Potpourri

Here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking of. Most is from the last couple of days. One or two are of longer gestation.


Pluto

I like the IAU’s decision to reclassify Pluto. Since the issue of designation is essentially arbitrary, I would have been satisfied with any number of outcomes. The one thing that really annoys me is the repeated assertion, and I mean repeated, over and over, in AP service reporting, that Pluto fails to meet the definition of a planet because its orbit overlaps that of Neptune. (I also was annoyed by the recent protest over Pluto’s demotion where signs read, “size doesn’t matter,” the implication being that Pluto was rejected for being too small.)

The new definition of a planet has three criteria. A body is a plant if it 1) orbits a star; 2) is sufficiently massive that gravitational forces have rendered it approximately spherical in shape; and 3) it is sufficiently massive and stable in its orbit that debris in its orbital path has been cleared or captured. Each criterion has some fuzziness. Satellites of planets do orbit stars, and planets orbit the centers of gravity of their planet-moon systems, so that some moons might be regarded as more star-orbiting than planet-orbiting. How spherical is spherical? How clear of debris is clear enough?

Pluto orbits the sun, though it has a big moon, Charon, and their mutual center of gravity is between the two planets. This is not considered a disqualification. The Pluto-Charon-Nix-Hydra system still orbits the sun, and since Charon has been locked into that system, it does not constitute unswept debris in Pluto’s path. Pluto is small, but it’s small planet-sized and basically round. The fact that the orbit is extremely tilted relative to the ecliptic, and highly eccentric, and that its motion is retrograde, are all oddities that do not effect its definition as a planet. Pluto’s orbital is not cleared, however.

But the idea that Neptune is in Pluto’s path is bullshit. If it were, Neptune could not be considered a planet either. Because Pluto’s orbit is tilted, it only intersects the orbital plane of Neptune at two points. If Pluto and Neptune were to cross that plane at the same time, they would be about 1.8 billion miles apart. When you see Pluto’s and Neptune’s orbits drawn in 2-D as they are projected onto the ecliptic, they appear to cross, but at the crossing point, Pluto is maybe 700 million miles above the ecliptic. Moreover, Pluto and Neptune’s orbits are synchronized: they “resonate” at a 2:3 ratio – a pattern that is stable over time. They never get closer than 1.8 billion miles apart, and that’s not at the ecliptic.

By comparison, Pluto will at some point come closer than 1.8 billion miles from both Uranus and Saturn, also considered to still be planets.


Poppy Crop

Well, another measure of US success in Afghanistan – they’ve reported a record harvest of poppies this year. I look forward to a few cents off those yummy poppyseed muffins.


Reading Quiz

Bush has been reading Macbeth and L’Etranger, which I dare say are a step up from The Pet Goat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. But does he comprehend anything he reads? Here’s a quiz he should take.

Both Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar have ambitions or appetites. Where do these ambitions or appetites come from? Do they stem from deep within the nature of the individual, or from somewhere else? Do Macbeth and the Very Hungry Caterpillar each have a clear vision of what it is they want?
Mersault and the Pet Goat both face the judgment of society. Would you say that Mersault goes from approval to disapproval, while the Pet Goat undergoes the opposite transformation? Are the motives for their actions clear? Does society judge them on their motives or on the outcomes? Who or what in these stories is existentially “absurd?”
The Pet Goat and the Very Hungry Caterpillar both eat a lot of things. How do their diets differ? How are they the same? Is different food wholesome for different eaters? Should the Pet Goat and Very Hungry Caterpillar have eaten differently? What do these stories tell you about the consequences of bad choices?
Mersault and Macbeth both engage in socially disapproved acts of violence, but for different reasons. Is there anything redeeming for either of these characters in the motives for their acts? How would we think of these characters if they had continued in their tracks and not committed the transformatory acts in their stories?


Castro's Death Date

Just learned that Ho Chi Minh died on the anniversary of the declaration of Vietnamese independence, much like Jefferson and Adams died on July 4. I predict Castro will die on January 1, 2067 (at age 140).


Missing Flag

The flag first erected on the 9/11 WTC rubble is lost. The story would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Well, it is funny. The firefighters came to a commemorative event and when the flag was brought out, which has been toured and worshipped like a religious icon, it turned out to be the wrong flag. Three times too big. Comment: what an incompetent country we’ve become. File under Katrina.


Can the First Responders Talk to Each Other Yet?

When Katrina came, one of the problems that was highlighted at the time was that emergency first responders could not talk to each other. Incompatible communications equipment. That was a problem on 9/11. It was going to be fixed. Katrina hits, it’s still not fixed, so everyone said again, now we’ll fix it.

I haven’t been able to find any news: on the anniversary of Katrina, when nothing else seems to have been fixed, have the communications problems at least been resolved? No one seems to say.


Survivor

Survivor is having the battle of the races. Ordinarily I might agree that this was a stupid, sensationalist, racially inflammatory tactic. But, as one local civil libertarian and fan of the show has pointed out, the normal course of the show when teams are integrated by force and left without any race-sensitive rules for the remainder of play is that the black people get kicked off the teams right way, and by mid-season it’s an all-white game. That was a telling social experiment. The battle of the races at least offers all races the opportunity to succeed, and it may be an interesting social experiment now that the lessons of the old formula have been absorbed.


Birth Pangs

It should be widely agreed that there was something callous in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s stating that she viewed the systematic destruction in Lebanon, with its accompanying loss of life, as hopefully representing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Of course, what was so appalling about Rice’s statement was not the mere notion in itself that some good can arise out of bad things. One can find millions of examples of the "silver lining" motif – whole cosmologies are built upon the analogy of slash and burn agriculture – the fire that destroys the last generation fertilizes the ground for the new.

What really makes the comment crass is the seeming failure to recognize that in this case, the metaphor suffers from Pollyanna optimism and a gross disproportionality. On one side, the hell of war, the wailing of men, women and children over the loss of loved ones to Israeli bombs, a society shattered, and jackboots approaching. On the other, what? Another showpiece of U.S.-certified Middle East Democracy a la Iraq?

For precedents, compare the following quotes, one from World War I, the other from World War II:

"The old world order died with the setting of that day’s sun and a new world order is being born while I speak, with birth-pangs so terrible that it seems almost incredible that life could come out of such fearful suffering and such overwhelming sorrow."

That was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia University President and leading figure in the Republican Party, looking back in 1915 to the start of World War I. It’s the same metaphor, but Butler at least does not sound cheerful. The pain of loss begins and ends the quote. Butler later received the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to "outlaw war."

Now here’s another quote, much closer in tone to Condi:

"There are rare moments in the middle of the pressures of daily life when we suddenly are struck by the feeling that everything before us is history, and that a new world is now being born. We experience the birth pangs of all that is young and new, and realize that this new world is replacing the old and sinking one, with all its peculiarities, tenseness and prejudice."

