This morning on the radio it was announced that one of the local hospitals under the jurisdiction of the County of Los Angeles, is going to have to shut down barring a judges injunction. The County Health Department is going broke.
State Republicans have decided within the week, to begin borrowing money to make up for the state's budget shortfalls. The state will borrow as much as 11 billion dollars just to cover two month's cash flow.
Supporting $10 billion in borrowing represents a major concession by his party, said Assemblyman John Campbell, R-Irvine, who is vice-chairman of the lower house's budget committee. The number is what the deficit is expected to be June 30."We don't like to do this. We think this is actually a bad idea ... but it's better than tax increases and so we offer it as a compromise," Campbell said.
There have already been fourteen cases of SARS reported in California, so I am waiting, with some trepidation, for SARS to make an impact in Los Angeles County. There will be a run on N95 masks as the hospitals are quarantined and run out of beds. Our politicians have a multivolume cookbook filled with recipies for disaster. This one seems poised to move to the front burner.
US scientists have discovered a cancer-proof mouse, according to this piece in New Scientist, and have successfully created a colony with this inherited trait. One can hope that the immune mechanism used by this mouse could translate into future cancer treatments. If so, how long before some demand that we cancer-proof the human germ line?
Hitchens posts a defense of Chalabi in today's Slate.
In news stories as well as in opinion columns, it is repeatedly stated that Chalabi hasn't been in the country for many years—or since 1958. This contradicts my own memory and that of several other better-qualified witnesses. They recall him in northern Iraq many times and for long periods in the 1990s, helping to organize opposition conferences and to broker an agreement between the opposing Kurdish factions. He frequently risked his life in this enterprise; indeed it was for criticizing the CIA's own ham-fisted efforts in Kurdistan at the time that he incurred the lasting hatred of the agency. And since his activity on Iraqi soil was reported on several occasions in such journals of record as the New York Times, it must be something more than objectivity (or, dare I hint, something less) that informs the current animus.Yasser Arafat hasn't been in Jerusalem for some considerable time, after all, and before his disastrous return to Gaza, he hadn't been on Palestinian soil for decades. The Dalai Lama hasn't been in Tibet since the 1950s. Perhaps these leaders should be criticized more for being out of touch. But the fact remains that they are not. More important, both Arafat and His Holiness consider themselves to be axiomatic and self-evident leaders while Chalabi does not. But the fact remains that his forces provided invaluable help and intelligence in the recent campaign, and it is to the Iraqi National Congress that several senior Baathists have recently chosen to surrender. If this does not demand praise, surely it merits a little recognition?
This UPI report from 2000 quotes conservatives deriding a Clintonian measure. The concept was to train Iraqi opposition in the art of political compromise. Given the current situation in Iraq, where presumably the USA does not want a theocracy to rise from the current flux, perhaps encouraging the deal-making aspect of the process of democratic governance wasn't such waste of money as the critics thought.
The latest example is a workshop proposed by the Conflict Management Group, a nonprofit offshoot of Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School... "To identify, diagnose, and enhance the ability of the Iraqi opposition parties, and the individuals within the parties, to discuss, design, and facilitate intra- and inter-organization dialogue, cooperation, and problem solving."Translation: Pull Iraqi resistance fighters out of the field, bring them to Harvard, and teach them how to get along.
It's a bit late to pull them out of the field now.
The Archbishop of Canterbury gives us a great deal to think about.
The idea that's being increasingly canvassed is that we are witnessing the end of the nation state, and that the nation state is being replaced in the economically developed world by what some call the 'market state'. This new form of political administration has in some ways crept up on us, and we need to do some hard thinking about how it has happened and what changes are involved for the whole idea of being a citizen - not to mention the whole idea of being a politician too. And if the analysis I want to offer is right, and these changes are indeed irreversible, we need to look at what kind of vacuum is left in our social imagination as a result.
I see that Stephenson's meme is finally taking hold in centers of authority. The Archbishop is my kind of clergyman in more than one way and I’m pleased to see that he gets it. He gets it in a rather unique way, but that depends on his reading of this Bobbitt fellow, whom I don't know. In either case I’m with him on the primary merits of his case, which is my reading of the current asymmetric war on terror. The nation state (and for my denser ideological colleagues) the nanny state, is on its way out the door. As market forces take over and they decentralize power and globalize standards via the disintermediary forces of global telecom and pervasive computing. This leaves a significant gap in the social forces and traditions long associated with government as exemplified by the great society. Who fills that gap? Religion. But not the kind of bible-thumping idiocy involved in creating the republican's big tent. I'm talking about smart religion.
So the problem of the market state looks rather like this. By pushing politics towards a consumerist model, with the state as the guarantor of ‘purchasing power’, it raises short-term expectations. By raising short-term expectations, it invites instability, reactive administration, rule by opinion poll and pressure. To facilitate some of its goals and to avoid chaos, government inevitably relies more on centralised managerial authority. So there will be a dangerous tension between excessive government and the paralysis that can result from trying to respond adequately to consumer demand. To put it in another way, government and culture drift apart: government abandons the attempt to give shape to society.
But check this out, and I think this is the key which shows that certain sects of Christianity may be ahead of the curve with respect to dealing with the decentralized world. That is because this market state preserves
..a vision that has nothing to say about shared humanity and the hard labour of creating and keeping going a shared world of values. Being provocative again, I’d want to say that a proper use of tradition makes us more not less critical and independent in society. The great revolt against traditional authority in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a necessary moment, because tradition was understood as the way in which the past dominated the present - or at least how some people’s version of the past seeks to limit what’s possible now.
And finally, without an explicit nod to GWBush’s state legitimation of Christian charity under the guise of 'faith-based initiatives', our archbishop remarks
The market state is much in love with partnership as a model of public action, and the possibilities of partnership with religious communities are many. To point to the importance of religious communities as, for example, partners in statutory education is not to license unbridled superstition and indoctrination but to invite - to challenge – religious communities to find a way of bringing their beliefs into practical contact with public questions, to identify exactly what difference faith commitments make to the educational process.
Lovely.
When Dorothy's house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, she inherited the ruby slippers and incurred the wrath of her more evil sister, the Wicked Witch of the West. That didn't stop the Munchkins from celebrating.
