Author's posts
Jun 06 2009
Who severed Hilzoy’s corpus callosum?
I make it point to visit Obsidian Wings daily, and hilzoy is a favorite of mine, because she’s pretty darn thoughtful, but something was seriously off kilter today in her post about Obama’s Cairo speech.
This bit from Obama’s speech also struck me as very strong:
“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.”
The normal criticism of Palestinian violence is moral. That is as it should be, and Obama does not slight that: “That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.” But that criticism leaves open the possibility of framing the debate over Palestinian violence as one of principle versus effectiveness. As long as it is framed that way, one can understand (though not agree with) Palestinians who say: you’d think differently if you didn’t have a state; if it was your land that was constantly being seized, and your pregnant wife who had to wait for hours at a checkpoint to see a doctor. You’d put aside your principles and do what works.
That’s why it’s immensely important to say, clearly, that violence is not just wrong, but ineffective.
It’s not so much that I agree or disagree with the double-barreled blast of “morality AND effectiveness” lines of argument. It’s kind of like the torture debate: it’s not only immoral; it plain doesn’t work reliably. Blam! Blam! You dead! Rhetorically speaking. That’s fine.
The part of the argument that indicates a severe case of hemi-neglect (when a brain-damaged patient can easily lift one arm on command, but when asked to lift they other, they say, “What other?”), was when she suggested:
This bit from Obama’s speech also struck me as very strong.
Jun 05 2009
Oratin’: Select takes on high oratory.
Obama gave another good speech, light-years beyond Bush in both content and tenor. Good. He said a lot of good and truthy things, including admitting the Mossadegh regime change thingy back in the day (I thought he wasn’t interested in “looking back,” but oh well, I guess it’s okay if it’s looking far enough back, b-b-but not too recently back,, though). Now maybe he’ll go to, say, La Paz, or something, and re-heat that part of the speech about regime change and self-determination and non-interference.
If my insect-like compound eyes are channeling the individual optics properly down the optic fiber-like shafts of my individual rhabdomeres without excessive leakage of light, then there appear to be a wide variety of perspectives on that speech.
Booman made a credible argument that Obama’s speech was frankly and thoroughly progressive, and we should strongly support his worldview.
On the other hand, Chris Floyd shrilly howls unrepentantly apostatic, heretical Commie-plotting-turned-al-Qaeda sympathizing lunacies such as this:
During the speech, we heard many nicely-turned phrases and heartfelt pieties from President Obama as he sought to “correct the misunderstandings” that Muslims have about America and its benevolent policies around the world. But what speaks far more loudly to the reality of those policies is a small story already being shunted aside by the tsunami of gushing press devoted to the empty flapping of presidential jaws in Cairo — the suicide of a Yemeni man held captive, without charges, in the Guantanamo concentration camp since 2002.
Fortunately, my bulbous compound eyes wrap fully around my cephalic structure giving me 360+ degrees of vision, and I can see the optics on virtually all disparate points of view, even those coming out of my own ass.
Here’s a few more of my favorites:
By: Bernard Chazelle
Tomorrow, the president of the United States will give a speech in Cairo that the White House has modestly called an “address to the Muslim World.” I saw on their web site a list of Obama’s forthcoming speeches.
June 04, 2009: Address to the Muslim World
August 12, 2009: Address to HumanityOctober 07, 2009: Address to All Eukaryotic Life Forms and Wiccans
November 23, 2009: Address to the Universe
December 15, 2009: Address to AIPAC
Feb 6, 2010: Address to All Deities
April 5, 2010: Address to My Puppy
Obama Calls for Something, Anything in Speech in Egypt
CAIRO – Speaking before a large crowd at Cairo University in Egypt’s sprawling capital city, President Barack Obama urged the Muslim world to “look over there,” causing several dozen in the audience to turn their heads to see what he was pointing at in the vague middle distance.
“But seriously,” Mr. Obama continued. “The time of the past is in the past, and the future is that which lies before us.” Pausing for effect, he added, “The present is now,” drawing applause.
