Vision Circle

It's Human Nature

Human minds serve “fitness” – not “truth”. Since every individual is programmed to pursue personal fitness and lie about intentions, no civilization has ever been able to convince its members to cooperate enough to survive the depletion of the energy resources which gave it birth. When confronted with ever-declining resources, the preservation of civilization requires more-and-more cooperation, but individuals are genetically programmed to reduce cooperation. This genetic program sets up a positive feedback loop: declining common resources cause individuals to reduce cooperation even more, which reduces common resources even faster.

IT’S HUMAN NATURE by Jay Hanson –10/08/05
(permission to reprint expressly granted)

Our behavior derives from genes and environment (lifetime environment, but mostly present environment). Our present genes are the product of earlier genes and earlier environments. We are born with different genetic programming for self, family, and social group (“tribe”). Although few of us are consciously aware of it, we swim in politics like a fish swims in water.

INDIVIDUAL COMPETITION
Men evolved to compete with other men for resources – especially breeding partners. The most-desirable women selected mates who were perceived (genetically and socially) to offer the best opportunities for their children’s survival (“sexual selection”). Those men who were able to accumulate the most social power tended to produce the most children.

Men evolved to form tribes and cooperate with other men (“reciprocal altruism”) in order to obtain more resources than they could as individuals or families. Tribal society provides the rules for competition, but an individual’s goal is always based on a genetic drive for “inclusive fitness”.

TRIBAL COMPETITION
Tribes serve each member’s fitness by competing with other tribes for resources. Tribes form political alliances and cooperate with other tribes in order to obtain more resources than they could as individual tribes. Tribes that fail to individual serve fitness become unstable and subject to fundamental change (e.g., revolution).

When tribal leaders “feel” that fitness is better served by violence, they will attack other tribes and take that tribe’s resources. The tribes with the most resources and largest populations usually win.

DO THE MATH
Why do so few people know or care about “peak oil”? It’s because evolution doesn't conserve “individuals”, it conserves “genes”. What type of behavior will evolve? Do the math!

Assume that two fundamental “genetic sets” (strains of people) exist in a tribe of primitive people. Each group is represented by ten pairs. Further assume that this tribe loses 30% of its population every twenty years due to war, disease, and famine.

Members of gene set #1 are intelligent, honest, and forward looking. The mating pairs in this set only have two children and limit personal consumption because they know the tribe is over carrying capacity (many die of starvation every twenty years). After 20 years, this set has 20 adults + 20 children = 40 members.

Members of gene set #2 are stupid, corrupt, chronic liars, and only care about the present. The mating pairs in this set consume ten times as many resources as the first group and have an average of ten children before the females die. After 20 years, this set has 10 adults (females dead) + 100 children = 110 members.

A famine kills 30% of the tribe. Now, set # 1 has only 28 members, while set # 2 has 77 members. The tribe now has total of 105 members. The fraction of gene set #1 will continue to shrink till it dies out.

What kind of people will be selected? Obviously, it’s people who are stupid, corrupt, chronic liars and only care about the present. The ancestors of everyone alive today was selected by a process something like the one described above.

DOPAMINEIACS
We are all addicted to “dopamine”. Dopamine is a drug produced by our body which makes us “feel good”. We buy things because the “buying” (more than the “owning”) gives us a dopamine rush. That's why we never get enough stuff. It's like an orgasm. No matter how many orgasms we have, we want to have at least one more.

MR. HYDE AND DR. JEKYLL
Deception is common in nature: animals evolved to look like plants, birds pretend injury to lure predators away from nests, and lizards inflate themselves pretending to be more dangerous than they really are, but humans are by far the most accomplished liars in the animal kingdom. Two separate personalities live inside each of us: a Mr. Hyde who makes all the decisions and a Dr. Jekyll who makes all the excuses. Mr. Hyde is only interested in sex, money and power, while Dr. Jekyll is only interested in how Hyde’s decisions look to the neighbors.

Mr. Hyde’s decisions are not based on calculation; they are based on subconscious image comparison, and he will select the choice that “feels best”. About ½ second after Mr. Hyde makes a decision, he invents a socially acceptable excuse for Dr. Jekyll, and then Jekyll tells the neighbors. Unfortunately, Dr. Jekyll has no way of knowing whether Hyde is telling the truth or lying. This makes it literally impossible for anyone to know for certain what Mr. Hyde is up to.

Human minds serve “fitness” – not “truth”. Since every individual is programmed to pursue personal fitness and lie about intentions, no civilization has ever been able to convince its members to cooperate enough to survive the depletion of the energy resources which gave it birth. When confronted with ever-declining resources, the preservation of civilization requires more-and-more cooperation, but individuals are genetically programmed to reduce cooperation. This genetic program sets up a positive feedback loop: declining common resources cause individuals to reduce cooperation even more, which reduces common resources even faster.

LIE, CHEAT, STEAL, RAPE, AND KILL
Tribal society only directs our behavior when we perceive that it is able to reward or punish us. A “collapsed” society has no influence over our behavior. That's why cultures disappear and people revert to more primitive ways of life. Our society has been in the process of collapsing for several years because of falling “net energy”.

Our tribe expands for mutual defense when our genetic drives are satisfied, but it will shrink when our genetic drives are frustrated. We invent excuses to kick minorities out of our tribe when resources are insufficient to support growth for all. Allies can become enemies almost overnight. The collapse of Yugoslavia was a good example of neighbor slaughtering neighbor.

When our subconscious feels our fitness is best served by lying, cheating, stealing, raping, or killing, then we will do so. It’s human nature.

Hunger in America rises by 43 percent over last five years

More than 38 million Americans go hungry, including nearly 14 million children....,

Waltham, MA, Oct. 28, 2005 –Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999.

The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999.

"This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome," noted center director Dr. J. Larry Brown, a leading scholarly authority on domestic hunger. "This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control." According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, food insecurity increased by nearly a million households from 2003 to 2004. Rates of hunger increased in almost every single category of household during the same time, with single mothers and those living in or near poverty continuing to suffer from severely high rates of both food insecurity and hunger.

California, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina all have food insecurity and hunger rates that are significantly higher than the national average. The lone bright spot in the nation is Oregon. Once considered to have the worst hunger in the country, Oregon has shown significant decreases in food insecurity and hunger since 1999-2001.

"With this astonishing level of food deprivation in America," Brown concluded, "we need President Bush to step up to the plate. If he now asks Congress to cut federal food programs, hunger will increase even further. We need the moral leadership to stem this crisis."

A full copy of Household Food Security in the United States, 2004 is available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err11/
To obtain a bulletin of the analysis by the Center on Poverty and Hunger, visit http://www.centeronhunger.org, or email hunger@brandeis.edu. The author of this bulletin can be contacted at bhall@brandeis.edu or by phone at 781-736-8680.

Hate Mail: Redux

The following are samples of hate mail that Colbert I. King received:

Some folks are really touchy these days. Take, for instance, these four readers: D.G., J., W.T. and D.L. They didn't care for my column on Harriet Miers ["The Right, on Fire Over Miers," Oct. 8] and thus availed themselves of the opportunity to tell me so by e-mail.

Wrote D.G.: "Some portly Episcopalian [an indelicate reference to moi ] who condones the systemic elimination of the helpless Unborn styles himself a good heart because he happens to be black and benefiting from the Graham family's quota mania. What a joke!!!"

From J.: "If you weren't Black, you wouldn't get a job in journalism. You are in due to a tacit quota system."

And W.T.: "Reading your article is like watching a black minstrel doing his song and dance with words. Pure buffoonery! Affirmative action writer in action."

Finally, D.L.: "king...your article was biased and fulla[expletive] . . . so pack it up your liberal [expletive] sideways."

I seem to remember Michelle Malkin showing some hate email that set off a round of faux disgust from around the right leaning blogosphere.

I wound up writing:

So, Michelle Malkin gets hate mail. What's the big deal?

Really.

What makes her special?

Since I have time to waste, I decided to check the blogspot.com domain to see if anyone referenced the hate emails Colbert I. King received. I found one reference to the article but it was for the article itself.

I searched the typepad.com domain as well, and saw references to other articles, but not this one.

That's different from Michelle Malkin's situation, isn't it?

It seems, to me, that "minority" conservatives are being given special treatment by conservatives. Some would call that patronizing.

Marsalis, New Orleans, and Noble Sounds

Wynton Marsalis writes about New Orleans in this week's New Republic. His ideas about sustained intensity resound with me. If I could only leave my kids with one skill? One trait? It'd be that of sustained intensity.

As an aside, one of the worst aspects of the blog as a form is that in most cases it detracts from sustained intensity.

But that's another discussion.

Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement was about changing public policy to allow full access to the promise of America.

It was about allowing full access to all schools.

It was about allowing full access to the voting booth.

It was about allowing full access to jobs.

It was about allowing full access to opportunities.

It WASN'T about disallowing people to "act the fool". That is a home training and/or moral and/or gray matter issue. It's not a "Civil Rights" issue.

Stopping rappers from spewing filth isn't a "Civil Rights" issue, it is a moral and human rights issue.

Stopping the insane use of "nigger" by Black people is not a "Civil Rights" issue, it is a self-respect issue.

Stopping crime is a moral and community issue not a "Civil Rights" issue.

Lowering the high rate of out of wedlock births is a moral issue and a poverty issue and a social issue, not a "Civil Rights" issue.

At least that's how I see it.

Rough and Tumble Black Politics

"Black politics" can be dirty, just like "regular" politics. From memory, these are some of the things that have happened, in no particular order:

• In Baltimore, Black Democrats for city council seats have tried to "out Black" their rivals by saying they would fight for the interests of "Black folk" in their district and that their rivals were beholden to "Johns Hopkins" or other outside interests.
• Again in Baltimore, some Black talk show hosts have called Black Democrat politicians names like "buck dancing negroes", "sellouts", "coons", etc.
• In N.J., Corey Booker's run for mayor saw his opponent use the "not really Black" charge against him.
• In D.C., the mayoral race often has politicians and "local leaders" saying that this person cares about people "east of the river" or saying that that person only cares about the ward Georgetown is in. "East of the river" is the mostly Black and poor area of D.C.

Those examples are given to show the "Black flavah" of "our" politics. Frankly, I don't like it because when I see it used, sometimes (many times?) it's used to hide and ignore some of the real issues involved in the race. In the case of Corey Booker, it was used when polls showed Cory Booker was leading in the race.

Now, the question of the day: how often do those antics reach the level of national attention of the incident with Michael Steele and the doctored picture?

Does this mean I condone it? Uhhhh.... "Hell to da naw!!!!".

But I'm increasingly starting to wonder why "Black conservatives" or "Black Republicans" are getting special treatment or protection and/or asking for special treatment or protection from "normal" Black politics?

I'm serious.

Is it OK for Black Democrats to call other Black Democrats sellout but Black Republicans/Black conservatives are so fragile that they must be protected from it?

Hat tip: The Black Informant

Thank you Mrs. Parks

We waited four hours in line to see Mrs. Parks' body while it lied in state at the Capitol Building in DC.

I underestimated the wait by seven hours at LEAST. We left at midnight...and would have had to stay until 7am to view the body (maybe). While Mrs. Parks had no biological children it was clear that many of us considered her more than family.

Votre Dame - Votre Shame

Word out of South Bend, Indiana is that new coach Charlie Weis (former Offensive Coordinator of the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots) has inked a new 10-year contract to coach the Fighting Irish football team.

It seems that the Irish's 5-2 record (losses to Michigan State and #1 USC) has inspired the administration, alumni and trustees to extend the tenure of Weis. The Irish have beaten Pittsburgh (one of the worst teams in the nation), Michigan (having a down year with 3 losses already), and several other mediocre teams. The Irish have not yet beaten a quality team this year. Why does any of this matter? Simple. Another coach walked down this path not too long ago.

That coach is presently leading the Washington Huskies. He began his career in the NFL with Dennis Green and the Minnesota Vikings and worked closely with the coach of the NFL's remaining undefeated team (Tony Dungy - Indianapolis Colts)...That coach began his college coaching career with the Stanford Cardinal and consistently won big games that his team should have lost. He was offered the gig at Notre Dame when everyone else turned the job down. He was offered the job when one candidate was found to have fabricated his resume. And he started his career 8-0...

And he beat an elite national power ON THE ROAD - but was not offered a ten-year contract extension...That coach's name is Tyrone Willingham.

The contract extension offer to Weis says Notre Dame is willing to accept the chance of prolonged mediocrity under a white coach - and they were unwilling to accept the chance of sustained excellence under a black coach. At similar points in their coaching tenure, the university elected to move in diametrically related directions.

I'm sure there's a story of merit in there somewhere. It is not discernable to the naked or experience eye, but it must be there, because if it's not there, then the cynics will carry the day.

Black guy starts 8-0...no contract extension. Beats the great Florida State...rises to #6 in National Rankings.

White guy starts 5-2...loses at home to #1 USC...loses to Michigan State...beats mediocre competition...gets 10-year contract extension.

I'm sure there is a story of merit - there better be. Otherwise, the message of ND football (of which I am no fan) is, "Hey Ty, thanks for the bailout. We're going in a direction that mirrors our preferred image." And the second part of the message is, "Hey Charlie...that's good enough. Just keep us in the game. You don't have to win. You haven't beaten anyone yet, but you look like our kind of guy. Why don't you stick around for a decade."

The moral of the story is that life is not fair and no one is entitled to a job at any school - least of all a lily-white Catholic, private school in Indiana...but the corollary is that equity of opportunity remains elusive...all things being equal, Willingham would still be at ND - for whatever that's worth. Sometimes, you just have to look the part. Sometimes, it's best to have your own thing and your own part. Sometimes, it is less than satisfactory to serve as an appendage to someone else's traditions.

Harriet Miers

I thought Harriet Miers would get confirmed, despite the pressure from conservative interest groups. I thought that way until I read that she seemed to support affirmative action. I knew she wouldn't get it then. (Colbert I. King wrote the same thing in this article, but he goes on to defend "activist judges". It's worth a read).

What this episode shows is how the president was forced to deal with his party's base. He had to buckle to the pressure which shows the strength of the base.

Now, compare that to Bill Clinton when his base said that the cocaine/crack sentencing disparity law should be allowed sunset. Instead, he made it permanent.

Black Democrats who are active in party politics should take note and do a real self assessment of political support.

I think I'm going to send letters to some Maryland Black Democrat politicians to needle them.

The Red Cross

The Red Cross took in about 1.2 billion dollars for Katrina relief. The Red Cross spent about 2 billion dollars for Katrina relief. Now they want a loan to cover the shortfall.

After the Red Cross was caught hoarding money sent in for 9/11 relief, and accusations of mispending money, is it now safe to say the Red Cross is shady for other than handling blood supplies?

Oh, wait... There's still that HIV tainted blood thing...

Thoughts While on Biz Travel

• Job well done Mrs. Parks. Thank you.
• Black women with apple bottoms should not wear low/no waist pants. The sistas look like they have a fully loaded diaper. Yes, I've written that before, but some things need to be restated.
• When you are on biz travel, and you are socializing with customers, you shouldn't drink so much that you get tipsy or drunk. It's not good business. Saying "I don't remember what happened" will erase the memory of you "acting the fool."
• Some nomination was withdrawn. blah blah blah. Somebody faces obstruction of justice charges. blah blah blah. But that's big news but not government abuse of power?
• It's interesting that the common question after Katrina was, "Why didn't they leave when they were warned?" Well, how come the national media isn't asking that question about Wilma victims?

  The local media is asking the question and the response being shown is, "I didn't think it would be that bad".
  

• Business travel gets very old very fast.
  
• So, when you make a flight reservation, you KNOW that you are leaving a warm climate to go to a colder climate. Yet, you insist on wearing shorts, flip flops/sandals and no coat. Well, in doing so, you have no reason to complain about how cold you are when you are standing outside in 40 degree temperature waiting for your ride. And, yes, I SAID so to a stranger.
  
• Southwest has opening seating, but they let you board based on 4 groups: kids/special needs, A, B, and C grouping. A, B, and C grouping is determined by when you check in. Southwest needs to put lines on the floor to help maintain the A, B, and C lines. When the flight is delayed by an hour or so, and people jump the line "by mistake" because they were in the wrong letter line, some people can get nasty.
  
• Job well done Mrs. Parks. Thank you.
  

"Black" man grows up "white" for 26 years

I got this story from one of my students. A subscription may be required. A few months ago I got into a discussion with science fiction author Steven Barnes on his blog about "race relations." Steve's thing was that blacks had special problems they needed to overcome from discrimination (no disagreement) that led to them having severe cultural and psychological deficits (big disagreement).

Reading this story it is clear that the son has some issues to deal with. But for me the mother's story is even more tragic.

The Purse-Seine - Robinson Jeffers (1937)

I cannot tell you how beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible. I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable of free survival, insulated From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all dependent. The circle is closed, and the net Is being hauled in.

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea's night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.

I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.

Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers--or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls--or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

The White House Cabal

Lawrence Wilkerson lays out the structural and managerial failings of the neocon cabal.

I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.

STEVEN CLEMONS: Thank you very much for joining us today, and thank you for your patience about seats. I know when the room is crowded and full what a hassle it is to – you know, as the room heats up.

But I do promise a very active and fun, interesting question-and-answer period following Larry Wilkerson’s presentation. For those of you who have not been here before, welcome to the New America Foundation. I’m Steve Clemons. I run our foreign policy programs here, and our foreign policy activities are expanding rapidly.

I hope all of you are on our list. If not, let me know and I’ll be happy to add you to our roster of programs that deal with things international and national security policy.

This is part of a series of forums that we’ve begun this year that eventually will lead into a major project that we’re calling our Solarium exercise. It’s very interesting. When President Eisenhower and his team came in after President Truman, there was a lot of scrutiny and thought that went into questions about whether to continue the doctrine of containment, whether to take a different track. And it was fascinating that Eisenhower at that time orchestrated three competitive teams with economics analysts, generals, national intelligence experts, and essentially they had to think about the world view that they were trying to sell in terms of policy, and they had to pay for it; they needed to think systematically about the social and economic costs and consequences of these various policies. And it was a very interesting way to discipline thinking about the direction that made the most sense for the United States.

And so what we’ve tried to do is use that as sort of a metaphor for how we need to think about our own debates and thinking, and it’s been a real pleasure for us to encounter folks that are both policy practitioners, but also people that bring, I think, real vision to the kind of world that we need to think that we are evolving towards in 20 or 30 years out, and who also think a lot about process.

And today we have Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – Larry Wilkerson – who many of you know served from the years 2002 through to this year as Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department. He is also the former associate director of policy planning at the Department of State, the former director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College, and he’s getting ready to teach some courses on national security at the College of William & Mary and at George Washington University.

He is also one of the speakers that spoke in our major September forum. Ted – oh, you’ve got a seat right there? Ted Alden, Financial Times – a very good guy. (Laughter.) Make sure he’s comfortable, get him a Coke.

In any case, it is a great pleasure and privilege to introduce to you today Larry Wilkerson, who will share his thoughts on America’s national security decision-making process, and I think will give some interesting historical context to what has changed and what’s the same, and whether this is a boon or a danger to American democracy.

So without further ado, please welcome Colonel Larry Wilkerson.

(Applause.)

COLONEL LARRY WILKERSON: I couldn’t help but grow somewhat nostalgic as Steve was talking about Dwight Eisenhower – (laughter). Though I was 7 to 15, roughly, during his tenure as president, I sometimes find myself longing for it – (laughter) – especially President Eisenhower’s rather conformistic – if that’s not too big a word – approach to the 1947 National Security Act. In other words, he thought it was a piece of legislation that was passed by the Congress of the United States, the people’s representative, and he damn well ought to follow it, and did so probably to an extent that few presidents, if any, have since.

I want to thank Steve and the New America Foundation for giving me this opportunity, and thank some of my friends for turning out. I see an assistant secretary over here – I think he’s left that post now – who used to spend some time in my office, and I see others around the room. I see some journalists in here who have been trying religiously to get me over the last three or four months. You finally got me, at least on this topic.

I was out in Montana recently fly fishing in Yellowstone National Park, standing in a river, and I had mistakenly brought my cell phone. And it went off and I answered it, and I won’t tell you who it was, but it was someone from the New York Times wanting to interview me about the detainee abuse issue. And I feel so strongly about that issue I released the trout I was then catching – (laughter) – got out of the Madison River, got up on the bank, told me son-in-law to keep fishing, and talked to the gentleman for about a half an hour. And if any of you have any questions on that issue, of course I’d be glad to address them.

I have two approaches to what Steve was alluding to as my topic today. The one is the approach of an academic. For some six years at the Naval War College at Newport and then at the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, I taught some of the brightest people in America, 35- to 40-year-old military officers of all services, both genders, and all professional skills within the services. You want to teach someone who will challenge you on an hourly basis, try that.

One of the things that I taught them was a very esoteric subject to most of them who were battalion commanders, fighter squadron commanders, destroyer or cruiser captains, or some other really tactical-level position in their service theretofore – 15 years in some cases; in other cases, maybe as much as 18 or 20. They came to me as tactical experts, as the very best. In most services they were picked out of the top 15 to 20 percent. In all services I would say they were picked out of the top 50 percent. So I’m looking at a very bright seminar of 15 to 16 people who know a whole hell of a lot more than I do about their services, particularly if they’re not in the Army, and who know a great deal about tactical applications of power, if you will.

But they know very little about such esoteric subjects as the national security decision-making process. So you go through a lot trying to get them up to speed so that they can then deal with what you’re going to throw at them at a really rapid pace after they’re up to speed. Some of them can’t take it. Some of them tell you, “I’d like to go back to my battalion,” “I’d like to go back to my ship,” “I don’t like this world of strategy, international relations, politics, interagency activities, and so forth.” And they’re very honest with you.

Others take to it -- like I think probably Colin Powell did at the National War College in the mid- to late-‘70s -- and become bigger because of the experience, and then go on hopefully to gain stars and be fairly influential in their own professions.

