There are a bunch of questions. Was Mukasey giving an evasive semantic answer to a substantive question when asked a substantive question whether waterboarding is torture? Is it torture? Does it simulate drowning, or is it drowning?
Mukasey was evasive. He didn't want to say something that would condemn illegal acts on the part of the administration. This was clear from the say-nothing follow up memo. However, the particular response that most people were carping about was correct. Waterboarding, as explaned by Senator Whitehouse, is not per se illegal torture. The description given was not an airtight legal definition. It would include applying what would normally be torture to willing volunteers for training demonstrations, and could possibly include some other applications short of legal torture.
On the other hand, in a vernacular rather than hypertechnical sense, waterboarding, traditionally referred to for hundreds of years as the water torture or the drowning torture, is pretty clearly torture when practiced in the form being discussed. I wish Mukasey had been asked whether the rack, the iron maiden, branding irons, thumbscrews, rape, mock execution, the capucha, flaying, electric shocks, mutilation, or burning were torture. He would have given either legalistic "that depends" answers for those too, which would beg for some elicidation, or not, which would beg the question of why his answer for the drowning torture was different. Either way, you'd put him on the spot.
The definition of waterboarding as a "interrogation technique" is misleading. Traditionally, torture has been practiced not as a means of interrogation specifically, but as a more general form of coersion or punishment. It has been used to force religious recantations or conversions, solicit information, or terrorize a population as a form of collective punishment or deterrence. This was supposedly Dick Cheney's rationale for using torture: not to get information, but to deter people who might not fear death or imprisonment from assisting al Qaeda. Such use of waterboarding is illegal because it fits the definition of terrorism (except in domestic law, wherein actions practiced by the United States against its enemies are excluded from the definition).
NPR said yesterday that to drown was to die of suffocation by water. I could find no source for this. The definitions I found all just said that drowning was suffocation or asphixiation, not necessarily fatal. Waterboarding is drowning.
Is there a law against practices that are not torture but sound like torture? There should be. If one uses dental surgery without anesthetic, or uses a blowtorch, the damage to the image of the U.S. will come from the way that sounds, not whether it meets a technical definition of torture. Keep those things put away. Using them, or waterboarding, in a manner just short of torture, would have may of the negatives of the real thing. And just as little benefit.
Torture is almost always counterproductive and ineffective. It is not without effects, though, and some people want to achieve those effects for their own sake: terror, coersion, and yes, you can get some information. You can pick up tiny clues even from confabulated stories. Is there ever an occasion where torture is the best or only way to get information? I find that highly unlikely. So unlikely, that this is a good place just to draw a hard line and not cross it.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Saturday, November 03, 2007
She is Zuul: hear her roar!
A few days ago, something brought to mind the famous quote from the 1984 blockbuster Ghostbusters:
I couldn't remember it precisely, so I looked it up. Some are more into this than I am. (Try Googling Sloar or Sloarism!)
So this has been rolling around in my brain for a few days, something that you'd suspect would be a complete waste of brain. That may in fact be so. Still, some of the thoughts you get can be interesting.
Some context before I go on, for the non-Sloarists out there. Louis Tully, played by Rick Moranis, is the nebbishy accountant neighbor of Dana Barrett, played by Sigourney Weaver. Louis and Dana have each become possessed by the demonic spirits who pave the way for a malevalent Sumerian deity, Gozer, who is coming to purify humankind with fire. Louis is taken over by Vinz Clortho, the "Keymaster," and Dana by the "Gatekeeper." Their conjugal union will allow Gozer to take material form.
I had never caught it before, but the explanation of the Sloar also reveals something of the language of the spirit world. Possessed by the Gatekeeper, Dana says, "I am Zuul. I am the Gatekeeper." I had thought Zuul was a proper name, like Vinz Clortho, which I still assume is a proper name, or at least a title.
But look at this: "Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar..." At first, it made no sense. Zuul again? Is it a name or a noun? Then I got it. Shub=Man, Zuul=Woman. Dana, translated, says, "I am Woman. I am the Gatekeeper."
It's kinda cool. Like triangulating on the meaning of "gulliver" (supposing you are unfamiliar with the Russian "golova") in A Clockwork Orange as recommended in the author's afterword (one is kicked in the gulliver; when a beer is later observed to have a gulliver on it, it becomes clear that gulliver means "head").
Maybe it's still a waste of brain. But it was cool to figure out something, even if it was something useless.
Gozer the Traveller will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldronaii the Traveller came as a very large and moving Torb. Then of course in the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him, that of a Sloar. Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar that day I can tell you.
I couldn't remember it precisely, so I looked it up. Some are more into this than I am. (Try Googling Sloar or Sloarism!)
So this has been rolling around in my brain for a few days, something that you'd suspect would be a complete waste of brain. That may in fact be so. Still, some of the thoughts you get can be interesting.
Some context before I go on, for the non-Sloarists out there. Louis Tully, played by Rick Moranis, is the nebbishy accountant neighbor of Dana Barrett, played by Sigourney Weaver. Louis and Dana have each become possessed by the demonic spirits who pave the way for a malevalent Sumerian deity, Gozer, who is coming to purify humankind with fire. Louis is taken over by Vinz Clortho, the "Keymaster," and Dana by the "Gatekeeper." Their conjugal union will allow Gozer to take material form.
I had never caught it before, but the explanation of the Sloar also reveals something of the language of the spirit world. Possessed by the Gatekeeper, Dana says, "I am Zuul. I am the Gatekeeper." I had thought Zuul was a proper name, like Vinz Clortho, which I still assume is a proper name, or at least a title.
But look at this: "Many Shubs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Sloar..." At first, it made no sense. Zuul again? Is it a name or a noun? Then I got it. Shub=Man, Zuul=Woman. Dana, translated, says, "I am Woman. I am the Gatekeeper."
It's kinda cool. Like triangulating on the meaning of "gulliver" (supposing you are unfamiliar with the Russian "golova") in A Clockwork Orange as recommended in the author's afterword (one is kicked in the gulliver; when a beer is later observed to have a gulliver on it, it becomes clear that gulliver means "head").
Maybe it's still a waste of brain. But it was cool to figure out something, even if it was something useless.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
SWMNBN
There are lots of good reasons to despise A--C------. She is either a fascist or ostentatiously pseudofascist in presentation, a felon, and poisonous to the discourse. But the flap about her longing for a world without Jews does not strike me as especially antisemitic. It strikes me as rather logical and ordinary that for adherants of one religion, adherance to another, incompatible religion is at very least misguided. For Christianity and Islam in their robust versions, nonadherants are destined for Hell. Hoping for the conversion of infidels is compassionate, from that point of view.
btw: Judaism doesn't fall in this category but it does something similar (again, at least in versions) in an unusual way: it has moral rules that apply to Gentiles, and sometimes only to Gentiles. Not only must they follow the Noahide Laws, and without the exceptions that Jews might sometimes be compelled to make to honor other commandments, but at least some Rabbis also assert that Gentiles are commanded not to follow the rules intended exclusively for Jews. Hence: have some BBQ Pork! This strikes me as unique and weird, and has a bit of that Christo-Islamic arrogance telling others what to do, but still tolerant, as is widely recognized: at least there is an admission that you can have your covenant and I can have mine, and there is no need for me to convert you.
btw: Judaism doesn't fall in this category but it does something similar (again, at least in versions) in an unusual way: it has moral rules that apply to Gentiles, and sometimes only to Gentiles. Not only must they follow the Noahide Laws, and without the exceptions that Jews might sometimes be compelled to make to honor other commandments, but at least some Rabbis also assert that Gentiles are commanded not to follow the rules intended exclusively for Jews. Hence: have some BBQ Pork! This strikes me as unique and weird, and has a bit of that Christo-Islamic arrogance telling others what to do, but still tolerant, as is widely recognized: at least there is an admission that you can have your covenant and I can have mine, and there is no need for me to convert you.
Pissing Everyone Off
Fete the Dalai Lama and piss off China as you need their support on Burma and Korea. Go to Russia to lecture Putin as you need Russian support on Iran. Issue a resolution to piss off Turkey over the Armenian genocide, as they prepare to invade Iraq. Only 15 months left to alienate everyone else. Well, you always have Eastern Europe and Sarkozy.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Foreclosures
I read this the other day, which I will quote in substantial part below. This gal, Jennifer Fink, whom the local paper engaged as a "community columnist" inspires me to say not-nice things about her, by arguing that in the present foreclosure crisis, "The fault lies with overextended homeowners." That's her title. In explaining her view, it she reveals herself to have been as thoughtless, clueless, and brainless in developing that view, as she appears heartless from her titlular conclusion. I think it's worth comment because I expect this view is not far below the surface of the vast majority of conservatives and others who are not moving to respond to this mess.
I'll skip over her solipsistic little intro in which she explains her own sacrifices to live within her means. What she is setting up very obviously is: I was smart and even noble to suspend my gratification and avoid this fate; hence anyone else who has to suffer it must have fallen into the temptation I avoided because they are simply not be as smart or noble as me, so screw them. I hate this argument. It's a suitable kind of argument for adults to use on children so long as they have all the facts. But to treat another adult with such disrespect based on casual assumptions, that's just lousy.
She lays out the problem starting in the fourth graf:
Okay, so that's the issue: a "rash" and expected "tidal wave" (neither assessment controverted) of people losing their homes, evicted, and sent looking for substitute housing. There are numerous aspects to this she does not mention: some are losing long-term, even multigenerational homes; many will be unable to shift to a new site without substantial loss of personal property stored in their homes; many are innocent children; many are old and infirm; also innocent will be the neighbors, who see their neighborhoods fill with foreclosed board-ups and see their own home values and quality of life crash. So it's not just, I have to relocate to the smaller home I should have had all along. It's more like a hurricane hitting the inner city. Oh yeah, she does not mention that the people she is calling worthless and stupid are largely black.