The thing about speeches is that they sound differently when you are in a refugee camp vs. when you are updating your status on Facebag.
I’ve heard a similar distortion can occur when you are unwittingly transformed into many separate pieces on behalf of the person speaking.
Jun 04 2009
Government doesn’t provide services to rich people
I’m morphing into a radicalized commie by the minute anymore. The mentality of our public officials regarding their responsibilities to society shows a utterly staggering disregard for the lower classes. The editor of the SF Bay Guardian, Tim Redmond, is equally incredulous at the world view of our ruling elites in the barking-mad basket case that is California:
The absolute most stunning statement of how messed up the state of California is emerged last week from the state director of finance, explaining why the proposed budget cuts fall so heavily on services for the poor. Let me quote directly from The New York Times:
“Government doesn’t provide services to rich people,” Mike Genest, the state’s finance director, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. “It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class.
“You have to cut where the money is,” he added.
Um … government doesn’t provide services to rich people? What about, say, the roads they drive on, and the airports they fly in and out of? What about the vast sums the state spends putting out fires that threaten wealthy enclaves in Southern California? What about the public education system, which trains workers for businesses? What about the entire criminal justice system, which exists to a significant extent to prevent poor people from taking rich people’s money?
Do you think Sergey Brin and Larry Page would have become Google billionaires if the Internet – developed and paid for by the government – didn’t exist?
(Emphasis supplied)
Jun 03 2009
Openly hostile: Obama has squandered the benefit of my doubt.
Superficially, Obama remains an appealing personality of great apparent warmth, intelligence, and compassion, which initially made his promise of change credible. Here’s a partial list of grievances accumulated against him in his short tenure as President via Paul Street that not even the warmest, fuzziest Al Rodgers’ diary could redress.
* Significantly expand the reach and intensity of imperial violence (replete with the mass slaughter of civilians and the related escalation of targeted assassinations) in South Asia.
* Promote a notorious assassin and death-squad leader (Lt. General Stanley A McChrystal – former chief of the military’s special Joint Special Operations Command) to the position of Commander of U.S. Forces in the newly merged “Af-Pak” war theater. [1]
* Sustain the criminal occupation of Iraq beneath rhetoric of withdrawal. [2]
* Increase “defense” (empire) spending, consistent with the following statement in a report issued by the leading Wall Street investment firm Morgan Stanley one day after Obama’s presidential election victory: “As we understand it, Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend.”[3]
* Revive military commissions.
* Continue the practice of renditions.
* Maintain secret prisons for persons “held on a short-term, transitory basis.”
* Continue the unspeakable torture of prisoners by an “extrajudicial terror squad” (Jeremy Scahill’s description of the Pentagon’s sadistic “Immediate Reaction Force” in Cuba) at Guantanamo Bay. [4]
* Advance the policy of “indefinite detention” (potentially permanent incarceration) for Guantanamo prisoners for whom no legally compelling evidence can be marshaled.
* Intimidate England (with a threat to withhold intelligence data on potential terrorist attacks!) into preventing a Guantanamo victim from having his day in court on the Bush administration’s torture practices. [5]
* Sustain the Bush administration’s abrogation of habeas corpus rights in regard to the roughly 600 “enemy combatants” kept at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (where people rendered out of other countries like Yemen and England can be considered “war [-zone]” prisoners!. [6]
* Advance nauseatingly specious legal and moral arguments (“better to look forward than backward”) to prevent serious federal investigation of the Bush administration’s human rights crimes.
* Sustain George W. Bush’s domestic wiretapping program.
* Invoke the “state secrets” (akin to the divine right of kings) doctrine to prevent disclosure of evidence in response to lawsuits emerging from Bush era rendition and surveillance policies.
* Suppress photographic evidence of U.S. torture practices.
* Justify all this and more in the name of the supposed “global war on terror” that was supposedly launched in legitimate defense against the supposedly unprovoked jetliner attacks of September 11, 2001.