Here we have the model for Condoleeza’s optimism. Peculiarities and prejudice will be abolished in the glorious new age to be ushered in by worthy bloodshed. How fortunate we are to be witness to it!

The speaker is Josef Goebbels, giving his annual speech praising Hitler on the event of his birthday. When "Our Hitler" was delivered, it was 1941, and German casualties alone stood at perhaps a quarter million, with 40 times that yet to come. That Rice would come speaking the same words as Hitler’s propagandist, as a defender of Israel, strikes an additional, though not unfamiliar, chord of distaste.

For Goebbels, the war was a good thing, and Hitler deserved the credit: "We are experiencing the greatest miracle that history offers: a genius is building a new world." The Nazis absorbed and believed this lesson. Even after the war, Rudolf Hess wrote from Spandau prison that the rise and fall of Hitler were the "birth pangs of a new age" of Naziism. That theme is not alien to this administration. Bush’s defenders, confounded by the horrible disasters of Iraq and the Bush Presidency itself, have turned like Hess for comfort in a redemptive future: If Bush succeeds in remaking the Middle East, he will be remembered as a great president.

One final source for Rice’s statement can’t be overlooked. In the King James Bible, Matthew 24: 7-8 reads like this:

"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."

Jesus’ disciples have asked for the signs of the end times, and he describes the lead up to Armageddon. The word with which he concludes, "sorrows," is translated in some versions of the Bible as "birth pangs." The posters at end-time-obsessed websites like Rapture Ready all understand that "the birth pangs" are the signs of the last days of the elect on Earth and debate each new event in the Middle East as to its position in the run-up to the rapture. The Armageddon theme is echoed by the right’s hopeful-sounding inclusion of the Israel-Lebanon war as part of World War III.

We know that Bush’s speeches are peppered with Christian Right inside references, whether these are secret messages or comfort words. It hardly seems coincidental that John Bolton insists he is "not the Alpha and Omega" just as Condoleeza is quoted saying that indeed, these are (the?) "birth pangs."

If this is the inspiration for Condoleeza’s quote, then she has much in common with Goebbels, only it is Bush rather than Hitler, who occupies the position of a Messianic figure, so certain in his inspired path to a new order that he wants the credit for war and for everyone to think positively about what it may bring.

Or rather, Rice has much in common with Hess, who clung to the vision, cherry ripe in 1941, long after its rotten core lay exposed.


Suicide March

The Republican phrases of the year are “cut and run” and “overall war on terror.” There is a subtle contradiction in they way they are used. If one wants to withdraw from Iraq, this could only constitute a “surrender” in the war if the Iraq war were a stand-alone adventure. If it is not a mindless filibuster but really just one of myriad fronts in a larger war, then abandoning it would be something akin to, say, retreating from the Phillipines five months into World War II. History has sustained the judgment that tossing forces fruitlessly into the Japanese meat grinder was less important than husbanding resources for the next phase of war, reinforcing lines of resistance further south and east, and allowing forces to be allocated to the European theater, where it was vital to keep Russia from being lost. Lose the Phillipines for a while, keep Europe and Russia and win the war. Good trade.

If Iraq is not the war but a mere front in the war, then “cut and run” does not mean “surrender.” It just means “redeploy.” The idea that you never retreat or never redeploy implies some kind of last stand or suicide march – by an army that only knows how to move forward or die. Is that the policy?

Not that we’ve been told. We train our armies to go forward and to retreat. We send along enough fuel and supplies for a round trip. The troops expect to come back someday. Our generals are taught orderly retreat as a valid military option. Taking away that option limits choices and generally limits the means available to be effective.

Historically, units have sometimes been ordered to never retreat. Some of these armies fought through to victory, motivated by the knowledge that this was their only hope of survival. Most were annihilated.

I think if a poll were taken and people were asked, “Should generals who can no longer obtain their military objectives have the discretion to order tactical retreats when necessary to save their forces from annihilation?” the answer would be yes close to 100% of the time.


Sheriff Bozo

Why David Clarke is even running for re-election for Milwaukee County Sheriff baffles me. He has shown a stunning disregard for the rule of law. He has demonstrated arrogance and incompetence while unethically abusing his apartment to aggrandize himself and his own political ambitions.

I received a campaign flier which: 1) featured a glaring typo in a headline featuring Clarke’s ironic slogan about being above politics (or “politices”); 2) featured laudatory quotes without any attribution; 3) bragged about all the remedial on-the-job training Clarke has received; 4) listed 150 citizen endorsers, all no-names because no one with any reputation is willing to endorse him; and 5) cites his record as a beat cop, a job from which he was fired for incompetence and insubordination. I wonder how many of the listed endorsers have criminal records?

Actually, I’ve run a few of these names. Michael Lutz was the cop who shot Timothy Nabors, a black man, in a controversial episode a couple of years ago. Michel Jurkovich has some jail time on his record. Paul Kopornik is under an injunction in what looks like a domestic violence case.

My brother is a deputy, and boy does he have some tales. Clarke is a laughingstock among his men. He must go.


More Potpourri to come later if I have time:

Cows with Accents
Katie Couric Retouched
Patriot Missles
Mouse Fur
Activism Amendment
Crying Wolf
The Rapture

Update on Lebanon

On Meet the Press, Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman asked what the US would do if it frequently suffered rocket attacks from Cuba:

"What would the United States do if Miami was bombed from Cuba, or if Chicago, which is your third largest city, would be bombed the way Haifa, our third largest city is, from Canada?" (source)

Great argument, Dan, only you got it backwards, as always.

Plan B

Gee, I haven't posted in over a month. Well, I did have a run of busy-ness at my job. Anyhow, just one brief comment. I saw this report on how the right is complaining about Plan B. What I found most interesting was the repeated claim that Plan B should be banned because it helps rapists and pedophiles get rid of evidence. Apparently, in the perfect world, nine year old rape victims would all become pregnant.

War in the middle east

Here is a useful device for anyone seeking to clear-headedly assess foreign policy matters: switch around the identities of the players so that one is not biased by the identities of the parties. On many occasions, one does not even need to look to hypotheticals, because history will provide minimal pair cases for you. But for this technique to work you don't need real facts, just a set of facts, true or not, that someone believes and wants to argue from.

Today we look at a situation with the following elements:

1. Country A and Country B are neighbors with a history. They are not peacefully inclined toward one another, but we start the scenario at a juncture of relative peace.

2. Country A is the home to a group of people who are utterly and violently opposed to the regime of Country B. Among these people are some who claim land within Country B for themselves, and others who are in solidarity with those aspirations.

3. These people in Country A do not run Country A but they hold seats in its highest legislative body and are a potent political force. Many people in Country A think they're crazy, but when you consider what it would take to neutralize them as a political force, few in government have the will to stand up to them, and it's not uncommon that the executive overtly favors them.

4. These people launch small attacks on Country B. Nothing huge, because they're not really a significant military force, but people in Country B can sometimes expect their territory to be violated, particularly from the air, and people in Country B have been killed as a result of these attacks. (The number of actual attackers is small, but their base of support is broad.)