Continuing:
So we get fact number 2: Predatory lenders peddle sophisticated financial products that involve escalating mortgage payments. The mortgages go up because the interest rates adjust. The new products include things like the "Option ARM" an adjustable mortgage that doesn't just kill its host parasitic and usurious rates that blow up bigger and bigger as they consume their victim. This evolutionary offshoot hooks its victim with the lure of low optional payments that do not even cover the monthly interest, so the amount of the loan increases every cycle. Then, when a pre-set limit is attained, the monthly payment suddenly and violently expands. Of course one of the reasons black folks are so readly preyed upon by this invasive species is that the predatory lenders are now engaged in reverse redlining. Instead of denying financing to low income minority neighborhoods for fear that the loan will be too risky, they fish particularly in these waters, recognizing the potential to reap windfalls from foreclosures.
Then we get:
So, it's the buyers who did this to themselves in the buying. Except that's not where most of this comes from at all. Many homes are acquired in probate court or in a divorce proceeding, or are financed reasonably when first sold, but get into problems after a refinancing. The refis are often designed to withdraw some of the equity because of an unforeseen crisis, maybe that aforementioned death or divorce, which led to a diminished household income. This may be abetted by an ex-spouse's failure to pay child support or required maintenance, or by legal or medical bills. The largest number of people who lose their homes have some medical issue at least contributing to the loss. But of course, Ms. Fink's stern analysis is drawn from the same ideological greasetrap as George Bush's statement that sick and dying children can always report to an emergency room, so no one really lacks for health care.
How many people "check and recheck the numbers"? How many people know how? Ms. Fink posits an unrealistic ideal world in which capitalism always works, in part because the consumers are always perfectly informed and the cost of becoming so informed is zero. It is absurd to imagine that the best system would actually be one in which the consumer, who engages in these transactions rarely, would have absolute responsibility for his or her choices and should be required to read and understand what are often dozens or scores of pages of legalese, recognize their consequences, and master the market well enough to know when a better deal will be available, as opposed to being entitled to rely on the representations of the other party, who is a sophisticated, repeat player, without discovering later that he or she was misled. The freedom to make necessary decisions without weeks or months of research is simply more important than the freedom of either winner or loser to make grossly unfair deals.
In fact, the law is not buyer beware, but that contracts may be set aside when the consumer is tricked or pressured. Lawyers who deal in this area frequently encounter the octagenarian widow who was tricked into signing onto an unconscionable refinancing arrangement. Her fault, we are to suppose, that she had no back up plan.
But even average consumers make costly mistakes. They don't sell insurance against the inevitable bouts of fleeting stupidity that most of us suffer. But it would be nice if people were protected against making mistakes that were too stupid. In most areas of life we do this and it's for the better. The friends and relatives of stupid people, and those of smart people who experiment with occasional stupidity, are usually thankful that some rules, social or legal, stand in the way of letting their friends injure themselves too badly. It's the friends and loved ones who have to worry, and who are going to be called on to bail out the unfortunate one whose foolishess leads to a loss.
(And in an ARM, what is it that you are supposed to check? Nothing more than the fact that it is an ARM. You sign up at 7% and the increases begin and soon you are at twice that. Rates that were once illegal. There are no numbers to check in the original deal. It is a provision that is bad.)
Then we get to the part where Fink finally says, I'm better than you; you deserve to lose:
Now in this last turn, the errors of Ms. Fink are finally exposed as being a full-blowin psychotic break. Apparently, she thinks the inner city where the foreclosure crisis is destroying already fragile neighborhoods is populated by people who each made the mistake of building his or her "dream home" in "a new subdivision." I guess then they just woke up a while later and discovered that their "four-car garages" were suddenly in the zip code of Milwaukee with the highest crime rate, surrounded by run-down $50,000 houses.
This isn't about subdivisions or newly built homes. The only new houses in my area were built by Habit for Humanity and they are not too much more than a roof. None have garages. The fact that people who have the money are building larger homes does not say anything about the people near me. All it means is that the as smaller homes in my area get boarded up or burn down, the housing supply shifts in favor of larger homes. The disparity in wealth is increasing, and it is the rich more than the poor who build homes. This trend presses buyers to find something larger than they need because that is what is available. (The alternative, sharing, is just not palatable to or really feasible for a lot of people.)
They are, true, taught to expect better for themselves. They look at their neighbors. They are told incessantly be optimistic. They do not often hear the truth about how limited their expectations should be. And once in a deal they are stuck there.
But it is not so much that those expectations are unrealistic as that prices are. One may think of a person only able to afford a $50,000 home who foolishly buys an $85,000 home. Another way to view this is a person who can afford a $50,000 home, finds what is really a home worth $50,000, but is told that it now costs $85,000 due to a runaway market. Not to worry though, financing is also easier. By the time the person faces foreclosure, they have already strained and sacrificed to pay excessive interest. They are being milked dry. So they have given enough, and the predatory lenders have gained enough. Why is housing overpriced to begin with? Because of speculation, and the fact that lower income people are economically unsophisticated as a class means that it is not economically advantageous for those who could develop the stock of low income housing to actually do so. They can usually be sold something worse and drained the limit of what they will bear anyway.
Anything else I have not covered?
I'll skip over her solipsistic little intro in which she explains her own sacrifices to live within her means. What she is setting up very obviously is: I was smart and even noble to suspend my gratification and avoid this fate; hence anyone else who has to suffer it must have fallen into the temptation I avoided because they are simply not be as smart or noble as me, so screw them. I hate this argument. It's a suitable kind of argument for adults to use on children so long as they have all the facts. But to treat another adult with such disrespect based on casual assumptions, that's just lousy.
She lays out the problem starting in the fourth graf:
Metro Milwaukee, like many parts of the country, is experiencing a rash of home
foreclosures. More than 4,000 area homes already have entered foreclosure, and
more are sure to follow. Experts predict that this month will see a tidal wave
of foreclosures...
Okay, so that's the issue: a "rash" and expected "tidal wave" (neither assessment controverted) of people losing their homes, evicted, and sent looking for substitute housing. There are numerous aspects to this she does not mention: some are losing long-term, even multigenerational homes; many will be unable to shift to a new site without substantial loss of personal property stored in their homes; many are innocent children; many are old and infirm; also innocent will be the neighbors, who see their neighborhoods fill with foreclosed board-ups and see their own home values and quality of life crash. So it's not just, I have to relocate to the smaller home I should have had all along. It's more like a hurricane hitting the inner city. Oh yeah, she does not mention that the people she is calling worthless and stupid are largely black.
Continuing:
...as $50 billion worth of adjustable rate mortgages will reset at a new, higher rates.
President Bush waded into the fray in late August with a series of proposals designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Among them is an initiative called FHASecure, which will, according to a government Web site, "help people who have good credit but who have not made all of their payments on time because of rising mortgage payments." Bush also vows to strengthen mortgage lending standards because some borrowers were placed in "sophisticated products they could not afford."
True as that may be, the problem, in my opinion, doesn't lie with predatory lenders.
So we get fact number 2: Predatory lenders peddle sophisticated financial products that involve escalating mortgage payments. The mortgages go up because the interest rates adjust. The new products include things like the "Option ARM" an adjustable mortgage that doesn't just kill its host parasitic and usurious rates that blow up bigger and bigger as they consume their victim. This evolutionary offshoot hooks its victim with the lure of low optional payments that do not even cover the monthly interest, so the amount of the loan increases every cycle. Then, when a pre-set limit is attained, the monthly payment suddenly and violently expands. Of course one of the reasons black folks are so readly preyed upon by this invasive species is that the predatory lenders are now engaged in reverse redlining. Instead of denying financing to low income minority neighborhoods for fear that the loan will be too risky, they fish particularly in these waters, recognizing the potential to reap windfalls from foreclosures.
Then we get:
...The problem rests squarely on the shoulders of homeowners who bought homes
beyond their means. It's your job, not the bank's, to make sure you can afford
the house you buy. To check and recheck the numbers. To have a backup plan, just
in case.
So, it's the buyers who did this to themselves in the buying. Except that's not where most of this comes from at all. Many homes are acquired in probate court or in a divorce proceeding, or are financed reasonably when first sold, but get into problems after a refinancing. The refis are often designed to withdraw some of the equity because of an unforeseen crisis, maybe that aforementioned death or divorce, which led to a diminished household income. This may be abetted by an ex-spouse's failure to pay child support or required maintenance, or by legal or medical bills. The largest number of people who lose their homes have some medical issue at least contributing to the loss. But of course, Ms. Fink's stern analysis is drawn from the same ideological greasetrap as George Bush's statement that sick and dying children can always report to an emergency room, so no one really lacks for health care.
How many people "check and recheck the numbers"? How many people know how? Ms. Fink posits an unrealistic ideal world in which capitalism always works, in part because the consumers are always perfectly informed and the cost of becoming so informed is zero. It is absurd to imagine that the best system would actually be one in which the consumer, who engages in these transactions rarely, would have absolute responsibility for his or her choices and should be required to read and understand what are often dozens or scores of pages of legalese, recognize their consequences, and master the market well enough to know when a better deal will be available, as opposed to being entitled to rely on the representations of the other party, who is a sophisticated, repeat player, without discovering later that he or she was misled. The freedom to make necessary decisions without weeks or months of research is simply more important than the freedom of either winner or loser to make grossly unfair deals.
In fact, the law is not buyer beware, but that contracts may be set aside when the consumer is tricked or pressured. Lawyers who deal in this area frequently encounter the octagenarian widow who was tricked into signing onto an unconscionable refinancing arrangement. Her fault, we are to suppose, that she had no back up plan.
But even average consumers make costly mistakes. They don't sell insurance against the inevitable bouts of fleeting stupidity that most of us suffer. But it would be nice if people were protected against making mistakes that were too stupid. In most areas of life we do this and it's for the better. The friends and relatives of stupid people, and those of smart people who experiment with occasional stupidity, are usually thankful that some rules, social or legal, stand in the way of letting their friends injure themselves too badly. It's the friends and loved ones who have to worry, and who are going to be called on to bail out the unfortunate one whose foolishess leads to a loss.
(And in an ARM, what is it that you are supposed to check? Nothing more than the fact that it is an ARM. You sign up at 7% and the increases begin and soon you are at twice that. Rates that were once illegal. There are no numbers to check in the original deal. It is a provision that is bad.)
