The Raving Moderate

New York Times: "A Critic Finds Obama Policies a Perfect Target "

2009-09-26T12:58:00.002-05:00

During Bush's term in office, I personally wasn't above emailing a few of my friends an animation I'd run across of W. morphing into Hitler, and I still feel that way. But if one drops all pretense of nuance in the public arena, then all you get is the nutty left battling the nutty right, and woe unto all of us if either one wins. Bush was all for gaining total power, on a credit card yet. Obama wants to make sure all Americans have health coverage, which seems like a bare minimum of returning something to the American people for all of the tax dollars we do spend, while hopefully making the whole project pay for itself. He wouldn't even be trying to do this if the insurance companies weren't doing such a crummy job in the first place. If we don't want the government to do this stuff for us, then we'd better grow up and start pursuing "enlightened" capitalism, entrepreneurship that has a true social conscience, not just the veneer of one, rather than all wishing we could be robber barons like the ones who have tens of millions of dollars and more tucked away.

Which is all to say, I think the Bill Wilson in this article sounds like a nut to me, more interested in winning some ideological battle than in what the actual outcome will be for democracy.

New York Times: Supreme Court to Revisit ‘Hillary’ Documentary

2009-08-30T12:28:00.000-05:00

There's a real tension here. Speech should be as absolutely free flowing as possible. I'd certainly like to think I can say what I want about a campaign candidate, and use what resources I have to disseminate my sincere feelings about that person and their relationship to the issues. However, with sufficient power and money, it is possible to overwhelm the airwaves and drown out the opposition. This may sound impossible. However, the so-called "conservative" (really corporate and would-be totalitarian) strategy for the past several years has been to activate the reptilian brains of its most loyal and unquestioning followers, using infantile arguments to whip them into a frenzy of anger and, above all, noise, that makes rational thinking and debate extremely difficult, magnifying the power of the distribution of a given broadcast or article. To the conservative thinkers out there: don't be offended, the preceding comment doesn't apply to you if you actually think, and believe in thinking and rational debate. Another perquisite that comes with corporate wealth and power is the ability to hire a lot of people to write propaganda and push it on the media. Often they even own the media, or heavily sponsor it, as Noam Chomsky points out in "Manufacturing Consent". Corporations don't care, if a corporation can do such a thing as "care", about the origins or private lives of a candidate. They care about being free to maximize profits, and they don't want to be bothered with regulations that force them to do anything, including taking proper care of their workers or reducing pollution. But they are happy to paint candidates as crawling from corrupt ooze if that will inflame people to not vote for the person who might want to actually limit corporate power. We're all afraid of government getting too big and powerful, but it is the big corporations that really dominate our lives, and who are all too happy to own the government as well, if allowed to do so.

NYT: "Judges’ Dissents for Death Row Inmates Are Rising"

2009-08-16T09:04:00.002-05:00

Executing innocent human beings is not law and order. It is murder. Or at least manslaughter, if one wants to get technical about it.

BBC Asks "Is an ageing population a good thing?"

2009-08-13T11:22:00.001-05:00

If it is comfortable and satisfying, long life is a great thing. After all, we only get a little time out of eternity. But of course having more people alive also further strains our planet's resources, and eventually, as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", tempers as well. So if we're going to stick around a long time, we should either think about how to extend resources without overtaxing our planet any further, about having fewer children, or colonizing the moon.

Another Prisoner to Be Released from Guano

2009-07-30T12:02:00.001-05:00

But One Question Still Remains For the Raving Moderate

Glad to see work being done on closing Guantanamo. Thank you, President Obama. But once again, where exactly is the possible reasonable balancing of justice with paranoia in this limbo category of "can neither be tried nor released"?? They call it "Gitmo" for short, but I still sense that "Guano" might be more appropriate in this regard.

Evan Bayh Votes for the (fortunately defeated) Thune Amendment

2009-07-27T16:33:00.004-05:00

Response sent to Evan Bayh's Office (http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/) after Bayh voted for this amendment -

Can't believe you voted for the Thune Amendment. The carrying of concealed guns would be nothing but a prelude to shootings breaking out in bars and on city streets, not to mention bringing cases of road rage one step closer to catastrophe. Let's keep in mind the first half of the Second Amendment - "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State". The right to bear arms is in light of this necessity, and to be kept "well regulated".

Frankly, Indianapolis, Gary, South Bend and other cities in Indiana are dangerous enough already.

Perhaps this was one of those votes that wasn't going to make a difference anyway, so might as well as please a few Libertarians and Independents. Well, core Democrats have noticed, too. I like and often agree with Libertarians and Independents, but occasionally we need to keep individuals from infringing on each others' liberties, just as we more often need to keep government and large corporations from doing so. Concealed weapons will make the streets more dangerous, not safer.

New York Times: Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests

2009-07-25T09:58:00.001-05:00

My feeling was always that, bottom line, Bush and Cheney simply wanted unfettered power, with no limits and no accountability. The legal stuff was just a smokescreen for that, or at best a hurdle to be cleared. If innocent people were rounded up alongside terrorists, better that they should just disappear than ever have the chance to tell their stories. Why else would Bush and Cheney have feared Habeas Corpus for prisoners? Don't we, a constitutional democracy that holds itself up as a role model for the world, care just a little whether people in prison are really who we suspect them of being? Their argument was always to put a label on them, terrorists, enemy combatants, unlawful combatants, and then say that such people weren't entitled to any rights. But they didn't even seem to care whether or not the label actually fit, begging the question. At least a large part of the reason that our Constitution gives rights to criminal suspects is that they might actually be innocent. Using labels that begged this question was a huge erosion of this principle, since increasingly anyone could be labeled and immediately placed outside of Constitutional protection.

Note Sent to Senator Kennedy in response to NY Times "Kennedy’s Absent Voice on Health Bill Resonates"

2009-07-17T10:13:00.001-05:00

All my best wishes to the Senator. The New York Times has described the mutual frustration felt by both Senator Kennedy and the Senate itself, that the Senator cannot be present for the current debate on the health care bill. I would like to suggest that when Senator Kennedy feels up to it, he should record his comments via video, and have those sent to the Senate floor, and of course invite C-Span to show them to the American people as well. His voice would be powerful at this time. I would also remind the Senator that, as shown in Michael Moore's movie, Sicko, and as I have experienced myself when visiting Scandinavia, health care in much of the industrialized world is simply covered. It is paid for by taxes to be sure, but no one in those countries need ever worry about being bankrupted by a health crisis such as the Senator is experiencing at this time, one which is well covered by the Senate's own plan for itself, but one which, even for a middle class family, could easily be financially devastating to most Americans, on top of the other pain it causes. I thank and congratulate the Senator for his years of tireless work and the historic point to which it has helped to bring us, and, again, wish him all the best.

The Economist on "The underworked American"

2009-06-16T08:32:00.003-05:00

Once again, the Raving Moderate once again comes down squarely in the middle of the debate about whether Europeans or Americans are truly lazier...

I'm all for American style endless summer vacations for our kids. I'm all for European style, liberal leave policies, too. People need to have time to get to know and/or remember what a little bit of freedom is like. It's worth the educational and economic costs, in my opinion, if it doesn't actually make up for them. Besides, we're all so damn competitive without really having any idea what the point is.

Thanks to Bob Knight for posting the article (linked to the headline above) on his Facebook page!

"N. Korea Sentences 2 U.S. Journalists to 12 Years of Hard Labor "

2009-06-08T05:55:00.000-05:00

We need to differentiate nations from their leaders. North Korea is a nation of human beings like any other. Their current leadership, however, appears to be exceptionally lacking in maturity. But the idea that we must retaliate militarily, and it will just be "their fault" also lacks maturity of vision. I hope that any confrontation does not escalate to the point where the people of any nation must suffer from it.

No Habeas at Bagram?

2009-03-08T09:39:00.005-05:00

Update on June 8 - no reply, although the form had a checkbox letting one specify that no reply is needed, a box which I didn't check off.

I just submitted the following comment at whitehouse.gov:

The New York Times states as follows: "In a court filing last month, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration position that 600 prisoners in a cavernous prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to seek their release in court." (Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/us/politics/08obama.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss). I personally don't see how any, and I mean any, prisoner should be denied habeas. There can always be mistakes where an innocent person is imprisoned, which is a horrible fate. This may occur despite the best intentions of the authorities involved. Furthermore, such intentions should not be taken for granted in a situation as serious as the detention of human beings. Even in a POW situation, a bystander may be mistaken for a combatant. There may be such cases where habeas needs to be streamlined, due to sheer numbers. But I seriously believe it should never be shortchanged. Please let me know where I may read a copy of the filing referred to in the Times article. I will be posting this question on my blog at ravingmoderate.com, and very much look forward to your response, so that I may understand how this filing is consistent with the Administration's apparent desire to stand on principle, and not just legalisms. I appreciate the apparent progress that has been made so far in this regard. Thank you.

Layoffs in an Economic Downturn

2009-03-06T07:59:00.001-05:00

(This is a response to the New York Times article linked above)

For decades we've been told that in the long run laissez faire capitalism will produce the best economy. This type of situation (massive layoffs in an economic downturn) illustrates the tension between the former and the latter. Our economy needs more people to be put to work; the capitalists would rather lay people off to keep their stockholders happy, and indeed may need to do so in order to keep their companies solvent. Even our government is asking the auto companies to trim their payrolls in return for bailout money, at the same time as the stimulus package is supposed to be largely for the purpose of producing jobs.

Coburn Amendment to Freeze Arts Out of Stimulus Package

2009-02-14T22:54:00.004-05:00

See:
LA Times and

San Francisco Chronicle

Commentary:
The arts are certainly not a "waste", nor "non-stimulating" to the economy. Music in particular almost literally "stimulates" the economy by creating a pleasant, "stimulating" atmosphere for working and shopping (aka spending money back into the economy). Live music makes an even greater attraction for special events that stimulate spending, whether it's a night at the opera, a festival, a show at a club, or a ribbon cutting for a new hardware store. Music has been shown to stimulate developing brains, and may help us turn out better engineers as well as musicians. Music is used for therapy for the ill and even the dying. No waste here, Mr. Coburn, nothing elitist, nor ultimately frivolous, about any of it. Some specific proposals may be better than others, but that's true in any area of endeavor, and is the reason that we have screening processes for grants and loans.

Sure there's a lot of serious business to do out there. But the arts help make life worthwhile, and, as in some of the musical examples I've just given, can provide a playful yet effective approach to serious concerns. A non-musical example might be a book or a play that serves to illustrate and help us understand important truths that we might otherwise miss.

It's one thing to leave the arts out of the package due to arguably more pressing concerns. It's quite another to slip a gratuitous insult to the Arts community into the package at the same time. Personally, I think the Arts are a crucial part of our infrastructure, and that artists have too long been undervalued because they are so much more eager than most to work very hard at making their contribution to the community - i.e. it's too easy to get them to work practically for free. If we all stopped working (I'm a musician as well as a blogger), the economy would feel the effects.

Letter to My Congressman on the Stimulus Package

2009-02-09T11:45:00.003-05:00

My Congressman, Baron Hill, today wrote his consituents, asking "I would like to hear your thoughts about the overall recovery package, particular provisions you are concerned with or support, and any ideas you have about how best to stimulate our economy. While I cannot promise a prompt response, I will certainly take your thoughts and suggestions into account while considering my next vote on this legislation." The letter also opened by saying "As you know all too well, we currently find ourselves in a very grave situation. The national economic climate is dismal." Here is my response.

Dear Congressman Hill,

My feeling is that whatever money is spent should be viewed as an investment that produces a return beyond just putting it out there into somebody's hands to "stimulate" the economy. Ideally, it would be calculated to be "revenue neutral". That is to say, it would produce at least as much revenue for the government as it costs, so as not to increase the deficit and the national debt to the point where the "stimulus" would eventually be the cause of another crisis for the American people. Politically, this would be accomplished most easily by stimulating the economy to the point where it produced additional tax revenues to compensate for the outlay, without raising tax rates. Some types of stimuli that might produce this result and/or have other beneficial results:

1. Infrastructure improvements. E.g. better roads would increase taxable commerce, while also providing jobs (which will also result in a partial rebate to the government of their stimulus dollars by way of tax revenues).
2. National healthcare would produce a return in healthier, more productive workers, who, again, pay taxes.
3. Environmental expenditures and tax incentives. Again, healthier environment, healthier workers. Green industries also pay taxes.
4. Loans to stimulate business - will theoretically get paid back, with interest, and create a taxpaying business.
5. More efficient use of bailout moneys. Here are some suggestions I posted earlier on my blog at ravingmoderate.com to that effect:

I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.

Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.

Again, fewer homeless people, more people likely to go back to work - and pay taxes. More tax revenues from the auto industry…

6. I also suggested on Raving Moderate that there is a psychological component to this crisis. No doubt there is a strong, fiscal component as well. But everyone is being told we're in a crisis that is made to sound so bad that everyone is afraid to try anything, so they are just staying home and hoarding their money, if they have any. So I suggest that we try not to wallow in too much "dismal"-ness. It's also worth noting that Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech is widely considered to be one of the pivotal reasons, along with the hostage crisis in Iran, for his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. I think we need a little more "Yes We Can" -- Obama himself needs to be reminded of this as well!
7. Businesses receiving stimulus money must keep their jobs in America in order to return the stimulus to the American economy. I don't believe in protectionism, and I want all people everywhere to have good jobs in a global economy; but we are also first responsible for keeping our own house in order.
8. At the same time as all of this, for the sake of our resources and our environment, both national and global, we should consider the virtues of living with somewhat less. A bigger economy isn't always the best economy.

Sincerely,

Tom Marshalek

Thoughts From the Fringe...

2009-02-06T20:37:00.002-05:00

A few years back, maybe we thought the Internet was a vast network of documents. Actually, it was we who were being networked.

Caps on Executive Pay to Bailout Recipients "Not Draconian"

2009-02-03T23:30:00.002-05:00

A $500,000 cap on pay to executives of companies receiving bailout money is "draconian", according to James F. Reda, quoted in the New York Times article linked above. That's very funny. Mr. Reda is not living in the real world. We're talking about giving these companies the tax money of people who mostly make a tiny fraction of that very comfortable salary, so that the companies can pay that salary. If the company can afford to pay tens of millions of dollars to their CEO's, then it's their business, but they don't need OUR bailout money. Incidentally, to reiterate some of my previous posts, bailout money should only go indirectly to corporations, so the money can do more good. For example, the financial bailout could have directly made payments on mortgages, which would have saved homes at the same time that the money ends up with the banks. The auto bailout could instead have been a tax incentive to buy American (and preferably ecological) cars, etc. Instead, we're just giving them the money, and what do they do? Horde it for themselves, and then expect to keep paying their CEO's ridiculously huge salaries.

On the "Racial Significance" of the Nomination

2009-01-20T15:00:00.002-05:00

Click the link above for the NY Times article to which this is in part a response (emailed a draft of this to Carl Hulse of the Times).

I find the phrase "racial significance" to be interesting. I think part of the significance of President Obama's election and inauguration is that it begins to affirm, or reaffirm, that so-called "race" is not significant. The significant problem has been that we have pretended or believed that race is significant. Allowing that people may identify themselves to a degree by their cultural heritages, and that differences in heritage can also be medically significant at times, I choose to believe that the very word "race" nevertheless tends to overstate the case, and that there is only one human race.

Incidentally, Viva Obama!

Change.gov Question

2008-12-31T11:35:00.003-05:00

Just condensed my previous post into a 250 character question for Change.gov. Sign in or register there to vote on or submit questions for the incoming Obama Administration to answer. Search for my question in order to vote on it by using the keyword "eco-cars".

"Couldn't bailouts help the American people more directly and still save industries? We make some payments on folks' mortgages: the banks get the money AND a home is saved. Tax rebates to buy American eco-cars would wind up in automakers' pockets etc."
ravingmoderate.com, Midwest, USA

We can get more for our money than a simple bailout

2008-12-21T23:23:00.002-05:00

Just posted the following on BarackObama.com:

I would suggest that rather than giving industries direct bailouts, we increase the incentives for Americans to patronize their companies while also benefiting society, the economy, and/or the environment. Case in point: the auto industry. If we gave a truly sizable tax exemption to anyone who buys a particularly environmentally friendly automobile that is made in the U.S.A., the industry would be forced to build the cars to meet the increased demand, and the money would still wind up in their pockets, while people could drive newer cars while cutting down on emissions. We would get a lot more for our tax dollar this way.

Similarly we should have bailed out mortgagees, not loan companies. The money would still have wound up in the companies' coffers, enabling them to stay in business, but at the same time more people could have stayed in their homes - for the same buck.

I'm also concerned that the dire forecasts themselves may be what is driving the economy down to a large degree. All the fear increases the rate of the spiral. At the same time, we should be learning to live with fewer unimportant luxuries, in order to preserve the habitability of the planet. In this sense, a slowing economy can be a good thing. The important thing is that we make sure people don't starve or live out in the streets. There has to be a tipping point where the philosophy that a booming economy is the best economy breaks down. Perhaps this is that tipping point, and we should be thinking of something other than to jumpstart things into another boom, which will lead to another bust. The economy we need is a comfortable level of food, shelter and medical care for all, where we aren't robbing the future just because we don't know when to stop.

Note to Obama - the Campaign Needs to Continue

2008-11-30T10:35:00.004-05:00

Sent to change.gov, the website of Barack Obama's transition team:

I actually came to this site looking for more of a national suggestion box than to tell my story... I had a small epiphany this morning. The campaign isn't over. In these troubled times, the chant of "Yes We Can" can be more important to overcoming adversity than it even was in electing a new President. President Barack Obama needs to return to whipping up those crowds, but also to continue to remember that it's not about him, it's about all of the people continuing to believe in their efficacy, and continuing to take the initiative. I fear perhaps he has begun to feel like the burden is all on him, even with the excellent help he has enlisted. He should remember that he has the assistance, and the ideas and innovation, of the majority of the American people, a majority that will hopefully grow. It is also important to remember that a cult of personality is a very fragile thing, whereas to inspire the many to each become wise leaders in their own right is to create a more robust democracy. Now that we have campaigned to make one man our President, we need to continue campaign for this even greater goal.

Additional note sent to the BBC in response to the musical question "Will Obama save the US economy?"

I believe that putting Americans to work rebuilding America is a very good start for the American economy. But Barack Obama will not singlehandedly save the US economy. The American people will. We cannot continue to rely on the fortunes of our nations rising and falling with those of our top leaders. Obama, however, is in a very good position to make a difference, and to keep leading us in the chant of "Yes we can!" Emphasis on "we".

Scalia on Torture (ignoring the Starbucks headline...)

2008-02-13T11:01:00.007-05:00

Maybe torture is "constitutional in a ticking time bomb scenario" (NYT paraphrasing Justice Scalia), if there is a reasonable belief that that is the most effective means of thwarting a genuine crisis that is truly imminent and of that magnitude, although the efficacy of torture is in itself questionable. But that scenario is also very fact specific. The danger is that the powers that be will simply hide behind an illusory version of this scenario when it does not apply. This tends to make the state itself look like something of a terrorist entity, and thereby also tends, as we have seen, to actually reinforce the anti-state arguments of the violent resistance, helping them to recruit. I read our Constitution as cleverly designed to avoid all of these things. Proper due process allows the guilty to be convicted and removed from society, while also largely convincing the skeptical that the state itself has not run amok. So we should be very careful about allowing for suspensions of due process, and not allow the executive to paint more-scary-than-real scenarios in order to clothe what is really the naked will to power.

Follow up post:

If Scalia's argument, per MR's comment, is that cruel and unusual doesn't apply -- we might reply to Scalia that torture IS punishment. It's almost by definition punishment for alleged non-cooperation, presumably used in an attempt to force cooperation. Often, it's also an attempt by interrogators to punish the prisoner for crimes he is assumed to have committed. In either case it is meted out without Constitutional due process of law, and if it is "cruel and unusual" (which is hard to get around if it's really torture) it is almost certainly unconstitutional on that ground as well. So I back off the part of my previous post that agrees that at least in some farfetched scenario, torture might really be constitutional. Even if the world was about to blow up, torture would still be unconstitutional on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment AND lack of due process -- whether or not those are Scalia's arguments. However, at that extreme, one might still forgive torture, unconstitutional though it may be, at least in the also unlikely event that it actually worked. In a way this sounded to me like what Scalia must have meant -- in the worst case scenario, the ban on torture would seem absurd, and the Constitution couldn't be absurd. But to the extent that there are better alternatives than torture, such a ban is not absurd. It's also possible that the framers, being human, didn't think of every possibility, and there may be, if only once in a lifetime, a time when something unconstitutional is the only right thing to do. But Bush and Co. are only pretending that that moment has arrived, because they don't want anyone telling them what to do.

Of course, the "unusual" in "cruel and unusual" is a most unfortunate loophole, inasmuch as it seems to allow any sort of "cruel punishment", if only it is also "usual". I would think this was either a linguistic lapse or a compromise on the part of the framers (who after all, were human). Then again, it might eventually force the phasing out of cruel punishments -- if for example the death penalty was found to be merely cruel (how could it not be cruel to be told you will be killed?) and several jurisdictions banned it, while others used it more and more rarely, it would also become "unusual". Meanwhile any cruel punishments that were new or simply unusual would immediately be unconstitutional before they could have a chance to become "usual", so they could never cross over that threshold.

Comment to Andrew C. Revkin/New York Times on "Resilient" Polar Bears

2007-12-13T10:26:00.000-05:00

"No threat of outright extinction within a century or more" shouldn't be that calming. "No outright extinction" doesn't rule out "endangered" or "rare". Also, a century isn't much at the tail end of "110,000 years". Neither does the relative safety of polar bears say much about the overall gravity and complexity of the global climate situation. For example, the polar bears may survive, and the Arctic may even reconstitute to one degree or another, but human beings will nevertheless have felt the impact of rising sea levels, perhaps including more Katrinas or worse.

It seems to me that we humans are shortsighted due to our own brief lifespans, and are all too happy to put off change even though we know our present course is leading to big problems in a decade or two, or even a century. Well, a century will include the lifespans of the grandchildren of those alive today, and they'll have learned from us either to seriously address or to mostly ignore global environmental problems. We knew in the sixties and seventies that pollution was a big problem, and already there were people experiencing its direct, toxic effects. We put band aids on a few of those problems when the media created sufficient pressure. Now, looking at increasingly powerful weather events and the melting of the ice caps, it seems that the next wave of chickens has come home to roost, and the pressure should be vastly increasing to reverse some of the damage we're doing. Indeed, some astronomical event, sometime, may have a much greater impact than we're likely to generate for a few decades or even centuries (sooner or later we'll figure out how to do that, too), even as our own chickens keep getting bigger and uglier. But in the meantime, why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Not only do we put off dealing with predictable problems, but we accept and tolerate newer and bigger problems as they, ironically in the case of melting glaciers, keep snowballing.

I don't mean to whine or complain, only to realistically describe the challenge which is out there to be met.

Global Warming

2007-11-11T22:13:00.001-05:00

Some thoughts triggered by the Times reporting on a recent hoax claiming global warming is actually being caused by bacteria. The times wasn't saying global warming was the hoax, but I was reminded of the doubting Thomases who remain out there.

To those who still doubt Global Warming:

We do know that the Earth is getting substantially warmer on the whole, and the glaciers are getting smaller. One can try to point the finger at other reasons for this, but the fact is that for the past hundred some odd years since the Industrial Revolution, we've been dumping more stuff into the atmosphere -- and on a continuous basis -- than probably in the rest of human history combined. Meanwhile, the theory of global warming seems to have been in place long enough that it should get credit for predicting the changes that are now occurring. I heard of global warming and greenhouse gases as a grade schooler, and I'm in my 40's. So it wasn't an after-the-fact explanation by environmentalists. But blaming "other" factors is pretty convenient for polluters who don't want to change their ways, which means not just industrial giants, but most of us humans in the industrialized world. Hard as it is to believe, the atmosphere holds only a finite amount of air, and the junk billions of people pump into it makes a difference -- same thing for the ocean and the land. So while there may be additional, complicating factors (global dimming from the particulates slowing down the warming from the gases??), I think it's pretty safe to say we've made a mess of a nice planet with our excessive ways. I'm not saying I've just proved global warming, but try on this perspective for a while and see if it doesn't make sense.