5. Country A does almost nothing to stop it. It continues to provide safe haven, while people move through its streets with signs lauding the attackers, hold parades for their most violent leaders, even as they are denounced around the world as terrorists. (But in defense of Country A, it's frankly a disaster and its government has shown almost complete inability to help its own people in the event of a serious crisis.)

6. Country B practices restraint, lodges formal protests. It has taken defensive military action in the past over these violations, but it seems they will continue until the terrorists and their supporters that want to completely eliminate B's government are dealt with decisively. Country B has a legitimate right to defend itself, of course. How far may it legitimately go to eliminate the threat of the people sheltered by Country A?

Given what's in the news these days, one might guess that country A is Lebanon, Country B is Israel, and the people operating unmolested from Lebanese territory are Hizbollah. The mainstream press accounts the facts above, and generally asserts that Israel may pulverize South Lebanon until Hizbollah either surrenders or is obliterated.

An alternative scenario has A as the United States, B as Cuba, and violent anti-Castro groups operating mainly out of Miami, but also out of New Jersey and some other places, in the Hizbollah role. One should not forget that some of these exile groups were identified by the U.S. government as domestic terrorists (when they bombed and assassinated political opponents in Miami), that they are blamed for thousands of Cuban deaths, and that their bloodiest representatives, like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles are given pardons or asylum by the federal govermnment and openly feted in Miami.

There are differences, but they do not generally favor the U.S. Unlike Lebanon, which was invaded, the U.S. has never been attacked by Cuba but itself launched an abortive invasion of Cuba, using its exile army. And the support for the Cuban exiles, including massive amounts of money, plus training, weapons, and intelligence, is tracable to the U.S. government, not some outside meddling state like Syria or Iran. These differences make average Americans more culpible in the deaths of innocent Cubans than average Lebanese are in the deaths of Israelis.

So by the logic of the media majority, Israel supporters and most of Congress, it should be legitimate for Cuba to seek to wipe out the terrorist exile groups and their supporters by mercilessly bombing Miami and Trenton. If Israel is right in all that it's doing, then Cuba should be free to destroy American bridges and hospitals first, target U.N. and Red Cross facilities, and, having rendered the civilian population incapable of medical aid or escape, rain down illegal phosphorous munitions. Once a few major U.S. cities have been turned into massive graveyards by the aerial assault, the ground troops would be expected to come in and round up the remaining anti-Castro terrorists and sympathizers.

There are two logical positions. Either:

(1) one determines that Cuba would be justified in committing massive violence to eliminate the bed of opposition it faces from its exiles in the U.S., or

(2) one determines that Israel has, at very least, gone to far in its effort to curb Hizbollah.

I choose the second.

The Beesting of Terrorism

Whereas terrorist attacks on the US get a lot of attention and a lot of rhetoric about changing the world forever, they have killed an average of something like 50 Americans per annum over the last 40-50 years, roughly comparable to the number of people killed by bee stings. Yet the attention paid to the bee sting epidemic is minimal. It has not promoted any secret wiretap programs, any massive government restructuring, or any $1.3 trillion foreign military adventures. The government is basically sitting on its hands as, insidiously, person by person, we are fallen by bees at the rate of 1 a week.

Where is our sense of perspective?

For that matter, bee stings are not even the leading cause of death in the U.S., which I know is surprising considering that they've killed more people here than international and domestic terrorism combined. Here are some other causes of death, given in BSEs (bee-sting equivalents):

Mauled by bears: 1/50
Poisoned by snakes: 1/10
Killed in deep sea diving accidents: 1/9
Electrocuted at work: 6
Plane crashes: 24
Gun accidents: 30
Killed while riding a bicycle: 48
Accidentally fall down and die: 100
Fatal asthma attack: 100
Atrial fibulation: 800
Murdered by a non-terrorist: 800 -- no, wait -- 799 (the other 1 is by a terrorist)
AIDS finally gets you: 800
Second-hand smoke: 1060 (conservative estimate)
Killing yourself intentionally (other than by smoking): 1100
Auto accidents: 1400 (not including the 48 hit while riding bikes)
Killed by doctors trying to help you: 2400
Killed by some kind of violent accident: 3000
Killed by your own dumb smoking: 7000
Got the "Big C": 12000 (overlaps the last one)

It's nice to see the government actually spening money on some of these things, even if it's chicken feed compared to the anti-terrorism investment. I mean, a trillion dollars would buy a lot of airbags and bicycle helmets, keep a few of those planes up in the air, even stop a few murders, doctors, or smokers from killing you.

Don't get me started on international comparisons, you know, all those kids that could get a cup of edible gruel and a malaria shot for 20 cents. You could really buy a lot of BSEs for a cool trillion if you could spend it anywhere in the world.

There's only one possible conclusion. It's not about lives to save. It's something else...

The Hussein Trial Dictionary

Kangaroo court. noun. The tribunal is formed under occupation and without the benefit of a "fully constitutional government." The judge is a neighbor of the alleged victims. The defense team is replaced on a whim by the judge with potted plants who make no objections during key testimony. Members of the defense team are frequently assassinated. Even if we'll never really know what happened, we can all feel happy that the man we most associated with these crimes was condemned by a kangaroo court.

Mistrial. noun. Order by the presiding judge at a judicial proceeding that the proceeding cases and be voided for incurable errors. I wonder how many defense lawyers would have to be assassinated in a U.S. court proceeding before the judge would declare a mistrial?

Hobbesian. adjective, from Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), political philosopher who outlined the need for a powerful sovereign to overcome the natural state of war of all against all. The imposition in Iraq of a weak and ineffective central government that cannot control rampant internecine violence seems almost like a demonstration of a Hobbesian argument for the restoration of Hussein.

Venezuela in USA Today

The June 5 USA Today featured a short article ("Chavez looms over Peru's runoff vote," page 8A) which described Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala as a "firey nationalist" who, if elected, would assure that Peru "tilts into Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' orbit." How can this be? Certainly, your editors must have spotted the paradox: a "firey nationalist" would assure that his country is not the satellite of anyone.

I suspect your writer and editors were blinded by their own nationalism. If the United States is the center of your political universe, as it has been for Latin American governments for most of the last century, then Peru doing what's best for Peru might seem too independent from Washington, and look like its trying to "help Chavez expand his anti-U.S. influence." But there's no chance that Peru will become a puppet of its sister Venezuela. Independence from Washington does not necessarily mean dependence on Caracas, Havana, Moscow, Beijing, or anywhere else. (In Monroe's era, it would have been London, Paris or the Hague.) Latin America is seeking to do more for itself and diversify its outside sources.

This is rational self interest, not irrational anti-Americanism. It should be also noted that Venezuela, while "anti-U.S." in the sense of opposing U.S. policy (as do most of the American people), has been a great friend to America by offering its people low-cost heating oil, hurricane relief, and free medical care, consistent with Chavez' characterization of himself and his country as pro-American.