Then we get to the part where Fink finally says, I'm better than you; you deserve to lose:
...Economic reality isn't always easy to swallow. By all rights, we should be able to buy a nice home in a new subdivision. ...But while we're content to remain in the home we can afford, many people are not. They see nice homes and think they should have one, too. More often than not, home-buyers stretch to reach some unobtainable version of the American dream.
As a nation, our expectations have changed tremendously over the years. We used to need a roof over our heads; now, we need a roof, a media room, a master suite and a three-or four-car garage. The average new home is now 2,459 square feet, up from 1,695 square feet in 1974. Families, meanwhile, have gotten smaller.
Stretch if you want to for your dream home. Just don't come crying to me when the mortgage
turns out to be more than you can afford...
Now in this last turn, the errors of Ms. Fink are finally exposed as being a full-blowin psychotic break. Apparently, she thinks the inner city where the foreclosure crisis is destroying already fragile neighborhoods is populated by people who each made the mistake of building his or her "dream home" in "a new subdivision." I guess then they just woke up a while later and discovered that their "four-car garages" were suddenly in the zip code of Milwaukee with the highest crime rate, surrounded by run-down $50,000 houses.
This isn't about subdivisions or newly built homes. The only new houses in my area were built by Habit for Humanity and they are not too much more than a roof. None have garages. The fact that people who have the money are building larger homes does not say anything about the people near me. All it means is that the as smaller homes in my area get boarded up or burn down, the housing supply shifts in favor of larger homes. The disparity in wealth is increasing, and it is the rich more than the poor who build homes. This trend presses buyers to find something larger than they need because that is what is available. (The alternative, sharing, is just not palatable to or really feasible for a lot of people.)
They are, true, taught to expect better for themselves. They look at their neighbors. They are told incessantly be optimistic. They do not often hear the truth about how limited their expectations should be. And once in a deal they are stuck there.
But it is not so much that those expectations are unrealistic as that prices are. One may think of a person only able to afford a $50,000 home who foolishly buys an $85,000 home. Another way to view this is a person who can afford a $50,000 home, finds what is really a home worth $50,000, but is told that it now costs $85,000 due to a runaway market. Not to worry though, financing is also easier. By the time the person faces foreclosure, they have already strained and sacrificed to pay excessive interest. They are being milked dry. So they have given enough, and the predatory lenders have gained enough. Why is housing overpriced to begin with? Because of speculation, and the fact that lower income people are economically unsophisticated as a class means that it is not economically advantageous for those who could develop the stock of low income housing to actually do so. They can usually be sold something worse and drained the limit of what they will bear anyway.
Anything else I have not covered?
Am I a suspected insurgent? (Only if I get blowed up good.)
I'm just noticing that when people get blown up in Iraq, especially by occupying troops and their air support, they always fall into two categories: "civilians", whose numbers are always comprised of "women" and "children", and "suspected insurgents", comprised of... well, I'm guessing any male older than twelve. Since I am a male over 12, then it follows that if I were killed in Iraq by U.S. forces I would thereby be drafted a member of the non-civilian category.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
USA Today on Jena 6
Here. A pretty good summary. Not complete, and falls short of calling for an investigation. But good to see some prominent attention and a much better resume of the facts than Walters was willing to give in the NYT.
And by the way, look at the comments. Yup. People are idiots. Duncan Hunter fersure.
And by the way, look at the comments. Yup. People are idiots. Duncan Hunter fersure.
Evidence that as a nation we deserve a Duncan Hunter presidency
The Chicago Sun Times has Barack Obama on his cover, with an interior article and an editorial on, drumroll, please...
His not wearing a flag pin on his lapel.
Also in today's issue:
Giuliani blasts Clinton for wavering in her support for the Yankees.
If it's true that in a democracy, you get the rulers you deserve (evidence the U.S. failure to adopt the metric system), then these are signs of a coming apocalypse: the incipient presidency of Duncan Hunter (or perhaps Tom Tancredo, certainly among the worstest candidates on offer this cycle.)
His not wearing a flag pin on his lapel.
Also in today's issue:
Giuliani blasts Clinton for wavering in her support for the Yankees.
If it's true that in a democracy, you get the rulers you deserve (evidence the U.S. failure to adopt the metric system), then these are signs of a coming apocalypse: the incipient presidency of Duncan Hunter (or perhaps Tom Tancredo, certainly among the worstest candidates on offer this cycle.)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Iranian President in NYNY.
I'm feeling lazy so I won't even look up how to spell the man's name. Let's just call him A.
Some very quick notes:
Some very quick notes:
1) Have you noticed how just about every other part of the world, from the American South to the Levant to Latin America or the Far East prides themselves on their virtue of hospitality? That is a nice virtue. We were embarassingly bad hosts.
2) Some editorials, as with the local daily here, actually thought this was America's finest hour, because Mr. A was actually able to speak. Let's get over ourselves. We don't have a monopoly over free speech. The fact that we grudgingly offer a hostile forum is not so exemplary.
3) Most of the people calling Mr. A and idiot are themselves idiots. Joe Lieberman said he "literally" had blood on his hands. So, let the man use a washroom, and your problem is solved.
4) Remember when Chavez spoke at the UN last year and insulted Bush? The Democrats rushed to condemn him as a bad guest, and all you heard all over was how Bush may be a bad president, but an insult against him by a foreigner was nevertheless a disrespectful gesture to the whole nation (despite questionable elections). So guess how Iranians will see this?
5) Mr. A loves the press. The only thing that gets more press than efforts to censor are ineffective efforts to censor.
6) Mr. A is not the supreme leader and does not set the policies, so most of the attacks on him that presume otherwise are deeply flawed and, when coming from people who should know better, mostly fraudulent.
7) One cartoon I saw had Mr. A dressed as a Nazi but with sharp jutting teeth, as though to say, Hitler was at least a civilized European gentelman who happened to be evil, while you, Mr. A are a mere animal of the feral third world and not worthy of that comparison.
8) Hitler comparisons were also all over the place. Why? Because we blame Hitler too much for anti-Semitism, and not enough for aggressive war and genocide. That is why it is so wrong to compare Bush to Hitler -- he may have killed his first million now in Iraq, but he likes Jews, so it's okay.
9) Mr. A makes lots of sense in some of his arguments. He's also effed up on other stuff, which makes him bad company and an embarassment for those who would otherwise like to support him, or at least his rights and the good things he says. Nevertheless, outside of the US, these points are often uncontroversial, and even within the US outside of its dominant political class, these arguments would carry some resonance if they reached people. Instead, from the papers you'd think Mr. A's entire speech was about the absence of gays in Iran.
10) Since when have visitors to Ground Zero been vetted for their perceived moral character, and why? If we let Karamov go lay a wreath, we should let almost anyone do so. And what about Giuliani's license to appropriate 9/11 as an omnipresent political backdrop? Can we revoke that? I think secular, public memorials should be treated as neutral ground and not politicized -- anyone who is willing to display the proper decorum should be free to go.
11) Iran's place in the Axis of evil has been promoted by most of the Democrats, who show their distaste for the cruelty of war by constantly lamenting that war prevents America from redirecting its resources to more important and humane matters, like some other war. Iran is currently the most popular other war.
That's all for now.Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Jena Prosecutor Walters in the NYT
Reed Walters, the prosecutor of the Jena Six, had an op-ed today in the NYT. Short version: Don't blame me.
Actually, the guy sounds mostly reasonable on the surface, at least if, like most people, you still don't know the facts of the case. He made his job easy by using a layperson speaking out on a legal issue as the representative of all the arguments against him. At least, the easy ones he wanted to respond to. Someone says, why prosecute these kids for assault, and not prosecute the ones who hung the nooses which set off all this racial fighting in the first place? Reed answers, I tried to be fair, but terrorizing and provoking blacks by hanging nooses where they're not wanted is perfectly legal. I had to prosecute the assault because it's my job.
The National Lawyers Guild statement lays out more of the case. Reed leaves out that he has already had to scale back his prosecution because the law would not sustain his original overreaching, charging attempted murder for a series of blows that resulted in no serious injury persisting for more than a few hours. Compounded by the decision he scarcely justifies of charging one of the youths as an adult. He also does not mention his history of similar bias, or his apparent conflict of interest in the matter.
I also disagree with Walters' description of his job (to lay the facts against the statutes and seek justice for victims, he says). The prosecutor's role is to vindicate societal justice by employing the criminal law, not just for victims but for everyone in the jurisdiction.
I find some aspects of his account vague: what was the criminal record of Mr. Bell that he refers to?
I get sick of officials admitting that they made a mistake, but only a PR mistake. The truth is, he did make a PR mistake, and most of the time, a PR mistake is a symptom of a bigger problem.
And he hides behind an African American federal prosecutor to imply that what he did was no different, which is horrendously misleading because most crimes, unless they happen on Indian reservations, cross state lines, or involve the government, are state crimes.
All of this appears dishonest to me. That's five things that look fishy without even starting on his facts. I don;t know the facts, but a good rule of thumb is, when you can catch 'em on what you know, expect them to be twice as dirty with what you don't.
But it's not all his fault. The judge, and lax DOJ Civil Rights apparatus that permitted all this comes in for some blame, as does the community, and the Louisiana Legislature -- can the noose display really not be a crime? Surpringly, that seems very plausible to me, because from what I can see, the criminal code there is a mess. To larger extent than in any of the midwestern states whose criminal laws I've studied, it's a big stack of specific offenses that are semi-random in what they cover.
Actually, the guy sounds mostly reasonable on the surface, at least if, like most people, you still don't know the facts of the case. He made his job easy by using a layperson speaking out on a legal issue as the representative of all the arguments against him. At least, the easy ones he wanted to respond to. Someone says, why prosecute these kids for assault, and not prosecute the ones who hung the nooses which set off all this racial fighting in the first place? Reed answers, I tried to be fair, but terrorizing and provoking blacks by hanging nooses where they're not wanted is perfectly legal. I had to prosecute the assault because it's my job.