Comment to New York Times on Colbert "Candidacy" Discussion

2007-11-01T10:45:00.002-05:00

The record needs setting straight on a couple of issues here. First of all, if you're looking for real news, try Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, available on independent radio, Free Speech TV, and the Internet. Stewart and Colbert just give a more enlightened spin on the same news the mainstream media is reporting already. Second, George W. Bush looks much more like Alfred E. Newman (as has already been portrayed in many satirical drawings) than Dennis Kucinich ever will. If you look past his physical features and listen to what he has to say, however, Dennis Kucinich looks considerably more like a real leader than any of the current candidates.

Offsets, offsets

2007-04-21T15:41:00.000-05:00

I was looking into Duke Energy's "Go Green" program for consumers in Indiana, and discovered the gee whiz article that my headline links to. Duke charges you extra to purchase presumably "green" power -- really, an offset, to my understanding, because we still personally get the same coal power or whatever that we usually do.

I think Greg Flynn's comment at the link nails the problem. If the big corporations - and we individuals - are serious about cleaning up the environment and reducing global warming, we'll actually cut down our own emissions, not just pay a "feel good tax" everytime we want to pollute some more, in the hopes that someone else who gets the money will make up for our excesses. Not that it hurts to pay it if you're going to pollute anyway, and maybe it will slow us down a bit, like having a curse jar, and produce some amelioration. But the real formula for preserving the environment -- especially now that we really need to actually reverse the damage or face the consequences --is the same as ever -- reduce, reuse, recycle (for best results, in that order). And you must do it YOURSELF! This offset stuff is only accessible to people with extra money, making it more of a bourgeois self-pat on the back than a real solution. If we take measures, I'm afraid global warming is still gonna get us!

Guns again...

2007-04-17T23:21:00.000-05:00

They say that guns don't people, people kill people, and that if a killer really wants to kill, he'd find a way to do it anyway.

But, if we could have controlled guns a long time ago, I don't think 33 people would have died at Virginia Tech on Monday. Maybe one or two, which would have been horrible enough -- it can't be nearly as easy to commit mass murder with a knife as it is with a semi-automatic weapon, and someone wielding a knife would be easier to subdue. Nor could it be as easy to build a bomb as it is to purchase a semi-automatic. So probably not 33 people. Some people love their guns. This (and probably most of our problems in the Middle East) is the price we pay.

A Thought and a Quote

2007-02-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

When you consider how much was accomplished by Gandhi and Martin Luther King by wielding the nonviolent power of love, just think what could be done if someone of that mindset was elected President of the United States, with all its resources.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Get Me a Job With Edwards!

2007-02-08T23:39:00.000-05:00

I posted this to Amanda Marcotte's blog after reading that she nerrowly kept her job working for the Edwards campaign after some x-treme blogging on her part was discovered. I was just hunting for publicity, if you really want to know, and chose to respond to an entry which used a picture of a guy with a tinfoil hat and black helicopters flying behind him. I really did meet the folks with their stories, mentioned below...

I knew somebody with a black helicopter story once. He didn't have a tinfoil hat, but there was another fellow hanging around the edges of the same group who apparently received messages from outer space through his Walkman (this is pre-Ipod, mind you). Since the former story was fairly plausible, I've never quite understood why black helicopters are supposed to epitomize wingnuts. Of course, maybe this means that I am one, or perhaps it's simply that helicopters have wingnuts holding them together at some point.

Maybe the whole "black helicopter = wingnut" was started as a way to cover up the REAL "black helicopter conspiracy". My acquaintance's experience of following a black helicopter to its landing point where some armed people got out sounded like it probably would have been a drug war kind of thing. I'm not saying it is or it ain't, I'm just saying...

Tinfoil I can understand. Completely.

Hey, have Edwards stop by my page, I'd love a campaign job. I have to admit to a certain fascination with both Obama and Clinton, but if John's gonna dig in and take a serious stand against the war, I could get behind him.

To Be Honest

2007-02-07T12:30:00.000-05:00

The BBC Have Your Say asks "Would you pay more for an environmentally friendly car?" I want to say "of course!" But...

Honestly, the answer is "Yes, as long as I can otherwise afford it." I want to be totally committed to the environment, but in lean times I also weigh my short-term personal costs and benefits, and buy "conventional" rather than organic food. I think producers of goods, from food to cars, need to get past the mentality that being green is a luxury option, and find ways to make all our essential products both green and affordable. Given roughly equal prices, I will definitely go green every time.

That's all the space BBC allows for responses. I hate to admit it. While I am struggling with a bit less than an average income, it isn't easy being green when it comes to buying stuff. Some stuff I can do without, but $2.50 a pound for organic apples translates into "I don't buy a lot of organic apples". Other things that I eat all the time, I buy organic when I can, conventional (i.e. pesticide sprayed) when I can't. I take it this makes me more or less a regular person. Regular people want to be green, but also have to worry about the pennies. We understand there is a cost to saving a couple of bucks not being green, but sometimes, global warming's reality notwithstanding, the threat of bankruptcy seems more imminent. Given the same price at the cash register, though, we'll choose green every time, and that translates into a competitive advantage for the company that can do the greenest product the cheapest. That's hard; we want to factor out sweatshops too! I'd like to hear your ideas about how it's possible to make profits with a conscience. And sure, you can give me a hard time for my compromises, but what I'm trying to point out is that to really make a difference, we have to make green affordable to the masses.

Folks Are Still Denying Global Warming

2007-02-04T23:33:00.000-05:00

Look people, we've known about the theory of global warming for decades. I first heard about it in primary school, and I'm 43. What's happening now seems very close to what was already being predicted 30+ years ago, and we have unprecedented numbers of people pumping unprecedented amounts of gunk into the air like it was an unlimited sized trash bin. Sure, we all want to blame it on something else so we can roll over and go back to sleep. Wake up!

The Law is Not for Sale

2007-02-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

"Can Patents Restrict Our Advice To Our Clients?" is the title of an American Bar Association Continuing Legal Education seminar for which I received an ad today in my email. I have to say, the very title floored me; I had never heard of such a thing as patenting the law. I contacted the CLE department of the ABA with this response. I believe I will be saying a lot more in the days to come; I'll have to understand this more, but I believe it to be a genuinely earthshaking development Please read the original ad to get more of a flavor; the headline links to it (right click and select "Open in a New Window" or "New Tab" to keep the Raving Moderate nearby ;).

This is my gut response to the title of this seminar. I will look into participating, but in the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you could forward it to the participants; perhaps it will influence the conversation.

If patents can "restrict our advice to clients", then people of no particular means will lose access to adequate, quality legal counsel, just as many have lost access to quality medical care and drugs. In theory, the law is the law and should apply to all people equally; it will become more like a vise if people have to pay extra in order to learn how to dance around its grip. The ability or inability to pay a lawyer creates enough disparity as it is. Perhaps right now we are just talking about sophisticated business methods, but there is a slippery slope in setting this precedent. The first thing that will happen is that I will not be able to save a client a substantial-to-her, but not huge, sum on her taxes, because it would be wiped out by having to pay the license for somebody's patent. The next thing will be that somebody will have to go to jail because the Public Defender's Office doesn't have patent licensing in its budget.

The ease with which people can patent just about anything these days seems likely to stifle innovation, rather than encourage it, as it gets to the point where you can't turn around without violating someone's patent. Patenting legal maneuvers will just mean that everybody, not just inventors and corporations, will start having to pay even greater tribute just to go through life.

I'm sure there's a First Amendment issue in here somewhere. Can we restrict legal speech in the interests of commerce? Shouldn't legal speech restrictions be subjected to strict scrutiny, since legal speech is at the essence of how the legal system operates?

Since I lack the time and funding to patent my arguments here, I suspect that someone else will do it first, and I will thus be silenced, as licenses on the patent will not be offered.

Sounds like a shocking development. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. It has also added a rather sour taste to my plan to go into estate planning. How can we non-patent lawyers practice law from day to day if we have to constantly be doing patent searches? Perhaps I am being naive, presuming too much, or being overly pessimistic, but as I say, this is a gut reaction, and I'd certainly like to know why it is incorrect, if it is. If I may sloganeer just for a moment, The Law is Not For Sale! I hereby claim at least a copyright on connecting this slogan with the issue of patenting the law.

Save the Polar Bears!

2007-01-26T17:21:00.000-05:00

My comment added to the petition by Defenders of Wildlife to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

It's bad enough - worse than we think - when species most of us have never heard of go extinct, eliminating another piece of the web of life in which we have evolved to thrive. When species we have grown up loving are allowed to disappear, it is a symbol both of how hard we have become, and how oblivious we have become to our own survival as the hands of the "Doomsday Clock" are moved toward midnight. The same global warming that threatens the polar bear was likely a major contributor to the intensity of Hurricane Katrina. I was recently in New Orleans, where almost a year and half after Katrina very few people have moved back into their damaged homes - another symbol of how hardened and oblivious we have become.

Minimum Wage Haters - Get Over It!

2007-01-22T10:59:00.000-05:00

Back to Townhall.com, a truly great resource for getting the Raving Moderate P.O.'ed enough to write something. Brian Lambro cites some studies which he says indicate that raising the minimum wage, as has just been done by the new Congress, may cause some additional unemployment, particularly among minorities. One of the sources is the Hoover Institution, which has some impressive neoconservative ties. Another is Dr. David Neumark, who has been funded by Walmart at times, but who is also applauded by the anti-Walmart Watch for standing up to them in reporting some of his findings about their company. Nevertheless, I take the use of statistics with a grain of salt, as far as Lambro's interpretation and the inference of cause and effect. I would ask, for example whether the influence of NAFTA and other influences on employment have been factored in, and what techniques have been used. I'm not fully qualified, nor do I have the time, to fully analyze all of the stats (since I have to make a living, too, and this ain't it. Gotta magazine/blog/think tank with a paying position for a Raving Moderate? Call me!). But I think I have some salient points to make within my current confines, so here goes my response.

(Original article is entitled $7.25? A Truly Bad Idea. Stop by there, my post created an interesting argument with a fellow named Fergus, so I had more to say...)

There has to be a balance. Given that we have a minimum wage, it ought to go up enough to at least keep pace with inflation and be adjusted annually; otherwise its original goals are constantly being eroded. I don't think this first raise in ten years even keeps up with the cost of living. And an annual adjustment would not be as much of a jolt, much as we adjust each year to a small increase in the price of stamps.

We could apply Mr. Lambro's logic in reverse. If raising the minimum wage, costs some jobs, we could reduce the minimum wage to a penny, and thereby have enough jobs for everybody.

But of course, that would be absurd. Human beings need a certain baseline to get by. While our standard of living is a little higher in this country than most others, it's often easier to fall through the cracks, too. Unless you live at home with your parents, even the new minimum is not going to get you far, nor help you to educate yourself to move up to a higher level.

Of course, if you operate a small business and are currently paying minimum, this hurts, and may result in some layoffs, too. I'm not saying it's an easy problem; it's just that there is a balancing act to be done, which is glossed over by Mr. Lambro's offhand point of view. Employers, keep in mind that paying someone to help with your business is your ticket to greater wealth than if you operated completely solo. You ought to be grateful to these folks, as well as them to you, and keep their welfare in mind, too (pardon the expression), as you would hope that they care about doing a good job for you. It's only fair business. It's for sure that if you paid your employees a penny or two an hour, you would be exploiting them, but of course the line has to be drawn somewhere. So it's not easy to say how long you could keep paying them $5.25 or $7.25 and not have it turn into exploitation, given what it costs to live and better yourself these days. We could "let the market sort it out", but we all know that on the whole those with money, power, and experience have a huge advantage in negotiations. Labor laws, including the minimum wage and rights for unions, which have been considerably weakened and subverted over the past two and a half decades, came into being precisely because of the gross exploitation of the early Industrial Revolution.