The Iraqis and American pacifists have no Lollypop Guild and won't be presenting any awards to GW Bush any time soon. In fact, now is the time that 1000 skeptics are blooming. Jack Balkin correctly notes that in the long view of things, it's far too early to tell. We have a long yellow brick road ahead. But it is not too early to celebrate.
The longer we wait for things to go wrong, the more certain we are to be rewarded. Everything goes wrong given sufficient time. Nevertheless we can do our moral calculus fairly immediately. The objective of any war is to win. We won. Unlike Dorothy, this tornado was of our own creation and we landed our house smack dab on the target. Granted, we took out a fair section of Munchkinland in the process, but we are making good on fixing it. We have rid the world of a tyrant.
The question which concerns me now that we have the ruby slippers of empire on our feet, is whether or not it is reasonable for skeptics to judge our 'success' on whether or not an evil sister materializes. We very may well get punished for crushing the Ba'ath regime, but why should we judge the success or failure of the war based for an ever expanding evaluation period? Is it fair to judge Bush against a failure to find WMD? Yes. Is it fair to judge Bush against a failure to establish a new republic in Iraq? Yes. But it is not fair to judge Bush against a rising tide of terrorism in the region which finds encouragement for its raison d'etre in our wars against Iraq.
I think it is fair to say that there may very well be flying monkeys in our path. But we did not create them nor there agenda and skeptics should not paint our successful defeat of the Ba'ath party by borrowing dark colors from a pessimistic future.
The State of Georgia is heading backwards once again. A cursory reading of the news shows that the state legislature has every intention of bringing back the flag of segregation once more. I could expend a lot of energy denouncing this retarded move in high minded language, and I'm sure plenty of people will. I won't, not because I am particularly shocked or outraged, but because it is so clear that Georgia is wrong that volume isn't necessary.
The question now centers on how the rest of civilization should make the State of Georgia pay for this moral error made legitimate by the government of Sonny Purdue. I hope that it is drastic.
According to a piece in the Christian Science Monitor, the trend towards more decentralized terrorism against American multinational targets continues. Small bombings, but there is potential for escalation. The reducttion of state sponsors of terrorism means suviving terror groups must organize locally to get funding and arms.
Admittedly these are petty attacks for now, but how long until one of these independent groups ramps up its expertise and organization? How long until one of these groups manages to get hold of biological weapons left over from South Africa's Project Coast, which have apparently escaped into private hands?
About two years ago, I finally got on the air for the first time with Ira Flatow on his Science Friday show. One of the subjects of his show was the bonobo ape and its sexuality. I haven't been thinking about sex so much, but about cultural dissonance. According to Ira, Japanese researchers had less difficulty studying these primates' complex sexual behavior but Westerners found a great number of their acts unconscionable. So when the question came around about which of the apes are most like humans and the most intelligent, the Japanese picked the bonobo. Meanwhile, Europeans and Americans alike settled on the chimpanzee. As time moves forward, it may turn out that the Japanese were right. A cultural interpretation of the meaning of sex acts is inevitable, no matter what our biology. We may never know.
As I reflect on cultural dissonance in the context of empire, we also may never know how our acts may ultimately be interpreted, or whether a question of the value of any particular act can and will be perceived as we expect. I mean how many Americans have ever heard of a bonobo ape much less consider it more intelligent than a dolphin or a chimp? The very idea is foreign.
Nevertheless in considering this matter of ape sexuality I have become moderately curious about how much of our own sexuality derives from observation of animals. Surely we humans have watched dogs, pigs, sheep, horses, cats and cattle copulate since the beginning of civilization. Often our health and wealth has depended on knowing when such activities were going right or going wrong. Surely our concepts of male dominance and female submission in things sexual comes more from horses more than say, black widow spiders or salmon. But what we say, what we think and what we do are surely divergent. After all, horses don't masturbate. Are we indeed like monkeys? Probably more than we'd like to admit.
Another great matter of sexual import which has passed through the old bean this weekend has to do with my anticipation of the great female prophet. My daughter asked about world religions and I pointed to my old, and fun reference on such liberal arts matters, An Incomplete Education. This book reminded me that there were approximately 650 million Roman Catholics. Knowing how much the Virgin Mary means to Catholics, having audited catechism myself, I wondered what a huge impact it would be to the world if some future Council of Nicea decided to make the Holy Spirit female.
A female pope would change the world in ways we cannot imagine. In this way, I tend to believe that all feminism is pre-historic. The day will come.
I'd like to offer a little anecdote. Several years ago there was much complaint about the usefulness of the Million Man March. If, detractors said, one million black men truly wanted to make a difference, then they would take 100 dollars out of their pockets and create a college scholarship fund. This kind of effort would be respectable. In a little known survey, scholars from Howard University found that over 40% of the participants at the march were college graduates. That means, given an average college cost of 20,000, that 8 billion dollars in college money had already been spent successfully. 80 times as much the complainers determined to take seriously. And still the march was derided. Sometimes the noise of new money promised masks the power of old money already spent.
These days, I hear a great deal of flak which annoys me a bit, about Haliburton this and Bechtel that. I thought I'd like to toss in a few comparative numbers in for spite. I realize this isn't particularly visionary, but it's something I haven't heard said much elsewhere.
The estimated cost of rebuilding Iraq will be about 20 billion dollars per year for about 5 years. The cost of warring against Iraq up to this point has been about 63 billion dollars. That 63 billion is mostly supplies, boots, combat pay, fuel and logistics. It's not the basic military stuff. That's already paid for. It is both comforting and disturbing to know that these are not very large dollars where the United States of America is concerned.
The International Red Cross has estimated that 2 billion in humanitarian aid will be sufficient for Iraq acording to a quote I heard last Thursday on NPR. Unfortunately I cannot find an update on that figure anywhere. Estimates vary depending on whom you ask. Still, let us be over the hand wringing over Bechtel's 700 million dollar contract, shall we? This is not an extraordinarily large job.