* Disregard qualified progressive defenders of civil liberties and human rights from consideration for appointment to succeed Supreme Justice David H. Souter and to thereby counter the hard right leanings of the court’s conservative majority. [7]
* Send clear signals of intent to roll back and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare benefits.
* Betray campaign pledges to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to insert stronger labor and environmental protections. [7A]
* Betray campaign pledges of serious intent to advance an elementary and overdue labor law reform (the Employee Free Choice Act).
* Force and approve an automobile industry re-structuring that drastically cuts domestic autoworkers’ jobs, wages and benefits while subsidizing General Motors’ further shifting of jobs abroad. [8]
* Advance a tepid, business-friendly health care “reform” that leaves the leading parasitic insurance corporations (major campaign sponsors of his) in power.
* “Methodically erase single-payer advocates from the picture” (Glen Ford) of health care reform despite the fact that a majority of Americans have long favored a single-payer (“Medicare for all”) health insurance system. [9]
* Spend trillions of federal dollars on taxpayer handouts to giant Wall Street firms who spent millions on his campaign and who drove the economy over the cliff. Obama’s Wall Street bailout rejects the elementary bank nationalizations and public financial restructuring that are required to put the nation’s credit system on a sound and socially responsible basis, choosing instead to guarantee the financial, insurance, and real estate industries’ toxic, hyper-inflated assets while keeping existing Wall Street management in place. It amounts to a giant effort to “keep perpetrators afloat” (liberal economist James Gailbraith) through a scheme in which the government takes more than 90 percent of the risk but private investors reap at least half the reward.
I could go on. It’s not a pretty story. And it’s only going to get worse.
Jun 01 2009
Genetic Conflicts of Interest in Female Reproductive Rights.
There are several related serious issues concerning female reproductive rights that are seldom discussed, which to my mind form inherent and sound biological reasons for reproductive rights to favor female choice. These biological facts point to conflicts of interest for males that under any rational system would disqualify males from interfering decisively in female choice.
(This diary has been exhumed from this graveyard, where it was originally interred in 2006. )
May 30 2009
Liberal/Conservative Disconnect: Evolution & Free Markets
There is a major disconnect between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals believe (mostly) in the science of evolution, but reject unrestrained capitalism.
Conservatives tend to exalt unrestrained capitalism, but reject evolution.
These are core philosophical antagonisms; and, of course, they are inconsistent with one another. In both cases, unrestrained competition is viewed as good/bad.
Why is Natural Selection lauded, but capitalism rejected, and vice versa, by the respective sides?
I have some thoughts, but will hold off on expressing them for now.
Have at it.
May 23 2009
Namby pamby NIMBY? Vincent Van Gogh was short!
For centuries Americans stood tall in the world. Literally. It would appear that the Dutch are now taller than us. The average Dutch man is 6’1″, whereas his American counterpart is 5’9″, only one inch taller than the average Dutch woman. Jiminy crickets: In one century they’ve had to redesign their ceilings and doorways and put extensions on the their beds! They’re better looking and smarter! Tall dudes make more money! And get better chicks. They are now using their advantage in stature to question our manliness. Because of the situation down at Guantanamo–the fact that we’re piss-scared of giving due process to the detainees in American courts– the towering Dutch are calling us “pussies.”
If you live outside of the US, or the US centric bubble, then the incredible stupidity of the this viewpoint is obvious.
Where does the World Court reside? It resides in the Hague in the Netherlands. the Netherlands has a population of 16 million (that are not allowed to bear arms or such).
The world courts deals with the worst of the worst, anything in Gitmo pails to what these folks have done.
Let’s take those war criminals (of which dozens have been tried and sentenced) from the Balkan conflict as an example. Here is a group that still has lots of support (Serbs primarily) all across Europe. They are in cells in the Hague which is driving distance from their homeland. Not like some poor Afghan farmer totally divorced from his people, these people have strong support living with a few hours drive!! Almost nothing could stop them from attacking and trying to release there leaders (and heros), or at least taking revenge on the country they are incarcerated in. The REAL danger to this court pails to anything the perceived Gitmo people could possibly do.