[end letter]

What's amazing to me is the contradiction. It's just like the Washington Post article that I blogged about earlier. The conclusions directly contradict the evidence, but no matter. I will post something soon on another revealing anomaly: Chavez visits Qadaffi in Libya. The report of his visit notes the damage from U.S. airstrikes and emphasizes Qadaffi's history as an enemy of the U.S., tarnishing Chavez by association. The day before, an article on Qadaffi quotes Condoleeza Rice lauding Qadaffi as a model for other nations to follow. (Just not Venezuela, apparently.)

Venezuela Poster

I did this flier design for an upcoming event in Milwaukee; the final version has additional text overlaid giving the details of the program. What you see below is a low-quality rendering that gives the basic idea but loses a lot of detail.

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Upcoming Posts

1) Immigration IV
2) Voluntary Prisons
3) Drunk School
4) The Media Campaign Against Venezuela
5) Draft Excerpt Series No. 2
6) Guns for Prisoners

Immigration III

Thought of the moment: if unlawful presence in the US is made a crime punishable by prison, and millions of immigrants are tossed into freshly built jails (who will be left to build them?), then will they be forced to work in low-paying prison sweatshop jobs? Wouldn't that mean they were still in competition for US jobs?

I think if we put all the immigrants in prison, they should have special prisons for people whose only crime is coming to the US without papers. They shouldn't be made to live with violent criminals. Anyone in the immigrant prison who committed a violent crime would be sent to a different prison. Immigrant prisons would be as nice as possible, with juvenile and adult facilities combined and families kept together. The prisons should have bilingual schools, parks and trees, superior medical facilities, and a prisoners' union whose elected representatives work together with the correctional officers to resolve problems. Prisoners who didn't commit any other offenses could go on work release to jobs in the city. The prisoners should have their own credit union to set aside money to buy nice houses after their release, and to facilitate efficient payment of remittances. The credit union would also manage the building funds for the main prison churches. Everyone would be crossing the border trying to get into one of the nice immigrant prisons. After a while, if everything worked out well, we'd experiment with making attendance at the prison voluntary. The guards' job would then just be to keep the prison-goers safe from crime. They won't let any of the riff raff inside the prisons.

More on sex offenders

Been watching more sex offender stings on TV. Dateline and the local station with John Mercure. I really feel sorry for the wannabe sex offenders who have to get lectured on air by that fatuous scumbag. To lose a battle of wits to John Mercure -- how humiliating!

Some observations:

1) You really have to wonder whether these stings are reeling in real perps or just creating new criminals by their existence. You constantly hear of the NIH study claiming that child sex offenders are super-recidivists who on average claim scores and scores of victims. If the sting operations dipped their lure in this pool, then they should be coming up with a high proportion of repeat offenders. After the sting, the cops should be able to get warrants and find out that the internet hookup represented by the sting was, for the average person caught, number thirty in a series of attempts, of which a dozen were successful, and that the sting is leading to multiple charges. It appears, however, that this is almost never the case. The broadcasts loudly exclaim that one or two of their captures appear to have previous records, while the fact that they trumpet these exceptions so loudly itself suggests that scores apparently do not. Add this to the fact that the captures are often young and contrite, and that the bait is exceptionally alluring, and you really wonder how many of these guys, if nature had been left to its natural course, would have gone about their lives without ever being tempted to arrange a hookup with an underage girl. Don't mistake me -- some of these guys are clearly creeps. But as to the proportion that would actually, left to their own, have committed criminal acts? It may be under fifty percent.

2) Some of these guys travel hundreds of miles for the date. What does that say about the logic of laws that require past sex offenders not to live within 2000 feet of a school? The real threat is coming from farther away, right?

3) A friend of mine observed that not a lot, but a significant minority of sting victims appeared to be younger men of foreign background who seemed genuinely confused about what they had done wrong. Recall that the age of consent at common law was 10, that it remains in the low teens in many places (and under certain conditions in the U.S. -- locally, for example, I believe the law is that with parental consent, a 13-year-old can marry and have intercourse). Most cultures have a taboo against going after extremely young boys or girls sexually, but their view of teenage sexuality is not as ostrichlike and they have nothing approaching the current mass hysteria over supposed sexual predators (and neither did we a few short decades ago). Whether or not as a matter of law these captures can be prosecuted, they clearly lack any real felonious intent. You almost expect these guys to ask the pretty face from Dateline, "What, you never had sex with a 15 year old? And also, at what age did you lose your virginity?"

Also, just a little more on that smug asswipe Mercure. When he says, "what he said on the internet then was so graphically disgusting, we can't say it on TV," well, first of all, I don't trust that it's even true. You can say a lot on TV. In part, I think the failure to air the details is an acknowledgement that Mercure is a hack whose tone is too cheap and sensational to let him air what could be aired in a tone of seriousness. In court room dramas, you hear sex crimes described in graphic detail, but the censors let it go because the presentation is so fraught with high tension and seriousness. Mercure smirks through every broadcast like a corrupt hawker of patent remedies, which essentially he is. Also, is it "disgusting?" I doubt that, too. Throughout his broadcasts, he feels he has to remind the audience, "Remember, he thinks he's talking to a 14-year-old girl." If you're prone to forget that the subject of a sex act is a juvenile, then what is left from the description of a sex act that supposedly makes it so disgusting? Is the guy into scat or something? My bet, based on how they treat other sexual descriptions on these broadcasts, is there's nothing particularly gross about what was said online. Probably Mercure is just titillated himself and has to remind himself, "John, this girl is 14." In fact, it's somewhat ironic that with his plump goofy face, Mercure looks like the stereotype of the kind of guy who would lure little girls or boys with free cotton candy. He's actually quite creepy. If I were as into the whole pedophile panic as the rest of the country seems to be, I'd worry about his little boy. Anyhow, the claim that what was said was so disgusting looks to me like a way of sensationalizing and inserting Mercure's protesting-too-much value judgments instead of just telling us the facts, which as I noted, if they were really graphic, would force John to stop smirking and seeming to almost giggle through his broadcasts. I can't believe this bozo pulls in journalism awards for his crap spectacles. The awards judges could be collectively ashamed. What happened to journalism?

The State Capitols Test (English Only)

I've taken down the text of this post to see if I can get it published elsewhere. It'll come back if I can get permission from the publisher. Nobody reads this blog but me and the NSA anyway.

©2006 by Pholidote, all rights reserved.

Resign, already!

George Bush should resign.

Duh.