According to the American Red Cross:
The highest natural disaster death toll in U.S. history was caused by the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900, which killed an estimated 6,000 people. The most expensive disaster is the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. The destructive events will cost more than $997 million in disaster aid. The largest mobilization of volunteers for a disaster relief operation was also in response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, when a total of 54,577 workers arrived on the scene to provide relief.
The State of California's annual budget is about 100 billion dollars. Iraq has fewer people. So we'll spend about a fifth as much. Granted, we are not going to take them to California standards, but the point is that 20 billion per year is not so much money that it will come anywhere near breaking the American budget. Given that Bush has conceded about 250 billion from his latest tax cut, there seems to be more than enough to go around.
I am looking forward to seeing how much money the United Nations will raise for all efforts at rebuilding Iraq, be they humanitarian or infrastructure. We know how much it costs, we know how much American companies are getting, we know how much America can afford. Let us now see some economic leadership from other coalitions.
I found this CIA text on the psychology of intelligence analysis quite interesting. URL: http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/index.html
In particular, the section on cognitive biases seems particularly relevant these days. Professional analysts are more conscious of such biases and their impact, compared to the casual viewer of the news. How much and how far does intelligence get distorted when presented to the public by the media in a manner that makes a better story?
Needless to say, I'm fairly cynical when it comes to the nature of popular punditry. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, so people will opt for pundits who echo their own beliefs at some level.
One of the reasons the story about antiquities has gone so far and lasted so long is because it is the one story that upper middle class Americans can relate to. Everything else is looting and shooting. We have no idea what the tone is in Iraq because all we hear are stories about the Iraqi on the street. But what of the Iraqi off the street? What about the Iraqi government functionary who hates his job but shrugs his shoulders? What kind of middle class functions in Iraq?
It has been said that the wealth of oil in Iraq will lead it further from democracy. The argument is that digging wealth out of the ground and selling it on the open market requires a lot less middle class give and take. People don't have to discipline themselves and comport themselves in professional ways. You want oil? You get oil. You don't care about my attitude. Iraq may be destined to remain incompatible with Service Economy.
The cruel irony of religious freedom is that once Americans rebuild the civil infrastructure of that nation, Iraqis will be free to thank Allah for it. I heard a quote from a soldier just north of Basra in the early going, which said something to the effect that he'd only been there a week and he already hated those ingrates. It is a sentiment we are bound to hear again and again. And yet I doubt that there will be much sting in our colonial whip. Our troops are, much to the consternation of many loopy conservatives, politically correct, diverse and otherwise respectful sorts of warriors, crankiness aside. We are not calling them godless monkeys.
For all the talk of peace at any cost, I have yet to see any real rapproachment with the Iraqi people as equals and as brothers. I want to see this from any quarter and I hope to see it soon. Then again, I expected that American pacifists would put their dollars into charitable relief organizations. Instead, it seemed that they put together a political coalition with ANSWER, a strange and often repulsive bedfellow. I will be looking forward to hearing from the bleating anthropologists and archaologists and other museum buffs of their upcoming foreign exchange programs, and scholarships for Iraqi students. Those who have called for and gotten the resignation of Martin Sullivan needn't be proud. I am of the opinion that everything worth knowing:
Among the priceless treasures missing are the 5,000-year-old Vase of Uruk and the Harp of Ur. The bronze Statue of Basitki from the Akkadian kingdom is also gone, somehow hauled out of the museum despite its huge weight.
would have been stolen one way or another. Further it is unclear to me what the average Iraqi cares about such treasures. They are certainly not Islamic. They very well may have been destroyed with the same abandon as the great totems of Afghanistan were by the Taliban. All we know is that it was an inside job.
Until such time as we can be convinced that Shiapundit is a CIA plant, I trust those words.
Of the many accounts being advanced, I can’t find one I like.Rather, I mean:
I don’t like the terms in which any of these accounts are being constructed.I want an account constructed in terms of a self-organizing system psycho-cultural system of individuals whose thoughts and decisions are subject to multiple interacting forces, some rational, some not.
[As intuition is not knowledge, I do not actually know that deadlock was intended. But I believe that, by exploring that intuition, I will learn something. Whether or not this particular idea survives the exploration is beside the point.]THE NATIONAL PSYCHE & THE FALL OF THE EVIL EMPIRE
If, to avoid war, we allow its diminutive, torture, Or to eradicate torture, we invite its expansion, war, not my fingers not my nails my genitals my eyes What are we but cross-etched hatchings in a workRembrandt might have created, dappling of light
not my fingers not my nails my genitals my eyes
With shade as in Hopkins, counterpoint as in Bach?
Conflict, like dissonance, demands resolution. Artnot my fingers not my nails my genitals my eyes
Knows no other choice but to care – stream whose
Eddies can't but mock our pacifist or military ways,not my fingers not my nails my genitals my eyes
Our close as we can get to righteous certainties...
not my fingers not my nails my genitals my eyes
It's not easy to parse Iraq from California, but this particular sentence is stunning:
At overflow Friday prayer services at the huge Abu Hanafi Mosque, a Sunni religious center that opened its doors to members of the rival Shiite sect in a rare demonstration of solidarity, hostility toward the Americans and the desire for an Islamic Iraq were on display.See also:Sunnis and Shiites Unite to Protest U.S. and Hussein
By JOHN KIFNER and CRAIG S. SMITH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 18
Imam's words spark mass demonstration
A Cleric Assumes a Bully Pulpit
A recent piece about Al Sharpton drives home what is bankrupt about American politics in general. We've become so focused on individual personalities and political parties that we've lost the big picture--people are elected to serve in order to get certain policies enacted. As much as Al Sharpton's critique of the Democratic Party is on point, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Take a look at Sharpton's web page.
Do you see a HINT of a policy program?
Now take a look at Howard Dean's page. I don't care about the extra stuff...we can expect that Dean has more resources to provide bells and whistles than Sharpton does. I'm talking specifically about policy platforms. From what I can tell, Sharpton DOES NOT HAVE ONE. So why in the hell should we vote for him? Coates seems to argue that somehow Sharpton's campaign is going to move the Democratic Party to the left, increase black political activism, and bring the disaffected back to the party. How this is going to happen without public policy is beyond me.