The National Lawyers Guild statement lays out more of the case. Reed leaves out that he has already had to scale back his prosecution because the law would not sustain his original overreaching, charging attempted murder for a series of blows that resulted in no serious injury persisting for more than a few hours. Compounded by the decision he scarcely justifies of charging one of the youths as an adult. He also does not mention his history of similar bias, or his apparent conflict of interest in the matter.
I also disagree with Walters' description of his job (to lay the facts against the statutes and seek justice for victims, he says). The prosecutor's role is to vindicate societal justice by employing the criminal law, not just for victims but for everyone in the jurisdiction.
I find some aspects of his account vague: what was the criminal record of Mr. Bell that he refers to?
I get sick of officials admitting that they made a mistake, but only a PR mistake. The truth is, he did make a PR mistake, and most of the time, a PR mistake is a symptom of a bigger problem.
And he hides behind an African American federal prosecutor to imply that what he did was no different, which is horrendously misleading because most crimes, unless they happen on Indian reservations, cross state lines, or involve the government, are state crimes.
All of this appears dishonest to me. That's five things that look fishy without even starting on his facts. I don;t know the facts, but a good rule of thumb is, when you can catch 'em on what you know, expect them to be twice as dirty with what you don't.
But it's not all his fault. The judge, and lax DOJ Civil Rights apparatus that permitted all this comes in for some blame, as does the community, and the Louisiana Legislature -- can the noose display really not be a crime? Surpringly, that seems very plausible to me, because from what I can see, the criminal code there is a mess. To larger extent than in any of the midwestern states whose criminal laws I've studied, it's a big stack of specific offenses that are semi-random in what they cover.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
This just in...
The Senate has just voted against a bill which would have ordered the Pentagon to assure that all U.S. servicemen and servicewomen performing in Iraq have adequate water to function. The bill would have required the armed forces in theater to maintain stores of water, or make plans to obtain water, sufficient to keep all troops there hydrated except when doing so would interfere with the military mission. The defeat of the bill was seen as the latest victory for those in favor of supporting the troops. "The signal this sends to the troops is one of no confidence in their ability to overcome thirst. The best way to bring the troops home faster is to let them win by letting the generals on the ground follow their own best judgment."
Opponents also said the bill was unconstitiutional. The Bush Administration has said that it does not believe the Congress has authority to pass legislation concerning the military, and that it considers the entire Title 50 of the United States Code, dealing with military matters, to be void.
Opponents also said the bill was unconstitiutional. The Bush Administration has said that it does not believe the Congress has authority to pass legislation concerning the military, and that it considers the entire Title 50 of the United States Code, dealing with military matters, to be void.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Definition: A Gathering of Eagles
Noun. (1) A support group for the endangered species which continues to back the failed occupation of Iraq; (2) A coming together of members of this group, typically numbering in the single digits, but ranging into hundreds for exceptional occations: A Gathering of Eagles counterprotested the anti-war march.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Completely Heterosexual
It finally makes sense to me; no, wait, I'm still confused.
Larry Craig, like Ted Haggard, is completely heterosexual, although it has not yet inspired a Roy Zimmerman song. For several days, Leno has been pumping a video clip from MSNBC with anthropologist William Leap (identified as a Northwestern) professor, but I find him identified online at American U). Leap states that the Craig bathroom incident does not involve gay sex, just sex between men who are seeking sex with other men, which generates an apparent amount of skeptical laughter from the crowds in Burbank. Dan Savage helps with a CNN appearance, also referred to in his column. Some insight also comes from a seminal 1970 work, recounted, among other places, in this article. (So today, I'm actually giving some links!) Short upshot: guys who seek out sex in mensrooms are nearly all "straight-identified," rejecting the gay label and gay culture, and are disproportionately conservative, Republican men. This goes along with the well established phenomenon that among those who identify as straight, homophobia and homoerotic arousal are strongly correllated. Some experts, apparently including Leap, think Craig is not dishonest in denying he is gay, that the term is not properly applied to the deeply closeted, that it makes more sense in some ways to separate what closeted men do from what we label as gay, and that Craig may be completely sincere, although deluded, in describing himself to others as straight. At some level, he sees himself that way, never having heeded columnists like Savage, who have written a million times that, hey, guess what, if you like sex with other men or other women, that is rest-assured, straight-up, end-of-argument gay.
Should police patrol mensrooms? There're various problems justifying the patrols -- the concerns are overblown and exaggerated by prejudice; policing legitimizes the apprehension, which is counterproductive; the interest in preventing exposure to facts of life that are not inherently harmful is somewhat dubious in an open society, even where those exposed would be children; the actions employed, while not entrapment, tend in that direction; the menace at maximum is small, while most metropolitan police departments have more serious issues to worry about. None of these, save the last, is a knockout.
Is Craig a hypocrite? Not as obviously as most assume, but yes, for the reason Savage notes: he probably would have voted for tough penalties against the very thing he was caught doing. But there is no contradiction between his vile opposition to healthy gay identification and activity, on the one hand, and his inulgence in unhealthy closeted behavior on the other.
Should Craig be investigated if he does not voluntarily resign? Yes. Merely being a pervert or a hypocrite, or using his position for political self-interest are all normal. But: He insists his guilty plea, made under oath, was a perjurious lie. The police account shows an apparent attempt to use his official position to avoid the consequences of the crime. His status as a closeted man active in same-sex hookups raises a concern that he would be exposed to blackmail. Any of these could be a legitimate ground for further examination. Less seriously, he may enjoy a good roasting. Recalling his Meet the Press appearance in 1999, one can almost imagine him saying, "Yes, by all means, investigate me, censure me; I've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. I need to be disciplined."
What is the larger lesson? The conservative majority in the redstate world is not as crazy as it may seem. If you lived in that world you would see the natural appeal of conservative positions. Gay people in blue America go about leading ordinary lives, albeit coping with prejudice. In red America they are more likely to sneak off from the closet to the toilet for anonymous sex. It may seem offensive for Santorum or Scalia to liken gay sex to bestiality, but in red states, there're a lot of farms, and boys do what they will do. It's not just gays, but the risk of animal sex is a lot more present if discipline were to fail. You can see why they may be more preoccupied over there. They also have more crime, more teen pregnancies, more abortions, they draw more of their economy from the public sector, and in general suffer more of the problems that their policies claim to fix. The Republican party and allied institutions are just about the only loci in the nation where unqualified minorities are routinely given positions over better-qualified whites. Look at Clarence Thomas, or a more spectacular laughingstock, Alan Keyes. The redstate right is focused on real problems, they just have not attributed their sorry state to the spectacular failure of these policies, or noticed that these problems are less severe in the civilized world outside their own.
Larry Craig, like Ted Haggard, is completely heterosexual, although it has not yet inspired a Roy Zimmerman song. For several days, Leno has been pumping a video clip from MSNBC with anthropologist William Leap (identified as a Northwestern) professor, but I find him identified online at American U). Leap states that the Craig bathroom incident does not involve gay sex, just sex between men who are seeking sex with other men, which generates an apparent amount of skeptical laughter from the crowds in Burbank. Dan Savage helps with a CNN appearance, also referred to in his column. Some insight also comes from a seminal 1970 work, recounted, among other places, in this article. (So today, I'm actually giving some links!) Short upshot: guys who seek out sex in mensrooms are nearly all "straight-identified," rejecting the gay label and gay culture, and are disproportionately conservative, Republican men. This goes along with the well established phenomenon that among those who identify as straight, homophobia and homoerotic arousal are strongly correllated. Some experts, apparently including Leap, think Craig is not dishonest in denying he is gay, that the term is not properly applied to the deeply closeted, that it makes more sense in some ways to separate what closeted men do from what we label as gay, and that Craig may be completely sincere, although deluded, in describing himself to others as straight. At some level, he sees himself that way, never having heeded columnists like Savage, who have written a million times that, hey, guess what, if you like sex with other men or other women, that is rest-assured, straight-up, end-of-argument gay.
Should police patrol mensrooms? There're various problems justifying the patrols -- the concerns are overblown and exaggerated by prejudice; policing legitimizes the apprehension, which is counterproductive; the interest in preventing exposure to facts of life that are not inherently harmful is somewhat dubious in an open society, even where those exposed would be children; the actions employed, while not entrapment, tend in that direction; the menace at maximum is small, while most metropolitan police departments have more serious issues to worry about. None of these, save the last, is a knockout.
Is Craig a hypocrite? Not as obviously as most assume, but yes, for the reason Savage notes: he probably would have voted for tough penalties against the very thing he was caught doing. But there is no contradiction between his vile opposition to healthy gay identification and activity, on the one hand, and his inulgence in unhealthy closeted behavior on the other.
Should Craig be investigated if he does not voluntarily resign? Yes. Merely being a pervert or a hypocrite, or using his position for political self-interest are all normal. But: He insists his guilty plea, made under oath, was a perjurious lie. The police account shows an apparent attempt to use his official position to avoid the consequences of the crime. His status as a closeted man active in same-sex hookups raises a concern that he would be exposed to blackmail. Any of these could be a legitimate ground for further examination. Less seriously, he may enjoy a good roasting. Recalling his Meet the Press appearance in 1999, one can almost imagine him saying, "Yes, by all means, investigate me, censure me; I've been a bad boy, a naughty boy. I need to be disciplined."
What is the larger lesson? The conservative majority in the redstate world is not as crazy as it may seem. If you lived in that world you would see the natural appeal of conservative positions. Gay people in blue America go about leading ordinary lives, albeit coping with prejudice. In red America they are more likely to sneak off from the closet to the toilet for anonymous sex. It may seem offensive for Santorum or Scalia to liken gay sex to bestiality, but in red states, there're a lot of farms, and boys do what they will do. It's not just gays, but the risk of animal sex is a lot more present if discipline were to fail. You can see why they may be more preoccupied over there. They also have more crime, more teen pregnancies, more abortions, they draw more of their economy from the public sector, and in general suffer more of the problems that their policies claim to fix. The Republican party and allied institutions are just about the only loci in the nation where unqualified minorities are routinely given positions over better-qualified whites. Look at Clarence Thomas, or a more spectacular laughingstock, Alan Keyes. The redstate right is focused on real problems, they just have not attributed their sorry state to the spectacular failure of these policies, or noticed that these problems are less severe in the civilized world outside their own.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Two Cents on Rove
The best observations I've made and seen others make:
1) He's treated as history making when in fact he made few innovations, had little real power, and made little impact. All the big historical things that happened would have happened, or come very close to happening, if he had not existed. Pre-existing trends, chance events, and a reliably ineffective opposition did the work, while Rove took the credit.