I should mention that many options have been floated. Plenty of others favor impeachment, which might take place under a wide variety of grounds. A few outposts of the blogosphere have raised suspicions of Bush suffering from brain damage, alcoholic relapse, or other debilitating mental conditions that cause him to act erratically, cling monomaniacally to filed positions and attribute his policies to divine instruction, which would justify a petition to have him removed for mental incompetence by the cabinet. Kevin Phillips thinks impeachment or 25th Amendment removal is inappropriate to this circumstance and we should have a Constitutional Amendment to allow a recall election. Still another proposal, which I've not actually seen, but must be out there is to radically reverse the policy of 1 USC 3, eliminating the safe harbor to protect the finality of votes for electoral college, and actually allowing the college to be reconstituted now to un-elect the President. Unelection, impeachment, psychiatric removal, recall, all have their logic.

I have a great idea for a petition. At the top is a title and general description and a place for signatories to print their full names and contact information. The petition then says: "whereupon I have signed my name next to each step which I favor in this regard." Then in three columns are about 150 provisions set out in fine print: president to be impeached for this reason, that reason, another, and another. Vice president to be impeached. To be recalled, unelected, removed on psychiatric grounds, censured. Secretary of defense to be fired or resign, etc. The great thing is, you could circulate 500 petitions at an event and wind up with 75,000 signatures. It may be my best cockeyed organizing innovation since the "secret protests" I organized against the Patriot Act. The sponsors and locations were undisclosed, but bases on the press they received, they were very effective!

Anyhow, beyond the obvious reasons of criminality, corruption, incopetence and political extremism, we have a new basis to ask Bush and his lackeys and cronies to vacate their positions of authority -- unpopularity.

There are plenty of fictional stories of presidents, and one real life story -- that of Richard Nixon -- where the protagonist has been mortally politically injured and decides that the only path is to leave for the good of the country. Of course Nixon had the incentive that he was destined to go in any event, but within that context, he still had a decision whether to fight to the end or give it up. In the premiere episode of Commander in Chief, Geena Davis' character Mackenzie Allen is set upon resignation (until she isn't). Where the leader is a noble hero, nothing seems to better display that nobility than the willingness to sacrifice the personal holding of the office for the protection of the office itself.

A president with a 29% overall approval rating is severely hampered in ability to govern. Those whose support is necessary to govern are inclined to distance themselves from whatever the leper of the White House says or does. What used to be a reverse Midas touch only for implementation of policy (the cronies placed in charge can't make anything work) has become a reverse Midas touch politically. Since the problem is personal unpopularity, the obvious solution is to lose the face-in-chief and let someone else use the bully pulpit.

There is moreover the simple fact that in a democracy, being vastly disliked signals illegitimacy. It's hard to justify remaining when departing would be viewed by the majority as a gift. The illegitimacy is also seen abroad and damages the credibility of the nation, just as foreign leaders see these numbers and can fairly presume that the President, speaking for the US in foreign policy matters, speaks only for a lame duck government and not for a nation.

As the Bush presidency unravels and new depths of incompetence and corruption are exposed, the office of the presidency takes some of the brunt of the exposure.

Bush's unpopularity misses the national record by only about the combined margins of error of the two polls. State by state, he retains his positive polarity only in Idaho, Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah, which if I'm not mistaken, is three more states than those with majorities approving of Dead-Eye Dick.

More importantly, no president has been rated so low for so long. This is no temporary bump that can be fixed by perseverence. The presidency is dead in the water with no momentum, no credibility and no ideas. It's hard to imagine why anyone would stay in the job.

The press corps should be asking Bush 1) can you think yet of any mistake that you've made in office? 2) have you considered resigning for the good of the country? 3) have any of the members of your inside circle brought this option to your attention? 4) why on earth are you still in office when there's so much brush left to clear back at the ranch? 5) Is there anything you plan to do before January 2009 that someone else couldn't do better? 6) By staying, aren't you putting your own selfish interests ahead of the national interest and the wishes of more than 200 million Americans who do not support you?

Oh, just go already.

Venezuela smeared in WaPo

Monte Reel’s May 10 article on the crime issue in Venezuela was enlightening, even if it took some reading between the lines to see just how well the facts support the government’s position, which was unrepresented by any quotes in the article. In fact the entire article was an interesting exercise in propaganda. The facts supporting the current government’s policy were mostly there, albeit buried in dependent clauses and otherwise disjointed over the span of the article.

As the article notes, opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which the article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. The United Nations figures cited in the article, readily available online, are restricted to gun homicides but show only 22.15 deaths per 10,000 capita-annum in 2005. Hence, though we are not told how much the homicide rate has come down, it is possible that Chavez has succeeded in reducing it by as much as half.

The article notes that Chavez has prosecuted police, promised reforms of corrupt police departments (which remain mainly holdovers from the pre-Chavez era), has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has committed his energies to attacking inequality, which is the single factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide (the second greatest factor is democracy, which has also increased, and the third is prominence of young males in the population, something beyond government control). It may also be noted that his government has covered the bases by also increasing sentences for most crimes.

The article quotes an expert, Rafael Muñoz, as saying that “historically,” Venezuela’s leaders have tolerated crime because it generated fear and made people easier to govern. Muñoz does not specifically name Chavez, however, since his presidency has apparently seen the first sustained decrease in violence in many years.

As a close student of the Americas in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I recall reading a 1996 report of how Venezuela’s homicide rate nearly doubled in the first half of the ‘90s – to less than it is now. Combining this information with that presented in the article, it appears that most of the current crime problem came into being well before Chavez was president, and has declined since. Specifically, the article states that the 1990s saw homicide rates that averaged less than half of the 37 per 10,000 capita-annum averaged over recent years. Assuming they came close to half, then for the ‘90s, which began with so little crime, to have reached this average, I estimate that it must have been about 30 in 1999. In other words, it had already reached crisis levels when Chavez came to power. It continued rising at first, but has since leveled off and has fallen to lower levels than seen in many years.

Chavez’s opponents also apparently believe according to the article that he has stimulated class violence against the rich; but the only named source which the article cites relating to this idea is a psychoanalyst for the rich who has noted the collective increased fear of class violence among the élite; the article presents no evidence that the fear are rational, and in fact its discussion of the fear as a treatable psychological problem suggests it isn’t, but then the article separates the accusation from the therapist’s account by several paragraphs, dissociating the irrational claim from the evidence of its irrationalism.

Finally, Chavez’s opponents argue that he needs to do more thoroughly revolutionize policing, taking on the police as an institution root and branch. The complaint is an odd and contradictory one: generally, the opponents of the Bolivarian Revolution have been negativists who favor the status quo ante. On this issue, however, they have suddenly, without any record of past advocacy, begun to demand revolutionary change. Anyone familiar with the problem of entrenched corruption in police departments, as we have in many American cities, knows just how intractable such problems can be. Chavez has shown more inclination and infinitely greater capacity to attempt such a Herculean task than any of his predecessors or opponents. Hence what his opponents demand is now ironically misguided and opportunistic. If they were serious about police reform, the best bet would be to move to strengthen Chavez, not tear him down.