Now at some point I expect that Sharpton is going to develop a policy program. But by making the policy program a secondary aspect of his campaign, Sharpton is making the campaign about one thing...his personality. And if black people need to get away from anything...it's the politics of personality. We don't need individuals...we need policy programs.
The Democratic Party HAS lost its way. Given that the Republican Party began as an attempt to envelop enslaved Africans within the American polity, we can say it has lost its way as well. But I'll be damned if we solve the problem by permed out reverends talking about identity rather than policy. Though I don't really expect more from Sharpton, we should all expect more from Coates and other analysts covering his campaign.
This site is a good reference on terrorism. Try it.
Celes King III died this week. An icon in Southern California, this black Republican is best known for his bail bonds business. But his is an interesting story.
He was a Tuskeegee Airman, he helped found the Los Angeles Brotherhood Crusade. He was an assistant professor at the State U. Amazing man, never fully appreciated in his time.
They're at it again. Elected officials in Georgia are about to vote on yet another referendum for the state flag. Republican Governor Sonny Purdue re-ignited this controversy with his campaign "Boot Barnes", the former Democratic Governor who had rid the segregationist emblem from the former state flag.
Purdue's legislative agenda is in all kinds of trouble as it stands. This can't help.
Abu Abbas has been captured in Iraq. Yoiks and Hazzah!
I hope that I am not the only one to be mildly surprised and then underwhelmed at this matter. Perhaps we have all grown measurably more hardened to the realities of terrorism since the days of the Achille Lauro. Somehow I doubt that Abbas is anywhere near public enemy number one. He didn't make the PKC 55, so what are we to make of his arrest?
NPR reported this morning that he was rumored to be passing money from Saddam Hussein to suicide bombers in Palestine. But his whereabouts and activities have been known to the US for some time.
Abbas will be extradicted in all likelihood to Italy where he faces a life sentence. Charges against him in the US were dropped some years ago, as part of a deal in the Israeli-Palestine peace process.
The world is a tiny bit safer today, but we can do better than this.
Intent
Following up on the excellent PBS series on this week, 'Avoiding Armageddon', we should concentrate more on intent rather than capability. The very nature of laboratories that could create biologic weapons make them all dual-use. Pay attention to what parties want to do, not so much what they can do. We'll never plug every hole. The discovery of Abu Abbas in Iraq is an interesting sign about Iraq harboring terrorists.
UN Money
The UN has not done much to administer Afghanistan. What indeed makes us believe that they are willing or able to do something different in Iraq. Prediction: The current allies will bear the brunt, and all the UN can and will do is spin world opinion one way or another.
The Christian Science Monitor covers the frustration of US troops as they face an outgunned enemy that fights to the death rather than surrendering.
Meanwhile, The Times reports that documentary evidence has been found confirming that Saddam Hussein imported at least hundreds of Islamic militants in preparation for this war and inserted them into the Feyadeen. These foreign fighters apparently led the resistance in Basra.
Did these fanatically devoted militants drive their less militant compatriots towards martyrdom? This type of arrangement strikes me as being a religious variant of a loyalty officer.
This almost begs the question: how many militants filtered into Iraq to lay low as sleepers in order to better mobilize action against US-led occupation?
There's also an interesting comment in the Times piece made regarding to the relationship between bin Laden and al Qaeda. Is the definition of al Qaeda narrow or broad?
"These are not just zealots who grabbed a gun and went to the front line. They know how to employ guerrilla tactics so someone had to have trained them. They are certainly organised, and if it's not bin Laden's people, its al-Qaeda by another name. But they certainly came here to fight the West."
Just cruising around the web lead me to an interesting dead economics weblog. Within its pages, I found a reference to this book which may or may not be of use. It's certainly interesting because it appears to point to a time at which Thomas Sowell was actively engaged in hacking out policy with other blackfolks. In his current throne as scold to the black masses, this work may be considered a throwback to earlier more optimistic days, but it exists nonetheless.
The Fairmont Papers: Black Alternatives Conference, San Francisco, December 1980 is a collection of edited excerpts from transcripts of the Black Alternatives Conference, sponsored by the Institute for Contemporary Studies, that took place on December 12 and 13th, 1980, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
The table of contents is fairly interesting. Do check out the site.
As stories start to emerge about the kind of everyday terror the Iraqis faced under Saddam Hussein, I have to say that I am afraid there may be worse times ahead. The reason has much to do with history and water. Rivers and less pleasant objects roll downhill, unless something stands in their way. Nobody seems to be stopping the Turks from rolling down onto the Kurds, and the Turks reserve the right to stop the water from rolling downhill. In fact, they've invested billions.
To the north in Turkey stands the massive Ataturk Dam, but even more controversial is the Ilisu. Why? Well, you'd have to understand something about Turkish nationalism to understand what kind of nation would consider turning a dam project into a weapon.
The Turkish state has long denied the Kurdish people their ethnic and cultural identity and for the past 16 years has waged a war against Kurdish guerillas, which has seen three million people displaced and 30,000 killed. Dams are another weapon in the Turkish state's arsenal: what better way to dispossess and crush a people than to flood their lands and cultural sites? The Ataturk dam, built by the Turkish state during the 1980s, displaced some 60,000 Kurds. Inscribed on the dam's centrepiece are the words of the modern Turkish state's founder, Kemal Ataturk, 'Ne Mutlu Turkum Diyene' – 'Lucky is the one who is a Turk'.
Start in Anatolia. This is the region of Turkey where many of the world's 20 million Kurds live. At the same time that they are treated as second class citizens in Turkey, the government of Turkey has embarked on a massive project to improve the area. This is the GAP.
The GAP includes a massive hydroelectric project. There is a fairly established school of geopolitical analysis dedicated to the ways in which water projects are used in a form of hydro despotism. Whether it is the Chinese or the Egyptians, there is a common thread. Powerful people steamrolling over the less powerful in the name of progress. But even after such projects are completed despite whatever reasons they were proposed, they end up as targets or objects of conflict.