As I dealt with the national security decision-making process, therefore I developed a bifurcated view about it. The one side was academic, the one side read the 1947 National Security Act that Harry Truman signed on 26 July 1947 and the amendments thereto, and understood that the Goldwater-Nichols Act – the DOD reorganization act, 1985 I believe it was – actually brought the 1947 act into a new realm, actually closed some gaps that had been in the original act, and created the finest military staff in the world from a staff that theretofore had been a desultory, at best, and even mediocre staff, and put at its head the man who had been the titular boss of the armed forced before – and titular is probably too strong a word – the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and made him the principal advisor to the secretary of Defense, the president of the United States, and the National Security Council. So this was a monumental change.

And I will tell you -- because I was there in the midst of the fight; I was in the arena, so to speak – it was tough. It was very, very tough to force the armed forces into jointness, which is the jargon that we use to describe it.

Today, we desperately need a Goldwater-Nichols Act for the entire federal government – desperately. We need to force the interagency process, for example, to conform to President Clinton’s PDD-56, if you’re familiar with that. It was a document that described – it could be improved on, but it described very well how America should deal with crisis. The problem was nobody followed it. The problem was nobody followed it so bad that when a Senate group was set up to investigate that very subject, and called my boss, who was then a private citizen for whom I was working in a private capacity, and said, “Would you come sit on our group? Would you help us with this – because we really think the process is broken,” my boss’ answer was simply, “No, I won’t, because you’ve got it already. You can’t hardly improve on what you’ve got already; you just have to force execution of what you’ve got.”

Now there are many critics who will say you cannot, in our system of government, force the executive branch to do something that it doesn’t want to do. The framers of the 1947 act I don’t think would agree with that.

Now before I turn to the formal part of my presentation, which is a little bit of history, let me just say that the other side – the reason my views are bifurcated – the other side is my practical experience; practical experience sitting at the right hand of a very powerful chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, underneath a very powerful secretary of Defense by the name of Richard Cheney, and watching probably one of the finest presidents we’ve ever had – that’s how I feel about George H.W. Bush – exercise one of the greatest adeptnesses at foreign policy I’ve ever seen. So many things happened in George H.W. Bush’s four years, that I think when historians write about it with dispassion – 25, 30 years from now – they’re going to give that man enormous credit for knowing how to make the process work. It took them awhile; took them about nine to 10 months to get their act together, but once they did, they worked very well.

So I’ve seen that aspect of it. I saw the Clinton administration, up close and personal. It took them a little longer than that to get their act together, and in a very intimate way, I saw the George W. Bush administration, from 2001 to early 2005 – a little over four years.

So I have two approaches, if you will: the academic over here and the practitioner over here, and sometimes I get them confused. The ground is so rich for an academic and for a person who has taught the National Security Act and what has come out of the National Security Act that I sometimes get to candid, if you will.

MR. : We’re hoping that. (Laughter.)

COL. WILKERSON: On the other hand, as a practitioner and as a citizen of this great republic, I kind of believe that I have an obligation to say some of these things, and I believe furthermore that the people’s representatives over on the Hill in that other branch of government have truly abandoned their oversight responsibilities in this regard and have let things atrophy to the point that if we don’t do something about it, it’s going to get – it’s going to get even more dangerous than it already is.

Now when the framers began to think about – I say framers; we’re talking about dozens if not hundred of people here, but we’re talking about some minds who were engaged in this. If I cited some names – we don’t need to, but of course you’d probably recognized them – Forestal among – you know, one of them who of course committed suicide. It got too heavy for him.

But these were probably some people who I think rivaled those who got together that hot summer in Philadelphia and put together the Constitution. We have had some peaks and valleys in our history, but I think post-World War II and World War II itself was a peak, and we had some really good people thinking hard about these issues. And one of the things that they probably wouldn’t tell you if they were here today – unless they’d had a few drinks, and Harry Truman would have had a few – (laughter) – is that they didn’t want another FDR. They did not want another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They even amended the Constitution to make sure they didn’t get one for more than eight years. But they didn’t want the secrecy, they didn’t want the concentration of power, they didn’t want the lack of transparency into principal decisions that got people killed, even though they’d been successful in arguably one of the greatest conflicts the world has seen. And so they set about trying to ensure that this wouldn’t happen again.

I don’t think even his critics would have argued that FDR wasn’t a brilliant politician and a brilliant leader. But let’s think about it for a moment, if you are one of the framers. How often does America get brilliant leaders? Put them down on paper. I can count them myself on one hand. You can perhaps count them on two hands and make persuasive arguments for the additions. I prefer one hand.

So we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody – or at least nearly so. (Laughter.) You know, you laugh, but I’m not trying to solicit your laughter. I think it’s a real problem in our democracy. You have to have a system that is so elastic, so resilient, so able to take punches that at one time one branch can supplant another, or one branch can come up and check another. It’s the old business of checks and balances.

If you concentrate power and you do it in a way that is not that different from the way Franklin Roosevelt concentrated it, but you don’t have someone who is brilliant at the utilization of that power, you’ve got problems. You’ve got problems. You may have problems even if you have someone who is brilliant. Go ask people who’ve written about Woodrow Wilson – although I wouldn’t say Woodrow Wilson had concentrated power quite the way FDR did. And of course the war and the depression gave him ample opportunity to do things to abridge civil liberties, for example, that even Abraham Lincoln didn’t go to in a conflict that produced far more casualties and arguably was more passionately fought, certainly in terms of the families of America. But too much power, too much secrecy – they wanted to get rid of that.

They also wanted to institutionalize, more or less, the very thing that had brought about their success in World War II. They wanted to institutional that product, that success, that whatever, and so they wanted to consolidate the armed forces, they wanted to bring them together. They wanted to put one person in charge of those armed forces.

Talk about secrecy – Harry Truman, when he took over in April of 1945, didn’t even know about the atomic bomb. He had had hints because he’d written -- as chairman of the investigating committee in the Senate, he’d written to Stimson, and he had said, “I’ve heard about this land-buying out in Washington; tremendous numbers of acres are being bought. What’s going on?” And Stimson had said, “Please, Mr. Senator, it’s too big for you” – essentially, and Truman had backed off – to give you a sense of the times and the seriousness of what was happening.

But it took Stimson and Leslie Groves, who sneaked in the back door so no one would know he was coming over – and George Marshall didn’t even attend because he was afraid it would bring to much attention to the meeting – and Leslie Groves – Brigadier General Leslie Groves and Stimson briefed the president with essentially two papers in the Oval Office 12 days after he took office, and he found out exactly how serious this was and exactly what he had to deal with in terms of the nation’s nuclear program.

So the process these people were going through was to try and make the system more transparent, make decision-making more transparent, make sharing of information and critical data more the likelihood rather than the exception, and they set about doing this through a legislative process.

Now, you know, how do you legislate that sort of thing? I heard the same thing about Goldwater-Nichols. I heard the same thing over and over again from my armed forces colleagues: you cannot legislate the armed forces into being a team. It’s impossible, you can’t do it. They did it. They did it, and the people who did it did a fantastic job because they didn’t jump through their rear end, like Joe Biden wanted to do when I talked to his staff about something similar to this. They actually went about it in a very concerted, very organized, very disciplined way, and they built the information that they needed in order to make good decisions about how to make the armed forces work together. And it involved everything. It involved education, it involved assignments, it involved the professionalism of the forces. It involved almost every aspect of the armed forces that is crucial to building people up into a team, and they enacted it.

I used to use the 1985 committee print from the Senate on civil-military relations as my text for my students because it was such a brilliant exposition of civil-military relations since the beginning of our country. That’s how good a work they did on that legislation. It wasn’t pull it out of your rear end; it was five, six years in the making. It was superb legislation. Can it be perfected even further? Probably so. People are debating that now. But it was legislation that changed things. We need something like that today.

Now let me tell you why I say that. Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn’t have to suffer. Domestic and international decisions should not be made in a secret way. That’s a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I’ve been taught to guard the nation’s secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I’ve gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do, and I understand that the nation’s secrets need guarding, but fundamental decisions about foreign policy should not be made in secret.

Let me tell you the practical reason – and here I’m jumping over really into both realms, the practical reasons why that’s true. You have probably all read books on leadership: “The Seven Habits of Successful People,” or whatever. If you as a member of the bureaucracy do not participate in a decision, you are not going to carry that decision out with the alacrity, the efficiency and the effectiveness you would if you have participated. When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions, more or less out of the blue, on that bureaucracy, you can’t expect that bureaucracy to carry your decision out very well. And furthermore, if you’re not prepared to stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy as they carry out your decision, you’re courting disaster.

And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran. Generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita – and I could go on back – we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it sometimes again. I just use it for a tutoring class for my students down in the District of Columbia. It forced me to read it really closely because we’re doing metaphors and similes and antonyms and synonyms and so forth, and read in there what the founders say in a very different language than we use today. Read in there what they say about the necessity of the people to throw off tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do. And you’re talking about the potential for, I think, real dangerous times if we don’t get our act together.

Now, let me get a little more specific. This is where I'm sure the journalists will get their pens out. (Laughter.) Almost everyone since the ’47 act, with the exception, I think, of Eisenhower, has in some way or another perturbated, flummoxed, twisted, drew evolutionary trends with, whatever, the national security decision-making process. I mean, John Kennedy trusted his brother, who was attorney general – made his brother attorney general – far more than he should have. Richard Nixon, oh my god, took a position that was not even envisioned in the original framers of the act’s minds, national security advisor, and not subject to confirmation by the Senate, advice and consent – took that position and gave it to his secretary of State, concentrating power in ways that still reverberate in this country. Jimmy Carter allowed Zbig Brzezinski to essentially negate his secretary of State.

Now, I could go on and say what Sandy Berger did to Madeline Albright in the realm of foreign policy, and I could make other provocative statements too, but no one, in my study of the act’s implementation, has so flummoxed the process as the present administration. What do I mean by that? Remember what I said about the bureaucracy, if it’s going to implement your decisions, having to participate in those decisions. And let me add one other dimension to that. If you accept the fact – and I do today, and if you’ll look around you at some of these magazine covers – I don’t need any more testimony than that I don’t think – the complexity of crises that confront governments today is just unprecedented. Let me say that again: The complexity of the crises that confront governments today are just unprecedented.

At the same time, especially in America – but I submit to you in Japan, in China, and in a number of other countries soon to be probably the European Union, it’s just as bad, if not in some ways worse -- the complexity of governing is unprecedented. You simply cannot deal with all the challenges that government has to deal with, meet all the demands that government has to meet in the modern age, in the 21st century, without admitting that it is hugely complex. That doesn’t mean you have to add a Department of Homeland Security with 70,000 disparate entities thrown under somebody in order to handle them, but it does mean that your bureaucracy has got to be staffed with good people, and they’ve got to work together, and they’ve got to work under leadership they trust and leadership that on basic issues they agree with, and that if they don’t agree, they can dissent and dissent and dissent. And if their dissent is such that they feel so passionate about it, they can resign and know why they’re resigning.

That is not the case today. And when I say that is not the case today, I stop on 26 January 2005. I don’t know what the case is today; I wish I did. But the case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. And then when the bureaucracy was presented with the decision to carry them out, it was presented in a such a disjointed, incredible way that the bureaucracy often didn’t know what it was doing as it moved to carry them out.

Read George Packer’s book, “The Assassin’s Gate,” if you haven’t already. George Packer, a New Yorker – reporter for the New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it, and I usually put marginalia in a book, but let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on. (Laughter.) And I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he’s got. (Laughter.) But if you want to read how the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And of course there are other names in there: Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Franks said was the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world. He was. (Laughter.) Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. (Laughter.) And yet – and yet – and yet, after the secretary of State agrees to a $40 billion department rather than a $30 billion department having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw itself in a closet somewhere. Now, that’s not making excuses for the State Department; that’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished. Read George’s book.

In so many ways I wanted to believe for four years that what I was seeing – as an academic now – what I was seeing was an extremely weak national security advisor, and an extremely powerful vice president, and an extremely powerful in the issues that impacted him secretary of Defense – remember, a vice president who has been secretary of Defense too and obviously has an inclination that way, and also has known the secretary of Defense for a long time, and also is a member of what Dwight Eisenhower warned about – God bless Eisenhower – in 1961 in his farewell address, the military industrial complex – and don’t you think they aren’t among us today – in a concentration of power that is just unparalleled. It all happened because of the end of the Cold War. Harlan will tell you how many contractors who did billion dollars or so business with the Defense Department did we have in 1988 and how many do we have now? And they’re always working together.

If one of them is a lead on the satellite program – I hope there’s some Lockheed and Grumman and others here today, Raytheon – if one of them is a lead on satellites, the others are subs. And they’ve learned their lesson; they’re in every state. They’ve got every congressman, every senator. They’ve got it covered. Now, that’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are – and women – they are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at.

So you’ve got this collegiality there between the secretary of Defense and the vice president, and you’ve got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either. And so it’s not too difficult to make decisions in this what I call Oval Office cabal, and decisions often that are the opposite of what you’d thought were made in the formal process. Now, let’s get back to Dr. Rice again. For so long I said, yeah, Rich, you’re right – Rich being Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage – it is a dysfunctional process. And to myself I said, okay, put on your academic hat; who’s causing this? Well, the national security adviser. Even if the framers didn’t envision that position, even if it’s not subject to confirmation by the Senate, the national security advisor should be doing a better job. Now I’ve come to a different conclusion, and after reading Packer’s book I found additional information, or confirmation for my opinion, I think. I think it was more a case of – in some cases there was real dysfunctionality – there always is – but in most cases it was Dr. Rice made a decision, she made a decision – and this is all about people again because people in essence are the government. She made a decision that she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.

And so what we had was a situation where the national security advisor, seen in the evolution over some half-century since the act as the balancer or the person who would make sure all opinions got to the president, the person who would make sure that every dissent got to the president that made sense – not every one but the ones that made sense – actually was a part of the problem, and probably on many issues sided with the president and the vice president and the secretary of Defense. And so what you had – and here I am the academic again – you had this incredible process where the formal process, the statutory process, the policy coordinating committee, the deputies committee, the principal’s committee, all camouflaged – the dysfunctionality camouflaged the efficiency of the secret decision-making process.

And so we got into Iraq, and so George Packer quotes Richard Haas in his book as saying, “To this day I still don’t know why we went to war in Iraq.” I can go through all the things we listed, from WMD to human rights to – I can go through it – terrorism, but I really can’t sit here and tell you, George, why we went to war in Iraq. And there are so many decisions. Why did we wait three years to talk to the North Koreans? Why did we wait four-plus years to say we at least back the EU-3 approach to Iran? Why did we create the national director of intelligence and add further to the bureaucracy, which was what caused the problem in the first place? The problem is not sharing information. The problem is not that we don’t have enough feet on the ground or enough people collecting intelligence or enough $40 billion eyes in the sky – national technical means. That’s not the problem. The problem is our people don’t share. The problem is the FBI is over here in its niche, and the CIA is over here, and INR is here, and Treasury is here, and the DIA is here, and the NSA is here, and the NRO is here, and god almighty, they never talk to each other. They don’t share. They don’t pass information around. They don’t work in the same cultures. They don’t have the same attitude about the information they’re handling, sometimes for good reason. Some are domestic law enforcement; some are not.

There are all kinds of problems that need to be dealt with and we are not going to make it into the 21st century very far and keep our power intact and our powder dry if we don’t start to deal with this need to change the decision-making process, and an understanding of that need, which, for whatever reason, intuitive or intellectual I don’t know, I’ll give credit to the Bush administration for, by suddenly concentrating power in one tiny little aspect of the federal government and letting that little cabal make the decisions. That’s not a recipe for success. It’s a recipe for good decision-making in terms of the speed and alacrity with which you can make decisions, of course. Harlan and I can sit down and we can make a decision probably a lot faster than all of you and me can make a decision, but if all of you bring something to the fight and will be integral in the implementation of the decision I’m going to make, and if you know some things I don’t know and you might dissent because of those things you know, I damn well better listen to you, and I better figure out a way to get all of you to work together if we finally come to a decision and we decide to implement that. I better know how to get you to work together.

That is not what this administration did for four years. Instead it made decisions in secret, and now I think it is paying the consequences of having made those decisions in secret. But far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences. You and I and every other citizen like us is paying the consequences, whether it is a response to Katrina that was less than adequate certainly, or whether it is the situation in Iraq, which still goes unexplained. You know, if I had the time I could stand up here today I think and make a strategic case for why we are in Iraq and why we have to stay there and we have to get it right. As Winston Churchill said, “America will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.” (Laughter.) Well, we need to get busy and exhaust them and do the right thing.

We can’t leave Iraq. We simply can’t. I can make that case. No one in this administration has made that case. They have simply pontificated. That’s all they’ve done. Now, I’m not evaluating the decision to go to war. That’s a different matter. But we’re there, we’ve done it, and we cannot leave. I would submit to you that if we leave precipitously or we leave in a way that doesn’t leave something there we can trust, if we do that, we will mobilize the nation, put 5 million men and women under arms and go back and take the Middle East within a decade. That’s what we’ll have to do. So why not get it right now? Why not get it right now? I don’t see any signs, other than signs of desperation – that is to say, the polls are falling, people are finally listening, to a certain extent, to the evidence that’s building up, and so people are getting desperate. And so Dr. Rice gets some more flexibility, some more leeway, and we do this and we do that; that looks diplomatic. But I don’t see anything that looks coordinated because I think the decisions are still being made essentially in that small group.

And I’ll finish just by bringing it down screechingly to the ground and tell you that the detainee abuse issue is just such a concrete example of what I’ve just described to you, that 10 years from now or so when it’s really, really put to the acid test, ironed out and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen. I don’t know how many people saw the “Frontline” documentary last night – very well done, I thought, but didn’t get anywhere near the specifics that need to be shown, that need to come out, that need to say to the American people, this is not us, this is not the way we do business in the world. Of course we have criminals, of course we have people who violate the law of war, of course we had My Lai, of course we had problems in the Korean War and in World War II. My father-in-law was involved in the Malmédy massacre and the retaliation of U.S. troops in Belgium. He told me some stories before he died that made my blood curdle about American troops killing Germans.

But these are not -- I won’t say isolated incidents; these are incidents that are understandable and that ultimately, at one time or another, we came to deal with. I don’t think, in our history, we’ve ever had a presidential involvement, a secretarial involvement, a vice-presidential involvement, an attorney general involvement in telling our troops essentially carte blanche is the way you should feel. You should not have any qualms because this is a different kind of conflict. Well, I’ll admit that. I’ll admit that. I don’t want to see any of these people ever released from prison if they’re truly terrorists. I don’t want to see them released because I know what they’ll do. I’m a former military man, 31 years in the Army. They will go out and they will try to kill me and my buddies, again and again, and some of you people, too.

So I understand the radical change in the nature of our enemy, but that doesn’t mean we make a radical change in the nature of America. But that’s what we did, and we did it in private. We did it in such privacy that the secretary of State had to open the door into my office one day – we had adjoining offices and he liked to do that, and I never objected – he came through the door and he said, Larry, Larry, get everything, get all the paperwork, get the ICRC reports, get everything; I think this is going to be a real mess. And Will Taft, his lawyer, got the same instruction from a legal point of view. And Will and I worked together for almost a year as the ICRC reports began to build and come in, and Kellenberger even came in and visited with the secretary of State. And we knew that things weren’t the way they should be, and as former soldiers, we knew that you don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it – unless you’ve condoned it. And whether you did it explicitly or not is irrelevant. If you did it at all, indirectly, implicitly, tacitly – you pick the word – you’re in trouble because that slippery slope is truly slippery, and it will take years to reverse the situation, and we’ll probably have to grow a new military.

We may have to do that anyway because my army right now is truly in bad shape – truly in bad shape. And I’m not talking about the billions and billions of dollars of equipment it’s burning up in Iraq at a rate 10 or 15 times the rate its life cycle said it should be burned up at, but I’m also talking about when you have officers who have to hedge the truth, NCOs who have to hedge the truth. They start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam, my war. They come home and they tell their wife they’ve got to go back for the third tour and the fourth tour and the wife says, uh-uh, or the husband says, uh-uh, and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel. And the signs are very concrete right now that the Army and the Marine Corps – to a lesser extent the other services because they’re not quite as involved in the deployments that we’re talking about here and the frequency thereof, the op tempo as we say it – problems are brewing. Problems are brewing.

So I’ll just close by saying that when I met Biden’s staff and Hagel’s staff, the Lugar staff, and others know that I was available for whatever I could contribute, for however long they needed me to write whatever we called it – the Lugar-Biden Act, the Biden-Lugar Act. I don’t care what we called it, but it would be a piece of legislation that would attempt to do for the federal bureaucracy what we had done for the armed forces. Okay. Impossible task? Okay. Impossible task, we’ve got to try it. We have got to try it. We have got to do better than we’re doing today.

I was at – I’ll close with a function I was at yesterday, the Yoshiyama Awards for the Hitachi Foundation, 10 of the brightest, bubbliest, exciting seniors from across the country that I’ve ever been associated with. This is the second time I’ve attended the awards and it was the same way last year. And these are not National Merit Scholars. These are not GPA 4.0, these are not Princeton-bound kids – although some of them probably are, this is not what’s heralded about them. They’re kids who come together because they’ve done community service. And the chairman of the board of the Hitachi Foundation was introducing them and he said, you know, the best way I can describe these kids to you is that you or I would confront the challenges, the problems that they’ve confronted and we would say, ain’t no way, politically impossible, or something like that. These kids have said, I’m going to do it, and they’ve done it.

I made a suggestion, for example, that a young major up at the Naval War College who had written a paper, and he put the specifics in it – I mean, really put the specifics to it that we ought to merge the State and Defense Departments, that what we ought to have is an undersecretary for East Asia, an undersecretary for Europe and so forth, like we have assistant secretaries now – regional undersecretaries – and they ought to co-locate with the CINCs, the combatant commanders as we say today, the military proconsuls who are stationed around the world in Honolulu and other places, and make the undersecretary the boss and make the combatant commander his deputy, merge the State and Defense Departments. Holy mackerel – (laughter) – you know? But as the chairman of the board of the Hitachi Foundation said yesterday, one of these kids would say, you know, let’s get to work. Let’s get to work.