Here's a drastically reduced version of this post to be sent as a letter to the Post:

Monte Reel’s May 10 article on the crime issue in Venezuela was enlightening, even if it took some reading between the lines to see how the facts support Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. As the article notes, his opponents have tried to make an issue out of Venezuela’s homicide rate, which your article notes peaked three years ago at roughly 44 per 10,000 capita-annum in 2003, and has since come down. (In fact, the United Nations figures cited in the article reflect only half as many deaths in 2005.) Chavez has prosecuted police – something expert Rafael Muñoz calls historically rare, promised reforms of the corrupt police departments left from the previous era, has initiated programs to get guns off the streets, and has attacked inequality, (the factor that correlates best with homicides worldwide). As facts in the article ironically demonstrate, Chavez is the leader best poised to execute the revolutionary reforms championed by his (misguided and opportunistic) opposition.

Immigration II

So I was in a 70,000+ person protest Monday (Well, May 1 -- this post has been sitting in the hopper). But something really needs to be done to advance the message beyond the one that illegal aliens don't like the Sensenbrenner bill.

The Family Research Council, always a pseudo-Christian front for anti-Christian values, found it necessary to poll its members on the immigration issues, and found that its members hate undocumented Mexican laborers almost as much as they do gays who won't submit to curative electroshock therapy. Now that Christian Right leaders know what to think from the science of polling, they will work hard on fixing the intelligence to support the policy, reading new anti-immigration messages into the book of Romans, and making sure the apostles of questionable parentage have their papers in order. Exception: Immigrant fetuses can only be deported to countries allowing abortion once they have been brought to term and birthed; until then they are refugees making a continual, albeit silent scream for asylum.

What are the arguments we need to advance against stupid anti-immigrant legislation? Here's a start:

1) The burden of proof would be on those seeking change. If what we got ain't broke, don't fix it. If we convince people of this obvious fact, we can sit down, because dummies like Senselessbrenner shoot themselves in the brain every time they open their mouths.

2) Immigration benefits the receiving country in almost every measurable way. It's not us versus them. It's us versus stupid legislation. There are a few problems associated with illegal immigration, but they're small compared to the benefits. Immigrants promote and support the economy as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and innovators. Because they are disproportionately willing and able to work, they especially contribute to keeping social security solvent. They benefit us culturally and through their contribution of diversity. Capitalist economic theory supports the notion that the influx of immigrants is a net good to both the sending and receiving countries. To achieve maximum efficiency, labor must be able to flow freely to meet demand. Immigrants receive more than they would at home, and can send back surplus as remittances. But their contribution of productivity is to the receiving country, and they also generate part of its internal market.

3) Immigrants are people. Penalizing them arbitrarily is just harm for harm's sake. I would not reflexively call it racist, but if it has a rational basis it is the burden of advocates to state what that is. So far, they look pretty damned racist. The argument that they are here illegally and that alone should justify punishment is actually a pretty lame argument. Illegal immigration is a wink-wink crime, like speeding. The fact is, and I've said this before, prosecution of crimes is both discretionary and rare. If all crimes were enforced and punished, there would be no one left to keep the country going, because we'd all be in prison. There's always something. Most criminals don't even know they're criminals. Of course, in the case of immigration, we frequently enounter families, and we always encounter communities, whose members differ in status and would be arbitrarily sundered by enforcement. To the extent one is pro-family and pro-community, this is a particular value of staying the hand of enforcement. Moreover, immigrant status is already disadvantaged in so many ways, it seems bizarre to go out of one's way to attach additional disadvantages.

4) Various sources of hypocrisy. Apart from the real First Nations, we all came here from elsewhere, as settlers and invaders. We took 1/3 of Mexico, and many Mexicans migrated freely before the Mexican War between these lands, and those to the south, so that many immigrants have longer ties to the land than those born here. We have promoted immigration to America by propaganda claiming to offer greater wealth and opportunity and fewer social problems than is true. And we promoted it by NAFTA, which destroyed the Mexican agricultural economy, forcing Mexicans out of their traditional occupations, and homes.

Well, this is just a few points. Someone needs to do the research and come up with a big ten list of points. C'mon somebody, I wanna see it.

Reasons for Peace

About 20 years ago, when I was more involved than I am today with the problems of Central America, I put together a short list of 10 reasons to oppose U.S. intervention there. Recently I tried to reconstruct that effort and come up with a general list of arguments generally against armed conflict. Of course, the weight given to each argument can vary vastly with the particulars of a given situation. There are certainly occasions where armed struggle is a justifiable response to an oppressive regime, and for every unjustified aggressor there is a defender who can find justification in his defensive posture. That said, even the good guys in a war tend to underestimate at the outset the degree to which they are choosing a dark path for others who are innocent or neutral. Here's a revised version of the list, subject to further revision.

Presumption
1. It is war, not opposition to war, that requires justification. In public opinion, political science, anthropology, religion, and law, peace is assumed superior and normal and not requiring of justification, whereas war, by definition entailing organized campaigns of mutual destruction, is always undesirable of itself. (This argument holds most strongly against aggressive war, preemptive or preventive war, or any escalation in hostilities among parties at war; it holds least against the defenders who use force merely to survive or rescue, repel invasion, or liberate themselves from forceful captivity.)

Multiplier Effects
2. The party to a war who decides to initiate or escalate the conflict may anticipate that its action will be met tit for tat if its enemy has the power to do so, and a powerful enemy may respond tenfold or hundredfold. Because the enemy's response is a predictable consequence of the other side's decision, that side bears some degree of responsibility for it. (This is a difficult moral issue -- if a cause is righteous, one should not necessarily be held hostage by the fact that an opponent is prepared to resort to atrocities; nevertheless, what is said here is correct -- the initiator must bear some responsibility for even a disproportionate reaction, if it was foreseeable.)

3. Furthermore, this response may not be merely mutual, but may involve embroiling multiple parties on multiple sides in an expanding conflict.

4. At very least, the eruption of a conflict in one place makes leaders everywhere wary of the prospect of being attacked, leading them to focus on security and defense. (The exception to the rule is when a bully who is already feared gets bogged down fighting a challenger; then the whole world feels they have a period of relative security while the aggressor is preoccupied.)

5. At the end of a successful war the victor may garner a reward. When this happens it teaches the universal lesson that war pays.

6. Because wars are won by the strong, rather than the just, the outcomes tend to favor the strong, but be unjust. While victory by the strong tends to engender some stability, perpetuated injustice also creates a constant pressure to revive the conflict. The issues that led to the war may go unresolved. In many cases, the victor demands unfair reparations and humiliates the defeated, which especially tends toward revival of the conflict. The classic example is World War II.

7. The duration and expense of war is almost always underestimated by the aggressor; in cases where there have been historical exceptions to this, successful aggressors have frequently grown overconfident, been contained and rolled back.

8. A common outcome that extends the effects of war beyond original predictions is extended occupation.

9. The move to war generally elevates the status of the military. Military technology advances rapidly as new weapons are field tested, and needs are identified. Conversely, diplomatic skills and abilities atrophy. War is accompanied more often than we like to acknowledge by unshared sacrifice and profiteering, the ultimate result of which is the relative strengthening of those parts of society most willing to invest in the suffering of others.