2) He's treated respectfully and asked his views, even as his interviewers wink to him with the knowledge that about 78% of everything he says is a lie.
3) He's regarded as a genius in all probability because he's mastered the art of getting perceived as a genius without ever having to prove it. He has no academic credentials, but drops names and historical references, constantly makes mistakes which people credit for being clever lies or part of a secret strategy, and he travels among the easily impressed.
4) He's very much a product and exemplar of the corrupt and juvenile College Republican milieu, where dirty tricks are virtually all that matter. It is a culture steeped in petty criminality which its practitioners tend to lose only when they move into some part of the real world where crime is looked down upon, or graduate into adult politics and the potential for actual felonies.
5) He's regarded as an ideologue rather than a functionary, but there is precious little evidence that he had any agenda other than accumulating power for himself and his team.
6) The supposedly big idea at the center of his philosophy ultimately reduces to conceiving politics as total war without any ethical limitations: you get away with whatever you can, and that's a lot. You lie because the lies have no adverse consequences. You deny the opposition access to information. You phony up evidence. You create token programs whose effects you can exaggerate. You smear without mercy or restraint. You are absolutely loyal to those with you and seek to destroy those who are not totally loyal in return. You manipulate voting rules, voting machines, districting, use all the arms of government to promote political over policy interests. In short you rely on short attention spans, public impatience with partisan bickering, and the media's tendency to frame every debate as an even and honest one no matter how lopsided and dishonest. You shovel coporate welfare at the money base and an endless stream of empty platitutdes and symbols at the social base, knowing that 50.002% of the voters will not notice.
7) Even as congratulations and applause greet him, it is widely recognized that he is leaving under a cloud, getting while the getting's good.
UPDATE: Hey, I have a comment! Yes, No. 1 is probably overstated. We may find out later that it is terribly wrong. But I thought this was a great observation since the tendency throughout most of the punditocracy has clearly been excessive in the opposite direction, crediting him for nearly every significant political event in the last seven years.
1) He's treated as history making when in fact he made few innovations, had little real power, and made little impact. All the big historical things that happened would have happened, or come very close to happening, if he had not existed. Pre-existing trends, chance events, and a reliably ineffective opposition did the work, while Rove took the credit.
2) He's treated respectfully and asked his views, even as his interviewers wink to him with the knowledge that about 78% of everything he says is a lie.
3) He's regarded as a genius in all probability because he's mastered the art of getting perceived as a genius without ever having to prove it. He has no academic credentials, but drops names and historical references, constantly makes mistakes which people credit for being clever lies or part of a secret strategy, and he travels among the easily impressed.
4) He's very much a product and exemplar of the corrupt and juvenile College Republican milieu, where dirty tricks are virtually all that matter. It is a culture steeped in petty criminality which its practitioners tend to lose only when they move into some part of the real world where crime is looked down upon, or graduate into adult politics and the potential for actual felonies.
5) He's regarded as an ideologue rather than a functionary, but there is precious little evidence that he had any agenda other than accumulating power for himself and his team.
6) The supposedly big idea at the center of his philosophy ultimately reduces to conceiving politics as total war without any ethical limitations: you get away with whatever you can, and that's a lot. You lie because the lies have no adverse consequences. You deny the opposition access to information. You phony up evidence. You create token programs whose effects you can exaggerate. You smear without mercy or restraint. You are absolutely loyal to those with you and seek to destroy those who are not totally loyal in return. You manipulate voting rules, voting machines, districting, use all the arms of government to promote political over policy interests. In short you rely on short attention spans, public impatience with partisan bickering, and the media's tendency to frame every debate as an even and honest one no matter how lopsided and dishonest. You shovel coporate welfare at the money base and an endless stream of empty platitutdes and symbols at the social base, knowing that 50.002% of the voters will not notice.
7) Even as congratulations and applause greet him, it is widely recognized that he is leaving under a cloud, getting while the getting's good.
UPDATE: Hey, I have a comment! Yes, No. 1 is probably overstated. We may find out later that it is terribly wrong. But I thought this was a great observation since the tendency throughout most of the punditocracy has clearly been excessive in the opposite direction, crediting him for nearly every significant political event in the last seven years.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Executive Privilege
Aziz Huq has a bylined editorial in the Nation this fortnight on executive privilege, which is very nice, but it does take him to paragraph 8 to make the point I would put first: what good is it?
The standard explanation is that shielding a communication from inspection is required in order to achieve candor. You can see this in attorney-client or priest-penitent privilege: the attorney or confessor function would be completely frustrated if secrecy could not be guaranteed. You can quickly think of most of the functions that might be considered important enough to make a guarantee of a controlled communications environment: gathering information on the transmission of a communicable disease, or for an individual's diagnosis or treatment, anonymous reporting of crimes, support groups and brainstorming sessions, or when spouses confide in one another.
There are lots of laws shielding eliberations of various bodies: when judges caucus, or jurors especially, or even when job interviewers speak openly to decide whom to hire. Hence it is argued that officers of the executive branch, in order to obtain candid advice, must have blanket secrecy over their internal (and some external) discussions.
Huq questions this, and rightly so. My own immediate thought was what kind of exchange might occur if there were no executive privilege, what Bush and Rove might have been like in a room where the contents of their discussions was subject to general release:
President: So, what ought I to do about this here thing?
Adviser: I, I.. I'd rather not say, Mister President.
President: What's wrong, rover-dover?
Adviser: I, I'm ascared, Mr. President. What if I tell you what I think and then someone finds out and doesn't like what I said? They might make me feel bad.
President: Well, you know, it's like I always say, you don't come here to be popular, you got to stand up for stuff. Just tell me what I should do.
Advisor: I can't. I'm still afraid. I, I just wet myself. Waaaah!
As you can see, eliminating executive privilege would have completely crippled Karl Rove's ability to advise the president, which would have been a loss for us all.
As a caviat, I don't doubt that observing a privilege for executive advice is appropriate in proper circumstances. Executives may also be penitents or spouses or clients or patients. There may be times when effective advice depends on disclosing some matter which is rightly secret for other reasons. And there may be genuine occasions where the value of secrecy outweighs its costs. Maybe an advisor is has a special basis for concern but they're indospensible and no one else can give the advice. Likewise, there are also exceptions going the other way, where a privilege fails: the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, for example: if a client and attorney conspire to break the law, the exchange is not privileged. In any unclear case, a court may have to examine the content of the matter in chambers to decide what is privileged and what is not. That's life.
The standard explanation is that shielding a communication from inspection is required in order to achieve candor. You can see this in attorney-client or priest-penitent privilege: the attorney or confessor function would be completely frustrated if secrecy could not be guaranteed. You can quickly think of most of the functions that might be considered important enough to make a guarantee of a controlled communications environment: gathering information on the transmission of a communicable disease, or for an individual's diagnosis or treatment, anonymous reporting of crimes, support groups and brainstorming sessions, or when spouses confide in one another.
There are lots of laws shielding eliberations of various bodies: when judges caucus, or jurors especially, or even when job interviewers speak openly to decide whom to hire. Hence it is argued that officers of the executive branch, in order to obtain candid advice, must have blanket secrecy over their internal (and some external) discussions.
Huq questions this, and rightly so. My own immediate thought was what kind of exchange might occur if there were no executive privilege, what Bush and Rove might have been like in a room where the contents of their discussions was subject to general release:
President: So, what ought I to do about this here thing?
Adviser: I, I.. I'd rather not say, Mister President.
President: What's wrong, rover-dover?
Adviser: I, I'm ascared, Mr. President. What if I tell you what I think and then someone finds out and doesn't like what I said? They might make me feel bad.
President: Well, you know, it's like I always say, you don't come here to be popular, you got to stand up for stuff. Just tell me what I should do.
Advisor: I can't. I'm still afraid. I, I just wet myself. Waaaah!
As you can see, eliminating executive privilege would have completely crippled Karl Rove's ability to advise the president, which would have been a loss for us all.
As a caviat, I don't doubt that observing a privilege for executive advice is appropriate in proper circumstances. Executives may also be penitents or spouses or clients or patients. There may be times when effective advice depends on disclosing some matter which is rightly secret for other reasons. And there may be genuine occasions where the value of secrecy outweighs its costs. Maybe an advisor is has a special basis for concern but they're indospensible and no one else can give the advice. Likewise, there are also exceptions going the other way, where a privilege fails: the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege, for example: if a client and attorney conspire to break the law, the exchange is not privileged. In any unclear case, a court may have to examine the content of the matter in chambers to decide what is privileged and what is not. That's life.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Applemilk1988 is offline
Perhaps the most lamentable quality of the popular internet is the forum it provides for, and the representatives it attracts from among, people who are just crude and vicious.
The accusation of expressing ignorant, hateful thoughts online has been abused by rightwing pundits as a means of putting down the progressive blogosphere: some of those thin-skinned, delusional pundits can hardly find a political opinion at variance with their own that does not set off their martyr complexes or promote a surge of unexpected solicitude towards a group they had villified only the previous day.
But it occurs quite a lot, either coming from the right, or in politically neutral settings.
Today I opened up youtube and saw that many of my favorite videos were gone. A few months ago I had gotten the account just so that I could favorite a few clips from a girl in South Florida named Emily. She had reminded me, in some superficial ways, of an old friend of mine, and the videos were entertaining in a modest way. Emily's videos have gotten probably a million views (I stopped adding the figures at half that) and have been the object of a lot of hype, fan mail, and -- to the point of this post -- hate mail. I wont compare her to Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick, but for a teen (Her login name is Applemilk1988; I can only guess 1988 is her birth year) just doing these quick simple postings from the local mall or Starbucks or from the couch in her family home, they had a lot of humor and personality. Some were definitely better than others. Her best, an "intense" lesson in the Japanese language which spawned four sequels of varying quality, made me understand why she had fans. In contrast, she had regular posts in an entirely different, more natural and subdued persona, that invited a sense of familiarity and empathy.
