unexploded ordinance, also pose a long-lasting problem for local populations.
12. Mental illness, including PTSS, affects a substantial portion of veterans. There is also the problem of secondary victimization: unlike natural forces of destruction, organized violence takes a psychological and spiritual toll on the aggressor, which alienates him from nonmilitary companions and family. Maladaption of veterans is one reason war is associated with increased rates of divorce and violent crime. The effect on soldiers is increased when they are placed in an environment where war crimes are being committed. The secondary effects there are profound -- many mothers would rather their children die or suffer torture than become torturers themselves.
Economic, environmental, and cultural losses.
13. Property destruction is of course vast. The scale of economic loss is enourmous and seldom appropriately measured. A billion dollar reconstruction contract is treated as an economic plus while infact its necessity is always a greater negative.
14. Environmental destruction, sometimes severe and long term. Oil fires set in the first Gulf War produced pollution and climate changes in China.
15. Loss of artifacts of historical, cultural and artistic significance, not including great artists who are killed. (A small recoupment of this loss comes from the inspirational effect of destruction -- without tragedy and atrocity we would not have Picasso's Guernica.)
16. Other economic costs, including production, maintenance and testing of weapons stockpiles between wars, pay to soldiers, fuel costs, research and development costs, opportunity cost, and the multiplier effect of lost yield on investment. (Although it's common to point to serendipitous discoveries emerging from military R&D, such research generally does not require war; war is seen perversely as a necessary goad to investment for those unwilling to support research for its peaceful benefits.)
17. There has been a long-demonstrated pattern of association between military presence and sexual ills -- harassment and domestic violence, forced prostitution, rape, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. This is not referring to the use of rape as a criminal tool of war, which is another matter of concern, but simply noting that with the male dominance of the military and its culture of fetishized violence, sexual abuses tend to accompany the military, whether it is AIDS in Honduras and the Philippines epicentered on US bases there, or the abuses at Tailhook.
Political degradation.
18. War is often conducted illegally. The U.S. has a long and terrible record of war crimes, and as a general matter of policy uses controversial weapons and standards of engagement. Troops perform "body checks" -- killing the wounded rather than taking them prisoner, classify journalists, broadcast centers, civilians, emergency medical vehicles, and other targets as legitimate, engage in torture and assassination campaigns, and massacres. Its current doctrine of engaging in unprovoked wars of aggression is clearly unlawful. War itself is always unlawful ab initio for one side (though in a domestic insurrection, the original crime may be only municipal). The occupation of Iraq is illegal, the imposition of Iraqi leaders and laws and the sponsorship of Constitutional referenda were all illegal.
19. War is accompanied by, and used to justify, domestic oppression.
20. War is accompanied by propaganda. Its first casualty is truth.
21. War is accompanied by campaigns of dehumanization and organized promotion of hatred of the "enemy."
22. It usually operates on either forced conscription, economic draft, or lies.
23. There is a substantial pattern of nations or groups at war tolerating or encouraging the cultivation of illegal narcotics in order to help fund clandestineor overt operations, or as a quid pro quo for the military support of local druglords.
24. Because anything goes in a state of war, allies are made who are as bad or worse than the enemies.
Unjust ends.
25. Because they are politically so useful, wars may seek to wag the dog, i.e., raise the standing of strongmen, dictators and commanders in chief, at the expense of democratic government.
26. By nature, wars seek to impose one will over another’s sovereignty. What is desired by that will is almost always in the "national interest" (really the interest of the segment of society controlling the state) of the aggressor nation, and not in the interest of the land attacked. Positive purposes are used as pretexts, but the conduct of the war generally undermines these pretexts. The most common goals of US wars are to maintain effective control of foreign resources and to punish independent development that might be emulated by neighboring states.
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