So if the United States is positive on the matter of the GAP, it would explain why they are willing to, in the words of Colin Powell referring to the Kurds controlling Kirkuk, "Take them out". There is quite obviously a conflict between the possibility of the establishment of an independent Kurdistan and Turkish control of Anatolia. I think GAP is the centerpiece. Some of the greatest florid rhetoric out of Turkey talks about their intentions to turn Anatolia into the 'California' of the area. Imagine if those Kurds tried to nationalize.
From what I am able to gather of the Kurdish perspective. One of their hottest buttons lie entangled in the fate of Hasankeyf. Hasankeyf stands as one of the last great examples of Kurdish cities in the world but it is in the Anatolia region of Turkey. The UK's Balfour Beatty, which had been a prime contractor on the project, pulled out two years ago over the controversy of flooding Hasankeyf. Recriminations are still biting today.
No matter what federal recognition they get in Iraq, Kurdish prospects will depend to some extent on the water they get, or don't get from the north. Oil as a resource will allow them to control their own fate and there are no doubts that Pesh Mergas will find their way to some of that oil revenue. Kurds in Turkey will suffer if Ilisu moves forward. How likely will they tolerate the Turkish governments grand plans for Anatolia? Let's watch.
The following represents a letter I wrote to Jim Talent, now Senator of Missouri. Talent was teaching a class at Washington University, and I got a chance to meet him. I wrote the letter after he noted during one of his classes that African Americans were basically scared by Jesse Jackson into voting for the Democratic Party. I never sent him the letter...but I think it provides a decent starting point as far as thinking how the Republican Party platform could be ported over to African Americans of various class backgrounds:
Rep. Talent I met you briefly during a lecture you gave for a graduate Congress class taught by my colleague. One of the areas you talked about was race and politics, specifically the relationship African American communities have towards both the Republican and Democratic Parties. You argued that to a certain extent the problem that the Republican Parties have with reaching African American communities is a problem of ignorance, to a certain extent a problem of outreach, and to a certain extent a problem of liberal black leadership. I listened to your comments with interest, and I too am interested in ending the stranglehold that the Democratic Party seemingly has on black male and female voters. In line with this, and because of the fact that I study this subject (among others dealing with race and politics) for a living, I thought I would send to you a primer so to speak…what the Republican Party would have to do to attract black voters.
As I see it there are a few platform items that would have to be vigorously fought for and touted:
· Aggressive enforcement of existing Civil Rights Law
As it stands, though the Republican Party has by deed and word fought Affirmative Action for the last two decades, they have (seemingly) done little to fight for increases in the enforcement of existing Civil Rights Law. Given that the Republican Party at least since the late sixties has been known as the party of law and order, it would seem that calling for vigorous enforcement of these laws would be very much in line with the party's philosophy. Though some would argue that this would increase government regulation, a strong argument can be made that the enforcement of the law is not something that can be given short shrift. If the government is supposed to at least protect individuals from having their rights infringed upon, then this would could easily be explained as part of the natural Republican inclination to make sure that government enforces the law and punishes those found guilty of violating it.
· Aggressive stances against police brutality and profiling
The African American community is strongly anti-crime, to the point that they are even against police perceived to have committed crimes. Though the Republican Party has spoken often about vigorous anti-crime policies, they have not focused on either police brutality, or on racial profiling. To a certain extent this is understandable, however given the strong feelings those in the African American community have against police brutality in particular, attacking crime without attacking police brutality is viewed by many as hypocritical at best. Again, if couched in the language of law and order, this does not have to be viewed as an attempt to create "big government."
· Creation of policies designed to build black wealth
Several scholars have noted that the wealth gap between whites and blacks is enormous, even when education levels are taken into account. Whites with a high school education on average possess more wealth than blacks with college degrees. Though in some isolated cases this may be due to individual behavior, for the most part this is due to the fact that throughout most of American history, African Americans were forcibly discouraged from accumulating wealth. As the Republican Party is associated with businesses and with wealth accumulation, and as many members of the African American community believe that political empowerment only comes with economic empowerment, there is a natural link that is waiting to be exploited. Along with policies that help people get off of welfare by finding work, policies that allow people on welfare to save money. I believe that members of the Republican Party have already touted such a program, but this policy is not common knowledge.
The relationship between the American Dream and owning a home was firmly established in America only after WWII and the GI Bill, which was designed to give (primarily white) veterans a chance to buy affordable housing. A similar program designed to spur homeownership in the cities would be powerful. Note that in these two cases are not focused on race, though undoubtedly a number of black citizens (as well as Latino citizens) would be assisted by them.
· Ending coded racial language
One of the points you made was that black liberal leadership were somewhat irresponsible in caricaturing Republican leadership as "racist" and their fear based tactics were keeping African Americans away from the Republican Party. I would like to posit a different hypothesis. I argue that the racially coded language of law and order, of welfare cheats, of quota queens, does more to keep African Americans from the Republican Party than any dozen statements from Rev. Jesse Jackson. Stop this, and forcefully criticize fellow Republicans when they engage in this tactic, and you will go a long way towards building respect and political support.
Given the ties that many in the Republican Party (particularly individuals such as Trent Lott) have with organizations such as the Council of Conservative Citizens, this will undoubtedly be the hardest to accomplish. I noted in our conversation that "racists vote too" and that the majority of individuals with long standing ties to groups such as the CCC or the KKK tend to vote Republican. So among both rank and file members, and party leadership are individuals who to be clear are not interested in the needs of black people.
However, I did not say that this would be easy. The easy route would be to argue that because of individuals like Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Republican Party cannot make progress in regards to black communities. The easy route would be to continue to pander to the lowest common denominator amongst your constituents rather than to build a new vision of American that can compete for the hearts of black citizens. Taking the road less traveled by in this case will lead to short term losses, both politically, and socially. But the long-term gains are enormous-because the bottom line is that the "racists" have no other party to turn to. They will either vote Republican…or they will stay home. And as their numbers are dwindling as we speak…it is a good idea to stop basing campaigns on their ideas and beliefs.
I will leave with this. When strategies designed to attract black voters have been undertaken the strategy has focused on upper-income black voters. This strategy is wrong for a number of reasons…but most important is this-black voters vote their racial interests using their group interests as a proxy for their individual interest. When I vote, my decision is based on which candidate is the best for black people…working on the assumption that what works for black people will work for me individually. What I have given you is a brief example of how the Republican Party can attract black voters of various economic backgrounds…by not diverging one iota from the platform as created by the founders of the party.