We need some people on the Hill who look at the challenge of reformatting, reorganizing, whatever, our interagency process, our federal bureaucracy to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We need somebody on the Hill like that. We need somebody who’s energetic. While they’re about it they need to also investigate and then do a major revision of their own processes. And don’t get me started on that one. Thanks you.

(Applause.)

MR. CLEMONS: Thank you, Larry. Thank you very much, Larry. I know there are going to be lots and lots of questions. I’m going to ask the audience, after I offer my own question, to pick one of the many you have. We’re going to work through a lot so we’re going to work on brevity – and I’m going to break my own rule. One is, have you paid any price for your candor, one; and two, when Colin Powell spoke – made his presentation at the United Nations on the WMD issue, was that your attempt to play ball and was the price you were trying to extract from the administration an attempt to get the process of inclusion fixed? Because otherwise, given what you’ve just said, Colin Powell’s presentation makes no sense unless he thought that he was trying to rearrange the players, so to speak, and to demand different treatment for both his role and other player’s role in the decision-making process.

COL. WILKERSON: Yes, I have paid a price, and it’s a high price for me. I’ve paid the price that Colin Powell and I see eye to eye a lot less than we used to. Now, that’s not to say that that wasn’t the case a lot of times anyway. The great respect I have for the man emanates as much from his ability to tolerate me in my many dissenting opinions as it does for any leadership qualities that he’s otherwise shown me, which were manifold. But at the end, I actually was physically thrown out of his office on one occasion, and that was a first in 16 years.

It showed, I think, his exasperation and it showed his tolerance level had sunk considerably for dissenting opinions. He’s not happy – I think that’s fair to say – with my speaking out because – and I admire this in him too – he is the world’s most loyal soldier and feels that his inveterate optimism is right and that we will overcome these problems. And I share that. However, I feel like as a citizen and as a person very much concerned with the military – it was my old home – I need to speak out.

Now, on the other matter, I’ve been over that so many times in my head and with hundreds of journalists who are trying to figure it out for themselves – I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know – and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios. Carl Ford and I talked; Tom Finger and I talked, who is now John Negroponte’s deputy, and that was the way INR felt. And, frankly, I wasn’t all that convinced by the evidence I’d seen that he had a nuclear program other than the software. That is to say there are some discs or there were some scientists and so forth but he hadn’t reconstituted it. He was going to wait until the international tension was off of him, until the sanctions were down, and then he was going to go back – certainly go back to all of his programs. I mean, I was convinced of that.

But I saw satellite evidence, and I’ve looked at satellite pictures for much of my career. I saw information that would lead me to believe that Saddam Hussein, at least on occasion, was spoofing us, was giving us disinformation. When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP – Ammunition Supply Point – with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

Well, Saddam Hussein really cared about deterring the Persians – the Iranians – and his own people. He didn’t give a hang about us except on occasion. And so he had to convince those audiences that he still was a powerful man. So who better to do that through than the INC, Ahmad Chalabi and his boys, and by spoofing our eyes in the sky and our little HUMINT, and the Brits and the French and the Germans, too. That’s all I can figure.

The consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming. I can still hear George Tenet telling me, and telling my boss in the bowels of the CIA, that the information we were delivering – which we had called considerably – we had called it very much – we had thrown whole reams of paper out that the White House had created. But George was convinced, John McLaughlin was convinced that what we were presented was accurate. And contrary to what you were hearing in the papers and other places, one of the best relationships we had in fighting terrorists and in intelligence in general was with guess who? The French. In fact, it was probably the best. And they were right there with us.

In fact, I’ll just cite one more thing. The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments? We were wrong. We were wrong.

MR. CLEMONS: Thank you.

We’re going to work with microphones and we’re going to have it here in the back. I’m going to start with Harlan Ullman then Allan Gerson in the back, then we’ll work around the room.

Harlan?

Q: Larry, thanks very much, and I want to say I share your optimism as well as your views. Two observations and then a quick question. First, I would just suggest that all presidents are secret: Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower.

COL. WILKERSON: Yep.

Q: Kennedy was among the worst. Then of course there was Dick Nixon. And you remember we had a guy called Yeoman Radford that was stealing NSC stuff because Henry wouldn’t share it with the Pentagon.

Second, I also think that the cabal really has a leader and the leader is George W. Bush, and I think that it’s the president who’s driving the ship of state. We had a referendum about a year ago and the public decided they would go with him, not with the other guy.

My question is this: I agree with you entirely that the absence of responsibility, authority, and most of all accountability is dereliction of duty in the highest degree. What would you do to try to reestablish some degree of responsibility, authority and accountability in both branches of government?

COL. WILKERSON: Well, I can’t resist the first part of your question. The criticism that has come at me from colleagues in academia and other places is that, so what’s new, which is essentially what you just said. Every president has done this or that. I think there are several things that are new. First of all, what I said about the complexity of the crises we face, the complexity of governance and so forth. And we’ve done something about this. We no longer have the patronage system that we once had, we no longer have, you know, you will be the postmaster in – over time, in an evolutionary way, we’ve done some things about the vestiges of corruption, if you will, or whatever.

The other reason – again, I spoke to it but I’ll elaborate a bit – I really think we have to protect ourselves against institutional imperfections, and in particular we have to protect ourselves against the institutions of humans and the imperfections that they bring. And the way you do that, in my view anyway, is with firm laws. They’re not perfect. Goldwater-Nichols isn’t perfect but – and Harry Truman might say it this way, and really diligent oversight. And if you’re going to exercise diligent oversight, then you better damn well have your own act together in terms of exercising that oversight. Eight committees had to be reported to by Colin Powell at the State Department – eight committees. He had to go give eight testimonies on his budget every year in order to get the money for the State Department. That’s ridiculous. I’m told Homeland Security’s reporting requirements – 88? Oh, my god.

So Congress needs to reorganize. That might be where I would start if I was king for a day. Congress needs to reorganize. The executive branch is not organized optimally either, and I’m not sure – you know, I really have trouble saying this sometimes but I’ll be provocative again. I’m not sure the State Department even exists anymore except in the minds of the Foreign Service. Yes, we have embassies around the world, and if you’ve been to one lately you know they look like concertina-wired Abu Ghraibs. They send a terrible signal. I was in one in Honduras that just – if I don’t watch out I’ll show my liberal leanings here. (Chuckles.) I’m not sure the State Department is effective anymore. And maybe the Congress realizes that and that’s the reason their budget is so low, that’s the reason they’re so small. Blue ribbon panels and other things have said, this ought to be done, that ought to be done. You know, Admiral Crowe had some really strong recommendations about consolidation efficiencies and so forth.

I’m not sure, unless you can figure out a way to link the most lethal instrument we have, without militarizing ourselves too much. And our foreign policy, I’m not sure you can get around the non-utility of the State Department. So I would seek a way to revitalize what I call the diplomatic instrument. And it’s not just money. It’s not just money.

Another thing – hold on, let me get one more out. Another thing, I think we really need to take a look at the national security advisor position. As I said, it’s not a position that was envisioned by the framers. It’s a position that has become immensely powerful. It’s a position that’s very personal. It’s a position that would be very difficult to get the executive branch to subject to the advice and consent of the Senate because it is that, and that would delete that somewhat, but I, nonetheless, think we ought to take a look at that position, and if you’d like to get together after, I’ve got some other –

MR. CLEMONS: In the very back, Allan Gerson.

Q: Thank you. I wonder if I could follow up on Steve’s earlier question about the price of candor. This is something that you’ve wrestled with, I’m sure, and I’m really interested in the limits of candor. How free are you – how free did you – what did you think you were free to say when you went public? Where do you draw the line? Is the line drawn where you think the government acted illegally in violation of some laws, and can you speak out publicly the way you do even though you’ve been in government and been privy to so much private discussions, when you think the policy is wrong or there is ineptitude? At what point can you go public?

Now, the other question I have is you began your presentation by lauding the Bush 41 administration, and I wonder if you could point to any evidence that the kind of secrecy that you see – that you argue we see in this administration was not really practiced by the Bush 41 administration in making decisions such as, for example, the invasion of Panama. Who was informed in the bureaucracy and wasn’t this also done just at the very top by two people?

COL. WILKERSON: Good questions, all. The first one is a difficult – I feel like being glib and saying, when your wife tells you – of 40 years tells you that you have responsibilities beyond your loyalty to the man you’ve worked for for 16 years, and admire greatly – that’s a glib answer. A less-than-glib answer is I think when you feel like what you might say has even a remote opportunity to affect some change for the good, that’s sort of my personal criteria.

On the other question, I think what George H.W. Bush did in the short four years that he was in office was just phenomenal. Let’s start – I mean, let’s just begin the discussion with the reunification of Germany. When I say “secretive” I don’t necessarily mean exposed to the full public glare on the front page of both – the full right side of the Washington Post. I mean the leaders involved in it, the allies involved in it, and those who will be impacted by it, largely in this case the Russians, are not only consulted but asked for their opinion, and even have evidence to take back with them that their opinion was not just listened to but the better points – and there are almost always good points in even the Russian’s presentation – have been implemented, or seem to be being implemented.

There’s a whole road of difference, a huge interstate of difference, between diplomacy conducted with all the parties that might be impacted by the results of that diplomacy and decisions that train and then a decision being made than a decision being made and foisted on the world, as it were.

The mayor of Beijing made a speech at Yale back in 2004, May I think it was, and he sort of comically suggested that the Chinese ought to have a vote in November 2004. And he said, I think it ought to be about 20 percent. That’s the way the world looks at America. That’s the way even the mayor of Beijing looks at America: When you make decisions, superpower, they affect me. Kim Campbell, the former prime minister, at the panel we had, she said, we’re not anti-American, we’re scared; we’re scared to death the giant has no head. You’re in the world and you have no head. Well, I could have been very cynical and looked back at Kim and said – because I have the experience to say it – well, as long as you sit behind our military up there in Canada, don’t do a damn thing, eviscerate your own military and continue to look like you’re the world’s pacifist nation, you’re getting what you deserve. That’s not what I said to her.

When you put your feet up on a hassock and look at a man who’s won the Nobel Prize and is currently the president of South Korea, and tell him in a very insulting way that you don’t agree with his assessment of what’s necessary to be reconciled with the north, that’s not diplomacy, that’s cowboyism. And I went to high school in Houston – I’ve got some connections with Texas. But there’s just a vast difference between the way George Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and affected positive results, in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.

I like to use the world gracelessness, and I use that word because grace is something we have lost in the modern world. It’s a very important product. It’s very different, for example, to walk in with a foreign leader and find something you can be magnanimous about. You don’t have to win everything. You don’t have to be the big bully on the block. Find something you can be magnanimous about, that you can give him, that you can say he gets credit for, or she gets credit for. That’s diplomacy. That’s diplomacy. You don’t walk in and say, I’m the big mother on the block and if everybody’s not with me, they’re against me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The difference between father and son, in my mind, sort of comes from that attitudinal approach to the world.

Yes?

MR. CLEMONS: I’m going to do it with the mikes because we’ve got to get on – (inaudible). Jacob Halpren (sp).

Q: Hi, just a quick question. I actually don’t agree with your assessment of Doug Feith. I think the interesting thing about him is not that he –

COL. WILKERSON: It wasn’t mine; it was Tommy Franks’.

(Laughter.)

Q: Right, but he’s actually quite intelligent. What he also is is a zealot. And that makes me wonder, how is it that Dick Cheney, who was described to me by someone who worked with him in a senior post in the Pentagon in the first Bush administration as prudent, cautious. He said to me, I don’t recognize Dick Cheney anymore. How did Cheney go down this path as well?

COL. WILKERSON: Well, there are a number of people who have asked me that a question and a number of people have offered their observations who are in a better position than I to make that judgment. I knew Secretary Cheney when he was the secretary of Defense, and he was, in my view, a good secretary of Defense. He would make a decision on a dime, and if you didn’t give him the material to make a decision with he’d send you away. Good executive – 9/11 changed his entire approach to business, I think. Some people have called it paranoia, some people have called it not having enough – sort of the ivory tower complex, not having enough contact with the real world on a daily basis to understand how things are going or how things are building or how tension is being handled.

But I think – if I had to put my finger on it and I was having to bet on it or something I would say that Dick Cheney saw 9/11, saw the potential for another 9/11, particularly one with a nuclear weapon or some other mass destruction device, and suddenly became so fixated on that problem, not without some legitimacy, that it skewed and bent some of the other approaches and decisions that he made. That’s my interpretation.

MR. CLEMONS: Dave Colton (ph).

Q: Colonel, I was struck by, excuse me, the academic portion of your presentation, which was fairly structural in political science terms, and looked at the morphology of decision-making, who was included, et cetera. I’d like to throw out an idea and get your reaction to it, which is to take this presentation today up another 10 (thousand), 15,000 feet and suggest to you that the phenomena you observed is emblematic of decision-making across the government today, whether it be domestic politics – I’m up on the Hill a lot. And the fundamental strata I would suggest to you is not so much personalities, although they’re important; it’s the fact that most people do not seem to recognize what this gentleman hinted at, which is the presence of radical ideology. You had at one time –

COL. WILKERSON: You need to make it briefer; I don’t have enough time.

Q: One last question.

COL. WILKERSON: Yeah, just finish it.

Q: Here’s the point: Colonel, could you address the ideologicalization of American politics and leadership and the fact that institutions like the Republican Party, Hagel being obviously an outrider, have been radicalized. Lenin said, peace, bread, land, the dictatorship of the proletariat. How would your reforms for the CINCs, all these structural things, work when the governing apparatus has been contaminated, if you will, with a viral ideology?

COL. WILKERSON: Well, my answer, you might expect, presupposes I agree with your idea that we’ve been contaminated in that way. While there has been a serious attempt to do that, I’m not one who agrees that we are driven entirely by ideology now. If you’re going to talk Republican and Democratic Party, now, that’s a different ballgame. If we’re going to talk the current administration as I knew it from the years that I knew it and have insights on it today, I don’t think ideology drives them as much as the press and mass media in general and others would have it.

I do agree with your point that Douglas Feith was driven by ideology, and others in the administration. I don’t think Dick Cheney is driven by ideology. I don’t think Donald Rumsfeld is. If you mean by ideology a certain nationalism or a certain realism or whatever, perhaps, but not by what we associated with neoconservatism. So I can’t address your question is a straightforward way – I’d like to – because I don’t agree that we’ve been contaminated. I do agree that it’s been a problem. I do agree that some people have advocated policies that have more or less been implemented strictly on the basis of ideology, and because those decisions were not exposed to the full glare of light – they should have been – they therefore got implemented.

But I don’t think that’s the fundamental problem of implementation. I think the fundamental problem is a broken bureaucracy and an inability to do the kinds of things that you need to do in the 21st century to succeed.

MR. CLEMONS: My colleague, Anatol Lieven.

Q: Thank you, sir, for a most interesting talk. Could I ask you to expand on one point? You said that if America withdraws from Iraq today or tomorrow we would have to go back in 10 years’ time and basically re-conquer the Middle East. Could you explain why you think that that’s the case? And could I ask you also to say, is there a way, in your view, whereby America could draw down its presence and its interests in the region while continuing to defend its most vital interests worldwide? Thank you.

COL. WILKERSON: Let me take the second part first. I’m guardedly optimistic about what’s happening there now. I think we may have reached the point, as I said earlier, where we’ve exhausted all the possibilities and we’re actually listening to the Iraqis, we actually are in the ministries that we need to be in, listening to who is in charge of those ministries, and we’re doing the kinds of things that are necessary to be done to leave at least something that’s very different and not inimical to our interests in Baghdad, in Iraq in general, as we do leave – leave over the next five to eight years. Now, that’s a fairly long timeframe. And I admire the president – for whatever reasons, I don’t know, he hasn’t intellectualized them; I think that’s a shortcoming – for sticking to that sort of a timeframe and that sort of an attitude about the whole Iraq problem.

There are a number of reasons why I believe that this is strategic in a sense that Vietnam was not. Vietnam was a misinterpretation, in my view, of a Cold War side battle that really wasn’t a Cold War side battle except in a superficial aspect. It really was a civil war. And the French misinterpreted, because of their colonial remnants, and we misinterpreted it because of our fixation on the Cold War, although I have some very provocative opinions about what we could have done in Vietnam if we’d stuck it out too. Nonetheless, Vietnam was not something that when we left, however with honor or without, we were going to have to revisit 10 years later because it was so strategic. I think Iraq is.

When I talk with my Turkish colleagues, for example, I really think Iraq is. One of the things the Turks are most perturbed about today, for example, is our inability to do anything about the PKK. Our inability to do anything about the PKK is not just because Secretary Rumsfeld doesn’t want to do anything about the PKK or because Douglas Feith thought that the PKK would be a good ally. It’s because he doesn’t have enough troops. He doesn’t have enough troops to do anything about the PKK. But the PKK disturbs the Turks, and I don’t have too much problem envisioning the Turks taking over at least the top third of Iraq were we to leave a mess. I don’t have a problem with the Syrians then becoming involved, the Iranians t

Where are Black Bloggers located?

I've found out about a tool called Frappr (don't ask me where they got the name from). It is based on Google maps (as an aside, damn but I wish I'd have invested in Google when it was "only" $85). I've been interested in the spatial distribution of the black internet for sometime, and this tool may give me some purchase on the question.

So here's the deal. I've created a map for black bloggers. Do me a favor. Send the word out to folks and sign up.

Rosa Parks passes away

Rosa Parks passes.

Thank You Mrs. Parks.

Katrina Victims

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/10/24/D8DECEP00.html

Study: Most Katrina Victims Were Older
Oct 24 7:36 AM US/Eastern

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS

A majority of people killed by Hurricane Katrina were older residents unable or unwilling to evacuate in the rising floodwaters, according to a study of almost half the bodies recovered in Louisiana.

About 60 percent of the nearly 500 victims identified so far were age 61 or older, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals reported.

"The elderly were much more likely to be in hospitals and nursing homes as well as possibly homebound and not able to access transportation in order to evacuate from the storm," said agency spokesman Bob Johannessen.

Government Abuse

During the too late "debate" concerning the Patriot Act, defenders of the abuse of power asked for instances of government abuse. In particular, I remember Diane Feinstein defending the Patriot Act.

Wiretaps and search warrants require a high level of proof and permission from a judge. The tools in the Patriot Act are fully consistent with the U.S. Constitution. As Senator Diane Feinstein said, "I have no reported abuses."

OK, so what about this?

Previously classified documents being released Monday show numerous misuses of FBI surveillance, including improper searches and seizures of e-mails and bank records, The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions.

The documents, which were turned over under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, show that FBI auditors have investigated hundreds of potential violations related to the agency's domestic surveillance since Sept. 11, 2001, the Post said.

Some of the violations found in the documents included:

• FBI agents failing to file annual updates on ongoing surveillance, as required by Justice Department guidelines.

• A violation of bank privacy statutes.

• An improper physical search.

• Improper collection of e-mails after warrants had expired.
  

On The Road Again

Some thoughts:

• Traveling during a hurricane is an interesting undertaking.
• I don't eat as well as I do when I'm at home. Actually, I eat too well, it's good for the palate but not for the cholesterol.
• Expense tab is nice.
• Hotel rooms and suites, are nice in the short term, but now it's old. Real old.

A Keeper Of The Funk

Kirk Franklin.

My American Journey - Oona King MP

Fear of the "other" drives people further apart, and I'm surprised to find that even my Dad lives in a segregated black enclave. When I ask him why, he says, "It's not so much that it's black, it's just that whites won't live here." The irony for most middle-class African-Americans like my Dad is that they have been detached from the rest of the black population. They can't live with white people, and they can't live with (working-class) black people - or if they do, they choose to live with a level of insecurity that is anathema to the middle classes the world over.

Originally in Tuesday's Guardian an interesting British perspective on Katrina - full story under the fold.

Hurricane Katrina not only destroyed New Orleans, but also laid bare the ugly truth about America's racial divide. Former MP Oona King set out on a personal journey through the southern states to see what has changed since her black father was forced to flee the US

The last time I visited New Orleans I was a student travelling around America. It was the first time in my life that I was physically thrown out of somewhere for being black. "We don't have niggers like you here!" yelled the manager of a scummy youth hostel before throwing my belongings out of a first-floor window, scattering them over the street.

I vividly remember sitting on that New Orleans pavement, eaten up with rage, wondering where I would sleep that night, and how long it would take to become mad or violent if you faced ingrained racism everyday. Hurricane Katrina showed us what happened to African-Americans in New Orleans who faced ingrained racism every day: they found themselves with the poorest-quality housing on the lowest, most treacherous land, and when catastrophe struck, they were left to rot.

Last month, I went back to the Big Easy. I wanted to see if it was really the case that the colour of your skin could determine your chance of surviving a catastrophic incident such as Hurricane Katrina. I had been warned that, post-Katrina, New Orleans had become like Haiti with skyscrapers. I drove along a freeway scattered with speedboats. The natural order of things had been turned upside down - together with palm trees, cars, bridges, even houses.
In the midst of the seventh ward, I came across three men sitting outside a bar listening to Stevie Wonder. A boat on the pavement blocked the entrance. A statuesque black man in his 60s, Alonzo Dawson, was cooking meat on a barbecue. Both his Latino friends, Rollin Garcia Sr and Gary Ker, had a beer and a gun to hand. It was like a sci-fi film in which they were the only ones left. I asked Alonzo what his worst experience was. "Looking out of my back window and seeing a dog eating a dead human body," he said. They had seen Federal Emergency Management Agency trucks arrive to deliver food to the white areas, they said, while most of the needy, who were black, didn't get help until some days later.

New Orleans is now dead; like Pompeii, Dresden and Hiroshima, suddenly annihilated with no time for farewells. Like most of those cities, it will return again, but so too will the schism of race that haunts America. Race governs the lives of most black people, but remains barely visible to most whites. Time and again, I have met white people who are genuinely confused as to why blacks are obsessed with race. Like a Punch and Judy show, they get bopped over the head by angry black people shouting, "It's behind you!"