At least for me. As I noted, Emily has gotten a lot of hate mail. I know because a huge amount of the hate mail is in the completely public form of open video posts on youtube. I continue to be shocked at the vicious character of some of the writing and posting about Emily. Just to give some idea, there is a lot of abusive language and epithets. I would guess that youtube probably deleted others because of use restrictions; either that, or the vloggers have maximized the hostility while evading those restrictions by design.
Anyhow, I noticed that the videos of hers that I'd saved were gone. Despite being a busy guy, I searched first youtube, which had still had others' videos about Emily, and then the broader web, and discovered that Emily's accounts on youtube and various other services had been hacked, apparently by people who specifically targeted her. This all happened just about a week ago, while Emily was (and maybe is still) in Japan. Their celebratory posts reveling in this attack should not have been surprising. Again, I would guess that use restrictions may have weeded out some that were more threatening or sexually graphic than what I see there, but yes, there are gratuitous references to her speculated sexual practices. They also linked to a (former)boyfriend's site, who included some personal gripes against Emily because, he said, they increased traffic to his account due to her fame. He sounds like a real prince.
Emily is such a minor celebrity, known to a fairly small segment of the public for a few short homemade videos. I don't even know her last name, or what city she's in. Nor do I want to know these, and while her more intimate videos invite some empathy with the events of her daily life, I really have no desire to know what she does in private. And yet, there is a following out there for material attacking her, calling her names, exposing her passwords, exposing her alleged doings offline, alleged failings, intimate matters, and who knows what next. This cottage industry of hate against a young woman whose worst crimes, as far as I can tell, are well within the bounds of small interpersonal matters where none of us are perfect.
This seems to me like an interesting case lesson in the proper bounds of discourse, as well as the perils of fame, and it reminds me of the Don Imus ruckus, but of course Emily's haters have not withdrawn their attacks or apologized, but let them persist and metastasize. They have gone to the point of silencing their enemy by force. And I don't see anyone defending her yet, but I'm not sure whether her fans know what's going on.
The accusation of expressing ignorant, hateful thoughts online has been abused by rightwing pundits as a means of putting down the progressive blogosphere: some of those thin-skinned, delusional pundits can hardly find a political opinion at variance with their own that does not set off their martyr complexes or promote a surge of unexpected solicitude towards a group they had villified only the previous day.
But it occurs quite a lot, either coming from the right, or in politically neutral settings.
Today I opened up youtube and saw that many of my favorite videos were gone. A few months ago I had gotten the account just so that I could favorite a few clips from a girl in South Florida named Emily. She had reminded me, in some superficial ways, of an old friend of mine, and the videos were entertaining in a modest way. Emily's videos have gotten probably a million views (I stopped adding the figures at half that) and have been the object of a lot of hype, fan mail, and -- to the point of this post -- hate mail. I wont compare her to Orson Welles or Stanley Kubrick, but for a teen (Her login name is Applemilk1988; I can only guess 1988 is her birth year) just doing these quick simple postings from the local mall or Starbucks or from the couch in her family home, they had a lot of humor and personality. Some were definitely better than others. Her best, an "intense" lesson in the Japanese language which spawned four sequels of varying quality, made me understand why she had fans. In contrast, she had regular posts in an entirely different, more natural and subdued persona, that invited a sense of familiarity and empathy.
At least for me. As I noted, Emily has gotten a lot of hate mail. I know because a huge amount of the hate mail is in the completely public form of open video posts on youtube. I continue to be shocked at the vicious character of some of the writing and posting about Emily. Just to give some idea, there is a lot of abusive language and epithets. I would guess that youtube probably deleted others because of use restrictions; either that, or the vloggers have maximized the hostility while evading those restrictions by design.
Anyhow, I noticed that the videos of hers that I'd saved were gone. Despite being a busy guy, I searched first youtube, which had still had others' videos about Emily, and then the broader web, and discovered that Emily's accounts on youtube and various other services had been hacked, apparently by people who specifically targeted her. This all happened just about a week ago, while Emily was (and maybe is still) in Japan. Their celebratory posts reveling in this attack should not have been surprising. Again, I would guess that use restrictions may have weeded out some that were more threatening or sexually graphic than what I see there, but yes, there are gratuitous references to her speculated sexual practices. They also linked to a (former)boyfriend's site, who included some personal gripes against Emily because, he said, they increased traffic to his account due to her fame. He sounds like a real prince.
Emily is such a minor celebrity, known to a fairly small segment of the public for a few short homemade videos. I don't even know her last name, or what city she's in. Nor do I want to know these, and while her more intimate videos invite some empathy with the events of her daily life, I really have no desire to know what she does in private. And yet, there is a following out there for material attacking her, calling her names, exposing her passwords, exposing her alleged doings offline, alleged failings, intimate matters, and who knows what next. This cottage industry of hate against a young woman whose worst crimes, as far as I can tell, are well within the bounds of small interpersonal matters where none of us are perfect.
This seems to me like an interesting case lesson in the proper bounds of discourse, as well as the perils of fame, and it reminds me of the Don Imus ruckus, but of course Emily's haters have not withdrawn their attacks or apologized, but let them persist and metastasize. They have gone to the point of silencing their enemy by force. And I don't see anyone defending her yet, but I'm not sure whether her fans know what's going on.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Wrecking the bus system
Cutting the bus system is an extremely stupid policy.
I was going through some old newspapers lying about my house when I noticed an article from May when vast cuts to the county bus system were being announced. I saw a detail which I had not noted before, though perhaps this is because I have paid too little attention to the issue. The article stated that the proposed cuts would create a net savings of something over $2 million, but at the cost of 7 million riders per year. I don't know what riders means, but let's assume it means full fare equivalents. Then there would be a gross loss to the system of about $13 million. This is a stunning statistic, and even if my figures are a little off, it would still be stunning, and perhaps moreso.
This is ridiculous from two standpoints. First, from the perspective of the bus system, it means a substantial reduction in service for a comparatively small benefit. The analysts have figured that by dumping unprofitable routes, they can achieve a net gain in strict economic terms. To the extent such a marginal change is a requirement, it may be the best among bad options, but it is still a bad option.
I recall my own experience in business running a small newspaper. The former publisher, deep in debt, had decided to economize by reducing the size, circulation, and use of color in the paper. The result was an immdiate net savings, to be sure, but the paper was locked in a spiral of decline. Ultimately, producing a less attractive, less frequent paper with less in it to read could not have anything good to do for readership, or the value of advertising in the paper. And economies of scale meant that a 50 percent reduction in service only produced, say, a 15 percent reduction in cost. Failure of the paper was palpable when, with a new strategy, the paper was saved.
Finding better ways to cut costs, my staff and I expanded and promoted the paper, with the result that we grew out of our debt. Similarly, a bus system in decline will only continue to decline if the best strategy its leaders can advance is to shrink service. The question that leaps to mind is what other options have been evaluated: Identifying potential efficiencies? Differential pricing of routes? Creative efforts to attract riders? Partnerships with popular
destinations? More effective use of grants and subsidies?
The other standpoint from which the proposal is ridiculous is the public standpoint. Although the bus system, on paper, will be made $2 million more profitable, the loss to citizens would be far greater than the $2 million necessary to maintain the current level of service. The fact that the equation is so lopsided suggests we need much more public investment in the bus system.
The loss of 7 million riders means that some riders will see their access to the city shrink, especially the blind and disabled, and the unlicensed, who are predominantly minorities. They will be forced to forego employment opportunities, opportunities to save on services, and bear the costs of less efficient modes of transportation, such as borrowing rides from friends, or using taxicabs, or simply driving themselves. Inequality and poverty can be safely predicted to increase. Lost employment or consumer transactions will also affect the would-be employers and sellers. Establishments that depend on bus service for customers or employees will be stressed and some may close. Increased auto traffic will increase pollution, traffic congestion, parking congestion (increasing fees for oher drivers), and will increase the number of drivers on
the road who are intoxicated or have suspended or revoked licenses, diminishing public safety. Milwaukee's reputation as a successful modern city with progressive values will be injured, and the loss of a public service will make the city less attractive to tourists, skilled immigrants, students, and businesses that may otherwise wish to locate here.
Did I leave anything out? Probably.
None of these losses will appear on an internal bus system spreadsheet. They will all have a long-term negative effect on the bus system, because the bus system depends on a thriving city and a thriving tax base. But more importantly, these losses will affect the entire public, which should invest in preventing these losses.
Of course, the question is who among the architects of the plan is: (1) actively trying to destroy public services for selfish reasons; (2) merely acting out of ill-considered ideology; (3) duped into following the plan because they have been brainwashed into thinking it is necessary; or (4) actually went through some rational thought process and concluded for a good reason whether it was necessary or not. All four exist. Only (1) and (4) know what they're doing, the former for evil, the latter for good. All that it takes for the (1)s to triumph is for the potential (4)s to become (2)s and (3)s.
I was going through some old newspapers lying about my house when I noticed an article from May when vast cuts to the county bus system were being announced. I saw a detail which I had not noted before, though perhaps this is because I have paid too little attention to the issue. The article stated that the proposed cuts would create a net savings of something over $2 million, but at the cost of 7 million riders per year. I don't know what riders means, but let's assume it means full fare equivalents. Then there would be a gross loss to the system of about $13 million. This is a stunning statistic, and even if my figures are a little off, it would still be stunning, and perhaps moreso.
This is ridiculous from two standpoints. First, from the perspective of the bus system, it means a substantial reduction in service for a comparatively small benefit. The analysts have figured that by dumping unprofitable routes, they can achieve a net gain in strict economic terms. To the extent such a marginal change is a requirement, it may be the best among bad options, but it is still a bad option.