If the problem your party faces is truly that of ignorance, I hope that what I have said will help to eradicate that particular problem. The rest is up to you and other interested individuals.
Debate on Gun Rights In House Turns Racial
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A03
A House debate over gun rights legislation erupted into a racially charged dispute yesterday when a Republican lawmaker from Wyoming seemed to equate African Americans with drug addicts or people undergoing drug treatment.
Rep. Barbara Cubin's remark -- which triggered a vote on whether to strike it from the congressional record -- nearly overshadowed the House's approval of a measure to protect gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits resulting from the criminal use of firearms. One independent, 63 Democrats and 221 Republicans backed the bill, which could block several pending lawsuits by counties, cities and individuals stemming from gun crimes -- including last year's sniper shootings in the Washington area.
" Mrs. CUBIN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this amendment and all of the other amendments which have been offered today on this bill, and I encourage Members to vote against the amendments and for the bill. I am the mother of two sons. One time when they were young, little boys, the boys and I were alone at night and we had a burglar break into our house. The fear that caused me to find out that someone had been in my house, rifling through my house, really made me take a look at self-defense and my right to own and bear arms. I became a big advocate of that at that time.[ . . . ]
My sons are 25 and 30. They are blond-haired and blue-eyed. One
amendment today said we could not sell guns to anybody under drug
treatment. So does that mean if you go into a black community, you
cannot sell a gun to any black person, or does that mean because my--- "
Every day that passes suggests that this was not a real war, rather politics by other means. Consider the lightness of casualties on the Iraqi side. Estimates were that the Iraqi Army had about a quarter million troops. One would expect that in a rout of a nation's forces, we could expect to see a large number of POWs and KIAs. How indeed could Baghdad fall in three days?
I am coming to believe that General Franks has cut some deals. To his credit, GW Bush spoke out to the military commanders at the beginning of the hostilities. It's difficult to imagine that there were not any number of plans crafted to allow Iraqi commanders to save lives, if not face. Despite all of the 'sharp' fights, Consider the following written less than a week ago from Ramzaj:
The coalition claims of "completely destroying" the "Media" ("Al Madina al Munavvara") and the "Hammurali" Republican Guard divisions of the 2nd Republican Guard Corps received no confirmation. No more than 80 destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles were found along the coalition's route of advance, which corresponds to about 20% of a single standard Iraqi Republican Guard division.It has been determined that only a few forward elements of the "Hammurali" Division participated in combat while the entire division withdrew toward Baghdad. A single brigade of the "Medina" division was involved in combat. The brigade was split in two groups during fighting and withdrew toward Baghdad and toward Karabela to join the main forces of the ["Medina"] division.
Equally unimpressive are the numbers of the Iraqis captured by the coalition. In four days of advance the US troops captured just over 1,000 people only half of whom, according to the reports by the US field commander, can be considered regular troops of the Iraqi army. There are virtually no abandoned or captured Iraqi combat vehicles. All of this indicates that so far there has been no breakthrough for the coalition; Iraqi troops are not demoralized and the Iraqi command is still in control of its forces.
These troops must have gone somewhere. Perhaps they have gone underground and will reappear later to cause friction. I suspect some have been given a free pass to go north. Are we capturing them? If not, why not? Are we mowing them down as they retreat? I don't hear anything which suggests that we are.
Today, Saddam Hussein is missing. Three weeks ago he was offered asylum. Have the same US Special Forces who supposedly tracked him to one building suddenly lost him permanently? Most of the senior leadership of the Ba'ath party is unaccounted for. Did they disappear as well?
I think the answers to these questions lie not only in Syria to a small extent but in Iraq itself. The Bush Administation has some of the same reasons today that the US had in 1991 to leave sections of the Ba'ath Party intact.
A major Shiite cleric, Sayed Abdul Majid Al-Khoei, was hacked to death in Najaf. Reconciliation with Haider al-Kadar, a member of Saddam's Ministry of Religion, was apparently an unpopular move.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=395996
He is/was featured as one of the voices of freedom by the State Department.
http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/voices/voicesb.htm
The cleric backed the US and UK on Afghanistan.
http://www.cwnews.com/Browse/2001/10/16562.htm
This influence play is getting complicated. Who is Mohammed Braga al Saddar? Or more to the point, what does he believe and who does he side with?
I was doing some housecleaning tonight and ran across an issue of Soldier of Fortune from April 1991. Inside was a fold-out map of the Middle East, as Desert Storm was the headline story of the day. There was also an article titled "Terrorist U", about Afghanistan becoming a "training ground for [a] new breed of Islamic fanatics".
The most organized radicals are from the Arab heartland: Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. This is a region where conflict with Israel is a part of the landscape, and where there is a strong tradition of underground radicalism.Sunni Wahhabis were throwing money at Islamic mujahadeen in Afghanistan. The Afghans provided support to the Kashmiri independence movement against India. The author's finishing tone implied he expected Islamic radicals to be a destabilizing influence in China's Xinjiang province and perhaps looked forward to it. Who would have guessed then that instead the purist radicals would extend their reach globally and strike out at the West?
Like most people in the world, I was greeted this morning by the video of Iraqis trying to pull over a statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of Baghdad. I searched the crowd for evidence of a sledgehammer and saw none. Even as the young man climbed up the rope around the statue's neck, I kept wondering if the crowd would have the strength to yank it hard enough. An American APC stood at the ready, and as I ironed three shirts and quizzed my third grader on the phases of the moon, the statue had not budged without its assistance. I got a good laugh as people threw their shoes at it.
I wonder if the world press assembled vented any of their frustrations and suggested the townies give up and tie the rope to the armored vehicle. I can't imagine that they didn't. Hell, they even pre-empted Dick Cheney's speech to show this live footage. I grew impatient and continued on to earth rotation and a necktie, turning back to family from the video. Later I found the statue had indeed been pulled over by the machine and not by the mob.
This tea leaf needs little interpretation.