So find a way to give your employees their extra money. Try to find a way to raise profits and cut non-employee expenses to keep them all on the payroll. Maybe put your own swimming pool on hold for a little while (invite your workers over when you do get the pool, if you're really such a regular person). If you want to protest the government taking your money, consider how much pork President Bush and other politicians sling around, and that half of your federal income taxes, probably more now, go to pay for wars, past and present.

The price of everything is going up. Isn't it fair the price for laborers, who also have to pay for the commodities of survival, should go up as well?

Is Hugo Chavez Going Too Far?

2007-01-19T10:31:00.000-05:00

Has Hugo Chavez gone too far? Originally, I liked the fellow, looking at him from a distance. He seemed to care about the poor, and was willing to stand up to the United States, but not in a way that suggested violence on his part. I don't mind a few socialist ideas coming in the form of Social Democracy, which was what I assumed he had in mind. You know, if we're going to pay taxes, I'd much rather have them help people than bomb them. Chavez' "George Bush is the devil" speech at the UN was a bit over the top, but, hey, I enjoyed that, too. Quite a bit, in fact.

But now, given the latest story in the BBC, Chavez seems to be decisively moving away from democracy, gaining Venezuela's National Assembly's approval to rule by decree for 18 months in order to accelerate his "Bolivarian" socialist revolution, replacing his Vice President with a hardliner, and saying he won't renew an opposition TV station's license.

A previous article stated that Chavez was only seeking one year of decree powers. I get the feeling eighteen months may not be enough, either.

When one human being thinks he knows enough to put himself above all other authority, it certainly smacks of hubris. You're going to tell everyone how it's going to be, answer to no one, and silence any opposition that gets in the way? Mr. Chavez, you are not God. Neither are Marx, Lenin or Trotsky, so it doesn't help that you may be implementing their ideas. I am not an ideologue; those guys had some good ideas and some excellent critiques of the way capitalism worked, but their ideas also paved the way for a bloody revolution, a great deal of repression and suffering, and for Stalin.

Let's say that Chavez is as wise a leader as can be, and his decrees are consistently the best thing that could happen to Venezuela. Since he appears now to be afraid to let the opposition even have the debate with him, I actually doubt this very much. But let's just say that it's true. Nevertheless, a precedent will have been set. Rulers can rule by decree. If the power has not been solidified by then, nevertheless it has been made available through appealing to the Assembly. What if the next leader to manage to invoke this power is a Stalin, or a George W. Bush?

I'll tell you what, nothing makes me for grateful for the existence of term limits and a system of government checks and balances than the Presidency of George W. Bush. For all our country's faults, our Founding Fathers were often at least as smart as Marx ever was.

Authoritarianism also tends to undermine whatever mandate comes from the people, which would also tend to strengthen the disrupting hand of ideologues in the United States. This formula could easily be the recipe for a coup sooner or later.

Mr. Chavez gained power more or less democratically (the BBC indicates that the opposition boycotted the last election). If socialism is what the country needs, it should be possible to persuade the people thoroughly enough so that socialism can also be implemented democratically, and with the input of the intellects of many brilliant people, not just the limited vision of a single autocrat and the ideologues with whom he surrounds himself.

The Death Penalty: Slow Down, Folks!

2006-12-20T09:46:00.000-05:00

Townhall.com, despite it's democratically open sounding name and self-description, is a bastion of conservative columnists. Lately, I've enjoyed jumping in to the comments section and attempting to spar with the 90% conservatives who are also leaving comments. Mostly, I get ignored, but it gets me writing. Below is a reponse to "Death penalty decision a bad first step" by Debra J. Saunders, who is apparently outraged that a federal judge has found a particular protocol of lethal injection to be at least potentially "cruel and unusual" and therefore unconstitutional. This provokes catcalls from Saunders and her fans, to which I politely retort "slow down you bloodthirsty mob!"

Look, if the state is going to kill people, they ought to be darn careful about how they do it, and any legitimate question needs to be considered, the time and expense be damned. Most importantly, we need to make sure the person being executed is every bit as guilty as we think, because -- guess what? -- DNA evidence has proven that just because we say "beyond a reasonable doubt" doesn't mean the accused actually did it. So that could be your totally innocent son or daughter up there next getting their lethal injection.

The fact is, the states have executed innocent people. Even with the most up to date evidence technologies, the remotest chance of this happening again is reason enough to ban capital punishment. Plus, we do discover from time to time that innocent people have actually been railroaded. Perhaps those rare prosecutors and officers of the court who participate in railroading should get the sentences they were lobbying for, under some of you folks' eye for an eye theories?

But let's just say the criminal justice system is perfected to the point that we really really KNOW who's guilty of a capital crime, and we continue to believe that capital punishment is necessary. As our next step, yes we should take the Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" seriously. If capital punishment is going to be administered, it is a solemn and sad duty, to have to say that this person has strayed so far that now we must take his life. Capital punishment is not there to satisfy some public thirst for blood and pain, which a few people here seem to be exhibiting. If the state, and by extension the people, become purposeful givers of pain and horror, this not only hurts the presumed criminal (who again, may not be the person we believe), but it creeps into our psyche and changes us. We begin to believe that we are entitled to dispense pain, that we are some kind of angels of justice. Perhaps that's who the murderer, in his or her warped mind, thought he was, but this is not who we should be. And sooner or later, we'll get carried away again, and find we've really made a mistake. That'll just be the one we find out about.

Ann (Coulter), you give me a headache everytime...

2006-12-07T10:55:00.000-05:00

...that you open your mouth or put pen to paper (so to speak, probably you type at your computer, in between nibbles on the eclair you swiped from the donut guy on his way to Guantanamo).

But the reason I'm responding this time is that the first sentence in your article, although written in your usual sarcastic, glib style, was actually interesting. It raises a good point; it would be a mistake to prematurely put too much faith in Iran and Syria. That doesn't mean we shouldn't get to know them instead of just rattling sabres back and forth. Talking was eventually helpful with the China and the former USSR, if you recall. I don't think anybody is seriously suggesting that we put Iran and Syria in charge of Iraq, so maybe this lesson has already been learned. But it's good to remind us of it. Thank you.

As for the rest of your (not-so) clever maneuvers, e.g. dismissing the use of the word "bipartisan" by putting it in "sarcastic quotes", even though the committee was co-chaired by James Baker, Secretary of State under George Bush I, Chief of Staff and later Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan and so on and so forth; condemning all Democrats and liberals straight to hell (that one never gets tiresome!); insinuating that Guantanamo prisoners are downright pampered and should feel lucky to be there -- oh, just give me a break. And an aspirin. --Ravingmoderate.com

-- In response to Ann Coulter's recent posting on townhall.com, making reference to the Iraq Study Group's conclusions, and entitled "Incoming Congress to Launch Operation Surrender".

First Muslim Elected to Congress

2006-12-05T00:46:00.000-05:00

Dennis Prager, conservative columnist at townhall.com, writes in his column at townhall.com:

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

My response follows:

There is perhaps a powerful American tradition of swearing in upon a Bible. However, there is no American law insisting on the use of a Bible, and even if this was made a requirement, it would be unconstitutional as an establishment of religion by the state under the First Amendment. It's not that you can't use a Bible; it's just that you can't make somebody use a Bible.

While it is possible to imagine fairly ridiculous books being used for swearing in, I hope, Mr. Prager, that you are not implying that the Koran is one of them; there are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, second only to Christianity, according to adherents.com. While the ratio of Muslims to Christians in the USA is much smaller, this nation was supposed to have been founded in large part on principles of equality and of religious freedom -- many of our early settlers were religious minorities, albeit largely variants of Christianity, fleeing oppression in Europe. And this freedom of religion is embodied in the First Amendment.

Now, if someone was actually to attempt to be sworn in on, as Mr. Prager suggests, a copy of 'Mein Kampf', I hope that the people would have the good sense to vote him out next time around.

But no matter the book, the oath is to the Constitution of the United States of America, not to the religion contained in the book, and is binding as such. You of course realize that when Joe Lieberman, who is Jewish, swears in to the Senate as he has done several times, he too is swearing an oath to the Constitution, not to Jesus or Christianity, even if his hand is upon the New Testament. Placing one's hand on a book is symbolically an indication that one is swearing before that which one considers the holiest, and therefore takes the oath seriously. If we are going to be that attached to the symbolism, perhaps we SHOULD ask Mr. Lieberman to use a Torah instead, since that is presumably the religious document closest to his heart.

Somehow, though, I suspect that if Mr. Ellison, as a Muslim, had decided to take his oath upon the Bible, you or some other fearmongering commentator would have protested against that instead, as though the act had a taint upon it. "He can't swear upon our Bible, he doesn't accept it as the ultimate truth!" Looking at the issue from another angle, what advice would you give to a Christian, called as a witness in a Saudi Arabian court of law and asked to swear in upon a Koran? Would you say, "when in Rome..." or would you would be yowling against it?

If what we are seeking is unanimity, perhaps we should have elected officials swear in upon a copy of the Constitution itself, since this is the loyalty we are supposed to be trying to elicit.

Personally, I am not a member of any particular religion. Should I ever run and be elected to any office (and I am sure you would work against me doing so), I will inform you, Mr. Prager, about what book or books I swear in on. I find much of value in many religions, so perhaps I will bring a stack of them. This would also serve as a symbol that I intended to represent all of the people, not just Christians or Jews, or Muslims, or Buddhists, or Atheists, or Scientologists. Although Mr. Ellison has instead chosen a single book, I believe that this is also what he intends to do. --RavingModerate.com

Added the following a couple of days later in response to those who are paranoid about the proselytizing aspects of Islam:

I think it's worth noting that a significant number of Christians think we should all be following Christian laws, that this is or should be a Christian state, that the Bible is a higher law than the Constitution etc. I think that the Constitution allows one to hold such beliefs, even act upon them, but within limits. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state, taken together with other laws, are a way of saying you can be who you want to at the deepest level, but you have to also allow others the same freedom. I think this is what we should be working toward, and this is how the Constitution protects the religious and general freedom of both Christians and Muslims in this country, while also protecting those who wish to follow other paths.

Military Times Says "Rumsfeld Must Go"

2006-11-06T13:13:00.000-05:00

The Military Times has published an editorial entitled "Rumsfeld Must Go" in their magazines, the Army Times, the Navy Times, the Marine Times, the Air Force Times. This site is not affiliated with the Military Times publishing organization. The Rumsfeld article can currently be found at any of these URLS:

Army Times
Navy Times
Air Force Times
Marine Times

To those in harm's way, in any conflict and on any side, I only wish you peace and a speedy return home.

"CIA Wants Prison Tactics Secret"

2006-11-04T14:08:00.001-05:00

Original Article Here

According to this article in the New York Times, the CIA wants these tactics secret -- prisoners would somehow be forbidden from disclosing what happened to them -- so that Qaeda can't adapt. Obviously, the problem with this sort of secrecy is that there is no accountability. I also am not impressed with assurances that various related rollbacks in prisoners' rights "do not apply to U.S. citizens".

American citizens, and all semi-to-fully conscious human beings, should be concerned that our prisons, whether for petty crimes or for the containment of "terrorism", do not become the Gulags we once vilified in the days of the Cold War. If we do not know what is going on, there may be -- no, make that there WILL be innocent and relatively innocent people subjected to horrendous abuses. We the People cannot grant unfettered power without accountability to our government. Even in a great democracy, there are nuts running around vying for, and often gaining, power. Without accountability, the terror will come more from them than anyone else they may be claiming to thwart for our safety.

Remember, "Detainees" = "Prisoners"

2006-09-28T16:37:00.000-05:00

Sent a note by email to Nancy Pelosi, after seeing her on a press conference on the news or C-Span. I was at a friend's house, on our way out, so I didn't catch all the details, but she gave three reasons for the following. The third escapes me, so I didn't list it, but it wasn't the third thing that I thought was most important!