I recall my own experience in business running a small newspaper. The former publisher, deep in debt, had decided to economize by reducing the size, circulation, and use of color in the paper. The result was an immdiate net savings, to be sure, but the paper was locked in a spiral of decline. Ultimately, producing a less attractive, less frequent paper with less in it to read could not have anything good to do for readership, or the value of advertising in the paper. And economies of scale meant that a 50 percent reduction in service only produced, say, a 15 percent reduction in cost. Failure of the paper was palpable when, with a new strategy, the paper was saved.
Finding better ways to cut costs, my staff and I expanded and promoted the paper, with the result that we grew out of our debt. Similarly, a bus system in decline will only continue to decline if the best strategy its leaders can advance is to shrink service. The question that leaps to mind is what other options have been evaluated: Identifying potential efficiencies? Differential pricing of routes? Creative efforts to attract riders? Partnerships with popular
destinations? More effective use of grants and subsidies?
The other standpoint from which the proposal is ridiculous is the public standpoint. Although the bus system, on paper, will be made $2 million more profitable, the loss to citizens would be far greater than the $2 million necessary to maintain the current level of service. The fact that the equation is so lopsided suggests we need much more public investment in the bus system.
The loss of 7 million riders means that some riders will see their access to the city shrink, especially the blind and disabled, and the unlicensed, who are predominantly minorities. They will be forced to forego employment opportunities, opportunities to save on services, and bear the costs of less efficient modes of transportation, such as borrowing rides from friends, or using taxicabs, or simply driving themselves. Inequality and poverty can be safely predicted to increase. Lost employment or consumer transactions will also affect the would-be employers and sellers. Establishments that depend on bus service for customers or employees will be stressed and some may close. Increased auto traffic will increase pollution, traffic congestion, parking congestion (increasing fees for oher drivers), and will increase the number of drivers on
the road who are intoxicated or have suspended or revoked licenses, diminishing public safety. Milwaukee's reputation as a successful modern city with progressive values will be injured, and the loss of a public service will make the city less attractive to tourists, skilled immigrants, students, and businesses that may otherwise wish to locate here.
Did I leave anything out? Probably.
None of these losses will appear on an internal bus system spreadsheet. They will all have a long-term negative effect on the bus system, because the bus system depends on a thriving city and a thriving tax base. But more importantly, these losses will affect the entire public, which should invest in preventing these losses.
Of course, the question is who among the architects of the plan is: (1) actively trying to destroy public services for selfish reasons; (2) merely acting out of ill-considered ideology; (3) duped into following the plan because they have been brainwashed into thinking it is necessary; or (4) actually went through some rational thought process and concluded for a good reason whether it was necessary or not. All four exist. Only (1) and (4) know what they're doing, the former for evil, the latter for good. All that it takes for the (1)s to triumph is for the potential (4)s to become (2)s and (3)s.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Habilus Erectus
I'm back, after a ridiculously long hiatus. Nothing for all of July? Two months gone? Absurd! I promise my estimated 0.06 readers that I will do better.
Lots of ideas have come and gone. Oh, well.
Today's inspiration was a pretty stupid AP story that I saw yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was a science story, and they're always bad. Basic information buried. Phony spin. No context. Oversimplified for idiots in a way that makes the story nearly incomprehensible to anyone with a whit of understanding to begin with.
Here's the deal. There are lots of species (or proposed species, or subspecies) of genus Homo, which includes the species of modern humans, Homo sapiens. For example, H. ergaster, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. georgicus, and so on. No one can be completely sure if a piece of skull from here or seven individuals from there is really a distinct species or not, so there could be at least a dozem, or maybe not. The two really old ones that are known, which are common and well established, are Homo erectus and Homo habilis. H. habilis is the oldest known, followed by H. erectus. There's been a longstanding puzzle exactly how the family tree looks for those old days because remains are scarce. Maybe there's more "missing links" to be undug.
The story is that they found a really old erectus -- older than any previously known -- in the same general area as an old habilis of about the same age.
This shows that erectus came about earlier than previously understood, and that it could co-exist with habilis without either species (presumably the newer and better erectus) driving the other out of existence by its superiority in a general competition to survive. This further implies the two species occupied distinct niches, and may have been under evolutionary pressure to dissimilate. The discovery also makes it more plausible that erectus might have existed even earlier than did the newly discovered , and that it could have evolved not from habilis, but from some as-yet undiscovered precursor.
I found that very hard to figure out from the article, which is larded with pseudoscientific garbage about whether human evolution is "linear" or not.
Now, the missing link idea I referenced above is mostly popular mythology. No one who does evolutionary anthropology has thought for a very long time that there was any validity to the idea that humankind evolved up a ladder or across the panel of a newspaper comic, gradually but inexorably growing less hairy and more erect through an orderly progression as though with a target end form in mind. This is so much old-fashioned simplistic magical predestination, nature is good, the world is orderly wishful thinking carried over from a 19th-century religious mindset.
Instead, you have a complicated family tree. Evolution is a natural process with lots of trial and error. Looking back, you can make up a linear progression from primoridial ooze to any modern form of organism you pick by simply ignoring all the side lineages along the way. Such a constructed linear picture, particularly when manipulated to make change appear gradual and homogenous, may be accurate as far as it describes the direct ancestry of an organism, but it carries with it a misleading message to the lay public that evolution is an arrow pointed at a final form.
Yet the news article proceeds from the premise that what is really important about some new Homo bones is that it puts further to rest an image which has long been relegated to the unschooled and those using outdated elementary school textbooks. It is full of stuff about whether erectus and habilis are "sister" species or "mother and daughter," which is itself misleading, since all mother and daughter species are sisters as well -- it's not as though a magic wand could have passed over all the hibiles and turned them into erecti -- the daughter is always a sister for at least some period. Likewise, although the use of the phrase "common ancestor" is scientifically correct, it should be noted that the common ancestor of species A and B might well be one or the other and not necessarily a third: any two species have a comon ancestor if you go far enough back.
I cannot say the article was inaccurate. But it said very little and took a lot of effort to make sense of because it really wanted to tell me things that it thought would have some lay currency, but made me wonder, "scientifically, what is that supposed to mean?" I have the same problem with a lot of legal reporting. If the reporting is not wrong, it's simply confusing. For example, a report will say a judge ruled that Mr. X can stand trial for Y. What does that mean? Was there a motion to declare him incompetent to stand trial? Was there a motion to dismiss? Was there a preliminary hearing? A challenge to jurisdiction? Was Y the only charge? Was there something specific about Y? Even if the report is accurate, I have to question, based on experience, whether it is.
It's frustrating.
Lots of ideas have come and gone. Oh, well.
Today's inspiration was a pretty stupid AP story that I saw yesterday in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. It was a science story, and they're always bad. Basic information buried. Phony spin. No context. Oversimplified for idiots in a way that makes the story nearly incomprehensible to anyone with a whit of understanding to begin with.
Here's the deal. There are lots of species (or proposed species, or subspecies) of genus Homo, which includes the species of modern humans, Homo sapiens. For example, H. ergaster, H. neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. georgicus, and so on. No one can be completely sure if a piece of skull from here or seven individuals from there is really a distinct species or not, so there could be at least a dozem, or maybe not. The two really old ones that are known, which are common and well established, are Homo erectus and Homo habilis. H. habilis is the oldest known, followed by H. erectus. There's been a longstanding puzzle exactly how the family tree looks for those old days because remains are scarce. Maybe there's more "missing links" to be undug.
The story is that they found a really old erectus -- older than any previously known -- in the same general area as an old habilis of about the same age.
This shows that erectus came about earlier than previously understood, and that it could co-exist with habilis without either species (presumably the newer and better erectus) driving the other out of existence by its superiority in a general competition to survive. This further implies the two species occupied distinct niches, and may have been under evolutionary pressure to dissimilate. The discovery also makes it more plausible that erectus might have existed even earlier than did the newly discovered , and that it could have evolved not from habilis, but from some as-yet undiscovered precursor.
I found that very hard to figure out from the article, which is larded with pseudoscientific garbage about whether human evolution is "linear" or not.
Now, the missing link idea I referenced above is mostly popular mythology. No one who does evolutionary anthropology has thought for a very long time that there was any validity to the idea that humankind evolved up a ladder or across the panel of a newspaper comic, gradually but inexorably growing less hairy and more erect through an orderly progression as though with a target end form in mind. This is so much old-fashioned simplistic magical predestination, nature is good, the world is orderly wishful thinking carried over from a 19th-century religious mindset.
Instead, you have a complicated family tree. Evolution is a natural process with lots of trial and error. Looking back, you can make up a linear progression from primoridial ooze to any modern form of organism you pick by simply ignoring all the side lineages along the way. Such a constructed linear picture, particularly when manipulated to make change appear gradual and homogenous, may be accurate as far as it describes the direct ancestry of an organism, but it carries with it a misleading message to the lay public that evolution is an arrow pointed at a final form.
Yet the news article proceeds from the premise that what is really important about some new Homo bones is that it puts further to rest an image which has long been relegated to the unschooled and those using outdated elementary school textbooks. It is full of stuff about whether erectus and habilis are "sister" species or "mother and daughter," which is itself misleading, since all mother and daughter species are sisters as well -- it's not as though a magic wand could have passed over all the hibiles and turned them into erecti -- the daughter is always a sister for at least some period. Likewise, although the use of the phrase "common ancestor" is scientifically correct, it should be noted that the common ancestor of species A and B might well be one or the other and not necessarily a third: any two species have a comon ancestor if you go far enough back.
I cannot say the article was inaccurate. But it said very little and took a lot of effort to make sense of because it really wanted to tell me things that it thought would have some lay currency, but made me wonder, "scientifically, what is that supposed to mean?" I have the same problem with a lot of legal reporting. If the reporting is not wrong, it's simply confusing. For example, a report will say a judge ruled that Mr. X can stand trial for Y. What does that mean? Was there a motion to declare him incompetent to stand trial? Was there a motion to dismiss? Was there a preliminary hearing? A challenge to jurisdiction? Was Y the only charge? Was there something specific about Y? Even if the report is accurate, I have to question, based on experience, whether it is.