From an interview of Richard Perle, published in National Review Online dated March 9, evidence against an immediate subsequent invasion of Iran or Syria. Not all regime change is intended to be achieved by force:
Of course, add North Korea to the list of countries in obvious need of regime change. A UPI report mirrored here notes that Libya has accelerated its pursuit of nuclear weapons since UN sanctions were dropped in 1999. Michael Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, also gave a warning:Taheri: Who will be your next target? Iran, Syria, Libya?
Perle: Change is needed in all those three countries, and a few others besides. But the Iraqi case is unique. I think Iran can be changed by the action of the Iranian people. We shall provide whatever support they need to ensure the success of the reform movement. I believe that Syria, too, can organize change from within. As for Libya, it is a weird case. For the time being it is out of world reality. But the colonel knows that we have our eyes on him.
In the interview, Bolton said he hoped the removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power would send a message to Libya, Syria and Iran. "We are hoping that the elimination of the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would be important lessons to other countries in the region particularly Syria, Libya, and Iran, that the cost of their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially quite high."The question remains: will countries such as Libya actually be intimidated into stopping pursuit of WMD or will they seek nuclear weapons as a deterrent to US intervention?
One downside to having taken this action in Iraq is that all affected countries will be seeing what US doctrine may be like in the future, and may attempt to develop countermeasures.
This conflict attracts bad opinions like static electricity. I find it amazing to see the kind of respect Arab nationalism and the Arab League are getting these days. The one that I simply cannot tolerate is the Baby Bin Laden theory.
Dershowitz wrote several months ago about how it was that world opinion has come to accept the terrorism of the Palestinian cause. But let me just separate the two and say Hamas. Hamas has somehow become a legitimatized organization because of the the politics of the region. I think people have become so distanced from the idea of a fight that they can hardly imagine that there is meaning in a fair fight. Which suggests that all fighting is equally horrible and to hell with the methods, let loose the foaming rabid canines of war. The only kind of empathy Arabs and Muslims seem to merit these days by those against "Bush's War" is as enraged, desparate suicidal revenge killers. I've heard this all my life: "If I was black, I'd kill every white person around." This is not empathy, this is foolishness.
The cause of nationalism is still valid even as globalism procedes. As global ways and means of power transform us in the first world, the necessities of the nations in the second world still count. Simply because America has become a superpower does not mean that the code of conduct for nations who are not superpowers should deviate from what nations have been. Every state with a grudge against the US does not retain the right to become a rogue state. Hence Arab nationalism, even Islamic nationalism, have no new rights to generate nations forged in the cauldron of hate. Most importantly, those who claim to be on moral course have no right to excuse.
I am unabashedly for an American empire. I believe we are capable, at our best and learning the lessons of history, to make transformative changes for the better in this world. I believe that what we have learned as a nation can and should help other nations. I accept that we are about to fulfill our purpose successfully in Iraq and I am moving on from that. Today there are countries on this planet that employ child soldiers. Something should be done. We should do it.
If and when we do, I should expect those who argue against our engagement to repeat the same faulty logic. We will only create more child soldiers. Think about what you are saying.
Ahmad Chalabi is the man in the middle. Chances are that you've not heard of him before, but after this conflict is over, you will hear more and more. An early start beats fast running. Here are a few things I've been able to dig up. The Perlez article will cost you money but the interviews are priceless. Read them before they get destroyed.
In "The Washington Times," editor-at-large Arnaud de Borchgrave, currently also with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discusses Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmad Chalabi, who some view as a potential post-Saddam Hussein Iraqi leader. De Borchgrave says Chalabi's detractors argue he has only known "comfortable exile, first in Jordan, then in Britain," and is ill-suited to the rigorous test that would await him leading a postwar Iraq. De Borchgrave also points put that on 9 April 1992, Chalabi was sentenced "to 22 years hard labor by a Jordanian state security court on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds, and speculation with the Jordanian dinar" for his actions as founder and head of Petra Bank, Jordan's third-largest. At the time of the sentencing, Chalabi "had already skipped across the border to Syria."
Chalabi denies the charges "and claims jealous royal courtiers framed him." But de Borchgrave says Petra Bank undeniably failed, "and some $300 million in depositors' accounts had suddenly vanished." He says Jordan's ruling establishment "does not look forward to a Chalabi-run Iraq, propped up by the U.S. military." However, considering Jordan's "total dependence on Iraqi oil, it's a safe bet that a President Ahmad Chalabi would receive a royal pardon in Jordan."
In Washington, Team Chalabi is led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, the neoconservative strategist who heads the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. Chalabi's partisans run the gamut from far right to extremely far right, with key supporters in most of the Pentagon's Middle-East policy offices -- such as Peter Rodman, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and Michael Rubin. Also included are key staffers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, not to mention Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey.
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Plato attributes these words to Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." I am inclined to agree, though I'd rather not end up taking the hemlock express as the latter did.
I find myself wondering what good I can accomplish in this world. For years I've been absorbing much in the course of my readings, and while I feel that my understanding of this world and the people in it have improved, it won't amount to much of a legacy in the end unless I act upon it. Is that what we strive for? Legacies, to leave our marks upon this world to prove that we once walked its surface?
Grandiose visions aside, perhaps it's just as well to take small steps and see what emerges from the complexity. And so, with a few words I sally forth. I might yet be a butterfly amid the chaos of the forces for good.
One of my favorite aphorisms is that an early start beats fast running. I am in a quandry these days about how exactly to reorganize my writing life now that I have seven blogs in three domains using two different authoring systems. I am pulled all over the place and can't figure how best to make it all gel. So I fall back on my gut wisdom. It's about 2:30 in the morning, that's an early start.
Sooner or later, my pals will be chiming in around here, or at least that's was the plan when I mailed them on April Fools Day. I've been champing (not chomping I'v learned) at the bit since then and actually losing more sleep over the possibilities than over my tax bill. So what I think I should do is start off the conversation with some thematic axioms. Axioms is a bit more dogmatic a word than I'd prefer but..