The remarkable thing about Hurricane Katrina was that, like a bolt of lightning, it clearly and unavoidably illuminated the chilling impact of race. It has finally been revealed for all to see: the elephant in America's living room. Katrina not only defined what it means to be black, it also redefined what it means to be white. And the point about whiteness is that it isn't defined.

"Defining whiteness is really difficult because it is a default category," says Dalton Conley, director of the New York-based Centre for Advanced Social Science Research and a writer on race and social policy in the US. "It's something we don't define. And part of whiteness is the fact that whites don't have to think about race."

At the same time, however, black people - in the UK as much as in the US - always have to think about not being in the norm or dominant group. We have to consider that all our social interactions are governed by this thing, previously invisible to the majority.

In my secondary school in north London, for example, I was one of five ethnic-minority kids in the class. I knew from the minute I walked into that class that there was only one boy there, the one black boy, who could ever be the first boy I kissed. There was no sign on the door, it was never mentioned, and the white girls (who remain my very best friends to this day) wouldn't have noticed. But to me it was blindingly obvious: the white boys wouldn't want a black girl (however light-skinned), and if I wanted to be like other girls and kiss a boy, my choice was clearly limited to this one black boy. Two years later, sure enough, he was the first boy I ever kissed.

When I was 16 I went to Atlanta to attend a summer-school. It was a revelation. For the first time, I was in an all-black environment. I was still "different", not least because of my British accent, but the social dominance flowed the other way. I was part of the dominant culture (black). Yet my light skin still put me in an even more dominant position within the group. Of 60 kids on the course, there was one white boy there. Again, as soon as I walked in the door I knew which boy I would be paired with. It wasn't a decision, more a recognition of reality. If it all sounds complicated and paranoid, that's because that's often the reality of being black. Not so much any more, and especially not in Britain. Notwithstanding the horrific recent axe-murder of Anthony Walker because he was in a mixed relationship, Britain still has one of the highest rates of interracial relationships in the world.

But in America, the effects of slavery remain visible - to blacks at least. There is a cousin I had who was never born. My aunt, eight months pregnant, took food to my uncle who had been arrested during a civil-rights demonstration. The first policeman she met attacked her, and the baby died. Past losses always linger, passed down in attitudes and anger from one generation to the next. The African-American community is crippled by an overwhelming sense of anger and loss - lost identity, lost homeland, lost kinship, lost pride, lost history, lost future.

So when Jesse Jackson visited New Orleans evacuation centres last month and said, "It's like looking at the hull of a slave ship", he brought home the proximity of slavery and its consequences for many African-Americans. Much of white America has the view, "Move on - slavery ended 140 years ago." But African-Americans see the emancipation declaration as the beginning of slavery by other means - first a vicious share-cropping system of indentured labour, and then jim crow with its constant whippings, lynchings, and humiliations. Changing the realities of race in America is a painfully slow process. It took 100 years from black emancipation, at the end of the civil war in 1865, to black enfranchisement with the Voter Registration Act of 1965. And yet when Bush stole the White House from under the nose of disenfranchised African-Americans at the turn of the millennium, it was clear that nothing much had changed.

I'm glad I don't know most of the humiliations my family was subjected to - instead, I just like hearing about the vaguely entertaining ones. Like the one about my grandfather Alan. His grandfather was a slave, but he was a share-cropper in Florida who was heading for a lynching due to his uppity behaviour - he was driving a horse and cart, and hadn't given way to a white person's cart. So he walked to Georgia, taught himself to read and write, set up his own business, and had seven sons whom he instructed to "do good" for the community.

The symbol of his success, both economically and socially, was that he was the first black person in the area to buy a car. The car was shipped to Albany, Georgia, from Atlanta, and Alan arrived at the stationa no doubt full of the pride and excitement that all owners of new cars feel even when buying a car doesn't represent a miracle. But the white stationmaster believed that it simply wasn't possible for a black man to own a car. Even though Alan's name was on the paperwork and the car was already paid for, the station master refused to let him have it, and instead shipped it back to Atlanta. And Alan went home empty-handed.

Jim crow kept black people in check psychologically as well as materially. Segregation had a specific agenda: to remove political and human rights that, on paper, were "inalienable". It worked brilliantly. The basis of it was the view that blacks were not quite fully human. Black people, excluded from the political process, retreated into their churches, and that's where they are today, and where, until Katrina, President Bush targeted them fairly successfully with his faith-based initiatives. Bush even increased his vote among African-Americans from 8% in 2000 to 11% in 2004 - enough to swing the election. As one black southerner put it, "Black southerners will run to anyone with a Bible." The race legacy in America is one of guns and Bibles. It has made both white and black culture more God-fearing and more violent.

Fear of the "other" drives people further apart, and I'm surprised to find that even my Dad lives in a segregated black enclave. When I ask him why, he says, "It's not so much that it's black, it's just that whites won't live here." The irony for most middle-class African-Americans like my Dad is that they have been detached from the rest of the black population. They can't live with white people, and they can't live with (working-class) black people - or if they do, they choose to live with a level of insecurity that is anathema to the middle classes the world over.

So the past has a grip on African-Americans. And yet to white people, race is invisible. As a child, my white family would tell me that if I got lost, I had to go and find a nice policeman. But I got the idea from my black family that I should steer clear of policemen, avoid them at all costs, because they were racist and violent and might beat me to death.

Myrtle Jones returned to her house in New Orleans with her two daughters and one granddaughter, driving from Houston, Texas overnight with a truck to salvage what they could. I followed Myrtle into the hallway of her home. Imagine all your household possessions are put into a giant food-blender: carpets, fridges, clothes, sofas, stereos, food, plants, jewellery. Then throw in some external objects - say a water hydrant, a car, and a couple of dead animals. Add a generous helping of black toxic sludge, blend for a minute, then rip off the roof, and pour the mixture into all remaining rooms - and, voila, the perfect recipe for life-long depression.

Myrtle's daughter Chanel, 23, clutched her first prize track trophy as though it might help her out-run disaster. Dionne, 34, was telling her 16-year-old daughter Brionne to load other salvaged mementos of a former life into the truck.

"Where are your men?" I asked. It was an old-fashioned question, one you would ask women during a war. "Right now," said Myrtle, "we don't have any. Dionne's man is sick. Chanel's is separated. And Brionne's too young to have one. We gonna keep her single a while." She chuckled. "We want her to go to college so she can look after us all." I looked at this African-American family of women, strong as they are, and I couldn't help feeling the pain that always rips our community apart: the bequest to each new generation of African-American children of family breakdown.

Where are the men? Well for a start, nearly a million of them are in jail. There are roughly as many African-American men in prison as there are in college. Numbers of federal prisoners have doubled in the past 10 years, most of it down to the "war on drugs" and three-strike automatic prison sentencing. In some notorious cases, prisoners have received life sentences for stealing food. The land of the free keeps more of its people in jail than any other. And, of course, the people jailed are disproportionately black. In fact, black men are locked up at seven times the rate of white men. In more than a dozen states, black men arrested on drugs charges are 57 times more likely to be sent to prison than white men on the same drug charges.

In short, many black men are sent to jail because they're black. During the early 1960s, my father was one of them. Of course, as with all racism, it's hard to prove conclusively that a white judge sentenced you because you were black. So my Dad fled the country and was exiled for 40 years. His crime? He joined nine white scholarship students at the LSE for a year, and asked the Georgia parole board (who considered draft-referral applications) to address him the same way they addressed his white peers - using the prefix "Mr". They jailed him instead.

It was a rule of Bible-belt bureaucracy that all blacks were addressed by their first name (like calling them "boy"), and all whites were addressed as "Mr". In asking for the same rights as whites, in a similar way to Rosa Parks on the buses, my Dad was challenging the whole edifice of white rule. So they punished him - hard. And yet after decades locked out of his home, the government told him he could never return unless he could prove the most obvious, yet least provable fact: that he was jailed because he was black.

I thought he would never go home, and that I would always be sent to Georgia, like I was as a child, to represent him at funerals and family gatherings. And then a miracle happened, a once-in-a-lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, it was a letter from the 96-year-old white judge who sentenced him, addressed to President Clinton. It said, "I jailed him because he was black." And so my father got a presidential pardon, and Jim Crow's stranglehold on our family was finally broken at the beginning of the 21st century.

The critical failings of the US government's response to Katrina forced many grassroots organisations to plan the relief effort themselves. I visited one named SoS (Save our Selves) in an Atlanta basement. An 18-year-old black volunteer from Alabama was manning the phones. She said her name was Margarets. "Really? With an 's'?"

"No, not with an 's' - just I never been able to say my name. It's too long. And don't ask me to spell it neither, 'cos I never learnt." Wow. It was harder to digest that Margaret couldn't spell her name than that she was looking after traumatised black evacuees.

Save our Selves is an informal umbrella organisation of black community groups and churches. One of those involved, LaTosha Brown, is a community worker with a prisoner advocacy group in Alabama that works to restore prisoners' voting rights. The first relief operation came about when she was contacted by a group of concerned ex-prisoners. "They rang me up, and said, 'Listen, these people need help. We'll get the resources, but can you get us the petrol so we can drive it down there? We just need to help the community get through the next 24 hours, till help comes.' But," said LaTosha, still incredulous, "help never came. So we had to set up a distribution network. And we've never stopped."

Churches are the other key organisations working in SoS. The Reverend Tony Lee is the youth director from Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church which has 15,000 members in Washington DC. He's also a rapper and on the board of the Hip Hop Movement, dedicated to advancing education and family values, and preventing gang killings (I applaud their efforts, but reckon that the first step to reducing violence and the mistreatment of women will be to encourage the black community to stop listening to 95% of commercial hip-hop).

Viola Plummer, a prominent activist in Brooklyn, rallied everyone shortly after the disaster by pouring a libation to African ancestors. "Brothers and sisters, on this day we have turned a corner. No longer do we look outside of ourselves for anything. This is just the beginning. We will fight to repair our families, our people and our human rights. Now, more than ever, it has become crystal clear - we cannot depend on anyone else."

Of course, it's not all doom and gloom for African-Americans. College enrolment of black women like Myrtle's granddaughter Brionne has increased by a third in six years - the sisters are doing it for themselves. And even the brothers have halved the murder rate in their own community since 1990, as well as energising a whole new generation of "Million Man Marchers" to rise above discrimination and set an example to their children.

But I also understand why community activists such as Plummer turn to the traditions of our African ancestors to seek strength. My cousin Peggy worked on the New York City African Burial Ground for five years. In 1790, 40% of white households around New York City owned slaves, and it was here that they were buried in white shrouds and wooden coffins, with a few cowrie shells or beads to remind them where they'd been kidnapped from. Nearly 45% of those buried were children under the age of 12.

One coffin lid found in New York had a sankofa symbol on it that still exists in Ghana, the meaning of which is, "Look to the past to inform the future". If you look to the past, it's easy to understand why the life expectancy of African-Americans in Harlem is lower than life-expectancy in Bangladesh. Am I surprised that it was prisoners and rappers who organised the relief effort to poor black people in Mississippi? No.

Whither Norman Kelly?

I just discovered this essay by Norman Kelly eviscerating Michael Eric Dyson's dubious critique of Bill Cosby.

Bill Cosby’s outburst could been seen as one of frustration, a collective one: forty years later America and black people still have the poor to deal with. Dyson spends a lot of time criticizing Cosby for what’s been a cottage industry for years: the foibles of the black underclass. But Dyson doesn’t really add anything to the debate; he merely constructs his book around the “text” of Cosby’s speech and adds a series of rejoinders that says more about him than Cosby. What the book tells us about Dyson is that he, like most pseudo-intellectuals of the black cultural criticism school, is a superficial thinker. He actually believes he’s doing important work: responding to a public figure whose major role is still one of being a comedian.

Crunch!
Relying as I do on the Blogosphere for debates and other intellectual table scraps from academia, I am surprised to have just discovered this. I know Spence was going to read Kelly, but I haven't heard any updates recently. What's up with Mr. Kelly?

Crack, Congress, and the Million Man March

It is time that crack cocaine laws change. Policymakers must have the courage to rationally reform them, and to directly confront issues of racial disparity. Perhaps the Millions More Movement can be the beginning of a grassroots catalyst that encourages those on Capitol Hill and in the White House to mend this “crack” in our justice system.

Nkechi Taifa states the painfully obvious that conservative apologists inexplicably refuse to touch at BlackCommentator

The 10th anniversary of the Million Man March also marks the 10th anniversary of a missed opportunity to dramatically reduce the number of African Americans in prison.

Bill Clinton, jokingly referred to as the “first black president,” could have made the decisive difference a decade ago by remedying one of the most notorious illustrations of disparity in the criminal justice system – the singling out of crack cocaine offenders for harsher punishment than powder cocaine offenders.

This sentencing law treats possession of just five grams of crack cocaine (the weight of five packets of sweet and low) the same as the trafficking of 500 grams of powder cocaine (about the weight of a one pound bag of sugar). In other words, one receives the same five year mandatory sentence for 5 grams of crack as for 500 grams of powder. But because powder cocaine can very easily be converted to crack, to punish crack cocaine offenses at a quantity ratio 100 times greater than its original powder form, is irrational.

Despite prevalent stereotypes, the majority of documented crack users are white. The “war on drugs,” however, has been primarily fought in inner-city black communities. This law enforcement policy has caused a disproportional number of low-level black drug abusers to be herded to prison under the crack laws, serving unreasonably harsh sentences.

On October 16, 1995, not coincidentally the day of the Million Man March, then President Clinton eloquently appealed for “fairness and equality” in a riveting address on race relations on a college campus, in which he stressed the need to “root out racism” from the criminal justice system.

Ironically, two days after that speech, the justice and equality that a million black men had marched to the steps of the Capitol to demand, was deferred. Congress voted against equalizing the quantities for the sentencing of crack and powder cocaine offenses.

This vote was suspect because lawmakers rejected the wisdom of their own bipartisan Sentencing Commission, which had meticulously researched and analyzed cocaine and federal sentencing policy over a two-year period. The Commission had come to the unanimous conclusion that the sentences for crack cocaine were too great and must be changed. Shamefully, out of over 500 recommendations submitted by the expert Commission since its inception, this was the first one Congress chose to ignore.

The ball was then in Mr. Clinton’s court. Congressional Black Caucus members pointedly appealed to the president to eradicate the disparity in cocaine sentencing. This was the first “test,” they declared, in the wake of the Million Man March, to prove he would “root out” unjust policies and practices. A coalition of civil rights groups at that time declared that eliminating this unjust law would have been “as easy as the stroke of a pen.” Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton failed to turn his eloquently delivered words on race relations into deeds, instead siding with the congressional majority and disregarding rationally based reform. And prisons continued to be built – and filled – throughout the 1990s.

Ten years have come and gone. Nearly a million black people are now in prison – largely because the harsh crack cocaine laws have remained unchanged. Politics, however, must not continue to drive sentencing policy. Now is the time for progressives and conservatives to join together to rectify the missed opportunity of the past. Congress must listen to the advice of its own Sentencing Commission, which concluded that revising this one law “would better reduce the gap [in sentencing between African Americans and other racial groups], and it would dramatically improve the fairness of the federal sentencing system.”

During the past decade the historic Million Man March has spawned several other national marches, including this past weekend’s Millions More Movement, pulling together not just men, but women, youth, and families as well. But the continuation of harsh and irrational sentencing laws is tearing these very families apart. These laws have thrust unprecedented numbers of women into the criminal justice system, subsequently terminating parental rights to their children. They have resulted in the warehousing of youth for prison terms at the beginning of their adulthood, creating in the process an epidemic of physical, mental, and public health issues. And those who manage to return to communities at the conclusion of decades-long sentences are confronted with staggering barriers to successful reintegration into society, oftentimes causing renewal of the same harmful cycles that put them in prison in the first place.

It is time that crack cocaine laws change. Policymakers must have the courage to rationally reform them, and to directly confront issues of racial disparity. Perhaps the Millions More Movement can be the beginning of a grassroots catalyst that encourages those on Capitol Hill and in the White House to mend this “crack” in our justice system.

Nkechi Taifa, Esq., is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Open Society Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Howard University School of Law.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/155/155_think_crack_congress_mmm_pf.html

If Napster Couldn't Do It, Why Would Google Be Allowed To Do It?

When the news went out that stated Google would scan books and put them online for searching, I knew that it wouldn't happen. At the time I thought to myself, "If the music industry goes after people who share music because the industry says they are losing money and it's stealing, why would the book publishers let Google do, essentially, the same thing?"

Well, here it is:

Publishers Sue Google

Association of American Publishers sues search giant for copyright
infringement from book-scanning project.
October 19, 2005

The Association of American Publishers filed suit against Google
Wednesday, charging the search giant with copyright infringement for
its plan to scan and digitize books for its Google Print online
library program.

The suit came after lengthy discussions between Google management and
the AAP broke down. The association had earlier lent its support to a
suit filed in September against Google by the Authors Guild, but the
lawsuit filed on Wednesday is a separate one.

In August, Google temporarily suspended the Google Print program until November after hearing complaints from publishers and authors alike (see Google to Library: Shush!).

Publishers had objected to the opt-out nature of the program, which
requires them to specify which books they don't want scanned in by
Google. On Tuesday, however, Google said it would expand the program
to eight countries in Europe (see Google Print Expands in Europe).

"Why Didn't They Leave New Orleans?"

On an email list that I am on, someone asked why people in New Orleans didn't leave when they had the chance.

This is the reply from someone who lived and New Orleans, who has/had family in New Orleans, and who plans to go back to New Orleans.

Please continue reading behind the fold.

Thank you.

There were a series of circumstances that caused so
many people to delay leaving or try to hunker down

1. The city had evacuated twice. Neither storms hit
the city and no damage occurred. Remember each time
you evacuate it costs MONEY.

2. It was a non-pay week. The hurricane came on a
weekend that hourly workers would not be paid. You
need MONEY to evacuate.

3. People who were afraid to ride it out at home and
could not evacuate were told to go to the Super Dome.
They did just that. NO provisions were made for them
at the Super Dome because the City did not want ANY
shelters in the city but did very reluctantly allow
the Super Dome as a shelter of last resort.

The City decided NOT (even after the racist Times
Picayune Newspaper asked, no begged them) to use its
city buses to move them and residents out of the city.
Nor did the city insist that the school board use its
fleet of buses to do the same. ALL city and school
buses flooded in the very neighborhoods (where the bus
barns were located) that could have used them.

4. Very little damage occurred to the city from the
hurricane. My sister who did stay said other than roof
and awning damage nothing much happened. It was the
FLOOD that cause the massive amount of damage which
made the majority of the city homeless and a serious
drain on tax dollars.

5. Even the people who left early (Friday) did not
believe that they would not be in their homes on
Monday cursing about no electricity, getting a spot in
the roofing line, sweeping leaves, gathering tree
branches and calling their extra car's auto insurance
company for a namby pamby amount of damage.

We left on Sunday. One hour ahead of the beginning of
the storm with three days worth of clothes, few
documents and the full expectation of being back in
our homes by Tuesday at the latest. It was on our
experience with storms that EVERYONE made the best
judgment for themselves to leave, stay or wait and
leave later. Other than a few nuts on tv most people
would rather not experience a storm if they could
avoid it.

There were examples of what little help was needed:

1. a black man in the Lower 9 ward saw a 18 wheeler
track abandon on the side of the road. Hot wired it
loaded of as many people who wanted to leave and took
off for Houston. They made it. When asked how they got
gas to get there the young man replied: "We pooled our
money."

2. A young man in the city saw an abandon bus on the
interstate started it up and drove along the highway
picking up folks as he went toward Houston. With
himself counted 51 lives were saved. They too pooled
their money for fuel.

My point is this given a way to leave people would
leave they very best way the could. Not everyone is
brave enough to risk jail to live.

Some people who did go to shelters in the city (opened
later) were still flooded out at the shelter.

For the ignorant self-hating Jesse Lees most people
did what they were told to do. It was government that
can provide massive evacuation assistance who tried to
pass the buck on to private entities.

It was a systemic failure and callousness on the part
of all levels of government that caused so many people
to be in such a vulnerable position.

Getting rid of the old guard

Earl posted a brief snippet of a dialogue between Oliver Willis and Steve Gillard on the changing of the guard.

Every few years, right around one of these moribund marches, we get this argument. I'm not immune to it myself. Hell just the other day I told a couple of people that the old heads (Jackson, and Farrakhan in particular) are going to have to die before we get this marching stuff out of our blood and move beyond brokerage politics.

Oliver is right on point in his basic critique (jackson, farrakhan, and sharpton are hustlers). But here's where he is wrong:

1. Black people aren't as moved by these speakers as we may THINK they are. I think most of us realize that these guys are pimps and hustlers...BUT we also have a long standing love affair with wordsmiths. Jackson, Sharpton, and Farrakhan are the best wordsmiths in America PERIOD. I have strong disagreements with ALL of them, but I'll be damned if I'd ever get snookered into a debate with any of them.

2. The idea of "black leadership" is bankrupt by its very nature. For folks like Oliver black people's problem isn't that we've got pimps running the show, it's that we've got the wrong kind of pimps running the show. Put Oprah and Cosby in the mix, and we'd be GOOD.

3. There's this sticky structural problem that Oliver can't get his head around. For Oliver our problem is largely cultural. The data is pretty clear here that it ain't the culture.

Now Gilliard (apologies) on the other hand seems to understand the problem of white supremacy, and the structural hurdles black men and women face.

But his argument--that Farrakhan and others are speaking truth to power when no one else will--falls flat for two reasons.

1. There are all TYPES of people who make the critiques that farrakhan and the others do. Of course no one makes these critiques as well on the mic. Adolph Reed for starters. Barbara Ransby. Errol Henderson. Oba T'Shaka. For some reason Gerald focuses on political representatives, as if that's the correct body of folks to focus on. JACKSON AIN'T BEEN ELECTED TO NOTHIN' SINCE HE WAS 2ND VICE GRAND OF OMEGA PSI PHI! You don't compare these guys to the ones that had to actually fight for votes!