It's frustrating.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Korea Model
I'll admit first off that I have not really looked seriously at what all the hype is with the supposed re-envisioning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq on the so-called Korea model. I've basically assumed there is no there there, that this -- to repackage an old analogy -- is a case of bad-tasting 4-year old wine repackaged into 50-year old bottles and resealed to make it seem both fresh and of good vintage. I mean, haven't they trotted out post-war occupations of Germany, Japan, Korea, and other places every time they wanted to encourage patience? What is there new about this? And at the same time, what is there of any venerability that we can apply? How is this anything like Korea, except that the occupation will strive for high-duration, low-footprint passive vigilence?
Is that a model? A model shows how something was done, not what the result will be. Otherwise, let's pick a better model, like Solonic Athens, or Paradise, or Eden, or one of those Star Trek planets where everything was kept in order by a benign computer or alien caretaker that never made a mistake. Or even a good Japanese car factory. Let's have our "model" be perfection, or at least continuous quality improvement.
Actually, some of those models are not what they once were. Restoring Paradise may require a crusade, and only al Qaida and the Coral Ridge folks want that. Eden was part of pre-Islamic Iraq, and although I would agree with preserving the origins of civilization, this seems to be a minority view, at least in terms of preservation in situ -- I understand that there may be some private collections enjoying a nice steroidal plumping off the work of those odd looters who do not feel compelled to smash every 20,000 year old vase they encounter. And as far as the Star Trek model, I'm sure Bill Gates' preserved head-in-a-vat could appoint a crack team of AIs to run Iraq from Washington state or from an orbital platorm after the required electrical grid is restored sometime in the 23rd century. Until then, few good options.
Actually, what I started out wanting to say is just that the Korea model is an ironic concept to be pushing now. Didn't we have the Korea model under the last administration? Hmmm...
I see the 50s. There's this country divided North-South. We call the North part Iraq and the South part Kuwait. Over time, lots of things happen, in no particular order. The Southern part, divided off and placed under separate leadership, remains subject to greater influence from the "Free World" has a free market and a less-free populace. The north has to be threatened with nukes because it is too independent. It plays both sides of the cold war. It is geographically prone to Communist bloc influence and receives selective support, and the West seeks various means of influence. Eventually, the North invades the South. (Though the hidden history of the war is that the North was lured or provoked because the U.S. wanted the war.) The North is driven from the South and could be crushed and occupied, perhaps, except that the President of the U.S. resists, knowing that this could turn to disaster as the North's more powerful regional allies could use it as a proxy to fight the U.S. By the 90s, the U.S. has a large force permanently garrisoned in the South, whose tasks include enforcing sanctions on the North, and defending the South from renewed attack. The North flirts with building a nuclear capability.
On this analogy, the Korean model went off the rails in 2003, when the U.S. invaded North Korea, destroyed its infrastructure, found no WMDs and is being bled to death by local and foreign-based insurgents, whom we claim are basically pawns of China, against whom we are threatening a broader, and nuclear, war. If this were actually the case in Korea, what would our model be for dialing that down? You'd withdraw as fast as possible to the old North-South line, and rely on China for help in stabilizing the situation, recognizing that its influence would be greatly expanded, and try to minimize that inevitable strategic loss. Am I wrong?
Of course, Iraq turns out to be more complex. Maybe Iraq will be partitioned, although it seems clear that if Iraq is divided into three countries, those countries will probably be called Iran, Syria and Turkey. Just what we wanted all along? Doubtful.
Is that a model? A model shows how something was done, not what the result will be. Otherwise, let's pick a better model, like Solonic Athens, or Paradise, or Eden, or one of those Star Trek planets where everything was kept in order by a benign computer or alien caretaker that never made a mistake. Or even a good Japanese car factory. Let's have our "model" be perfection, or at least continuous quality improvement.
Actually, some of those models are not what they once were. Restoring Paradise may require a crusade, and only al Qaida and the Coral Ridge folks want that. Eden was part of pre-Islamic Iraq, and although I would agree with preserving the origins of civilization, this seems to be a minority view, at least in terms of preservation in situ -- I understand that there may be some private collections enjoying a nice steroidal plumping off the work of those odd looters who do not feel compelled to smash every 20,000 year old vase they encounter. And as far as the Star Trek model, I'm sure Bill Gates' preserved head-in-a-vat could appoint a crack team of AIs to run Iraq from Washington state or from an orbital platorm after the required electrical grid is restored sometime in the 23rd century. Until then, few good options.
Actually, what I started out wanting to say is just that the Korea model is an ironic concept to be pushing now. Didn't we have the Korea model under the last administration? Hmmm...
I see the 50s. There's this country divided North-South. We call the North part Iraq and the South part Kuwait. Over time, lots of things happen, in no particular order. The Southern part, divided off and placed under separate leadership, remains subject to greater influence from the "Free World" has a free market and a less-free populace. The north has to be threatened with nukes because it is too independent. It plays both sides of the cold war. It is geographically prone to Communist bloc influence and receives selective support, and the West seeks various means of influence. Eventually, the North invades the South. (Though the hidden history of the war is that the North was lured or provoked because the U.S. wanted the war.) The North is driven from the South and could be crushed and occupied, perhaps, except that the President of the U.S. resists, knowing that this could turn to disaster as the North's more powerful regional allies could use it as a proxy to fight the U.S. By the 90s, the U.S. has a large force permanently garrisoned in the South, whose tasks include enforcing sanctions on the North, and defending the South from renewed attack. The North flirts with building a nuclear capability.
On this analogy, the Korean model went off the rails in 2003, when the U.S. invaded North Korea, destroyed its infrastructure, found no WMDs and is being bled to death by local and foreign-based insurgents, whom we claim are basically pawns of China, against whom we are threatening a broader, and nuclear, war. If this were actually the case in Korea, what would our model be for dialing that down? You'd withdraw as fast as possible to the old North-South line, and rely on China for help in stabilizing the situation, recognizing that its influence would be greatly expanded, and try to minimize that inevitable strategic loss. Am I wrong?
Of course, Iraq turns out to be more complex. Maybe Iraq will be partitioned, although it seems clear that if Iraq is divided into three countries, those countries will probably be called Iran, Syria and Turkey. Just what we wanted all along? Doubtful.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Brownback's Folly
It's been a few days now since Sam Brownback authored this in the New York Times. I would leave it lie with the posts at Hullabaloo and Pharyngula, but I feel let down by their reactions. I mean, Tristero's point is worth acknowledging(although there are other meanings of "materialism" that are also being evoked), and for most of what he says, P. Z. Myers is good as always, but I would comment differently from the good cephalopodist on some of it, so here goes:
Brownback gives us a pile of gas, comfortably vague principles with no controversial application, the standard mealy-mouthed variation of glittering generalities designed to offend no one. He assures us that the issues are complex and nuanced and should not be reduced to a sound-bite or false dichotomy.
He then goes ahead and abandons nuance, rattles off sound-bites, and confronts the reader with a series of false dichotomies.
Nuance is abandoned by his representation of the opposing position in terms that are false, unsubstantiated, or contradictory. Myers covers this well. He catches what I thought was a pretty obvious point, that to believe in evolution, one must believe in randomness ("man is the chance product of random mutations") and also "an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world." And he states with familiarity and authority things that I suspected but could not have argued with assurance (e.g., that Gould's punctuated equlibrium has long established its dominance, and Brownback is stuck in the past).
At the same time, he complains that his own side's view has been oversimplified and mischaracterized:
The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days.
It's worth noting that there is no evidence presented that anyone anywhere has actually accepted or advanced this "premise." But anyway, okay, so it isn't his view. Creation in 144 hours would be too silly. So what is his view? (It must be nearly as ridiculous-sounding, or I think he'd tell us.)
The sound bites consist of maybe half the op-ed, lots of Rodney King-style fluff prasing science and religion and urging them to get along and for each to respect the other's contributions. As Myers notes, none of the contributions of religion are ever made.
He doesn't want an oversimplistic dichotomy:
But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.
Although he never explains what would be wrong with this particular dichotomy. Evolution is a pretty clear-cut idea, and so is creationism.
But of course, he goes ahead and dishes up phony dichotomies.
If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes
over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I
believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an
exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place
for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
Apparently, these are the only choices. And Brownback, you guessed it, believes in small changes within a species. This is kind of like saying, "if believing in Einstein's theory of relativity means accepting that atomic clocks will run faster at high altitudes, then count me in." That is, I accept the theory, but only one small, irrefutable observation in support of it, but none of the conclusions from that and other supportive observations that actually make it a scientific theory, and hence also none of the other predictions that would flow from the theory.
But apart from being a hypocritical wanker, Brownback's real problem is in drawing the line between the appropriate the appropriate realms of religion and science in the wrong place.
Myers is more of an atheist than I am. My profile on the "What kind of atheist are you" quiz is very similar to his, but we part in that he opposes religion, and seems to fault Brownback for saying religion should have any role in the search for truth. I, in contrast, can go along with most of what Brownback says, but I think he's grossly disingenuous when he outlines the value of faith.
People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given
us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question.... Faith
supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values,
meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us
understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love.
This is designed to suggest that he accepts a David Hume kind of recognition that questions of "is" and "should" are absolutely independent. Science examines the material world and allows us to understand cause and effect. Moral philosophy helps us identify duties and desiderata. Science allows us to understand the consequences of actions, which is a fundamental factor in their moral evaluation.
It turns out that Brownback suffers from a defect, however, in his faith, one that many of his coreligionists also suffer from. The spiritual world is not real enough to hold their interest, so they have to profane God by basing their faith on what occurs in the physical plane. For Brownback, you cannot have God without certain material consequences that, unfortunately, contradict the scientific evidence.
Many questions raised by evolutionary theory — like whether man has a
unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations —
go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy
or theology.
...
It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.
So you see, Brownback has a very reasonable position. Science is okay until it sounds offensive to human dignity, like when that nasty Galileo Galilei and people like Giodorno Bruno showed that "insolent spirit of self-assertion" that required they be sanctioned for the common good.
Don't worry, if history is any guide, Darwin will receive his full pardon sometime around A.D. 2400. By that standard, Brownback is really ahead of his time, even if he's behind most of the industrialized world.
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