Death and Injury
10. War kills. Loss of life is not only a loss to the individual, but to all who are bound to him or her by social connections, family, or affinity of varying degrees of intimacy. To the extent that war kills those of working age, it depletes the social investiment in rearing and training productive members of society. To the extent the victims have special gifts, there is the additional loss of their anticipated future creative production. Losses of life due to war are usually underestimated or undervalued and often deliberately concealed. In recent wars we've seen loss of civilian life on the opposing side minimized, loss of life by opposing forces either exaggerated or ignored, and, most strikingly, loss of friendly forces downplayed or concealed. Lowballing KIA tallies of U.S. forces has been noted in Vietnam, Panama, and the first Gulf War. In situations approaching genocide, birth rates also typically plummet, meaning further loss of potential life.

11. Alongside death run injury and sickness. It has been noted that in recent decades medical advances have sharply upset the ratio of dead to wounded, yielding many more maimed and dismembered survivors. Exposure to foreign climate and pathogens, shortages or contamination of rations, airborne smoke, and toxic munitions such as depleted uranium shells, the side effects of preventive measures, and chemical agents used for defoliation and illmnination have led to post-war syndromes affecting large numbers of veterans. Chemical agents, along with mines and unexploded ordinance, also pose a long-lasting problem for local populations.

12. Mental illness, including PTSS, affects a substantial portion of veterans. There is also the problem of secondary victimization: unlike natural forces of destruction, organized violence takes a psychological and spiritual toll on the aggressor, which alienates him from nonmilitary companions and family. Maladaption of veterans is one reason war is associated with increased rates of divorce and violent crime. The effect on soldiers is increased when they are placed in an environment where war crimes are being committed. The secondary effects there are profound -- many mothers would rather their children die or suffer torture than become torturers themselves.

Economic, environmental, and cultural losses.
13. Property destruction is of course vast. The scale of economic loss is enourmous and seldom appropriately measured. A billion dollar reconstruction contract is treated as an economic plus while infact its necessity is always a greater negative.

14. Environmental destruction, sometimes severe and long term. Oil fires set in the first Gulf War produced pollution and climate changes in China.

15. Loss of artifacts of historical, cultural and artistic significance, not including great artists who are killed. (A small recoupment of this loss comes from the inspirational effect of destruction -- without tragedy and atrocity we would not have Picasso's Guernica.)

16. Other economic costs, including production, maintenance and testing of weapons stockpiles between wars, pay to soldiers, fuel costs, research and development costs, opportunity cost, and the multiplier effect of lost yield on investment. (Although it's common to point to serendipitous discoveries emerging from military R&D, such research generally does not require war; war is seen perversely as a necessary goad to investment for those unwilling to support research for its peaceful benefits.)

17. There has been a long-demonstrated pattern of association between military presence and sexual ills -- harassment and domestic violence, forced prostitution, rape, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS. This is not referring to the use of rape as a criminal tool of war, which is another matter of concern, but simply noting that with the male dominance of the military and its culture of fetishized violence, sexual abuses tend to accompany the military, whether it is AIDS in Honduras and the Philippines epicentered on US bases there, or the abuses at Tailhook.


Political degradation.
18. War is often conducted illegally. The U.S. has a long and terrible record of war crimes, and as a general matter of policy uses controversial weapons and standards of engagement. Troops perform "body checks" -- killing the wounded rather than taking them prisoner, classify journalists, broadcast centers, civilians, emergency medical vehicles, and other targets as legitimate, engage in torture and assassination campaigns, and massacres. Its current doctrine of engaging in unprovoked wars of aggression is clearly unlawful. War itself is always unlawful ab initio for one side (though in a domestic insurrection, the original crime may be only municipal). The occupation of Iraq is illegal, the imposition of Iraqi leaders and laws and the sponsorship of Constitutional referenda were all illegal.

19. War is accompanied by, and used to justify, domestic oppression.

20. War is accompanied by propaganda. Its first casualty is truth.

21. War is accompanied by campaigns of dehumanization and organized promotion of hatred of the "enemy."

22. It usually operates on either forced conscription, economic draft, or lies.

23. There is a substantial pattern of nations or groups at war tolerating or encouraging the cultivation of illegal narcotics in order to help fund clandestineor overt operations, or as a quid pro quo for the military support of local druglords.

24. Because anything goes in a state of war, allies are made who are as bad or worse than the enemies.


Unjust ends.
25. Because they are politically so useful, wars may seek to wag the dog, i.e., raise the standing of strongmen, dictators and commanders in chief, at the expense of democratic government.

26. By nature, wars seek to impose one will over another’s sovereignty. What is desired by that will is almost always in the "national interest" (really the interest of the segment of society controlling the state) of the aggressor nation, and not in the interest of the land attacked. Positive purposes are used as pretexts, but the conduct of the war generally undermines these pretexts. The most common goals of US wars are to maintain effective control of foreign resources and to punish independent development that might be emulated by neighboring states.

Draft Excerpt Series No. 1

I've decided to post bits and pieces of books I'm writing as I write them. These are copyright me, now, but I probably don't need to say that since no one ever visits this site anyway.

In spite of the motto that the Ten Commandments are just that -- Commandments, as opposed to suggestions or helpful hits, like the kind you would follow to get candle wax out of shag carpet, there is a strong case to be made that the Commandments were meant to be broken. Some of the arguments that support this claim are:

1. They are widely labeled as something less than law, and seem to have a dual status, not so much that they clearly are not commandments, as something more subtle and schitzophrenic. The Ten (wink, wink, nudge nudge, don't tell Yahweh but I've got my fingers crossed) Commandments. This is true in the Bible and continues to the present day.

2. They are not enforceable; and in fact not even keepable. I mean, you can covet all you like. You can't help it and nobody's going to know. Just don't be obvious about it. Being obvious, well, that would just wreck everything.

3. They come with a judicial rule which appears designed to help hide noncompliance.

4. Their vagueness makes it possible to get around them.

5. Their punishment is too draconian to expect normal people to execute it. There is a long tradition of doctrines to aid their nonenforcement.

6. To fulfill their function of propitiating the wrath of a distant deity, they did not need to punish crime which was not exposed.

7. The entire context and subsequent story suggests that compliance was the exception and not the rule. These were people inculcated for generations to present the pretense of obedience.

Lots more to say, but gotta go.

Two new Democratic Party memes

Watching Tom Vilsack (Democratic governor of Iowa) on Tavis Smiley last night, I recognized a trope I had last heard from John Kerry on Meet the Press. The idea, and I will paraphrase, though if I had more energy I would link to the transcripts, is that Iraq is a mess and the Iraqis aren't doing their job to fix it, have not yet opted for peace, and need to be pressured by Americans who are sacrificing for them while they ungratefully decline to solve their own problems.

Vomit.