2. Speaking against police brutality and doing something against police brutality are two very different things. Where was one of the big three when Jamala Rogers and an entire coalition of black, brown, and white folk in Saint Louis forced the mayor to create a police review board? Where were they when blacks in Detroit fought for the successful passage of a living wage ordinance? The part of northern black political culture that i've grown to detest is its acceptance of wolf ticket politics. Talking shit don't mean jack unless action follows.

Both should take a gander at an essay Michael Thelwell wrote about the March on Washington. The first one. It's in Gerald Early's excellent SPEECH AND POWER vol. 2, and also in REPORTING ON CIVIL RIGHTS vol. 1.

Black Intra-Racial Politics: A Thought

I have a long simmering thought that I think is ready for the public square: the "Black conservative" vs. "Black liberal" "debate" isn't really about liberal vs. conservative ideas. It's about being a Democrat or a Republican.

The rest of the stuff is noise.

A Response To Cobb

This is generated by a post Cobb/Mike did on his blog.

I put this in his comments section, but decided to do it here as well.

Interesting defense.

Where were public Black conservatives concerning Tulia, TX? Larry Elder, who has written about the War on Drugs and it being wrong headed, had a great opportunity to build upon what he has written and said, and produced zip.

Where were the public Black conservatives when a study came out stating that employers appeared to discard resumes containing "ethnic sounding names" vs. "traditional names"?

Where were the public Black conservatives when a study done by doctors came out stating that Blacks, even when socio-economic status is taken into account, get less aggressive heart aliment treatment?

On Star Parker and welfare, I can show you a woman who was on welfare for 4 years, before her child went into elementary school. From some of the commentary that Parker has written or said, the woman I can point out was a "victim of government handouts" when it was far from the case.

Her husband died, she got fired, and she went on welfare while taking care of her child because she didn't trust day care and close family members worked during the day.

Plainly put, the public face of Black conservatives are what the writer is commenting upon. If it ain't you, fine it ain't you. But I STILL find it interesting that some Black conservatives get fired up over the image of the "sterotypical" Black conservative but say nothing about the "sterotypical" everyday Black person:

• Depending on the government.
• Always whining about racism.
• Blindly following "Black leaders".
• Not doing anything about negative aspects happening in the Black community.

Come on Mike. You KNOW what I'm writing is true. How is it that you can be so ticked off and justified in your ticked off-ness but people like me are dismissed as being a liberal and "on the plantation" when I'm ticked off about the garbage coming from "the Black right"?

I'm going to end with this quote from Joseph C. Phillips, a blog mate of Cobb's Conservative Brotherhood.

And it is not just those on the left who are guilty. There is an old saying that when you point one finger at others, you point three fingers at yourself. Those of us on the right have engaged in our share of outrageous rhetoric. I have not cut off my Democratic friends, but I cannot claim innocence. The fact that I am now mourning the loss of a cherished friend has convinced me that we must turn down the fire. Political passions run deep but what do we accomplish by raising the temperature so high that we are unable to speak to one another, no longer able to recognize each other's humanity?

I do not have the luxury of discussing in the abstract air of theory issues of importance to this great land. I am a married father of three boys. Do I not care about healthcare? I must provide it for a family of five. Do I not care about education? I have three school age children. Do I not care about our foreign policy? I have three boys who will be called upon to offer their lives and service. The same is true of millions of other families who did not vote as I did on November 4, 2004.

Terrorist to Terrorist: Selected Quotes

I've read the reported translation of a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. If the letter is real and if the translation is accurate, people who are against what is happening in Iraq for noble reasons, need to rethink their position.

Some things that caught my attention:

The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of a caliphate- over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, i.e., in Sunni areas, is in order to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill this void, whether those whom the Americans will leave behind them, or those among the un-Islamic forces who will try to jump at taking power.

...

The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.

The fourth stage: It may coincide with what came before: the clash with Israel, because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.

...

And it's very important that you allow me to elaborate a little here on this issue of popular support. Let's say:

(1) If we are in agreement that the victory of Islam and the establishment of a caliphate in the manner of the Prophet will not be achieved except through jihad against the apostate rulers and their removal, then this goal will not be accomplished by the mujahed movement while it is cut off from public support, even if the Jihadist movement pursues the method of sudden overthrow. This is because such an overthrow would not take place without some minimum of popular support and some condition of public discontent which offers the mujahed movement what it needs in terms of capabilities in the quickest fashion. Additionally, if the Jihadist movement were obliged to pursue other methods, such as a popular war of jihad or a popular intifadah, then popular support would be a decisive factor between victory and defeat.

(2) In the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahed movement would be crushed in the shadows, far from the masses who are distracted or fearful, and the struggle between the Jihadist elite and the arrogant authorities would be confined to prison dungeons far from the public and the light of day. This is precisely what the secular, apostate forces that are controlling our countries are striving for. These forces don't desire to wipe out the mujahed Islamic movement, rather they are stealthily striving to separate it from the misguided or frightened Muslim masses. Therefore, our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahed movement to the masses and not conduct the struggle far from them.

(3) The Muslim masses-for many reasons, and this is not the place to discuss it-do not rally except against an outside occupying enemy, especially if the enemy is firstly Jewish, and secondly American.

...

We don't want to repeat the mistake of the Taliban, who restricted participation in governance to the students and the people of Qandahar alone. They did not have any representation for the Afghan people in their ruling regime, so the result was that the Afghan people disengaged themselves from them. Even devout ones took the stance of the spectator and, when the invasion came, the amirate collapsed in days, because the people were either passive or hostile. Even the students themselves had a stronger affiliation to their tribes and their villages than their affiliation to the Islamic amirate or the Taliban movement or the responsible party in charge of each one of them in his place. Each of them retreated to his village and his tribe, where his affiliation was stronger!!

...

Indeed, questions will circulate among mujahedeen circles and their opinion makers about the correctness of this conflict with the Shia at this time. Is it something that is unavoidable? Or, is it something can be put off until the force of the mujahed movement in Iraq gets stronger? And if some of the operations were necessary for self-defense, were all of the operations necessary? Or, were there some operations that weren't called for? And is the opening of another front now in addition to the front against the Americans and the government a wise decision? Or, does this conflict with the Shia lift the burden from the Americans by diverting the mujahedeen to the Shia, while the Americans continue to control matters from afar? And if the attacks on Shia leaders were necessary to put a stop to their plans, then why were there attacks on ordinary Shia? Won't this lead to reinforcing false ideas in their minds, even as it is incumbent on us to preach the call of Islam to them and explain and communicate to guide them to the truth? And can the mujahedeen kill all of the Shia in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried that? And why kill ordinary Shia considering that they are forgiven because of their ignorance? And what loss will befall us if we did not attack the Shia? And do the brothers forget that we have more than one hundred prisoners - many of whom are from the leadership who are wanted in their countries - in the custody of the Iranians? And even if we attack the Shia out of necessity, then why do you announce this matter and make it public, which compels the Iranians to take counter measures? And do the brothers forget that both we and the Iranians need to refrain from harming each other at this time in which the Americans are targeting us?

...

Among the things which the feelings of the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable - also- are the scenes of slaughtering the hostages. You shouldn't be deceived by the praise of some of the zealous young men and their description of you as the shaykh of the slaughterers, etc. They do not express the general view of the admirer and the supporter of the resistance in Iraq, and of you in particular by the favor and blessing of God.

And your response, while true, might be: Why shouldn't we sow terror in the hearts of the Crusaders and their helpers? And isn't the destruction of the villages and the cities on the heads of their inhabitants more cruel than slaughtering? And aren't the cluster bombs and the seven ton bombs and the depleted uranium bombs crueler than slaughtering? And isn't killing by torture crueler than slaughtering? And isn't violating the honor of men and women more painful and more destructive than slaughtering?

All of these questions and more might be asked, and you are justified. However this does not change the reality at all, which is that the general opinion of our supporter does not comprehend that, and that this general opinion falls under a campaign by the malicious, perfidious, and fallacious campaign by the deceptive and fabricated media. And we would spare the people from the effect of questions about the usefulness of our actions in the hearts and minds of the general opinion that is essentially sympathetic to us.

This letter indicates that the terrorists are aware of internal and external politics and public opinion. This is eye opening.

The Black Commentator Nails One

I read The Black Commentator but I don't often agree with what is written.

This article, titled "How Black Conservatives Hurt Their Cause", is one that I agree with, in general.

Blacks aren’t voting liberal-Democratic because they are simply misled by Jesse Jackson and the civil rights leadership, or because they have a “herd mentality” as conservatives often contend. It would be condescending to deny the fact that black people, like any other population group, know and comprehend their self-interest. The black community is voting against what it hears, or does not hear, from black conservatives.

Armstrong Williams May Be In Serious Trouble

Armstrong Williams is getting a probe that he doesn't want this time:

The Government Accountability Office has concluded that the Education Department engaged in illegal "covert propaganda" by hiring Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act without requiring him to disclose that he was being paid. The Education Department's inspector general has also reviewed the Williams deal, which was part of a broader contract that the education agency had with Ketchum, a public relations firm.

Now the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia is investigating whether Williams accepted public money without performing his required duties, said Dan Katz, chief counsel for Lautenberg. The attorney's office has a range of potential remedies, from suing to recover the money to possible criminal charges, Katz said.

Liar, Liar, Brain's on Fire

The theory that Yang and colleagues have developed is the extra connections between nerve cells give liars a greater ability to lie. Dr. Raine put it this way: "Lying takes a lot of effort." For example, "You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person (and) to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous."

Their theory is partly based on two observations, Yang said:

Young children do not lie well and their prefrontal cortex has less white matter proportionately than it will later in life.

Autistic people, whose prefrontal cortex has the "converse pattern of grey/white ratio to that shown by the liar group," also do not lie easily.

Previous studies have shown that moral decisions involve the prefrontal cortex. "If these liars have a 14 percent reduction in grey matter, that means that they are less likely to care about moral issues or are less likely to be able to process moral issues," Dr. Raine said.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 30-"Any fool can tell the truth," wrote British author Samuel Butler, "but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well."

Not so, according to a new study. All it takes to lie well -- or at least consistently and deliberately -- is a slightly abnormal brain, one with more white matter and less grey matter in the prefrontal cortex than the rest of us.

"Their brains are different," said Yaling Yang, MS, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California here.

"They have more connections between the nerve cells, which gives them a better ability to lie," Yang said in an interview, "and (because) they have decreased grey matter, which is associated with impulsivity and inhibition, they can't inhibit their tendency to lie."

To conduct the study -- published in the current edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry -- the researchers interviewed 108 volunteers from five temporary employment agencies in Los Angeles. A series of psychological tests and interviews found 12 people -- 11 men and one woman -- who had a history of repeated lying.

Additionally, the researchers found two control groups -- 15 men and one woman who exhibited signs of antisocial personality disorder but were not pathological liars and 15 men and six women who were normal controls.

The "liars" met the criteria for pathological lying or for conning and manipulative behavior on a standard psychopathy checklist, the deceitfulness criterion for antisocial personality disorder on the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV diagnostic manual, or admitted telling lies to obtain sickness benefits.

"We looked for things like inconsistencies in their stories about occupation, education, crimes and family background," said Adrian Raine, D.Phil, a psychology professor at the university and a co-author of the study.

Then the subjects underwent structural MRI imaging, Dr. Raine said. The MRI examinations found that the liars had significantly more white matter and slightly less grey matter than the other groups.

Specifically:

On average, the liars had 25.7% more prefrontal white matter, compared to the antisocial controls, and 22.2% more than the normal controls.
The liars showed a 35.7% decrease in ratio of grey to white matter in the region, compared to antisocial controls, and a 41.7% decrease in the ratio, compared to controls.
On an absolute scale, the liars had 14% less grey matter than the normal controls.

The theory that Yang and colleagues have developed is the extra connections between nerve cells give liars a greater ability to lie. Dr. Raine put it this way: "Lying takes a lot of effort." For example, "You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person (and) to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous."

Their theory is partly based on two observations, Yang said:

Young children do not lie well and their prefrontal cortex has less white matter proportionately than it will later in life.
Autistic people, whose prefrontal cortex has the "converse pattern of grey/white ratio to that shown by the liar group," also do not lie easily.

Previous studies have shown that moral decisions involve the prefrontal cortex. "If these liars have a 14 percent reduction in grey matter, that means that they are less likely to care about moral issues or are less likely to be able to process moral issues," Dr. Raine said.

The British novelist Jerome K. Jerome once wrote: "It is always the best policy to speak the truth -- unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar."

But, says Dr. Raine, the people in the liar group in this study aren't especially good. Often "they can't tell the truth from falsehood and contradict themselves in an interview," he said.

And, says Yang, they often lie for the fun of it. "They admit that they like lying," she said.

The researchers said the study doesn't account for all forms of lying -- such as to escape punishment or to be polite.

Yang said she and her colleagues believe that the abnormal brain structure causes the lying behavior, not the other way round, but she added the study still needs to be replicated by other investigators.

In the long run, she said, the structural differences might be useful for diagnostic purposes or to help police determine which suspects are likely to be lying. "But right now there are no practical applications," she said.

This study is the latest in a long line of inquiries aimed at ferreting out the roots of dishonesty. The philosopher Diogenes was reputed to wander the streets of Athens with a lamp, searching for an honest man.

In modern times, the polygraph has been promoted as an effective tool for identifying liars. But the lie-detector, as it is popularly known, simply measures heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and galvanic skin response (or sweatiness).

Liars, the theory goes, will have physiological responses that will betray them and the polygraph will pick that up. But polygraphs can't differentiate between changes in heart rate brought on by the stress of taking the test from changes triggered by bald-faced lies.

A more high-tech approach uses functional magnetic resonance imaging. Scott Faro, Ph.D., of Temple University in Philadelphia, reported last year that fMRI can tell when a person is lying -- more areas of the brain become active.

Lying caused activity in the frontal lobes, as well as the hippocampus and middle temporal regions and the limbic areas, Dr. Faro said at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of America. During a truthful response, parts of the frontal lobe, temporal lobe and cingulate gyrus were active, he said.

Several limitations to the study pointed out by the authors include the small sample and relatively few women.

Primary source: British Journal of Psychiatry
Source reference:
Yang Y et al. Prefrontal white matter in pathological liars. British Journal of Psychiatry 2005. 187;320-325

How To Wreck An Economy, 102

So, I'm standing in line, waiting to board an airplane when I hear a CNN news reader mention an idea to modify the mortgage tax deduction.

The panel found that current tax breaks for homeowners, such as the mortgage interest deduction, encourage wealthier taxpayers to buy bigger houses and do little to help others purchase homes.

That contributes to rising home prices and pushes less wealthy taxpayers toward risky loans, said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab. “We are starting to see some significant pain here,” she said.

One change discussed would lower the $1 million limit on mortgages eligible for the interest deduction to an amount closer to average housing prices, with adjustments for geographical differences. The panel also considered converting the current deductions into a credit, among other ideas.

What's missing is the amount the "average housing prices" is listed as being. The number I've seen is $350K.

Well, in my area, most of the homes being built, start above that price. However, I don't live in a "rich neighborhood". I live in a middle class neighborhood.

This would cause a housing market crash you would not believe. This would follow with a recession or depression.

This proposal is a "soak the rich" scheme that will catch ordinary middle class people. This is up there with the AMT.

CSPAN DOES Black Conservatives and One Fool

So, while in the hotel room, I decided to give a look at the Black conservative shing ding on CSPAN being moderated by Jesse Lee Peterson.

Here are some thoughts as I watch..

If "white guilt" is a "bad thing", then why is "Black inferiority" not a bad thing?

Listening to CSPAN, I've heard Shelby Steele and LaShawn(?) mention feeling "inferiority" when they saw the images out of New Orleans.

Hmmm....

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1:30:00 Seems like Joseph C. Phillips is out of the Glenn Loury mode of "Black conservatives" if there really is such a thing. And he's taking the tact that I take, one where I get labeled as being in denial because I'm accussed of "they do it too!" syndrome.

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1:55:00 Joseph C. Phillips mentions Old School. His comments about ignoring "Black leadership" and putting out your message is ignored on purpose(?) -- by Jesse Lee Peterson. Shelby Steele keeps hammering "Black leadership" and points the finger at "white guilt". Interesting.

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2:02:00 "They are going to screw you". "Black people have been screwed by Black leadership". Would you believe a preacher said this?

----

2:38:00 A Black student, 22, just made Jesse Lee Peterson look like a fool. Joseph C. Phillips recovered for Peterson very well.

The student asked about "looking back to the morals of the past" but the history of the U.S. doesn't show morals because of slavery, Jim Crow laws, etc. Joseph C. Phillips said the "moral foundation" is based on the principles of equality of the government. For example, equality. He's pretty animated.

Looking back...

Joseph C. Phillips is the face of Black conservatives that will get Blacks to consider what is being said by being REASONABLE. Jesse Lee Peterson is not reasonable. He is a race hustler and poverty pimp. I found it interesting that Phillips spoke up and disagreed with what was being said at the same times I thought something should be said.

I also found it interesting that Phillips pointed out the hypercritical nature of Black conservatives and how that is perceived in the Black community.

I also found it interesting that Phillips said that Black conservatives make too much of media appointed "Black leaders" when people in the Black community don't give the "Black leaders" the weight and credibility that Black conservatives give those media appointed "Black leaders".

Phillips said MANY of the same things I have said, and have been criticized by internet conservatives for saying.

A few times I've written that I thought that Blacks were brain damaged as bourne out by the hypercritical nature of Blacks, left and right, towards the Black community.

Shelby Steele's continuing reference to "Black inferiority" has strengthened that belief.

If whites shouldn't feel white guilt why should Blacks feel "shame" at seeing Black victims of Katrina?

I Don't See What You See

in reading cnu's response to an earlier post on bennett's comments, i had a thought. it seems that perspective is everything...and the comedy of america are the historical myths of liberty, freedom, obectivity and justice. in any case, i have felt, for the past two decades, that these differences are irreconciliable (at the collective level) and came up with the following:

the point, nulan (that you correctly - to me and mines'' - identify), is the notion of raising genocide. in point of fact, i would wager that i could find a similar quote from some leading white official/public figure/scholar concerning some so-called non-white group in EVERY single nation on the planet in which whites and "non-whites" share space. in fact, i would wager that i could find a similar quote in EVERY ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE and FIELD OF WORK in EVERY COUNTRY - without exception. the comments would be directed at black, brown, red, yellow - etc. and I could find a similar expression in EVERY CENTURY - backed by a continued institutional practice to affirm this sentiment. these folks would not isolated, but rather LEADERS and ARCHITECTS...but what would that prove - after all, if this were about information and logic, you'd have wrapped this baby up, long ago.

moreover, contemplation of genocide is fundamental to white identity. it's the cauc version of 'waiting to exhale.' similarly, the conflation of blacks and crime is the epicenter of white identity. these fools still believe they live in a democracy and that the founding fathers were on some liberty shit. straight crack smokin'. these are the same folks who raise the spectre of black rapists in a world where white women go OUT of their way to get some rhythm, to put it mildly. it's all about the overcompensation in the face of a debilitating deficiency.

so, when i come across a negro apologist - i wonder what they're defending and compensating for...in other words, are they coming up SHORT or simply in it for the green. if the green is easy to get, they should have no problem articulating an authentic defense of their collective. the rubber hits the road when cats like connerly, armstrong and others need SPECIAL TREATMENT in a competitive BUSINESS environment. it's not fair and it discrimination of the worst order...pimps paying hoes to talk down the competition - that's simply no way to win the playas ball.

Jobs Vs Pensions

A simple question:

All other things being equal, what would you rather have corporations fund with respect to their compensation packages?

a. Retirement benefits

b. More entry level jobs

c. Higher overall wages

Pick one. Explain.

Future in Our Hands

Bennett's awkwardly disclosed bigotry and the insipid apologetics offered in its defense - got me thinking long and hard about our social ecology and how the future is stolen from many of our best and brightest. We live in a society governed by a collective mentality that routinely and systematically - at worst - conflates blackness and criminality, and which - at best - conflates blackness and athleticism. This power wielding mentality, which is broadly and institutionally implemented throughout American socieity, early corrupts or destroys the potential of many of our very best and brightest.

It is encumbent upon us to act communally and institutionally to counteract the malfeasance architected by folks like Bennett, who as Drug Czar and Secretary of Education made a career out of devising and implementing policy harmful to our youth. So much of what passes for conservative discourse nowadays consists of little more than cheerleading for policies and programs that harm black folks. I have enclosed an excerpt from Leon Dixon's book, Future in our Hands which serves as a discourse on the motivation and approach of the Dubois Learning Center in Kansas City.

Future in our Hands is a treatise on why and how it is imperative that we architect our own self-interested institutional approach to supplementing the education and acculturation of black youth so as maximize their potential to both themselves and to our communities.

I was watching a public television program about sled-dogs wherein the trainer was talking about the importance of the lead dog. He pointed out that the particular traits of the lead dog are very special, and how not every dog has them. The traits of the lead dog are so crucial to the sled-dog team that it is imperative that you start training the future lead-dog while it is still a puppy. Quizzically, the reporter asked, "how can you tell which puppy has the characteristics to become a lead dog.?" The trainer explained: "When a litter of puppies is born, you watch them. There is always one puppy who is the first out of the box, the first one to start poking his nose into things and venturing out. The other puppies follow along after him. That's the lead dog.!"

Might this also be true with people? I began to observe young children and reflect back on the childhood of people I know, friends and family for example. Sure enough, I saw the same phenomenon. Are young children who exhibit these characteristics also potential leaders? Keep in mind that a leader is not necessarily the wisest, smartest, most knowledgeable, or most intelligent. A leader is quite simply one who others will follow. Every area and every aspect of different fields and communities has its own leader.

Verifying my hypothesis took time, years in fact. To speed the process, I talked with others who have worked with children over a long enough time that they can discuss the development of various and particular talents with the kind of authority that is derived from experience. From long time and retired teachers, family elders, church elders, little league coaches and others, came the resounding affirmation. They all observed the same phenonomen. Leadership traits as well as other characteristics begin to show up quite early.