Hi,

Saw some of your press conference on TV today. You gave a reporter three reasons why detainees in the so-called War on Terror should receive Habeas Corpus rights. Two of these were to protect American soldiers, and to protect American citizens. I think it's equally important that we emphasize protecting innocent accusees, be they foreign or domestic. We already know that innocent people are sometimes convicted, even with all procedural rights allocated to them. Without Habeas Corpus, the innocent don't stand a chance, and unscrupulous people in government, even our own President, have the increased capability to simply make people they don't like disappear, on a mere pretext of some arbitrary designation. It is no more acceptable that this happens to a Muslim or someone of foreign citizenship than to a Christian or an American Citizen. We must be a country that neither tortures people nor arbitrarily takes away their freedom. At least I hope that's what our Constitution means.

V for Vendetta, a Not So Distant Future

2006-09-05T10:48:00.000-05:00

Any movie reviews from me will be rather late, because I almost never go to movies. I recently got the DVD by mail order rental service, though. Movies can be a great way to explore politics and philosophy, though. I found the Wachowski Brothers latest flick to be stimulating, but not quite like the "Matrix", which I could talk about all day, even the sequels.

"V" is sort of a 1984 meets Zorro bin Laden as played by the Phantom of the Opera. I liked it, but I think it was mostly that the dystopian aspect worked and struck a chord with modern times, depicting a not so distant future. When you think about it, people in America have disappeared and wound up in Guantanamo without hearings or trials or even any real process. Some of them are terrorists, but some of them... aren't. We don't know for sure which, because there is no process. So the stormtroopers and the bags thrown over people's heads are getting close to home these days. Not to mention, this is the not so distant past for many nations in Central America. Meanwhile the concept of the character of V, though he was well acted, came across as naive, a bit unbelievable, and anachronistic. But I like Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and feel the pain of the Phantom of the Opera (and of political prisoners). Casting such a character as a terrorist with bombs and a taste for downright vengeance, in contrast to his basic swashbuckling charm, does provide for an interesting thought experiment, and may help us to understand what some people might see in a bin Laden (I much prefer a Gandhi, and think he would do much more good). The ending was a big yawn, reminiscent of "Dead Poets Society", a mild catharsis that comes across as a simplistic quasi-resolution to a world gone mad, followed by a generic eulogy. But the movie is still worth a spin, and talking about over coffee afterwards.

In fact, reading my own review reminds me that, in contrast to what many people on many sides of the political spectrum would say, I think it is more naive to believe that you will solve problems with bombs than to believe that you will solve them with love.

Am I a Baby Boomer????

2006-08-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

OK, here's another post to BBC today, this time in response to the question "Are You a Baby Boomer?" I don't know, am I?

Born in 1963, I'm on the cusp between being labelled a "Baby Boomer" or "Generation X". The best of the Boomers were striving for freedom and harmony, questioning authority in order to think for themselves and arrive at a rational, rather than an inculcated, worldview. Sometimes the quest to throw off chains led to excess, like drug overdoses or people being too quick to callously divorce. But even these problems were a painful side effect of a process of maturation, wherein people began to realize that they were entitled to be in charge of their own bodies and destinies. Some traditional values may need reclaiming, but only if they make sense, not just because they are traditional.

Note that I was also responding to some other posts that seemed to characterize the 60's as a period of wretched excess, leading to more of the same to this day. There may be more wretched excess; certainly less of it is kept hidden. But divorce, the increase of which someone lamented, should be acceptable, not a subject for whispered gossip. While people should proceed with some sensitivity that it is wrenching for a human to lose his or her mate, to be permanently tethered to another person by anything other than one's own free will amounts to slavery. Likewise, I am no longer a big fan of recreational drugs, but, well, it's your body. Throwing a user or addict in jail doesn't help them take better care of their body, and even rehabilitation may be nobody's business to enforce if a person chooses otherwise and has done no criminal harm to others. And whose to say that Timothy Leary didn't actually make a positive contribution to society?

Iran v. Bush

2006-08-30T09:33:00.000-05:00

Just posted this to the BBC Have Your Say, in response to the question "Has Iran Benefited from the War on Terror?":

I think that in the Middle East, Bush's handling of the so-called War on Terror has tended to boost anyone seen as standing up to him. Mr. Ahmadinejad, interviewed by 60 Minutes, came across to me as no more of a madman than our Mr. Bush. The former's claim that Iran is entitled to nuclear power is as valid as anyone's, if perhaps also disingenuous and ultimately misguided (even peaceful nukes have the pitfall of dealing with the waste, and the risk of another Chernobyl). His veneration of suicide bombers was shocking, but then most cultures (mistakenly, I think, ours included) venerate dying and killing for a cause. We could talk to Iran, but I hear a drumbeat.

Water: The Most Essential of Resources

2006-08-26T10:09:00.000-05:00

Posted to BBC discussion today:

Water, earth, and air are all essential to our existences. Why are we so cavalier about dumping our waste into them, and depleting our best resources? Further, we need to understand that the entire ecology evolved over eons to become a place in which humans thrive. If we continue to blindly alter it, it will no longer support us.

Lebanon II

2006-07-22T03:18:00.000-05:00

Is no one even intrigued anymore by the idea that Gandhi and Martin Luther King apparently won their struggles? Maybe not permanently and conclusively in every regard desired, but as much, probably much more, than any war has ever truly won anything worthwhile.

Lebanon

2006-07-22T03:16:00.000-05:00

I submitted to the BBC a few minutes ago:

Israel and Hezbollah both seem to think they have something to gain in this conflict. Presumably Iran and Syria agree with Hezbollah and think they have something to gain. And now the Bush Administration thinks that something should be gained before a cease fire is ever implemented. There is nothing to be gained from this senseless destruction except more destruction, and no one will win in the long run. The world is even more rapidly becoming a less stable place.

Deep Thought of the Day 2

2006-07-19T23:32:00.000-05:00

I think that the most important contribution a human being can make to the world is to positively influence the way people think. Building a multi-billion dollar corporation: that's just showing off, and leaves us with another many-headed monster to boot. Nope, deep thoughts -- that's the legacy to leave. But deep thoughts that lead to powerful actions, and (sigh) to love in a universe that sometimes seems so heartless.

Deep Thought of the Day

2006-07-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

"He made a lot of money, he had a good time, the world suffered for it on his behalf."

How many of us would want to leave this for a legacy? Yet how many people, especially those with some power, actually do leave this legacy? And how tempting it is to try and live this way. This is what we should struggle (peacefully!) against, and try to create avenues where we can all be successful in life, yet not leave such a legacy.

Alleged Rape and Killings by American soldiers.

2006-07-01T09:41:00.000-05:00

See story at New York Times

My comment is the same I made a month ago with regard to the Haditha incident:

"The greater lesson is that war always leads to such horrors. 'Accidental' and 'collateral' horrors happen, and then there will be those that are intentional, although likely motivated by panic or psychosis. It does not reflect on all soldiers, but it does reflect on the nature of war."

I do not remotely suggest in this case, however, suggest that the incident might have anything directly to do with policy, although rape as a method of terrorism has been suggested in other wars involving other countries. But I do suggest that we need to make war obsolete. The intentions of soldiers and their willingness to sacrifice their lives may be noble, but the intentions of governments rarely are, and the results almost never are. The most likely exception, the position of the Allies in WWII, may have been noble and necessary, but we have lost site of the goal of then moving past the necessity of further wars and the sacrifice of human lives, and even crossed over the line into fighting optional wars, with the concomitant horrors all wars, noble and necessary or not, precipitate. Still worse, we seem to be addicted to war, and use our just war theories and our defense of the honor of soldiers as an excuse for our addiction. Young people on every side believe they are signing up for a noble cause; can they possibly all be right?

Notes for "How to Save the World"

2006-06-26T05:42:00.000-05:00

...Without Really Trying

Part I is "The World Needs Saving".

Part II is the "How to"

Or maybe vice versa, just to get down to brass tacks.

Half Measures:
Hybrid Shmybrid...
Recycling Shmecycling...

Saving the Planet in the Days of "Terrorism"
-Remarkable Goodness of Humanity (?!)
-Nod to Pattern Theory, Watch that Chaos!
-Still Worth Saving
-Still Savable!
-Save the Planet, Unite Her People!

Note I sent to the BBC have your say 6/26:
A few Earth-saving suggestions... Keep your PC and peripherals until replacement is completely necessary or at least a really big leap forward beyond the abstract numbers. Use your PC (with file backups) to go as paperless as possible. Buy a used PC. Give your old PC to that genius kid building a supercomputer from used parts. Manufacturers, make PCs more easy to upgrade without replacement.

Wake Up!

2006-06-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

The world is being torn apart in so many ways, and you should care! Things may be critical!

Principles of Diplomacy I

2006-06-20T23:38:00.000-05:00

Countries should not continuously seek to put other countries into a bad position. Most often it will be far more constructive to find ways to put both countries into a mutually advantageous position. Advantage does not have to be one over the other. "Win-win" is not just business or diplomatic jargon - it is the essence of cooperation.

Patterns of Survival

2006-06-19T00:21:00.000-05:00

So patterns that tend to survive do, statistically speaking. As someone pointed out, the apparently fittest do not always survive. That simply means that in a chaotic universe, there is no perfectly fit entity, and no entity is fit for every set of circumstances. But on the whole, those patterns whose continued existences fit in best with the resultant overall pattern will survive and/or propagate. Mutations result as the kaleidoscope wheel turns, and the so the pattern evolves, and so does the nature of what it is to be fit and thus to fit into the pattern.

Given the tautology of survival of the fittest, it seems possible that the intent and struggle to survive and propagate are in some sense emergent properties of the tautological nature of evolution. For example, humans tend to think it is "important" that they themselves, that their families, that their lifestyle, that their ethnic and religious groups and beliefs all continue to thrive, that is to survive, propagate and continue comfortably and with room for error, generally at the expense of some "other".

Since we tend to follow these instincts as though they were handed down on stone tablets -- whatever that is supposed to mean -- we may want to question them when we discover that they may be some sort of emergent property. However, given that they are a fairly instinctive part of our nature, we may instead want to mold our desire to survive and thrive to the most effective models possible.

I believe that some progressive and religious leaders, notably Gandhi and M.L. King, were in a sense offering us a way out of prisoners' dilemma problems by offering us a code of ethics in which we could -- by propagating the patterns they suggest -- essentially know that the other was working in our interests, and we were working in theirs, because all people, despite their diversity, were all unified by working for the "greater good" of all humanity. Further, if we relate their programs to prisoners' dilemmas, they were trying to show that the greater good, with attention to the well-being of each individual as well, would in fact produce the greatest payoff for the most individuals. Even those who sacrificed disproportionate wealth would benefits because of the love and security they would gain in a compassionate and caring world. The beginning of such a world was a set of rules that were not imposed, but accepted because of their compelling nature. Why were they compelling? Perhaps G and MLK would say because they came from God. Perhaps so, indeed, but perhaps such ideas produce a certain level of rapture because they in fact contribute to the survival of the individual AND the species. They are reassuring to the pattern with the emergent property of caring about its place in evolution.

In a mosaic, pieces of rock or glass of many shapes, sizes and colors may be fit together to form a strong, long lasting, and beautiful pattern. The shapes and sizes are not important so much as finding the ways the pieces fit together. The colors are not important at all to the resiliency of the finished product, but each color adds to the beauty of the whole.

Happy 6/6/6!

2006-06-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm going to take all kinds of heat (let's hope not literally) for trying to make a holiday out of today's date 06/06/'06. I grew up reading comic books, occasionally watching TV preachers, and with the Catholic Church on the periphery of my awareness by way of the nearness of the University of Notre Dame (where my father taught and which I eventually attended) and other influences. Frankly, devil stuff scares me. 6/6/6 -- perhaps this will be an especially bad day!