The U.S. occupies Iraq. Iraq has no central government. Virtually all of the plagues visiting Iraq to day were inaugurated on the heels of an American-made war. Also arriving in the soldiers' dufflebags were most of the Iraqi exile "leaders" who are dickering for the scraps of political power falling from the mouth of the U.S. proconsul. The U.S., in violation of international law, sponsored a new, godawful constitution and a raft of unjust laws. Its project for most of the occupation has been to arm and train the sectarian battalions that are only nominally distinct from the militias engaged in the growing civil war. Legally and morally, the U.S. is responsible for all of it, not just its guilty acts but its guilty omissions, loosing mere anarchy in the cradle of Western Civilization.

Blaming "the Iraqis" for allegedly not wanting peace and normalcy is about as cynical and grotesque as anything Don Rumsfeld has come up with. Let me call here for Vilsack, Kerry, and all their fellow-thinkers to resign today.

The second meme, this one courtesy of Nancy Pelosi and some other Congressional Democrat I heard today on NPR, is that we should all blame the Republicans in Congress who rubber stamped the last energy bill, and/or the "oil men" in the White House and VP's residence, for the pox of high gas prices on all our houses. It's not that I disagree with the claim that it's no coincidence gas prices have reached historical heights under a big oil president. But I think high gas prices themselves should not be demonized. Windfalls to the price-gouging suppliers who've posted record profits, yes. Hardships upon poor homeowners struggling to heat their homes during the most recent bizarre late-April cold snap, yes. People forced to commute long distances because the regional planners, developers and megamall proprietors opted for policies that undermine neighborhoods and promote sprawl, yes. Let's tax the oil execs and help the commuters and the poor homesteads in the temperate zone.

But high gas prices? All in all, a good thing. We need to encourage conservation, help arrest global warming, encourage better planning, better vehicles, smarter consumption. I won't cry for the guy whose monster pickup, Hummer, or SUV can't make it to the end of his driveway on a gallon of gas.

The Gousha & Hagerty Show

An update to the last post, which I should have made Sunday night. That night Mike Gousha had a lengthy interview with Milwaukee Police Chief Nan Hagerty. More discussion about the credibility of the police department and their integrity. Gousha went the entire interview without mentioning any of the episodes of police misinformation carried unquestioningly by his news reports. It should be noted that a public meeting at city hall had just been held and that members of the public had independently raised the same issues as my last post. They noted that the entire community, and the African American community in particular, had been libeled in the police misinformation about the two missing boys. If Gousha were the journalist he pretends to be and not just a pretty face, he might have asked:

Who came up with the idea of announcing publicly that the police had solid information that someone knew the whereabouts of the boys?

What people in the police department knew that was a lie?

Is there any procedure for review the appropriateness of incorporating particular misinformation into the department's public statements?

Was that process folowed here?

Who if anyone signed off on the lies?

Were the appropriate deciders aware of the lie, or were they misled by lower-level officers?

If the lies were signed off on, what is the official justification of the Department for lying?

Did the department consider the fact that lying could injure public trust in the department in the future?

Did it consider that its statements denigrated a particular community with already strained relations with the police?

If the lies were against policy, has anyone been disciplined?

If so, who, and what is the nature of the discipline?

Has the department reevaluated its approach in light of the intensity of trust issues after the Jude verdict?

The official line from the MPD is that it's just a handful of lower level officers who are untrustworthy and the top of the department is credible. How can this be reconciled with what appears to be an institutional pattern of official lying by the department?

But, of course, this was a suck-up no-heat interview with Channel 4 continuing in its predictable role as a shill for the department. Surprise, surprise!

More against the local news

Last night Channel 4 had another one of its reports by John Mercure pushing for a new law restricting where sex offenders can live. It began with Mercure stating how outraged he was as a father of two, and went to interviews in which he asked residents loaded questions about "perverts" living nearby, soliciting their support for a proposed law. He interviewed one legislator who supported the law, and no one opposed to it. He noted that one agency of state government had claimed the law would be expensive and difficult to enforce, but still has not bothered to tell viewers that the cost of the proposal runs upwards of $60 million, or that several very careful research studies have failed to show that such a proposal would have any beneficial effect. You can agree or disagree with Mercure, but it's offensive to present this kind of strident, one-sided, know-nothing editorial as objective journalism.

On a separate front, please note that Milwaukee was the center of national attention because of the disappearance of two boys, Purvis Virginia Parker and Quadrevion ("Dre") Henning, who finally showed up drowned in a park lagoon with no evidence of foul play. This news station had almost daily reports for more than three weeks (often the lead story despite the absence of any real news), helping to drum up a massive popular response with people distributing fliers with the names and faces of the missing kids, billboards, fundraisers, statements by public officials, etc. For weeks, the station reported over and over as a fact that police were certain that someone in the community had knowledge relating to the disappearance of the boys but had failed to come forward. This claim was tied to a police campaign to oppose the allegedly widespread mentality of "no snitching" -- the police want people to report on each other. The implication was that the two boys were victims of foul play which was known to third parties who were covering up the crime. This was portrayed as a certainty.

Mentioned briefly but without any sort of comment or reaction, the Police Department admitted that they were "just grasping" when they claimed to know that someone in the community had information. In other words: (1) They lied; (2) They lied brazenly; (3) They libeled the entire community; (4) They especially libelled the black community; (5) They promoted their own agenda; (6) They let a massive set of actions grow out of their misinformation; (7) They admittedly had no reason to think their lie would have any practical benefit in finding the boys, whom they almost certainly understood were almost certainly dead.

What's interesting to me is that, as previously blogged here, the Police not long ago made a series of erroneous public statements based on anti-black stereotypes that two other black kids were fleeing an abusive mother who had 13 kids (implied: probably for the welfare). The local news bought into it, reported it as fact without any investigation, and later revealed that they had been lied to. Without any comment, apparent anger or disappointment, any calls for change, any reflection on how they'd been used to libel a community.

It's even more interesting that the lead story in this night's news report had been the issue of the credibility of the police department following the not-guilty verdict received by three Milwaukee police officers accused of taking part in the savage beating of a man of color, Frank Jude. Numerous other officers were at the scene but no one would share any information incriminating their brother officers, leading to a transparent obstruction of justice for Jude, and massive community protests. Despite the fact that the news department was leading with a story on the police-public credibility gap, here was the news that the department had lied about the two missing boys, promoting their own agenda and libeling the community in the process, and the news staff was either too dim-witted or too complicit to make the obvious connection. The head of the police department, and ordinary police officers not involved with the Jude case, were treated as heroically fighting off the effects of a few bad apples, but if this is the case, why do the police appear to be insitutionally, at the highest levels, appear to be spreading misinformation about cases involving the black community over and over again?

Is Channel 4 brain-dead (some evidence for this), or are they intentionally not remarking on the routine racist misinformation spread by the MPD because they understand they are complicit in that scandal by never disclaiming or doublechecking the department's dubious claims?