Moreover, there was one particular characteristic that one of our staff members, Cornell Perry Sr. of the Dubois Learning Center observed that I think is worth further exploration. For a little background on Perry, to underscore why his opinions on this matter are worth consideration; Perry, as of this writing (1994), has been a little league baseball coach for 12 years. He coaches, eight, nine, and ten year olds, and has never had a losing season. his teams are perennially in the city play-offs and he has won the city championship twice that I know of. I point this out because boys at this age know next to nothing about baseball. Also, since his team plays in a predominantly white league, they face th usual amount of racism. Sometimes, it is very blatant. He lost one game 8-12 and the opposing team didn't even get a hit. The racism he's faced with his eleven and twelve year old team is just as blatant.

As a result of lopsided scores, he was encouraged to move up to another level or move on to another league. Perry and his assistants taught his charges, the lion cubs, to win in spite of the prejudice. In the world we live in, racism is simply a given fact of life. It just has to be dealt with. You acknowledge it, abhor it, grapple with it, figure out how to overcome it, and move on. You cannot wish it or its effects away.

Perry's observation; The talents that our kids have show up at a very young age and what is looked out for, nurtued and exploited is nearly exclusively their athletic abilities. You can see similar potential across the board, but what usually happens to these kids, because of their superb athletic abilities is that they get pampered by adults and the other kids in our communities. These kids are given a false sense of security and signals that they can rely solely on their athletic ability to achieve success. They consequently become lazy when it comes to academics and far too many are allowed to do just enough to get by and seldom do they reach their full academic potential.

This occurs because the media and schools have set the tone in our communities that the quickest way out of the inner city is through sports. And to perpetuate this myth, we as a community allow these kids to showcase their talents in sporting events even when we know that some of them are not performing academically as well as they should. Or we give them preferential treatment so as not to hinder their chances for athletic success.

Even among these kids, however, there are one or two who stand out above the others. Thereis something even more special about them. It is just something that they have. They are the trendsetters and are usually the most popular kids in school. Since they are their schools best athletes, with suspected professional possibilities, they are treated like royalty by a small contingent of their peers and elders. Their activities and ways are mimicked by a lot of our other youngsters for better of for worse. These individuals are natural born leaders with the ability to influence entire student bodies.

Perry's hypothesis: If we can identify and guide these particular youth in a positive direction, starting at a very early age, their effects on our communities could be staggering. If we can develop their natural athletic abilities, with their natural leadership abilities these young people would become very positive influences affecting whole neighborhoods, families, and communities for a generation.

Perry calls this the disciple theory. It is based on the common sense and experientially verified premise that our youth are influenced more by their peers than by adults. If Perry's observations are true, or even partially true, and many of the indicators seem to suggest that they might be, that that indicates a strategy we need to employ that depends on early recognition of talent and the early beginning of its development.

One of the great tragedies in our social ecology is that so many of our youth tend to focus on feast or famine endeavors, like athletics, entertainment, [and even illegal commerce CN]. Too many of our young are walking the razors edge, often so blinded by the glow of fools gold that they do not even see all of the former travelers who have fallen by the wayside on these paths.

The Neural Basis of Human Moral Cognition

Hopefully a little timely neuroscience will inject the rationalism required to stave off any ill-considered quackings about moral absolutism and moral relativism hereabouts.

Through the centuries, philosophical theories have adopted a deductive logico–verbal approach to morality that aims to identify universal principles that should guide human conduct. By contrast, a scientific approach to morality is emerging from the documentation of changes in moral behaviour in patients with brain dysfunction5, which provides inferences that concern the major dimensions of moral cognition. Moral cognitive neuroscience, therefore, aims to elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie moral behaviour. Here, morality is considered as the sets of customs and values that are embraced by a cultural group to guide social conduct, a view that does not assume the existence of absolute moral values.

THE NEURAL BASIS OF HUMAN MORAL COGNITION

Moral cognitive neuroscience is an emerging field of research that focuses on the neural basis of uniquely human forms of social cognition and behaviour. Recent functional imaging and clinical evidence indicates that a remarkably consistent network of brain regions is involved in moral cognition. These findings are fostering new interpretations of social behavioural impairments in patients with brain dysfunction, and require new approaches to enable us to understand the complex links between individuals and society. Here, we propose a cognitive neuroscience view of how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and motivational states can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition.

At a time of increasing awareness of the different value systems in multicultural societies and across nations, a deeper understanding of the cognitive and brain mechanisms that guide human behaviour is of general interest. Recent social cognitive neuroscience reviews have emphasized perceptual and emotional abilities that are shared by humans and other animals1-3. However, social neuroscience has largely avoided dealing directly with the complex aspects of human moral cognition, including MORAL EMOTIONS and MORAL VALUES. Here, we review current theoretical accounts of social cognition and put forth a framework designed to overcome the main limitations of earlier accounts. We argue that moral phenomena emerge from the integration of contextual social knowledge, represented as event knowledge in the prefrontal cortex (PFC); social semantic knowledge, stored in the anterior and posterior temporal cortex; and motivational and basic emotional states, which depend on cortical–limbic circuits. Our framework offers new interpretations for social behaviour patterns in healthy individuals and in patients with brain dysfunction, and makes testable predictions for neuropsychological dissociations in moral cognition.

Defining morality

'Moral' (derived from the Latin moralis) and 'ethical' (from the Greek êthikos) originally referred to the consensus of manners and customs within a social group, or to an inclination to behave in some ways but not in others4. Through the centuries, philosophical theories have adopted a deductive logico–verbal approach to morality that aims to identify universal principles that should guide human conduct. By contrast, a scientific approach to morality is emerging from the documentation of changes in moral behaviour in patients with brain dysfunction5, which provides inferences that concern the major dimensions of moral cognition. Moral cognitive neuroscience, therefore, aims to elucidate the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie moral behaviour. Here, morality is considered as the sets of customs and values that are embraced by a cultural group to guide social conduct, a view that does not assume the existence of absolute moral values. The implications of cognitive neuroscience for moral philosophy have been reviewed in detail elsewhere6-8 and are not addressed here.

The challenge

Morality is a product of evolutionary pressures that have shaped social cognitive and motivational mechanisms, which had already developed in human ancestors, into uniquely human forms of experience and behaviour9. Non-human primates have a vast repertoire of social behaviours that can be interpreted as genuine forerunners of human morality, such as caring for their peers and constantly striving for dominance10. As in humans, a sense of justice permeates their behaviour11. The evolution of the human PFC is intimately related to the emergence of human morality12-15. This has allowed motivational mechanisms to be integrated with an exceptional power to predict outcomes, and has characterized humans through their recent evolutionary steps in the cultural explosion of the Upper Paleolithic period16.

The challenge for moral cognitive neuroscience is that it requires extensive cross-field integration of neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology and anthropology, among other areas. In setting the goals of scientific exploration in this field, some central issues should be considered. How does the human moral mind emerge from the interaction of biological and cultural factors? How can the context-dependent nature of moral cognition be explained by neuroscience? How does moral cognition relate to emotion and motivation, and what are their neural substrates? Although moral cognitive neuroscience is still in its infancy, the available evidence already points to some promising solutions.

The neural basis of moral cognition

Moral behaviour impairment. Persistent antisocial behaviours have long been described17, yet their history in medicine is relatively recent. Impairment in 'moral sense' , or 'moral insanity', was first formally described as a "perversion of natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses"18, 19. Systematic evidence that specific brain regions might be crucial to moral behaviour was provided by early accounts of frontal lobe damage20, 21 and neurosurgical reports of war wounds (see, for example, Ref. 22) (Fig. 1).

Figure 1 | Brain regions implicated in moral cognition and behaviour in functional imaging and patient studies.

a | Cortical regions13, 99, 107 include the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC), the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC and lOFC), the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC; mostly the right hemisphere) and additional ventromedial sectors of the PFC (vmPFC), the anterior temporal lobes (aTL) and the superior temporal sulcus (STS) region. b | Subcortical structures13, 36, 48 include the amygdala, ventromedial hypothalamus, septal area and nuclei, basal forebrain (especially the ventral striatum/pallidum and extended amygdala), the walls of the third ventricle and rostral brainstem tegmentum. c | Brain regions that have not been consistently associated with moral cognition and behaviour in patient studies include the parietal and occipital lobes, large areas of the frontal and temporal lobes, the brain stem, basal ganglia and additional subcortical structures. Panel b modified, with permission, from Ref. 147 © (2005) University of Iowa's Virtual Hospital. Anatomical image adapted, with permission, from Ref. 148 © (1996) Appleton & Lange.

More recently, researchers have started to explicitly frame these observations within the sphere of moral cognition, strengthening the links between neuroscience, developmental neuropsychology and moral psychology. Eslinger and Damasio23 described moral behavioural deficits in a patient with damage to the ventromedial PFC acquired in adulthood, who was remarkably unimpaired in specific MORAL REASONING tasks. It was later shown that ventromedial PFC lesions acquired at an early age led to impairments in both moral reasoning and behaviour, indicating that moral development can be arrested by early PFC damage24, 25. These impairments in moral conduct resemble those observed in developmental PSYCHOPATHY26, 27 (Box 1). Less frequently28-31, lesions of the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC; typically of the right hemisphere) also lead to changes in moral behaviour.

In addition to the PFC, other brain regions are crucial for moral cognition. Structural changes in the anterior temporal lobes — either acquired or developmental — can also impair moral behaviours28, 32. Dysfunction of neural circuits that involve the superior temporal sulcus (STS) region — a key area for social perception33 — is associated with the difficulty experienced by individuals with autism in attributing intentionality, which leads to reduced experience of pride and embarrassment1, 34. Lesions to limbic and paralimbic structures can impair basic motivational mechanisms, such as sexual drive, social attachment and aggressiveness, leading to extreme moral violations — for example, unprovoked physical assaults and paedophilia35, 36. Structural and functional imaging studies in psychopathic individuals have pointed to abnormalities in almost all these regions37-40.

Moral emotion and judgement. Recent studies have directly addressed the neural correlates of moral emotions and judgements. Patients with focal damage to the ventromedial PFC show deficient engagement of pride, embarrassment and regret41, 42. Functional imaging studies in healthy individuals have involved simple MORAL JUDGEMENTS43-45, moral dilemmas46, 47 and moral emotions48-52, using different tasks and stimulus presentation schemes. Overall, there is remarkable agreement between functional imaging and clinico-anatomical evidence about the brain areas involved in moral cognition. Activated regions include the anterior PFC (encompassing the frontopolar cortex, Brodmann's area (BA) 9/10), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; especially its medial sector, BA 10/11/25), posterior STS (BA 21/39), anterior temporal lobes (BA 20/21/38), insula, precuneus (BA 7/31), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, BA 24/32) and limbic regions. Notably, the wide range of modalities, stimuli and task requirements appear to have little effect on brain activation patterns (Fig. 2).

Figure 2 | Functional imaging studies of moral cognition.

Functional imaging studies of moral cognition have revealed consistent involvement of the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) region, as well as the anterior temporal lobes (aTL) and limbic structures. Panels a–e depict a transverse slice showing the activation of the aPFC (frontopolar cortex, Brodmann's areas 9/10) across different studies43, 45, 46, 48, 50. Panel f shows spatially overlapping activations in the PFC, STS region and aTL, derived from a conjunction analysis of two different studies: active moral judgements of written stimuli44 and passive viewing of pictures with moral content48. Samples of the pictorial149 and written stimuli used in these studies are shown. The remarkable overlap of brain regions involved in moral cognition, regardless of a wide variation in task requirements and stimulus modalities, contrasts with the large variability observed in brain imaging studies of 'less complex' basic emotions depicted in panel g (Ref. 150). A strong possible explanation is the effect of familiarity and situational context, which have not been controlled in functional imaging studies of basic emotions or moral cognition. The higher reproducibility of the activation patterns in studies of moral cognition might, therefore, have resulted from a smaller contextual variability related to the use of more well-defined social situations for moral judgements and moral emotions. By contrast, experimental designs of studies of basic emotion have put more effort into equating the sensory properties of stimuli (such as luminance, visual complexity and frequency) at the cost of more variability in social contexts (such as fear associated with a picture of a spider or with a crime scene). Panel a reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 43 © (2001) Associacao Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria. Panel b reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 46 (2001) American Association for the Advancement of Science. Panel c reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 48 © (2002) Society for Neuroscience. Panel d reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 45 © (2003) Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. Panel e reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 50 © (2004) Elsevier Science. Panel f (right-hand images) from Ref. 149. Panel g reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 150 © (2002) Elsevier Science.

Besides the consistent patterns of brain activation found across studies, there were also some differential findings. We found activation of the anterior PFC when a moral judgement condition was compared with non-emotional factual judgements43, but not when moral judgements were compared with a social–emotional condition, during which a more ventral region was activated44. Greene and colleagues used a moral judgement task that involved classic moral dilemmas (for example, should you kill an innocent person in order to save five other people?) and found similar activation of the anterior PFC46, 47. Decision difficulty was correlated with increased activity in the ACC. Heekeren and colleagues showed that the presence of bodily harm in moral violation scenarios leads to decreased reaction times and decreased activation of the anterior temporal lobe53. Evidence is emerging that partially dissociable PFC–temporal–limbic networks represent distinct moral emotions, including guilt, anger and embarrassment13, 49-52.

Current accounts

Some current cognitive neuroscience frameworks have direct implications for our understanding of the neural basis of moral cognition. The main characteristics and limitations of these accounts are briefly reviewed and discussed below, with an emphasis on their relevance to moral cognition (see also Table 1).

Table 1 | Characteristics and limitations of frameworks relevant to moral cognitive neuroscience

Conflict processing in moral judgement. On the basis of functional imaging studies46, 47, Greene and colleagues have focused on the role of cognitive control in moral judgement. Their hypothesis was derived in part from Miller and Cohen's theoretical account of PFC function54, which assumes that the PFC is specifically involved in 'controlled processing', such as in rapidly changing, ill-structured situations — characteristics that are also held by other models14. This proposal is supported by evidence for DLPFC and ACC activation in response to increases in attentional and conflict detection demands. Greene's hierarchical processing view assumes that cognitive control processes, afforded by the lateral PFC and ACC ('cognitive areas'), override emotional responses (which are attributed to the medial PFC, posterior cingulate cortex and STS) to produce UTILITARIAN responses to moral dilemmas — for example, smothering a crying baby to save more lives. By contrast, emotional areas would favour 'personal' moral judgements — for example, thinking that it is inappropriate to smother the baby. The theory posits mutually competitive roles of cognition and emotion in moral judgement.

Greene's functional imaging findings are in line with the cognitive control view and demonstrate reliable task-related effects in different types of moral judgement. However, the concepts of 'personal' and 'impersonal' violations, and of 'utilitarian' and 'non-utilitarian' choices need to be broken down into clear cognitive components. Furthermore, this account does not address the possibility that culturally shaped moral values and beliefs might lead to disparate 'utilitarian' conclusions. Finally, it is unclear how impairment of cognitive control and conflict monitoring would affect moral cognition55.

Somatic marker hypothesis. Damasio and colleagues observed that patients with ventromedial PFC damage can detect the implications of a social situation, but cannot make appropriate decisions in real life. They suggested that such patients would be unable to mark those implications with a signal that automatically distinguishes advantageous from pernicious actions56. The somatic marker model explains why patients with ventromedial PFC damage can still reason about social problems, provided the premises are cast verbally, but fail in natural settings. The IOWA GAMBLING TASK, which was preceded by similar gambling tasks57, was put forward as an experimental surrogate for decision-making in real life. Bechara and colleagues58 showed that normal individuals develop anticipatory galvanic skin responses whenever they contemplate a risky choice, and begin to choose advantageously before they are consciously aware of the best strategy. Patients with ventromedial PFC damage do not develop anticipatory autonomic responses and behave as if they are insensitive to future consequences, positive or negative, being primarily guided by immediate prospects that ultimately lead to a net financial loss.

The somatic marker hypothesis has been influential and is considered to be a possible mechanism that could underlie behavioural dysfunction in patients with PFC lesions. This framework is compatible with contextual effects (although these are not explicitly addressed), integrates cognition and emotion, makes testable predictions, and has been supported by neurophysiological and clinical data58-60. However, it does not explicitly address the role of different PFC subregions in moral cognition. The relationships between somatic markers and other cortical and limbic regions that have previously been linked to moral cognition13 are also obscure. Recent evidence from both patients with PFC lesions and healthy individuals has challenged the role of somatic markers in guiding decision making and social behaviours61-63.

Social response reversal. The social RESPONSE-REVERSAL model, which was proposed by Blair and Cipolotti to explain social behavioural impairments in patients with OFC damage, was influenced by Rolls and coworkers' response-reversal paradigm. In their pioneering work, Rolls and colleagues showed that patients with OFC damage were impaired in EXTINCTION and response-reversal tasks64. These impairments were correlated with measures of socially inappropriate behaviours, which led to the hypothesis that the sociopathy of these patients results from a difficulty in modifying behavioural responses, especially when these are followed by negative outcomes. The response-reversal model has received extensive support from electrophysiological studies in animals65 as well as from human lesion and neuroimaging data66-68.

Blair and Cipolotti compared their findings from a patient with OFC damage (J.S.) with those from a patient with DLPFC damage and five prison inmates with psychopathy62. J.S. showed a drastic change in personality after OFC damage, becoming aggressive and callous towards other people. He was impaired in recognizing facial expressions of anger and disgust, but was unimpaired in response-reversal tasks. This led the authors to argue for a social response-reversal mechanism — an inhibitory system reliant on the proper functioning of the OFC that is normally activated by perception or expectation of others' anger69. Blair suggested that a different inhibitory mechanism — the 'violence inhibition mechanism' (VIM) — would be deficient in developmental psychopathy, leading to instrumental aggression70. The VIM underscores the role of the amygdala in aversive conditioning, and is believed to have a key role in moral socialization.

These accounts can be used to make specific predictions about the role of response reversals and aversive conditioning in patients with OFC and amygdala lesions. However, they cannot be easily extended to explain other types of impairment in moral behaviour that arise from damage to other brain regions, such as the temporal lobes and anterior PFC. In addition, these models were not designed to explain how social knowledge, on which reinforcement contingencies operate, is represented in the brain. Finally, although bilateral amygdala lesions lead to impaired perceptual judgement of facial emotions71, evidence for severe impairments in moral behaviour following isolated amygdala lesions acquired either in adulthood or early childhood is still lacking.

Sociopathy as a failure of 'theory of mind'. Disruptive antisocial behaviour is a hallmark of early frontotemporal dementia72. These profound changes in personality have been predominantly ascribed to degeneration of the right PFC73 or the temporal poles74, 75. Lough et al.76 used a battery of neuropsychological and social cognition tests to assess J.M., a 47-year-old man who presented with a decline in work performance and a gross deterioration in social behaviour. Imaging studies revealed bilateral atrophy of the OFC and anterior temporal lobes, including the amygdala. J.M. had a normal IQ and fared well on standard executive tests, but was otherwise severely impaired on THEORY OF MIND (ToM) tasks that require a degree of abstraction, with specific deficits on first- and SECOND-ORDER FALSE BELIEF TASKS, and on detection of faux pas. The authors proposed that the dissociation between the impairment in ToM mechanisms and normal executive performance underlies the personality changes observed in some cases of frontotemporal dementia. This account is therefore compatible with abnormal moral cognition — such as difficulties in the attribution and experience of pride and embarrassment — observed in autism and Asperger's syndrome, which are typically associated with ToM impairments34, 77. However, ToM abilities only account for some aspects of moral cognition, but not, for example, the role of social knowledge, contextual information and basic motivations. Noticeably, ToM is relatively intact in psychopathy, in line with its role in the deviousness of these individuals78.

Structured-event-complex framework. The structured-event-complex (SEC) framework15 supports claims that executive functions performed by the PFC are based on stored event sequence knowledge. SEC representations are long-term memories of event sequences that guide the perception and execution of goal-oriented activities, such as going to a concert or giving a dinner party79. A SEC representation includes situational knowledge abstracted across events (concert) and the temporal organization of events (making a reservation, dressing up, and so on). Activated SECs sequentially bind representations of objects, actions and spatial maps stored in posterior brain regions. The SEC framework predicts that different subdivisions of the PFC store different types of content or domains of event knowledge14, 80, 81. Clinical and neuroimaging evidence supports this prediction, showing that different PFC regions are involved in representing social and emotional SECs (ventromedial PFC)82, 83, novel or multi-tasking event sequences (anterior PFC)84, 85 or overlearned sequences (more posterior PFC regions)86, 87. The importance of the PFC for goal-oriented activities is also corroborated by recent functional imaging studies of future reward prediction88.

Although this framework has clear implications for moral cognition, these rely on the hypothesis that the PFC stores the situational and temporal context of social knowledge. The SEC framework does not predict how PFC regions interact with limbic areas and other cortical regions to give rise to a range of moral cognitive phenomena, such as moral values and moral emotions.

Moral sensitivity hypothesis. A final account is that of the moral sensitivity hypothesis13, 48. Using a task that engaged participants as observers, we showed that the viewing of pictures that depicted moral violations specifically activated the anterior PFC, medial OFC, STS region, brainstem and limbic structures. Scenes associated with BASIC EMOTIONS (disgust and fear) activated similar brainstem and limbic regions (including the amygdala), but not the medial OFC and STS. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a network involving the anterior PFC, OFC, STS and limbic regions represents social–emotional events linked to 'moral sensitivity' — an automatic tagging of ordinary social events with moral values. This hypothesis was supported by the finding that the medial OFC, anterior PFC, STS and precuneus show increased coupling in a functional connectivity analysis48, and by the observation that a similar set of regions is involved in moral reasoning and social perception. Although we proposed that the OFC is more involved in automatic social–emotional associations and that the anterior PFC has a role in predicting future social outcomes, the role of the PFC in context-dependent social situations was not addressed. In addition, the moral sensitivity hypothesis makes no predictions about specific impairments in moral cognition following selective damage to the anterior temporal lobes, the STS region and PFC subregions.

Limitations of current frameworks

Some of the above frameworks point to clear-cut singular mechanisms. These mechanisms have the potential advantage of allowing more specific predictions to be made about the workings of particular brain regions, but they fall short of explaining key aspects of moral cognition. Some general limitations that apply to all of these frameworks are discussed below.