"PISH POSH!" screams the Skeptic side of me. Make that "BU-U-U-L-L-S-H-I-I-I-T-T-T!" as I think, first, that "pish posh" is a really lame scoff, and second, of the tyranny of words and concepts that we live under. Words and concepts are also what get us through life, forming one of the latticeworks that allow us to function as an organized pattern in a universe that is, on the whole, chaotic. Words and concepts are also used in religion and in government to tell the populace as a whole that "a few of us know all the answers and therefore we will guide what you do." But they don't know the answers. Many leaders, particular religious ones and politicians piggybacking on religion, were raised to believe they know the answers, and like any upbringing, they probably came away with a few good ones and some bad ones. But leaders are human beings, who, as youths, were told by other human beings that certain human beings got the answers directly from God. Despite the impolitic screaming of my inner Skeptic, I don't really want to insult anybody's religion. It is just that I trust the intellect that God/the Universe/Whatever You Want to Call It gave me, and it sincerely questions these things. Frankly, I suspect many of the so-called leaders don't believe it either.

Now, this doesn't make me "down" with some counter-deity. Today, I just want to celebrate my freedom from the words and concepts that try to tie God down, and that try to tie us all down. Satanism certainly doesn't come any closer, it just borrows the bad guy character from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, as a target for worship in order to thumb its collective nose at that tradition.

On the other hand, I've been intrigued by a small body of literature that pops up once in a while to personify the Devil as misunderstood. What this says to me is that Satan is the literary personification of all that the churches that created the character feared. Some of what the character personified really should be avoided; other things, perhaps, we just need to get comfortable with, maybe even revel in, because there is beauty even beyond the boundaries of the world of Mayberry so many of us think we are pining for. Forget about the guy with the cape and the horns himself; he is just a literary device.

I don't want chaos in the world. The pattern of our existence is holding to an extent, other disruptions in which the supposedly religious are largely complicit notwithstanding (war, environmental devastation -- and here I'll give some credit to the Catholic Church as an organization for protesting these problems).

On the "shadowy" side of things, the sole commandment "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" has been attributed to Aleister Crowley. Being a proponent of the rights of all people, I never thought that was very suitable, but only because it was too sweeping, for how many people "wilt" wantonly destroy others for their own pleasure or gain. I am also a proponent of great freedom for all people, freedom to do but not to infringe upon the freedom of others. So Crowley's maxim might be modified as a basis for some simple rules from which the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments can also be derived as good rules of thumb, if not absolutes (certainly our mostly Judaeo-Christian government already treats them far less as absolutes than I would):

1. Do what thou wilt,
2. but do your absolute best to do as much good for others, and as little harm to others, as possible;
3. and respect the equal right of others to do the same.
4. It is strongly suggested you take good care of yourself and do not harm yourself, as well.

And that's how I intend to celebrate 6/6/6.

But, due to the side of me that remains a bit brainwashed and nervous, I am definitely not going anywhere near the opening day of the remake of the movie, "The Omen".

Haditha

2006-05-31T20:37:00.000-05:00

Comment I submitted to BBC Have Your Say on the incident:

As with Abu Ghraib, it should be asked whether there were orders or policies from higher up that led to this horrible incident. The greater lesson is that war always leads to such horrors. "Accidental" and "collateral" horrors happen, and then there will be those that are intentional, although likely motivated by panic or psychosis. It does not reflect on all soldiers, but it does reflect on the nature of war.

Pattern Theory of Human Survival

2006-05-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

A little crystallization occurring today... The primary theme or focus of my "pattern theory" is "The Pattern Theory of Human Survival". Central points that will develop are that
1. "Survival of the Fittest", while shown to be a sort of truism both in statistical terms and in random, chaotic terms (sometimes the apparently fittest do not survive while the "less fit" do because of individualized circumstances), the oversimplified notion of survival of the fittest has led to an overemphasis on competition between organisms or between human cultures
2. Human beings, or any pattern, have evolved in and are adapted to a diverse environment, containing a huge multiplicity of organismic and also "non-living" (the reason for the quotes will be become clear) patterns. That is to say we come from a complex world of many kinds of people and other living beings, all existing in a complex environment.
3. In terms of survival and propagation, it is all too often a huge mistake for humans, who choose their modes of existence, to try to minimize or eliminate, or to allow the minimization or elimination of other well-developed patterns of existence, such as other organisms (extinction), other "sorts" of people (discrimination, war, genocide), or beneficial states of being (clean air, clean water) in order to attempt to dominate a larger portion of the overall pattern of existence, since this alters the pattern which supports us in such a way as to tend to hasten our own extinction.
4. Rather, we can more gently nudge and nurture those modes of existence that enhance our well-being, which can be summed up in a word: "diversity". This has become a loaded term; it really just means multiplicity, a state of many. There are many things, such as those listed above (people, organisms, a clean environment), in the world that benefit us, yet we often refuse to recognize them when they seem to stand in the way of a short term goal, such as, say, industrial production.
5. Obviously, every pattern that evolves means that other contrary patterns do not exist at that moment, and other patterns will never exist. The essence of chaos theory is that every action everywhere changes history at least a little bit. Every state of being carries with it the negation of its opposite, which, in the overall scheme of things, means every other possible state of being. Choices must be made, patterns and possibilities will be destroyed, and in any case entropy will eventually catch up with us. Yet we wish to survive, thrive, and propagate, and we can best do so by encouraging general patterns of diversity which reflect those patterns which gave rise to our existence and certain levels of comfort, love, and peace of mind.

Lawlessness, Law, Lawlessness

2006-05-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

So, with a bit of a pause in the middle, I am a newly minted attorney, at least in license.

In law school, which is now a long time ago although I recently passed the bar on the first try, I did come to appreciate that we live in a system of laws, that this protects us from the worst kind of anarchy. But, a little later, I met and came to appreciate anarchists and their philosophy. I still think we need some laws, but look forward to a day when we teach enlightenment such that very few laws will be needed, and even less enforcement. The laws that remain will be followed not because they are the law, but because people understand what makes them important, and would follow or even invent them of their own accord even if they were not formally recorded.

A Favorite Recurrent Thought

2006-04-24T23:52:00.000-05:00

Did you ever stop to think how much happens around the world, or even across the universe, during a single second when nothing much seems to change and maybe you're just spacing out (or contemplating some "deep thought")?

On Making Killing Unthinkable

2006-04-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

No, it hasn't been a month and a half since my last shower. I've probably let some good blog entries go by without translating from brain to blog or any other recorded medium, which I regret...

A recent issue of Rolling Stone featured a piece on the making of soldiers, pointing that the human inhibition against killing is quite strong. And so the military goes to great lengths to control soldiers' very thought process and reduce the inhibition, while simultaneously depersonalizing the act of killing. The latter is accomplished for example by referring to "neutralizing targets" rather than "killing human beings", and by using technology to maximize the physical distance between killer and killed. Inhibitions are reduced by such activities as war games.

Introspectively and statistically (for although there is too much killing in the world, most people do not kill, and most who do do so rarely), it seems true that on the whole, human beings are loathe to kill. But the fear of death, and perhaps especially of murder, invests those who are willing to kill with a certain amount of power, whether it be a lone killer or a military force. Still, this power may be neutralizable in many people simply through the exercise of logic and self-examination.

Say that you are a young person thinking of joining the military. You probably have a variety of motives, some of which may be idealistic (i.e. to defend your country), others which may be in a sense "selfish" but which are certainly understandable (you need a job and a future, and the military promises good training and benefits). You probably do not want to kill anyone, certainly not for the money involved and certainly not unnecessarily. You know at some level killing (or dying) may nevertheless become an issue, but you believe that will only happen because it is necessary for the greater good, such as defense of country or perhaps order in the world. Note that this is a balancing equation; untimely death on either side is a bad thing, but the greater good may outweigh it.

But also note that military training and role playing is aimed at desensitizing you to the death side of the equation, and along with physical distance from the "target" human beings, that side has become minimized in your mind, so that someone else can command death and you will simply react. Life and death in which you directly participate become somebody else's call. Just like you, that someone else has also been desensitized by training, plus they gain additional distance by the fact that you are carrying out the killing for them. Everybody is minimizing death in their minds, as much as possible, and so that side of the equation is not given proper consideration, even though it is entirely obvious that it is happening.

But if you do not wish to live in a comic book reality, the truth remains the truth. When you fire a weapon and it squarely hits someone, the usual outcome is that that person's guts are ripped to shreds. People who are not killed are maimed, or lose family. If they are not of your nationality, that is only an accident of birth; their pain is the same as yours would be. Or you could be the victim as well. That is reality. I wish to inflict no guilt on those who have felt they were doing their duty in war. I am just saying if we are to be reasonable about trying to avoid unnecessary wars, we must face the reality of what war is.

War is a horrible phenomena for most people affected by it. I would also argue that violence is a very blunt instrument, and rarely the most effective means to accomplish anything. Either one of these reasons should be sufficient to say that if war and/or killing are ever necessary, they must be an absolute last resort.

A budding young soldier, thinking this over, may nevertheless choose to serve in the military, believing, for example, claims by the President that the current war is indeed a last resort, and that all other options have indeed been exhausted before the war was launched. It is natural for young and old alike to defer to higher authorites simply by virtue of their position (and, for the young, also by virtue of their age). Let older and more powerful people decide these things; after all, don't they know best?

But the first six years of the Presidency of George W. Bush should have made it quite clear by now that wealth and power, even the power of the most powerful man in the world, do not make for wisdom. In fact, lately it's beginning to look quite the opposite way. The word "cronyism" has recently become commonplace, but it's just another word for an old idea: you scratch the back of the most powerful man in the world, and he will scratch yours. The rest of the world be damned. Resources and fellow human beings are to be looted, pillaged and killed for the short term enrichment of a few.

We are at war for the wrong reasons, and we must face the fact that not only Americans are being killed. Americans are being made to kill, and Iraqis are killing each other as well as killing Americans. It is without any disrespect to those soldiers who believed or still believe they are doing the right to thing that we must face the fact that people, not "targets", are being killed and for causes that are entirely wrong, the cause of enriching and rewarding the President's cronies, the cause of controlling oil when we should be getting away from its use, and the cause of allowing the President to gain as absolute control of his own people -- whom he is supposed to be serving -- as is possible. War is killing; if there is ever a right time for war, it must be done with the consciousness that it is killing, the most awful thing that humans ever could have to do to each other, no matter how much one sanitizes the language. If we deny this, the equation goes out of balance, and the odds are that not only are we killing, we are killing wrongly and unnecessarily because we have shut out the truth.

I also happen to personally believe that if we face the truth, there is always another way, that Gandhi, Jesus, and Dr. Martin Luther King (who was influenced by Gandhi and who believed in Jesus) have lessons to teach us about the nature of power. Arguments can be made for the necessity of fighting of World War II; I would hope other ways could still be discovered, even in retrospect, to have averted that tragedy. But Iraq is most certainly a bad argument for war, for killing human beings.

More Notes from the Shower

2006-03-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

Overall structure: theft of essential resources and freedoms under Orwellian pretenses of political and corporate benevolence.

Positive agenda: a world free from fear. Freedom from fear comes from a trust in the purity of one's environment and the (actual) benevolent intentions of one's fellow human beings. Freedom from does not come from the "protection" of bigger guns and restriction of other freedoms. The remarkable extent to which humans in fact are benevolent to each other proves this; we need to leverage this tendency, rather than sow the seeds of distrust and intimidation.

Goal along the way: the Million Gandhi March, to say that there is not just one leader of non-violence who can be shoved out of the way, but millions. Nevertheless, a more marketable name may be helpful, since relatively few people outside of India have a full appreciation of Gandhi's historical and spiritual importance.

Preliminary thoughts for the "Million Gandhi Manifesto":

No one rules the world. The enlightened person rules his or her self, and contributes to and protects the commons.

Non-violence is a near absolute; violence disturbs the order of things and contributes little.

There are no enemies, only unenlightened or angry friends.

All human beings deserve a safe, secure, and sufficiently prosperous place on this planet.

Note to self: read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

More soon, perhaps after my next shower. Got to run now!

Thoughts After a Shower

2006-03-04T15:04:00.000-05:00

Probably half of this blog is written immediately after a shower, as are half of the songs I write, although I haven't done a lot of that for a year or two.