Just the other morning I read something about old Tom Lehrer, who is not dead but retired somewhere around Santa Cruz, California. He is probably best known for his extraordinary wit and lyrics in songs like The Masochism Tango, The Vatican Rag and Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. I've got all the MP3s, I hope he doesn't mind much. Lehrer suggested that there is no more wit in comedy these days. I've said as much but I'm not quite so famous or good at math as he. He's retired and I've got a blog so I'll take it from here if you don't mind.
That's rather the point. Wit is in short supply, especially the self-deprecating kind. We supply, on occasion.
As you may or may not know, I've read a bit of Robert Nozick, and although I don't particularly subject myself to the rigors of worship and subjugations to Elohim, I have a strong sense that one should try one's best over a full lifetime to examine and improve one's life. Or else. We appear often to be living in the time of 'or else', of devolution and devaluation, not to mention scarcity, of the ethos of enlightenment. God's not punishing us, we are simply reaping a harvest of cynicism and nihilism.
I'm not going off on a rant against the bad isms of the age. I've contributed myself, if only to solopsism (but then again who am I to say so?). But I do want to share in a community of folks who work honestly for the better forces of life. This is certain to be one and I believe each of the writers here understand that it is indeed work to persue and defend the better forces of life. It's a renewable spark; when you see others working hard, you feel the need to contribute. Of course the same mob dynamic works on the bad ism side of human nature as well, but I think we'd rather spread the good words.
Finally, as my eyelids buckle and I reach my length for spontaneous writing, I want to get us beyond the horseracing. That may be difficult because I have become painfully aware of how being a blog author gives one audience fever. I've watched it happen at in the capitol cities of Blogistan and I know how it works. But I will strive to be a bit more philosophical, a bit more long term, and look at the kind of large things that don't go from zero to meme in 6.5 seconds.
As a writer and a programmer I understand that you cannot force creativity. You can't just hum the noodle dance and crank out elegance. I know my mind well enough to know that some days, and some very late nights, it draws ideas from the air with zen-like efficiency. Other times it farts like a dyspeptic. I'll try to write at length when I'm inspired, and simply vibe off the others when I'm not particularly insightful.
That's enough to get me started.
Vision Circle is a small group of thinkers and writers who collaborate in the creation of:
Provocative Essays
Political Commentary
Social Analysis
Cultural Criticism
and other brain spew.
Differentiators:
The Long View
Mutual Vibe
Who:
William Benzon
Michael Bowen
Timothy Burke
Charles Cameron
Jim Lai
Mike Sellers
And so it begins.
Colorblindness cripples. How much it does so becomes apparent when its principles are applied without nuance. The plaintiffs who argued their case before the Supreme Court this week sounded to me to be of the persuasion that there should absolutely be no regard to color. This is a problem.
I'm not close enough to the law to understand what the Constitution directs historically with regard to its ability to percieve race but I do have a principle I think which ought to be applied. I call the idea 'effective resonance'.
The reasoning behind it has to do with the notion that all racist acts are not equal either in intent or effect. The state does have a compelling interest in insuring that society does not exclude groups but I don't see that it is useful in policing all instances of racist discriminations. For this reason I have come up with three classes of racist offense. These of course are informal and don't stand up to legalistic definitions but you should get the picture:
Class Three - Background Noise
This will include all such insults, slights and disrespect as is generally expected to be found everywhere in this nation. Examples include but are not limited to being ignored by cabbies, flying confederate flags, nazi propaganda, being mistaken for the help, being shown costume jewelry, being asked one's opinion of, or to account for the opinions of the Fungibles, and most nigger calls.
Class Two - Political Intransigence
Class Two racism involves denials of public accomodation or private standing which are not criminal, yet grossly unfair and unjust. Such acts would include imposition of glass cielings, racial profiling, white flight, medical misdiagnosis, educational tracking, false arrest, false imprisonment, racist vois dire, racist jury nullification, denials of service with plausible deniability, any institutional individual or institutional racism which must be tried in civil courts and all such active bigotry one associates with hate groups which fall short of incitement.
Class One - Crime
Theft, criminal defamation, cross burnings (now), hate crimes, murder, rape & all that stuff for which America has never made any extraordinary effort to repair.
The matter of Effective Resonance adds a second dimension to this classification. I consider it an important context because it takes into account the ability of a group to withstand the inevitable turmoil of ethnic, religious or racial animus. I believe this to be something that changes over time and that the law should be sensitive to that robustness or lack thereof.
Let us consider several well known examples from the not too distant past. In the first case consider the significance of the restrictions place against blacks from sitting in the front of the bus. In the course of human events, this is little more than humiliating. And yet in the case of Rosa Parks, the willingness to defy this racist rule was quite courageous. That is because at the time such rules exemplified the extraordinary control whites had over blacks.
One could hardly imagine it necessary today to escort black highschool children into a white school with federal troops. Yet this precaution, dare I say this remedy, was entirely appropriate for the integration of Little Rock highschool 2 generations ago.
What has changed greatly since those days is the power of black American individuals to move freely in society. This derives not soley from the change in the law, but because of the collective power of the group to work around such difficulties. Today the law is fairer and the power of individual blacks to absorb such pains as sitting in the back of the bus or not accept police escorts is greater.
What I am suggesting is that for the same reasons Class Three racist offenses have not been outlawed and criminalized is not because they are not racist, but because despite the fact that they are racist and offensive black mobility in society is not restricted inordinately. Blacks as a group and those interested in black success is too strong.
On the other hand, could we say the same thing for Arabs and Muslims in post 9/11 America? No. Today they are more vulnerable.
When we look at racial discriminations we should consider the robustness of the context of the group in question as well as the severity of the act itself. This is an important distinction that many critics of Affirmative Action make when they say it is not as necessary today as it was 20 years ago. Despite the fact that individual blacks may be just as underprivileged today as the very first Affirmative Action beneficiaries does nothing to diminsh its stigma today. One cannot escape the fact that individuals are judged in the context of the benefit to their group, in fact the entire question of Affirmative Action is one of social justice. Is America made weaker or stronger because of it?
If the legitimacy of positive discriminations for individuals of a group owes something to the status of that group, likewise the severity with which we judge negative discriminations should be considered in light of the status of the group to which the discriminated individual belongs. The aim after all is to keep all groups in the mainstream of American life with special regard to their race, gender and creed.