Ecological validity of experimental designs. Ecological validity is especially relevant for moral cognition studies, because moral cognition depends strongly on situational and cultural context6. The experimental constraints that are imposed by behavioural and functional imaging studies might have an important impact on performance on moral cognition tasks. Some people might feel uncomfortable disclosing their opinions about sensitive issues, providing socially desirable answers instead. On the other hand, different people might provide similar opinions, but rely on entirely different moral values. The fact that moral cognition operates to a large extent swiftly and implicitly in regular social life13 makes the ecological validity issue even more crucial. The making of moral judgements on extreme and unfamiliar situations, such as those posed by classic moral dilemmas89, offers interesting ways to probe philosophical points of view, but can hardly be taken as a proxy for everyday moral reasoning. In addition, personal beliefs and familiarity with the scenarios strongly affect behaviour and brain activation results90-94.

Brain processes and representations. Another important limitation of current accounts is the lack of specific predictions about the effects of PFC lesions on moral behaviour. PFC function has been described using two general views: the 'processing' approach, which holds that the cognitive function of the PFC can be described in terms of performance without specifying a representation, and the 'representational' approach, which seeks to establish what type of information is stored in the PFC14. The processing view tends to regard the PFC as a content-free repository of processing modules, such as conflict monitoring, selection and inhibitory control95, and predicts task-dependent rather than content-dependent dissociations resulting from brain lesions. Therefore, moral behaviour impairments following PFC damage would result from a release of limbic areas from PFC 'executive control'96. However, there is no convincing evidence that PFC damage leads to universal impairments in these processes, and it is hard to imagine how complex personality and emotional changes could emerge from dysfunction of these all-purpose processes97. The finding that performance on social reasoning tasks crucially depends on the content of the information being evaluated (for example, social versus non-social)90, 91, 94, 98, and evidence from functional imaging and brain lesion studies linking PFC subregions to content-specific dissociations in social reasoning99, ATTITUDES82, 83, beliefs92 and emotional signals100 indicate that a representational view can better explain the role of the PFC in moral cognition.

Culture and the brain. Finally, inferring cognitive and neural mechanisms from behaviours can be misleading101, especially when cultural and situational factors are involved. For instance, Westerners and East Asians differ in categorization strategies when making causal attributions and predictions102, and moral values and social preferences are shaped by cultural codification103-105. The PFC has a central role in the internalization of moral values and norms through the integration of cultural and contextual information during development24, 106, 107. Assessing the relationships between culturally shaped values and preferences in social interactions will therefore be a logical next step in designing experiments with which to study moral cognition (Box 2).

A new model: EFECs

The evidence discussed above strongly indicates that the neural mechanisms of moral cognition are not restricted to the PFC, limbic areas or any other brain region. We propose a new representational neural architecture, designed to circumvent the limitations of previous frameworks. In our view, moral cognitive phenomena emerge from the integration of content- and context-dependent representations in cortical–limbic networks.

The structure of the framework, its properties and its predictions rely on three main components (Fig. 3a): structured event knowledge, which corresponds to context-dependent representations of events and event sequences in the PFC; social perceptual and functional features, represented as context-independent knowledge in the anterior and posterior temporal cortex; and central motive and emotional states, which correspond to context-independent activation in limbic and paralimbic structures. These components were derived from clinical and imaging evidence, and their relevance to moral cognition and behaviour is reviewed below. Component representations interact and give rise to event–feature–emotion complexes (EFECs) through three putative BINDING mechanisms: sequential binding, which has been proposed to link SECs in the PFC108; temporal binding among anatomically highly connected regions, also involved in PERCEPTUAL GESTALTS in the posterior cortex109; and third-party binding of anatomically loosely connected regions by synchronized activity, which results in the formation of episodic memories108, 110.

Figure 3 | The event–feature–emotion complex framework.

a | The event–feature–emotion complex (EFEC) framework postulates that moral cognitive and behavioural phenomena arise from the binding of three main components: structured event knowledge (provided by context-dependent representations in prefrontal subregions), social perceptual and functional features (stored in the posterior and anterior sectors of the temporal cortex) and central motive or basic emotional states (such as aggressiveness, sadness, attachment or sexual arousal, represented in limbic and paralimbic regions). b | Emergent representations predicted by the EFEC model. Relevant types of moral cognition phenomenon that can be understood on the basis of the EFEC framework include moral emotions, moral values and long-term goals. The elements from the three main components of the EFEC framework interact to produce the moral emotion compassion. The prefrontal cortex provides contextual event representations (for example, the girl is an orphan and the odds of adoption are low), the superior temporal sulcus and anterior temporal cortex region contribute social perceptual (sad facial expression of a child) and functional (the concept of 'helplessness') features, and limbic/paralimbic regions underlie central motive states (feeling sadness, anxiety and attachment). These component representations give rise to a 'gestalt' experience by way of temporal synchronization109. c–f | Recent functional imaging studies show that these component representations are consistently activated by distinct moral emotions: compassion (Moll et al., unpublished observations) (c); embarrassment50 (d); indignation151 (e); and guilt49 (f). ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; aPFC, anterior prefrontal cortex; aTL, anterior temporal lobes; OFC, orbitofrontal cortex; STS, superior temporal sulcus. Anatomical image in panels a and b adapted, with permission, from Ref. 148 © (1996) Appleton & Lange. Panel d reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 50 © (2004) Elsevier Science. Panel e reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 151 © (2005) Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. Panel f reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 49 © (2000) Elsevier Science.

Structured event knowledge. Morality is a real-world business. It is about people navigating, interacting and making choices in an ever-changing world. Humans integrate extensive contextual elements when assessing the behaviour of others and when appreciating their own actions in a given situation. The importance of the PFC in structuring context-dependent social and non-social knowledge into SECs is described in terms of the SEC framework14. Distinct PFC regions have been postulated to be involved in representing event sequence knowledge. According to the SEC model, over-learned event sequences, such as routine tasks, are stored in medial and more posterior sectors of the PFC, whereas less predictable event sequences are represented in the DLPFC. The anterior sectors of the PFC are more important for storing long-term goals and multi-stage event complexes, such as those involved in making plans and thinking about the future23, 84, 111-113, and have been implicated in integrating separate cognitive operations to achieve a superordinate behavioural goal84, 114. Finally, the ventromedial sectors of the PFC are preferentially involved in representing social and emotional event knowledge, which is essential for the formation of attitudes and social stereotypes115-117.

Social perceptual and functional features. When you skim your favourite newspaper, gather at a conference or attend a family meeting, your brain deals with a massive number of perceptual signs of social significance. Our ability to manage this burden of information relies on complex patterns of featural and semantic knowledge118. The existence of context-independent featural representations is supported by a vast amount of neuropsychological and functional imaging evidence119, 120. Making implicit or explicit moral appraisals when engaged in the social world requires the ability to efficiently extract social perceptual and functional features from the environment. Social perceptual features are extracted from facial expression, gaze, prosody, body posture and gestures. The posterior STS is a key region for storing these representations33, 121. In support of this view, morphological abnormalities of the STS region have been implicated in the impaired social decoding observed in autism122.

Social functional features code for context-independent semantic properties that are extracted from different social situations. The importance of the anterior temporal cortex for semantic feature knowledge is underscored by supramodal semantic impairments in semantic dementia123. Patients with anterior temporal lobe resection show impairments in naming human actions124, which indicates that this region is involved in representing functional knowledge relevant to people. The severe behavioural changes that are associated with isolated anterior temporal atrophy in semantic dementia74, 75, and the finding of semantic impairments and abnormal activity in this brain region in psychopathic individuals39, 125 support this view.

Central motive states. Moral cognition depends on elaborated cortical mechanisms for representing and retrieving event knowledge, semantic information and perceptual features. However, morality would be reduced to a meaningless concept if it were stripped from its motivational and emotional aspects. Limbic and paralimbic regions126 monitor bodily homeostasis and underlie elementary emotional or motivational 'states'. The concept of 'central motive states'127 is an influential account of the basic mechanisms of motivation. Together with other limbic/paralimbic and brainstem structures (the amygdala, septal nuclei, ventral striatum, medial forebrain bundle, ventral tegmental area and paralimbic cortex), hypothalamic activity has a central role in 'undirected' emotionality, including sexual arousal, social attachment, hunger, aggression and extremes of pleasantness. Accordingly, these states can be potently elicited or suppressed by selective lesions, drugs and electrical stimulation of these regions, as well as by imbalances of neurotransmitters or neuromodulators13, 36, 126-129. Central motive states must be distinguished from basic emotions, such as fear and disgust. Basic emotions emerge by temporal binding of context representations (perceiving the feared object or situation) and the central motive state itself (undirected anxiety).

Several limbic nuclei exert a powerful influence over a wide range of behaviours through reciprocal connections with the PFC and other cortical regions126, 130. Our framework underscores a key role for central motive states in moral behaviour by way of integrated cortical–limbic networks. For example, cortical representations allow you to notice that someone is hurt, whereas central motive states elicit anxiety and attachment, which encourage you to help the suffering person. This integrative perspective contrasts with the commonly held view that 'rational' cognitive mechanisms control or compete with emotional ones.

Explaining complex moral phenomena

Although the EFEC framework can predict several possible emergent properties, we discuss three of the most relevant for moral cognition: moral emotions, moral values and long-term goals.

Whereas basic emotions spring from perceptions, imagination or recollections endowed with personal relevance, moral emotions are linked to the interest or welfare of other individuals or society as a whole131. Guilt, compassion, embarrassment, shame, pride, contempt and gratitude are prototypical examples of moral emotions; depending on the context, other emotions — such as disgust, awe and indignation or anger — may also qualify as moral emotions131, 132. As a general rule, moral emotions result from interactions among values, norms and contextual elements of social situations, and are elicited in response to violations or enforcement of social preferences and expectations104, 132. Although the contextual cues that link moral emotions to social norms are variable and shaped by culture103, these emotions evolved from prototypes found in other primates11 and can be characterized across cultures133.

Moral emotions require the integration of the three components of the model. For example, compassion requires the integration of context-independent social perceptual features (for instance, 'a sad facial expression of a child'), social functional features (abstract conceptual knowledge pointing to the features of 'helplessness' of an orphan child), and central motive states (sadness, anxiety and attachment) with specific contextual event representations (such as 'her parents died in an accident, and the chances of adoption at her age are low') (Fig. 3b).

Moral values (for example, being an honest citizen or a caring parent) and norms (such as paying taxes and not stealing) comprise several standards of conduct in society; they enforce social conformity and shape attitudes and expectations in social situations105, 134. Behaviours that deviate from or enforce these values elicit different moral judgements and emotions (for instance, pride when one upholds the values, or guilt when one fails to do so). Despite the intimate link between moral values, norms and attitudes with moral cognition, their neural representations are still poorly understood. Recent functional MRI (fMRI) studies have started to shed light on these aspects. Attitudes that relate to sensitive issues, such as war, murder and abortion, activate networks involving different PFC sectors, limbic and paralimbic regions and the anterior temporal cortex80, 135. In our view, the moral values and moral emotions involved in specific situations directly influence implicit and explicit moral appraisals.

Another key aspect of moral cognition is the representation of goals and the prediction of the utility of outcomes136 in social situations. Pursuing goals or foreseeing possible consequences of one's decisions in the social world requires the ability to estimate the likelihood of outcomes and their desirability. Functional integration of information in the anterior PFC (which represents long-term outcomes)88 and limbic structures (which code for the reward value of behavioural choices) is key to our ability to weigh the motivational relevance of different behavioural choices in social situations13. This view can be parsimoniously integrated with cognitive and neurobiological models of reward expectation and utility estimation65, 137-139, and contrasts with the interpretation that the PFC performs a 'cognitive role' in abstract moral reasoning by suppressing emotional responses47. Our view posits a central role for the human ability to represent and evaluate large sets of possible event outcomes, which are linked to motivational salience through cortical–limbic integration.

Model predictions

The EFEC framework allows us to generate new predictions about the patterns of moral behavioural changes that result from dysfunction of different brain regions that cannot be made using the other frameworks described above. In addition, it offers novel ways of interpreting functional imaging findings in healthy individuals. Some of these predictions are described below.

A general prediction is that different neural subdivisions store distinct knowledge or motivational states. The binding of particular neuronal groups in each of these areas could give rise to a particular moral cognitive representation (Fig. 3b).

A lesion of the anterior PFC would lead to selective impairments in moral evaluations that rely on predicting the long-term outcomes of one's own actions, such as the anticipation of guilt. We predict that patients with damage to this area would be guided more by short-term goals because their knowledge of long-term plans and goals, or their binding with motivational relevance is impaired. In our interpretation, the activation of this region during moral judgement results from representing possible outcomes and how they branch into the future; this offers a parsimonious explanation for anterior PFC activation in reflective moral reasoning ('moral calculus')13, and in 'utilitarian' moral judgements47.

Lesions of the DLPFC would lead to behavioural impairments in unfamiliar situations, in which reliance on external guidance and stimuli becomes an issue54, but would leave intact well-established social behaviours and attitudes. By contrast, lesions of the ventral sectors of the PFC would lead to severe social behavioural changes due to disruption of social–emotional contextual knowledge14, with early lesions having more drastic effects as they impair the learning of moral values107. Lesions of the ventromedial PFC would tend to impair adherence to well-established social norms and attitudes, which is consistent with the often ensuing personality changes. Lesions of the lateral OFC are expected to impair behaviours that rely on dynamically comparing non-matching social–emotional cues with stored representations, which is in agreement with the proposed role of this region in social response reversal62.

Damage to the posterior STS is predicted to disrupt the ability to recognize socially relevant perceptual features of faces, body posture and movements. This would lead to inadequate social behaviour under circumstances that depend on the perception of these signals, but would leave intact previously established social rules, attitudes and outcome knowledge, as well as their integration with emotional and motivational states. Therefore, acquired lesions in adulthood are predicted to have a relatively minor effect on general social knowledge. However, early developmental disorders that affect this region would impair the acquisition of general social knowledge, including social rules, attitudes and outcome knowledge, which depends on the perceptual integration of social situations.

Lesions of the anterior temporal lobe are expected to disrupt knowledge of social concepts and values that are more context-independent (such as 'honour' and 'greed'), but to leave intact highly context-dependent knowledge of sequences of social events (for example, 'going to a supermarket'). We predict that loss of this knowledge, as measured by semantic memory tasks, would impair implicit and explicit evaluation of one's own and others' social behaviours.

Dysfunction of limbic or paralimbic regions is predicted to cause exaggeration or attenuation of basic motivational and emotional states, thereby affecting moral behaviour. Lesions of the hypothalamus, septal nuclei, basal forebrain and neighbouring structures are predicted to produce gross distortions of the valence of moral values, attitudes and moral emotions. This is in line with the observation of unprovoked rage, lack of empathy and abnormal sexual behaviours following isolated damage to limbic and paralimbic regions35, 36, 128, 140. In the case of acquired lesions in adulthood, gross changes in the motivational relevance of behaviours would be observed, in spite of preserved knowledge of social rules. By contrast, early developmental disorders that affect these regions would cause aberrant social learning. Abnormal behaviours in these patients do not result from impaired inhibitory mechanisms, but from a lack of emotional empathy, or increased aggression or sexual drive, for example. These motivational states can be investigated with functional imaging and physiological methods (such as galvanic skin responses).

Conclusions and future directions

Moral cognitive neuroscience researchers have developed innovative paradigms for the scientific exploration of unique forms of human social behaviour. Recent studies are fostering new interpretations with regard to the neural bases of moral cognition. However, they are also generating new conundrums that require theoretical frameworks to be compatible with distinctive characteristics of the human moral condition.

We have reviewed clinical and experimental work and discussed the strengths and limitations of current theoretical accounts that are relevant to moral cognitive neuroscience. We have proposed a new comprehensive model — the event–feature–emotion complex framework — which integrates cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and basic motivational states. This framework allows us to generate testable predictions for neuropsychological dissociations associated with selective brain dysfunction, and can be used as a guideline for designing future experiments.

Moral cognitive neuroscience can improve assessment, prediction and treatment of behavioural disorders. Understanding the neural basis of moral cognition will help to shape environmental, psychological and medical intervention aimed at promoting prosocial behaviours and social welfare. Future studies will be needed to explore the neural basis of how different individuals and social groups make use of strategies and heuristics to solve moral conflicts. The implications of this new knowledge for how societies conduct business, regulate social behaviour and plan for their futures remain to be seen.

Boxes


Box 1 | Psychopathy and the neural organization of morality



The concepts of antisocial personality disorder ('sociopathy') and psychopathy (a severe form of sociopathy) originated from the need to diagnose individuals who show a pattern of behaviours that goes against the common good and repeatedly involves harm to others. Although social norms vary among cultures and even among intracultural niches, sociopathy and psychopathy cannot be reduced to 'cultural artefacts'141 for the simple fact that their core manifestations are stable and easily recognizable, both historically and cross-culturally. The neurobiological validity of sociopathy and psychopathy is supported by increasing scientific evidence that the brains of affected individuals differ from those of socially adjusted people: imaging studies in psychopaths have revealed reduction of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex and abnormal brain activation in limbic regions, as well as in the prefrontal and temporal lobes38, 39.

Box 2 | Culture, moral values and neuroeconomics




Humans often show altruistic inclinations, relying on moral values and preferences, such as equality and fairness, as well as to self-interested motivation142. Economic games provide an interesting way to experimentally investigate social cooperation. In the Ultimatum Game, a proposer makes an offer to a responder on how to split an amount of money. If the responder accepts, the money is split as proposed. However, if the responder rejects, both players end up with nothing. Recent functional imaging studies in the new area of NEUROECONOMICS show that the brain areas activated during these interactions include limbic/paralimbic regions (the hypothalamus and ventral striatum), the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) and the superior temporal sulcus (STS)143, which overlap with the regions involved in moral cognition (panel a). Activation of the insula, a paralimbic structure, predicted rejection of unfair offers144, and activity in the aPFC and striatum reflected decisions to punish violators of the norm145. An interesting aspect of these experimental designs is that they make it possible to measure brain activation during real-time interactions among two or more individuals. Prec, precuneus.

Behavioural studies clearly underscore the role of culturally shaped preferences and values in social and economic interactions. For example, behaviour in experimental games might reflect differences in social cooperativeness, such as proneness to engage in collective efforts. In a study conducted in Tanzania, the more individualistic Pimbwe group made low offers in the Ultimatum Game, whereas the highly cooperative Sukuma group consistently made generous offers146. Such cultural differences are illustrated by the variability of proposals in the Ultimatum Game among different social groups (panel b), although the underlying cognitive and motivational mechanisms and their relationships to social norms and values are still largely unknown105. Future studies could address the distinct roles of PFC subregions, limbic areas and the temporal cortex in representing culturally shaped moral values and norms. Panel a reproduced, with permission, from Ref. 143 © (2004) Elsevier Science. Panel b modified, with permission, from Ref. 146 © (2005) Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society.

Jorge Moll1, Roland Zahn1, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza2, Frank Krueger1 & Jordan Grafman1 about the authors

1 Jorge Moll, Roland Zahn, Frank Krueger and Jordan Grafman are at The Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Building 10; Room 5C205; MSC 1440, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-1440, USA.
2 Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza is at the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience Unit, LABS-D'Or Hospital Network, R. Pinheiro Guimaraes 22, 3rd floor, Rio de Janeiro 22281-080, Brazil.

correspondence to: Jordan Grafman grafmanj@ninds.nih.gov

Links

FURTHER INFORMATION
Cognitive Neuroscience Section, NINDS, NIH | Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience Unit, LABS-D'Or Hospital Network

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Delphi goes bankrupt. GM next?

First, thanks to P6 for coming out and to T3 for setting us out.

Delphi files for bankruptcy. For people outside of Detroit this is small time news. Probably about as important as new cases of Avian Flu.

Sometime around the late nineties, both Ford and GM began to spin off their parts making enterprises (for Ford, it was Visteon) so they could become leaner and meaner, focusing more on building cars (and financing their purchase--a significant source of profit for both companies). In the case of Delphi, a deal was cut by GM that stipulated that if Delphi went under, GM would still provide for Delphi employees if Delphi went under.

GM doesn't appear to have those resources, but they still have the obligation.

A good friend of mine predicted that GM would file bankruptcy, SOON.

I Listen to Conservative Radio

[ Edited for corrections aplenty ]

I listen to conservative radio. I also listen to "liberal" radio, but that doesn't seem to a problem for some.

Of course, for others, listening to "liberal" radio is a problem. But that's not what this is all about. What this is about is responding to the idea, to me, that listening to conservative talk radio is a "bad thing".

So, if I listen to conservative radio, does that mean I, therefore, am not able to think for my self?

Lord forbid I should happen to want to formulate ideas based "pro and
con" vs. just based on knee jerk reaction. Lord forbid I should happen to want to be logical about what I base my beliefs upon.

I guess if I was to follow the "logic" that since I listen to
conservative radio, I'm brainwashed, then that means those who listen
to liberal radio are brainwashed. What an interesting concept. And
what a condenscending concept. [Let's ignore that I listen to left leaning talk radio as well].

I listen to conservative radio, therefore, I am beholden to conservative thought.

Let's see, I believe in low taxes. Of course that could only mean I
believe that way because I listen to conservative radio, not because I feel abused when I look at my year ending tax statements and see about 40% of my money going to taxes. Should I mention all of the regular people who buy homes for the reason of the tax deduction? Isn't that trying to keep as much money as possible from the government?

I believe the size of government is too big and mostly ineffective and wasteful. That must be because I listen to conservative radio, not because in my dealing as contractor I've seen government employees read the newspapers, walk the halls, visit their friends, shop in the on site stores, and take care of a lot of personal business during the day, instead of doing their jobs. My belief has to be that way just because I listen to conservative radio, not because I've seen the waste in government money when the end of the government fiscal year nears and organizations rush to spend all of their money for fear that next year's budget will be less if they don't spend all of the money. Or, when I've witnessed contracts let based on internal politics and "empire building," not the job required or who is best qualified to do the work.