God as the big pattern of the fractal: I've mentioned before that the idea of the fractal leads me to see something bigger than us. If fractals are identical patterns within patterns (as you zoom in, you see the macro-pattern duplicated at the micro-level, again and again), and the universe actually has a fractal structure, then the existence of things like values and love would seem to indicate that this is a property of the universe, rather than just what some philosophers would call an "epiphenomena", an odd side effect of a dead universe, full of energy yet intrinsically lifeless. There is a book on my father's shelves, for example, called "Values in a Universe of Chance". I haven't actually read it, but the title illuminates the conundrum of the modern thinker who sees physics at the base of all existence.

A simplified fractal might be a circle that is filled with tiny circles that are filled with tinier circles. But then again, you could build much the same circle out of triangles, the favorite shape of virtual reality programmers. So is the fractal just a convenient way of dicing things up, creating beautiful poster, and even depicting reality -- but just a depiction? Or is it actually an expression of reality? Even when I see a little light, I like to ask the dark questions. But if the questions are not suppressed, each new light seems a little more real, a little more reassuring.

Incidentally, this is one reason why I don't like censorship, even when free speech hurts or seems to strike at the soul of all we believe in.

However, now I have to work on the question. I don't have an answer at the moment.

The Bar Exam: Completed the bar exam a week and a half ago. Reading outlines of American law gave me a new appreciation of the balance struck by our Constitution, legislation and jurisprudence over the years. Of course much that is evil or unfortunate in human beings has also expressed itself over the years. My sense is that, along with society in general, our progress in law peaked around the mid to late seventies, and started slowly downhill with Reagan, although I'd bring him back in a second to replace our beloved W.

Love is a tool which humans use to provive (survive and propogate) the human pattern, or the family pattern, or sometimes the cultural pattern, through cooperation and nurturing. Humans are separate patterns, but part of a bigger pattern. Groups are intermediary patterns, while the human race is the big pattern, although not the biggest. Hate is also a tool, which attempts to assist provival of oneself or an intermediate sized group by neutralizing or destroying a competing group. The great strength of love is that it is also a pattern in and of itself, which tends to provive when put into action. The great weakness of hate is that it too is a pattern in and of itself, which tends to provive when put into action. When love provives, solutions are found. When hate provives, people suffer and die; those who set it into action for their ends will find that it tends to then turn against them. If the so-called enemy and its friends and allies are not completely neutralized, then their hatred will surface against the instigators, and it will go on until there is nothing left. As Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind". If somehow an "enemy" is completely vanquished, there will be no paradise for those who remain, because, having learned the power of hate, they will then turn on each other, competing as smaller and smaller groups until there is only one, alone (perhaps that is the point of the Highlander movie slogan, "There can be only one!"). And then, since we are not immortal like the Highlander, there will be none. Only love can intervene, which it is really up to all of us to do at our earliest, er, convenience.

Love and hate are patterns within our patterns of existence; we are capable of both. But the vision that hate is a shortcut is the most vicious of illusions. Not to wax religious per se, but it is a shortcut only to Hell.

Which brings me back to last Fall (no pun intended), when we proved, facetiously of course (well, sort of), that W. is the anti-Christ, despite his religious posturing. Not to introduce anymore hate into the equation, but just to bring some perspective on the gravity of what we are dealing with, even with just a trace of hyperbole and humor.

Stray Thoughts on Globalization

2006-02-17T12:18:00.000-05:00

Hit a wall with studying for the "Bar". May not "pass on the first try", making this a "practice test", but planning on getting back to work shortly anyway. The process reaffirms that "the Law" as promulgated by governments and taught in "Law Schools" isn't exactly what I was meant to study, but very educational nevertheless. But one could never be "educated" by only studying this type of law in a vacuum.

OK, enough sarcasm. I'm tired and frustrated, although a little better rested for having acknowledged this state of affairs and taken a break.

The rest of this blog is just a notebook entry, a seed to be germinated later.

Human relations are, of course, a global pattern, part of the universal pattern. Nevertheless, over the aeons, many human cultures have managed to stay relatively separate. Travel, communications, wars and diplomacy all contributed to breaking down the separateness; to some degree such factors have homogenized us, to another extent they have pitted us against each other. Previous entries on the interactions of human patterns are relevant here. More recently, somebody or other (perhaps someone in particular, perhaps it was more of a gradual dawning) recognized this phenomenon, and decided to push it forward, leading to the term "globalization" to denote an actual program upon which it is suggested that humans should actually be embarking. Even in the most idealistic sense, there is a lot of hubris to this, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is not correct at some level, i.e. all humans could probably stand to be somewhat idealistic towards each other, help each other out, cooperate in attaining mutual goals. However, what's actually happening, not surprisingly to anyone who's paying attention to everything else that's happening, is that the process has become another vehicle, perhaps the ultimate vehicle, for looting the existences of those with less power.

Shifting things to another level, I should perhaps have said "those with less power than they are aware of or in control of". Again, I point to the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. However, the world doesn't need one more Gandhi or MLK. The world needs several billion of them. It is too easy for a violent cult, say some branch of the U.S. government, to scatter a cult of personality; just kill the leader, and the movement will never be the same, at least not for decades. Gandhi and MLK took too much upon themselves; the work they wanted to see done was too pressing on them to delegate too much, or to take the time to wait for their teachings to become fully formed and promulgated. The cult of personality was, unfortunately, a convenient tool, a shortcut that seemed necessary. They accomplished much, but then their work was largely cut short, because they were too important to the pattern of each of their respective movements. But these men did study deeply, and their ideas and examples are perhaps the best starting point that we have to explore the power of love to actually move mountains.

So, one level of the ongoing work of nonviolence is to initiate, for starters, a million people with the depth of understanding of Gandhi, plus a little bit. While we may be fond of the Matrix movies, we need to stop searching for "the One", and each become that person. A beginning is to realize that the power of love is ultimately the strongest, and that we all possess it. The power of violence has long dazzled our eyes, but it is a weaker, clumsy, and unfocussed power that has always done much more damage than it has good. Part of that damage is that whenever it does do any good, it dazzles our eyes even more, making it that much greater of a temptation to go our and do more damage, in the service of some smaller good. Those who followed Gandhi's example did more than anyone else to free their nations from colonialism, and those who followed MLK's example did more than anyone else change civil rights laws in the United States while leaving a lasting vision of how to gain equality, a fair balance of power, in a loving manner. Those are the visions that should dazzle our eyes. However, we should not simply act upon the impulse imparted by hypnotism. We should shake it off, consider what we have seen and what is to be learned, discuss it, teach others, deepen our understanding... The appropriate actions will follow. Yes, there is a hurry, but there is also great danger in too much haste, in not understanding what it is that we are doing.

To let a little air out of this balloon, allow me to quote a song I once wrote:
"Yeah baby, I believe in the 60's." Get down!

Back to "the law".

Quickie Comments I've Posted to the BBC Today

2006-02-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

Also, please see today's updates to "Gandhi's Experiment", directly below and originally published a few days ago.

On Bush's "Clean Energy" Comments in his State of the Union Speech:

Nearly any policy Bush puts forward benefits his mega-wealthy cronies and contributors first, and the rest of us not at all. If you don't believe it, you only need to look a little more closely. Bush's "clean energy" programs will be virtually unregulated, allowing "clean energy" to be produced in the cheapest, dirtiest ways possible, like burning huge amounts of coal without scrubbers as a means to produce "clean" hydrogen as fuel, or burying nuclear waste by a convenient earthquake fault at Yucca Mountain. And since when has nuclear energy been clean? Follow the money.

On the Danish cartoon, depicting the Islam's prophet Muhammad as a suicide bomber:

The newspaper may have been insensitive in publishing this cartoon. However, I don't think religions can or should enforce all of their proscriptions on everybody else. It's fine to be offended and say so. But let's not divide the world further with large scale, political repercussions. The good name of a prophet as great as Muhammad will survive the insult, which I think was really directed at those who misuse that name, and God will sort out the sinners in the long run.

Gandhi's Experiment (Updated 2/01)

2006-01-30T09:14:00.000-05:00

Mohandas Gandhi played a pivotal role in freeing India from British colonial domination. His technique was revolutionary amongst revolutions. He eschewed all violence, but said that the power of love or "soul force" was more powerful and more effective. Then he set out to prove his point with regard to India's independence, with a campaign basically composed of positive propaganda (i.e. education as to his philosophy) and non-cooperation, peppered with organized acts of calculated defiance that were dramatized by the refusal of the participants to react violently, even when beaten or killed.

In terms of evolutionary pattern theory (a tautology: those patterns which are best able to survive and propogate (provive)... survive and propogate, although they also evolve in the process), Gandhi's approach was to introduce the virus of tolerance, a subpattern which is meant to allow patterns to coexist side by side. Recall that there are at least four ways in which patterns may interact affecting their provival: competitively (weakening or destroying each other to increase energy inputs), parasitically (one draws strength from the other, at the other's expense, or weakening of the inertia of the pattern), symbiotically/cooperatively (each draws strength from the other), or separately (side by side coexistence with little significant interaction). Most interactions among significantly interacting patterns employ a combination of approaches, weighting each differently and accomplishing each aspect in a variety of ways.

Tolerance, in Gandhi's sense, is one such technique, which takes very seriously the balancing of these interactions. It basically says, let us look carefully at our patterns. Historically, we have been afraid of each other, and when we have acted upon our fears, it has given us more cause for fear as we look back at our history. But really, our patterns are not different and need not be competitive or mutually destructive to provive. But we must alter our patterns only enough to realize this, and to mutually act upon that information.

Love is another such technique; it recognizes that there is strength and security in not just learning to live side by side, separately, but in strengthening each other and making each other more secure: patterns reinforcing each other. This requires mutuality and a buildup of trust in the long run for effective provival, because otherwise fear and betrayal can also result in patterns of culture going at it with each other once again.

Active love (aka satyagraha, or soul force) takes this one step further. It demands respect at the least, and strives for actual cooperation and mutual love. There is self-love as well as love for the other, a security that the instinctive weapon of violence is not really needed, because the tools of love are available in the here and now.

Non-cooperation is another tool of satyagraha. Think about it. No tyranny has any more power than its ability to command at least the actions of its subjects. If the vast majority of the people refuse to cooperate in tyranny, the tyrant is helpless. Perhaps part of the tyrant's power comes from commanding many soldiers, whom he can pay from some vast resource of wealth. Still, if a brave populace is willing to face death rather than follow the dictates of a pointed gun, this power will self-destruct, just as surely as if the world's last remaining superpower stepped in with all of its military might, probably much more so. For the threats of the tyrant, even if carried out, are futile.

So I imagine the message of Gandhi's famous Salt March thusly: "We will show you how we demand respect and offer our love. We will break your unjust law by making our own salt from the sea in defiance of the British monopoly. You cannot disrespect our right to do so, for we will not cooperate in your disrespectful restrictions of our rights. You can beat us, but we will not hit you back, because you are human, and we love all of humanity. But you're beating us will humiliate you in front of the world while also teaching you that it is a waste of your time and energy to try to hold us subject to your will."

This is a pattern that can survive the world, and spread itself, without altering the positive patterns/values that are most fundamental to our existences. But it cannot do so if it emanates primarily from a single, charismatic individual, who can be killed, as were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and will surely die one day in any case. It must be learned, pondered, practiced, and incorporated into the hearts of, if not all of us, as many of us as possible, and certainly not by force, but by the sincere reaching out and internal struggle of the individual inspired by teaching and debate that has the ring of truth about it. If one Martin Luther King can do so much to bring about civil rights reform, and one Gandhi can do so much to free a nation, think a few million Gandhis and Kings could do.

Satyagraha,

The Raving Moderate

To the memory of Coretta Scott King.

Alito and the Presidential Signing Statement,

2006-01-27T09:50:00.000-05:00

Sent this email to some Congresspeople through Working Assets:

The "Presidential Signing Statement", which Alito apparently recommended, Reagan first seized upon, and Bush uses with some abandon, is an indication of where Alito's nomination is coming from and how he will behave if allowed to sit on the Supreme Court. The Executive is not supposed to replace the Legislature anymore than the Judiciary is, yet this is what Bush tries to do with these statements: sign into law a modified version of Congress' intent. These statements should have no binding authority; they have perhaps been tolerated because they were just a footnote, an expression of Presidential vanity of little consequence. Bush doesn't operate that way; he tries to monopolize power to the greatest degree possible. And Alito will back him up on this when Bush actually tries to hide behind his own interpretations, in the form of signing statements, of legislation that would otherwise curb his authority, like the ban on torture.