Just look at the history of the Balkan conflict, its horrible geenocide and the people who did the killing, and then grab a map to see where the two countries lie, you will get the picture. Then do the same for the Afghan conflict … Kinda makes you giggle.
But, do you hear the good people of the Netherlands on the streets demanding these criminals leave or cowering under their beds at night? No, it just might be that not all folks in the globe are NIMBY and some have the balls to realize that freedom comes at a price, and you never know when you will have to pay up in full.
Could it be that a small country in “old” Europe has more balls than the gun toting folk wingnuts of the US have?
May 20 2009
War torn nation has vastly more mineral wealth than previously thought!!
Wow. I’m sure this can only be good news for the impoverished, innocent, and war-torn people of Afghanistan. They are freaking rich, RICH! While many think they are sleeping on dirt floors (if not already taking “dirt naps,” heh indeedy), they are instead…well let’s hear it straight from Afghanistan’s minister of mines, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel:
“We are a people who don’t have money, food or clothes. But we are sleeping on gold,” he said. The country’s iron deposits were estimated at between five to six billion tons, he added.
That’s not all. A 2005-06 joint survey by the US Geological Survery (USGS) and NASA showed they also have considerable copper, gold, precious stones, oil, and natural gas.
Based on the USGS survey, he said, Afghanistan’s north is estimated to hold between 600 to 700 billion cubic meters of natural gas and the country has some 25 million tons of oil in four basins.
Oh boy, pass the Bean-O! That’s a lot of gas! I think it’s fortunate for the people of Afghanistan that we are liberating them from al Qaeda the Taliban. For one thing, by already being there, we were in an excellent position to be invited by former UNOCAL executive Hamid Karzai to send in NASA and the USGS to determine just how minerally enhanced ordinary Afghan citizens might be.
Jan 30 2009
Wall Street Bailout Costs More than US History.
Casey Research, of Vermont, has analyzed the costs of the government bailouts of the housing crisis, the credit crisis and others and has concluded that the total is $8.5 trillion, which is more than the cost of all US wars, the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan and the NASA Space Program combined. According to CRS, the Congressional Research Service, all major US wars (including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the invasion of Panama, the Kosovo War and numerous other small conflicts), cost a total of $7.5 trillion in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars.
http://www.rockcreekfreepress….
hat tip to Ilargi.
Nov 18 2008
Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an outlaw administration
Over at Harper’s, Scott Horton lays out the case for prosecuting the Bush adminstration (subscription required, but having someone lay out the case clearly does my heart good, so it’s worth it).
Oct 22 2008
Does Laughter Cause Gene Expression?
I want to know: Does laughter cause gene expression? This is a question I have never heard asked. If there is a psychologist or neuroscientist in the audience who knows if this question has ever been asked, I want to know that, also. The answer is certainly, Yes. Of course, there are genes constantly activated by everything we do. But are there specific genes associated with laughter? This is not a subtle question, such as the difference between humor and laughter. I am talking about Hee-Haw, robust, in yer face, I can’t stop laughing, lol catz!
Nov 20 2007
America’s fractional self-esteem
According to William James, arguably one of the most insightful students of the mind, certainly since his own time, self-esteem can be represented as a fraction, with one’s pretensions in the denominator, and one’s actual successes in the numerator:
Thus, one can increase self-esteem either by increasing the numerator by increasing actual successes, or by decreasing one’s pretenses to greatness. It was James’s claim that both self-satisfaction (high self-esteem) and self-abasement (low self-esteem) are intimately related emotional primitives. The barometer of self-esteem could wax and wane seemingly due to various organic causes from day to day, but in non-pathological cases, it was overall subject to personal dispositions toward pretense and reality-based, objective outcomes.