I guess it's easy to forget that I had an inspector tell me that I had
to have wired electrical smoke detectors installed in the bedrooms
upstairs, otherwise he would fail the last inspection for having a
bathroom installed, and storage room finished _in the BASEMENT_. I
guess it's easy to forget that I had to challenge the inspector and
threaten legal action before it was said that all I had to do was show that I had smoke detectors in the bedrooms. I don't think I told you all the inpsector did was ask if the detectors were installed. He
didn't do a verification. But believing that government is wasteful
and ineffective is based not on experience, but based on conservative
radio.

My support of school vouchers must be because I listen to conservative radio, not from seeing lousy teachers protected by the school system by sending them to minority majority schools instead of firing them. Or from seeing Black students overwhelmingly placed in "special education classes" to get more federal aid instead of properly assessing their capabilities. Or from seeing school systems like the Baltimore City Public School System have the worst performance in the state of Maryland, while having the highest administration costs in the state of Maryland. Or from seeing the Baltimore City Public School System know they have a problem with lead in the water but still letting kids drink from the fountains. This was until the school system was sued. Then, the system used bottled water for 1 1/2 years before turning on the water fountains again, but NOT FIXING the lead problem. Or from seeing public school teachers send their children to private schools at a rate that is higher than the rest of the community. Or finding out how a private school makes their book selection with 3 telephone calls, but never being able to find out how a "good public school system" makes their academic book selection. Who cares if I recognize that school vouchers
are backed by some who want the end of government schools but the
situation in some areas is so bad that parents of the children need
more options, not less. Who cares if I recognize that charter schools
are a public school option that may fail but why point them out when other public school failures get a pass.

The fact that I think Bill Clinton is a "cracka in a suit" is because
of conservative radio, not because he hung Lani Guinier out to dry
when he claimed he didn't know about her views. Or when he hung
Joyclen Elders out to dry just because she said that the idea of
teaching masturbation could be discussed. Or when he signed the
cocaine vs. crack sentencing disparity into permanent law, instead of
letting it sunset like the CBC wanted. Or when he did nothing about
racial profiling. Or when he took time away from campaigning for
president to go back to Arkansas to oversee(!) the execution of a
retarded Black man convicted of murder. Or when he signed the welfare
reform act even though the CBC was against it.

The fact that I think that the CBC is ineffective, lacks political
skill, and suck up to the Democratic Party power structure comes from
listening to conservative radio not the fact that Bill Clinton signed
bills into law that the CBC was against. Or that the CBC, in a
Democratic controlled congress, seemed to get little of what they
wanted.

But at least the CBC throws one helluva party.

The fact that I think the Democratic party takes the Black voted for
granted comes from listening to conservative radio, not from the fact
that the Democratic party promised to back McCall in the governor's
race in New York, instead did nothing. Or that Charlie Rangel said
that he wished their were more J.C. Watts' in congress so that he
could get more consessions from his party.

The fact that I think "Global Warming" is not proven comes from
listening to conservative radio, not from the fact that scientists
disagree if the warming is a result of human actiivites, or if the
warming is not normal when the long range is taken into account, or
even if it really is occuring. The fact that I think "Global Warming"
is not proven can't be based on my engineering background that compels me to ask how they are determining global warming exists when a baseline is not discussed or how the baseline was derrived.

But we all know that liberal radio is much better to listen to for
Black folks, right?

How about those liberals, who clearly love us Black folk, when Air
America displaced Black talk radio in New York? You don't know what I
mean? Read this about Air America and Black radio.

Let's pick on more liberal radio some more. How about when Air America got a "loan" from a New York Boys and Girls Club? So what you say? How about how the loan was given and by whom? You don't know what I mean?
Read this. This one
has more.

On September 5, 2005, I wrote this about what's being said in the
media

Those are 5 simple questions. Need I mention that the conservative AND
liberal media were reporting things that didn't happen in NOLA?

The attempt to use the fact that I listen to conservative media to
attempt to shut me down is nothing but intellectual weakness.

When we were on soc.culture.africanl.american and
soc.culture.africanl.american.moderated, I remember noticing that with
each wave of conserva-kook attack, the regular posters refinded and
enhanced their responses to the same tiring wave of garbage. I also
remember Michael Bowen mentioning that very same fact.

I went searching, and here's something I wrote back in August 1998,
concerning Clarence Thomas:

http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african.american.moderated/msg/ffdcc9bb0b995fff?dmode=source&hl=en
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african.american.moderated/msg/e7dc3c339626e731?dmode=source&hl=en

"Next, by making all of the negative comments about him, without
attacking his views in a purely intellectual manner, Thomas is
being built up, not torn down! People in the 'liberal media,' are now
saying 'It's a shame those Black people are calling Justice Thomas all of those mean names.'"

Meaning, if all you are going to do is call the man a "sellout" or
uncle tom, shut the hell up! If you are going to pick his views apart,
intellectually, do it. Then the labels aren't necessary.

I caught hell for writing that, but I was proven correct when Judge
Higginbotham wound up saying the same thing and wrote a piece
attacking Clarence Thomas' on his understanding and application of law.

Just deal with the information presented. If you don't like it, argue against it. If you do like it, then so be it. But if you disagree because of the source, and attack that only, then it looks like you can't argue otherwise.

Or, at least, that's how I see it.

My Take On Bill Bennett

I don't like doing this, but:

in·fer·ence

1 a the act of passing from one proposition, statement, or judgment
considered as true to another whose truth is believed to follow from
that of the former

im·ply

2 : to involve or indicate by inference, association, or necessary
consequence rather than by direct statement

When I heard Bill Bennet's comments, I heard them in full context.

My take on the matter was to think that if all Black babies were
aborted, some fraction of those Black babies would turn to crime. I
never assumed the statement meant ALL Black babies would become
criminals. And, statistically speaking, I'm right. In fact, most won't be criminals. But for those that would turn to crime, since they wouldn't be around, the crime rate would have to go down.

The same applies if Bennett used whites instead of Blacks or if he said male babies only or if he said if we somehow removed all males between the age of 15-30.

In looking at the responses to Bennett's remarks, there seems to be a
strong thought that states Bennett meant all Black babies aborted
would have been criminals. No where do I see that in Bennett's remarks.

However, going further, it seems to me that Bennett's comments are not what's making the racists feel comfort, it's the replies that confirm the idea that most Blacks are criminals.

Maybe I've missed it, but the fact that most Blacks are NOT criminals, is being lost, to me, with the knee jerk reactions.

That's what is giving comfort to the racists.

More Media and Katrina

OK, now Eugene Robinson writes this about the media and revisionism.

I witnessed this warp-speed process in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. I got there five days after the deluge, when the story, as the whole world understood it, was one of "Mad Max" depravity and violence. Hoodlums were raping and pillaging, I just "knew" -- even shooting at rescue helicopters trying to take hospital patients to safety. So it was a surprise when I rolled into the center of the city, with all my foreign-correspondent antennae bristling, and found the place as quiet as a tomb.

The next day I drove into the French Quarter and was struck by how pristine St. Louis Cathedral looked, almost like the castle at Disney World. I got out of the car and walked around the whole area, and I wrote in my notebook that except for the absence of tourists, it could have been just an ordinary Sunday morning in the Big Easy. Then I got back into the car, and on the radio a caller was breathlessly reporting that, as she spoke, a group of policemen were "pinned down" by snipers at the cathedral.

I was right there; nobody was sniping at anybody.

Ummm...
So, let me get this straight. The snipper "incident" made national news, he was there an knew it didn't happen, yet there was no article in the Post about it? Nor did Robinson write a column about it before now!?!?!?!?!?!?

And HE talks about revisionism?

Knee.Grow.PLEASE!!!!

Biz Travel Gets Real Old

The title says it all.

I remember when airlines served "decent" food, now you have to load up before the flight, in the airport.

I had to laugh when I saw a Black woman break out aluminum foil from a big bag and pass out home fried chicken.

I started to pay her for a piece of the bird.

Bennett, Cosby, and Barnes Pt. 3--The Fakelore of White Supremacy

In pt. 1, I deconstructured Cosby's comments. It should be clear, if it wasn't before, that Cosby's comments reveal a significant degree of disdain for black poor citizens. In pt. 2, I talked about the distinction between enslaved Africans, and black slaves. A simple way to think about it is grammatically as far as adjectives and nouns. In the one case the adjective is "African" in the other case the noun is "slave".

Steve's response can be found here. In my short comments to his post, I noted that by not asking how whites were damaged by slavery we fall into the fakelore of white supremacy. In his response, and his first Bennett Cosby quote, Steve argues that one way to see negative conditioning is by looking at the way blacks took to white standards of beauty, preferred straight hair to kinked (or "natural") hair, left black communities, and took being smart to mean "acting white."

A lot to cover here.

Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison two of the deans of black literature write about the "fakelore of white supremacy." It refers to the degree to which blacks and whites buy into white supremacy, by arguing that blacks were psychologically and culturally damaged by the enslavement.

The entire "blacks have lost their religion, their culture, their god..." argument? Fakelore.

In point of fact, slavery and oppression may well have made black people more human and more American while it has made white people less human and less American... It is the political behavior of black activists, not that of norm-calibrated Americans, that best represents the spirit of such constitutional norm-ideals as freedom, justice, equality, fair representation, and democratic processes....It is the non-conforming Negro, not the median of the white population, who now acts like the true descendent of the Founding Fathers--who cries 'Give me liberty or give me death," and who regards taxation without representation as tyranny. It is the white American who, in the name of law and order, now sanctions measures that are more in keeping with the objectives of a police state than those of an open society.

(Murray, pp. 36, 37)

To the degree that America is a democracy, it is a democracy because of the actions of enslaved Africans and their American descendants. But it is these people who are supposedly crippled? Take a look at lynching pictures if you can. What stands out to me are the smiling faces of white boys and girls, of white men and women. Proud. Happy. Gleeful.

Black people were the crippled ones?

Whenever I walk behind a white woman in the night, she clutches her purse...and often crosses the street. Physically I'm fit, but I'm nothing like Steve. I weigh 155 WITH CLOTHES ON, and am 6' tall. Hardly menacing.

But I'm the crippled one?

Check out that Rodney King tape if you get a chance. Police are given the authority by the state to use deadly force. It took what? A few dozen police officers to subdue him.

HE'S the one that's crippled--even though they had guns?

People who have bought into the fakelore of white supremacy--whether they be nationalists, or integrationists, radicals or conservatives--argue that blacks are crippled IN COMPARISON TO THEIR WHITE COUNTERPARTS.

Not politically or economically crippled--an argument I agree with.

Spiritually, culturally, and psychologically crippled.

And buying into the fakelore means buying into such things as: the myth of acting white, white standards of beauty, good hair, and consumption to ape whites. I don't want to get deep into the social science literature because I don't have a lot of space. I'll just say this. The social science literature on acting white? Mostly Bunk.
On consumption patterns? Bunk too. White standards of beauty? Check out rates of black vs. white anorexia. Black female self-esteem rates (very high compared to whites).

I've been blessed with the ability to do this type of research for a living. To study, research, and write about black life. To be an expert on race and politics, and American politics. Through synthesizing the social science literature with my own experience as a product of seventies and eighties Detroit, I've come to pretty much shirk off the fakelore of white supremacy. Ellison and Murray are on point here.

Next? Steve's got some powerful ideas on thought processes at the individual level. But he attaches this to culture, and to large social groups, in a way that ignores politics and economics. I think this is what I'll talk about...and given I've got a book of my own to write, I may finish there depending.

Google's Microsoft Strategy

Steady clocking this meme cause I use googletalk with my boyz, today this slashdotted ditty turns up.

According to “The Google Legacy,'' history is about to repeat itself. Microsoft today is where IBM was years ago. And Google is in a position to do to Bill Gates what he did to IBM. The result could be a new industry kingpin.

Dig deeper into Google, dig into its software and engineering patents and you’ll find a roadmap for its future, says an author and online systems specialist, who believes the patents also spell bad news for Microsoft if the tech world moves to a new Google-dominated network paradigm.

“Google really doesn’t hide things,” said Stephen E. Arnold, who has written a book on his one-year odyssey studying the search firm. “Bill Gates is basically in the same spot he had IBM in. IBM was challenged by Microsoft and IBM didn’t understand Microsoft’s business model. It’s history repeating itself.”

Arnold, author of “The Google Legacy”, said in an interview this week, that it appears that Microsoft doesn’t understand Google in much the same way that IBM didn’t understand Microsoft 20 years ago. “It will be the Googleplex from 2004 to 2020 – a network paradigm,” said Arnold. “It will be enabled by Google’s approach to innovation.”

In placing Google’s patents under microscopic scrutiny, Arnold said he believes Google is not so much protecting its past technology innovation, but is positioning itself for the future with the first stop targeting Yahoo!’s Web advertising. Microsoft will come into its gun sights later.

“These patents suggest that Google is looking beyond search, possibly targeting such companies as Microsoft, as Google tries to become the leading info tech company of the 21st Century,” he said.

Arnold has identified 72 patents with Google heritage that were filed during the first six months of 2005. That compares with the 47 Google patents he found from 2001 through 2004.

In Arnold’s analysis, he said some filings in the patent portfolio point to an accelerated use of high-speed fiber and wireless that could be used to deliver Google technology. “Google already has some number of data centers where it’s good to have high-speed connections,” he said.

With Wi-Fi currently working its way into communities across the world and with wide area WiMAX ready to be deployed in a big way next year, it could be a natural fit for Google to deliver its technology over these high-speed links, free of charge. Noting that Google is moving to VoIP via its recently-announced Google Talk, the high-speed connections appear tailor-made for delivering streaming video, Arnold said.

Google is testing Google Wi-Fi in locations near its headquarters in Silicon Valley. Arnold said China, India and Japan are attractive and ripe for Google to deliver its services over high-speed wireless links.

In a broader sense, Arnold believes Google is building a “patent fence around search” technology as the firm moves to codify its unique competitive advantage. An ultimate goal of the firm is to deliver completely individualized ads to users.

While Google currently dominates Microsoft in search usage and technology, Arnold believes that even Microsoft’s desktop software dominance isn’t safe from assault from Google. He notes that Google’s RTG feature already implements some 70 percent of the functions of Microsoft Office; Google Maps has underlying technology that could compete with Microsoft’s PowerPoint.

Another industry observer, Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at JupiterResearch, believes that Google represents a “version 2” challenge to Microsoft’s Windows dominance. “Version 1,” according to Wilcox, was the earlier threat to Microsoft’s dominance represented by Netscape’s browser.

“Windows is threatened again (by Google) and in some ways the threat is greater than before,” said Wilcox. “Google is betting on search as the next platform.” Wilcox believes there are still some big “ifs” in the future of the Google rollout – whether the search firm can execute its business plan well and what Microsoft will do to respond.

Arnold calls the search company’s universe “Googleplex” using the name the company has given to its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. Because of its massively parallelized distributed network tied together with very high speed links, the Googleplex as seen by Arnold can be expanded indefinitely. As it evolves, users on the virtual network won’t need to backup, or setup or restore.

Arnold, author of six books and scores of articles on online technologies, has had hands-on online expertise as vice president of electronic business information for Ziff Communications and as a vice president in charge of electronic publishing at the Courier-Journal & Louisville Times Co. He is head of Arnold Information Technology of Louisville, Ky.

"The Google Legacy" (Infonortics, $180.00 per download) is available in online PDF version only. An online order form and a sample chapter are also available. By W. David Gardner TechWeb News

What Makes Us Slaves?

PETROTHEISM!!!

Bennett, Cosby, and Barnes Pt. 2 WHAT MAKES A SLAVE

In writing about Cosby and black people, Steven Barnes has this to say about black life:

I take the position that massive damage was done to black America by slavery (by the way--slavery also gave the descendants of those slaves some kick-ass opportunities, so I'm not looking for guilt here). If that damage was done, you will find the evidence of it in either "software" or "hardware". I'm betting "software." How do you get an elephant to remain tied to a rail he can pluck up with a shake of his head? You start when he is a baby elephant, and the conditioning will last. How do you create a slave? You impose helplessness upon them, make them dependant, in essence change a wolf into a dog, begging for scraps at the master's table.

Ever been to the circus? If you have you'll note that they don't really use much in the way of security to prevent an elephant from fleeing. Just one little rope tied around the ankle. No extra security guards. No electrified fences. Nothing.

Contrast this with the way that enslaved Africans were treated in the south.

An entire series of laws were designed to keep them from congregating, traveling, and learning. Enslaved Africans couldn't worship without the presence of whites. They were forbidden from reading. They were forbidden from traveling without a pass. They were forbidden from having funeral services. They were forbidden from using weapons. They were forbidden from using drums.

Then on top of that there were a series of very invasive laws designed to actually track down runaways. All types of white southerners were able to make a good living off of becoming bounty hunters.

And then on top of THAT there was the actual maintenance of plantations. A complex series of overseers were required to regulate African life...and punish them for violating various codes.

Now let's go back to that elephant comparison.

If indeed black people were slaves, in the way that Barnes thinks...why exactly did whites need to spend all these resources keeping "slaves" in check? Why couldn't they just go with the single thin rope, like the one the elephants have?

Enslaved Africans fought tooth and nail from the moment they were put inside the slave castles, to the last day of the Civil War.

(quick question--would "slaves" have fled the south to fight against their masters in such large numbers?)

Helplessness? Read Foner's work on Reconstruction when you get the chance. There is a passage there in which Foner talks about a young white southerner. She was asked about life after slavery. Because enslaved Africans cooked for her, cleaned for her, and combed her hair, she was distraught. She now had no one to do those things for her...and she did not know how to do them herself!. Being enslaved in the American context meant that Africans were chattel. They were brutalized, beaten, raped, neutered, and had their lives brutally mangled. But as I write next, enslaved Africans and their descendants are largely responsible for whatever weak level of democracy we've ascended to, and the most powerful aspects of American culture come from black bodies as well.

Someone's hardware and software has been badly damaged. But to the degree that we are comparing here, I say that that someone doesn't look or sound like me. I'd take a look at the girl who doesn't know how to comb her own hair.

Bennett, Cosby, and Barnes pt. 1 THE SPEECH

Steven Barnes is one of the few African American science fiction authors in the game. Probably one of the few black belts too. He's got a blog that I've been checking out. I appreciate the method Barnes has used to approach his life, and as I get older, I find it even more important to develop efficient work patterns for every aspect of life. His lifewriting method is pretty sound.

He recently took on William Bennett's comments about blacks and crime. Whereas he was outraged...me? I didn't care that much. I fully EXPECT white conservative elites to hold detestable ideas about blacks...and every now and then to have diarrhea of the mouth and spout them off. Nothing new to see here.

I DON'T expect blacks to evince the same type of idiocy.

Of course Cosby stands out here...and I said as much in my comments to Steve's post. Cosby's comments reveal a disdain for the black poor.

Steve's response.

Now this is going to be a bit long, as there is a lot to correct here. So I'm going to start with Cosby's speech, and then create more posts to deal with things like the "elephant slavery comparison" that doesn't hold water, the entire "hardware/software" comparison that falls flat, and other things that strike me. I normally would let stuff like this pass, but from his blog I find Steve to be very fair minded, and decent.

So first, Cosby's speech. I can't get too all of it...it in itself is worth a book.

I had the opportunity to actually HEAR the modified version of his speech given on his smackdown the poor tour. If you read the speech, you hear someone who is justifiably angry at the state of black people--just as Bennett is justifiably angry at the level of crime in America. And as Cosby is a comedian, it is clear that some areas of the speech are solely designed to generate laughter.

But what exactly are we to make of this:

50 percent drop out rate, I’m telling you, and people in jail, and women having children by five, six different men. Under what excuse, I want somebody to love me, and as soon as you have it, you forget to parent. Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them (clapping). All this child knows is “gimme, gimme, gimme.” These people want to buy the friendship of a child….and the child couldn’t care less. Those of us sitting out here who have gone on to some college or whatever we’ve done, we still fear our parents (clapping and laughter). And these people are not parenting. They’re buying things for the kid. $500 sneakers, for what? They won’t buy or spend $250 on Hooked on Phonics.

Isn't this the stereotype? It gets deep though. Who's buying 500.00 on sneakers? If that person had the money to actually buy gym shoes, wouldn't that person almost by definition not be poor? (The response: but you know it happens right? all the time! yeah...just like all them people killed in the superdome.) And what about those people having kids by four and five different men? We KNOW they exist right? Yes they do.

But how many? Check the numbers Steve.

In both cases, Cosby is exaggerating for effect.

But to what effect?

Part of that answer comes in two other paragraphs.

Kenneth Clark, somewhere in his home in upstate New York…just looking ahead. Thank God, he doesn’t know what’s going on, thank God. But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged, “The cops shouldn’t have shot him” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? (laughter and clapping). I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else (laughter) And I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said if get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother. Not you’re going to get your butt kicked. No. You’re going to embarrass your mother. You’re going to embarrass your family.

Cosby's right. There is a difference between a political criminal, and someone imprisoned for theft. But there is also a difference between the legitimate use of force, and police brutality. Seems to me that Cosby doesn't recognize the difference. Could be that he's tough on crime and on criminals.

But if so, why does he appear at Martha Stewart's trial emphasizing his support for her? He's tough on crime...but only when the crime deals with a certain type of perp.

And the kicker for now:

Are you not paying attention, people with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up (laughter and clapping ). Isn’t it a sign of something when she’s got her dress all the way up to the crack…and got all kinds of needles and things going through her body. What part of Africa did this come from? (laughter). We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans, they don’t know a damned thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap and all of them are in jail. (When we give these kinds names to our children, we give them the strength and inspiration in the meaning of those names. What’s the point of giving them strong names if there is not parenting and values backing it up).<----This last sentence was removed from his presentation in Baltimore.

With names like Shaniqua, Shaligua, Mohammed and all that crap. People with their hat on backwards.

The combination is a perverse indictment of poverty in which Cosby exaggerates the face of black poverty in order to blame the poor for their own condition. Yes he's getting old and sincerely wants America to be a better place. What? And he can't disdain poor people while he's at it? As bennett is no longer in public service, I think Cosby is far more dangerous.