Please support John Kerry's filibuster of this nomination. When you put the nomination together with things like outsourced, fraudulent elections and going to war on false pretexts that lead to the multi-billion dollar profit of crony corporations, it is clearly a step on the road away from democracy and towards dictatorship. Extraordinary circumstances indeed.

Click here for an NPR broadcast on the subject. of Presidential signing statements. A somewhat more probing looking is provided in this article by John Dean. My suspicion is that the signing statement is extra-constitutional, and that it's legal effect should be nil, if challenged in a responsible Supreme Court. But an irresponsible Supreme Court could allow the President to usurp legislative responsibilities, essentially giving him a line item veto, which already has been ruled unconstitutional: the President may sign or reject the bill given to him, not write his own version of it, as far as I can tell so far. However, I have believed all along that it is Bush' desire to erode the separation of powers. One way to do that is to place his "yes" men (and women) on the Supreme Court. Another is to get those members of the Supreme Court to vote him legislative powers, gradually moving the Presidency toward the vision of a "Unitary President", who ultimately becomes, to quote one word from a supposed wisecrack of Bush's, a "dictator". So, if the so-called "signing statement" is ever challenged, Alito may be just the person that Bush needs to tip the court to grant it the power to override Congressional authority.

Censorship on China's Internet

2006-01-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

Nice article in the BBC here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4587622.stm

They've even kindly thrown in some URLs to what they call "SOME PUBLIC WEB-BASED CIRCUMVENTION SERVICES" for surfing without being identified. It's too bad some people are forced to hide in order to explore the universe of ideas, but let me reprint those services here (I have not tried them so I can't vouch):
www.peacefire.org
www.anonymizer.com
www.unipeak.com
www.anonymouse.org
www.proxyweb.net
www.guardster.com
www.webwarper.net
www.the-cloak.com

Review and Discuss

2006-01-06T20:46:00.000-05:00

My posts will be infrequent for the next couple of months, since I'm supposed to be studying for the bar exam. Very difficult to concentrate on though; while the law as it relates to human reality is a fascinating subject, I'm still too busy trying to understand human reality on more of a meta-level. Hence the theory of patterns. By the way, it only just crossed my mind that there may be (and a quick Google confirms it) an existing "Pattern Theory" which is under academic discussion. I suspect my "pattern theory" has something to do with, but mine is more of an evolution from studying evolution at the grade school level, and from considering problems of social disruptions at the political level in college.

Let's review. Pattern theory basically restates the primary theory of evolution as a tautology: those patterns of existence which tend to survive and propagate... tend to survive and propagate. Duh. If there are slight changes to the pattern which further enhance survival and propagation, then, duh, that pattern's survival and propagation are further enhanced. And so existence evolves. For our purposes here, you are nevertheless welcome to debate whether humans come from apes. The specific outcome is not a tautology, at least not without additional evidence, only the general rule. In fact the general rule in no way precludes a divine hand helping out in the "evolution" of things or even more or less creating people out of whole cloth or, in Eve's case, spare ribs (this pun is from Richard Armour's cute book of historical satire, "It All Started With Columbus").

Since it is based on a tautology, pattern theory should not be considered earth-shattering in and of itself. What it does do, is provide an interesting lens to look through in considering existence and other theories of existence. Take for example economics. Economics may be seen as patterns of behavior in which individual and groups of humans (individuals as patterns within patterns of groups) attempt to ensure their own survival, their own ability to thrive, and to propagate, both in the forms of children who are then to be successfully raised, and in the forms of groups similar to the one(s) the individuals currently belong to. Economic patterns may take such forms as cooperation, competition, or exploitation among individuals and groups, all of whom are struggling to survive and propagate their patterns of existence, including their genome, lifestyles, beliefs, ways of thinking etc. They... we... act this way not necessarily because of some higher calling (we may get to that question later), but simply because patterns that act in the interests of survival and propagation are the tautological outcome of evolution in an existence where "existence", "continued existence" and "patterns" can be descriptive terms.

Pattern theory can also be applied to questions of war and peace, which I have indirectly discussed previously. The application is actually very similar to the economic one; people as patterns trying to provive (survive and propagate) in the presence of conflicting people (patterns) may try to terminate those patterns, cause them to become cooperative (harmonious) patterns, or exterminate the conflicting patterns altogether.

Still, evolution is not complete, and our mechanisms of provival are still imperfect. So there is much to discuss.

Read This Blog

2005-12-30T22:53:00.000-05:00

Read This Blog.

Of Ghosts and Chickenhawks

2005-12-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

David Swanson is excerpted here from www.AfterDowningStreet.org, my favorite website of the day:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he "ghosted" a detainee, meaning that he made the decision to hold a prisoner without keeping any records of the fact.

While prisoners of war can be theoretically stripped of their rights by calling them other names (like "unlawful combatants"), they are probably most effectively stripped of all rights by keeping their imprisonment secret. That is what Rumsfeld says he did.

My comments, submitted as a reply, below:

The Administration tries to defend these types of practices by scaring us with terrorism, and saying that the practices are practiced on those who deserve no rights. But if there are no rights, no procedures to defend those rights, and no legal recourse for "certain people" that certain other people can choose, without any review by anyone else who is relatively impartial, then anyone can disappear, anyone can become a "ghost", anyone can be tortured. Allowing some of these loopholes, not necessarily "ghosting" per se (but close), under the Patriot Act was a huge, bipartisan mistake, which many Dems defend by saying "we thought that we could trust the Administration". Of course you can't, but even if you could, a United States that starts removing its Constitutional bridles from the government must eventually begin itself turning into another USSR or a northern version of one of the "banana" dictatorships that, showing warning flashes of our dark side, we helped create. As it happens, it feels like the transition is happening sooner than later. But perhaps We the People allowed this pattern to develop, by standing by when it seemed to be happening mostly to other people in other lands. And now our chickenhawks have come home to roost.

Donkeys v. Elephants v. Shrubs

2005-12-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

In response to a post on AfterDowningStreet.org reiterating the "sameness" of Democrats and Republicans as a bit of a yawn toward impeaching Bush (although the writer acknowledged that Bush deserved impeachment, and the site as a whole wholeheartedly supports it), I posted the following today:

While you do point out many good reasons that it would probably be an understatement to say that Democrats have a long way to go before they can assume the true moral high ground, this is true of the vast majority of governments through the ages. But where there was once Julius Caesar, a monster to some and a wise leader to others, there was later Caligula, a completely self-absorbed monster with hardly a shred of wisdom or rationality. Where the Democrats and even some Republicans might at least realize some limits upon the wisdom of allowing wars to happen or the environment to be degraded, and where run-of-the-mill Dems and Repubs might sometimes resort to skullduggery thinking it somehow necessary for the benefit of the nation, Bush and Company see only opportunities to gain more power, while lining their own pockets and those of their benefactors. This is epitomized by the act of awarding so-called no-bid contracts to the incompetent likes of Halliburton after lying the nation into war, sending children with their whole lives ahead of them off to kill and die on false pretexts of honor and "national security".

While the differences may be largely of degree, make no mistake that Bush has hastened the decline of our civilization, and we cannot afford not to impeach him. He is our Caligula.

The original post, and also links to Representative John Conyers preliminary look at impeachment, entitled The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, are to be found here.

Fully Flippant Definition of the Day

2005-12-22T18:09:00.000-05:00

synchrophant - a type of elephant which synchronizes with other elephants such that they all say the same thing at the same time. e.g. the Republican Party.

Interestingly, synchrophants are often sycophants as well, and synchronize best when being sycophantic to one another. It is the species of elephant most commonly related to the common parrot.

With apologies to self-actualized, freethinking Republicans, all three of you. I just thought of this while jogging this afternoon.

My Slightly Flippant Comment of the Day

2005-12-22T18:07:00.000-05:00

To the BBC, on the Bush's brazen surveillance policies:

If we go too far in allowing surveillance, there will be no such thing as privacy, and a lot more people will go to jail for meaningless "crimes" besides terrorism, such as smoking marijuana or having sex in the wrong position. In any case, there must be standards and processes beyond arbitrarily declaring someone a terrorist and therefore beyond legal protections, or the government that is supposed to protect us will in fact become the rogues and the terrorists.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=629&&&edition=1&ttl=20051222225026

Antagonistic and Harmonious Patterns of Life

2005-12-22T15:12:00.000-05:00

What's it all about? My feeling is that it's very important that everyone enjoy living; not that I enjoy it at the expense of you, or you at the expense of me or someone else. That we all enjoy it. Although this idea resembles utilitarianism, which is often snubbed by those who want to have a "deeper" basis for their morals, even most people who want to rest their values on religious principal recognize it anyway, either through the notion of Good Samaritanism (making someone else happy or helping them through a time suffering and need) or through the notion of themselves receiving a later reward even if it is after death. We all want to be happy in the way (pattern of living) that we have learned. Many of us are too attached, however, to that pattern; instead of simply trying to exist in the way we have found, we try to make others live the same way (propagate the pattern) or try to destroy their alternate ways of living (cause the extinction of competing patterns). My belief, however is that the most important aspects of any way of living, or cultural/religious/moral pattern of society, is compatible with coexisting with other patterns, so long as those patterns adopt a similar attitude. Most of us are dealing with similar patterns of existence, trying to get through our lives on Earth; if there is a god and only one god, then it is the same god we are dealing with as well. In fact, even an atheist would be dealing with the same god and might even be seen not so much as denying the existence of God, but as merely refusing to use the same metaphor as everyone else, since we are all finite beings trying to explain the same existence from differing understandings and points of view.

So why do people from different walks of life fear each other? There are a number of reasons that come to mind:

1. Another's way of life tends to contradict one's own. It is not just that the beliefs or lifestyles are side by side within the world, which may be enough to trigger cognitive dissonance leading to paranoia, but that the alternate set of ideas may have some attraction to one's community and family, which could cause behavior oneself, one's family, or one's community would consider inappropriate, even criminal or schismatic. It might be feared that this will happen more or less through osmosis, or perhaps even because of proselytization by the other group.

2. The other group may actually wish the extinction of one's own group (ethnic or religious "cleansing") or the patterns of one's own group (proselytizing), or this may at least be feared.

3. One may wish one's own way (pattern) of life to become totally dominant, out of a combination of the escalation of these fears and being convinced that one's own way is totally the right one, and all the other ways are bad.

Note that by writing a blog and by trying to convince the reader of certain things, I too am trying to propagate patterns from my existence; I am trying to "provive", make my patterns, or the ones that I find valuable to the survival of my community, survive and propagate themselves, in the sense of a previous entry to this blog. But in this, I am no different from almost anyone else. (It is conceivable that from time to time someone might commit suicide in order to remove their own patterns from the world; but in most cases, suicide also involves making some sort of a point, in other words, propagating a thought pattern.)

But reasons 1-3 above, I believe, are generally rooted in paranoia. Once a group becomes paranoid and becomes a threat to others, then the fears of the other group become more legitimate, and the cycle spirals into an antagonistic pattern that is harder to break. Since this has already happened across the world for centuries, the question becomes, can we break the pattern?

The first step in breaking the pattern, or in any project, is understanding the problem. In human affairs, understanding, particularly if it is mutual, can do more to dispel many problems than one might think. Many people believe in deeds over words and thoughts. But in people, words are actions, and changes in thoughts quickly influence other less ephemeral actions as well. So if we can understand that our fear of each other is rooted in paranoia, and prove to each other that we both understand it, we can begin to trust each other with our differences, knowing that we are also the same in being human and wishing to survive and thrive in happiness.

What I am trying to do here, and what many other peace activists have attempted to do over the years, is basically inject a small pattern into the overall pattern of human existence, like a small strand of DNA into a cell, to make the organism heartier. This can be a risky practice, and in fact I am rather opposed to most gene splicing. But at the same time, every act is a modification of the pattern, and everything we do in a world with a chaos of causalities (everything effecting everything else, directly or indirectly) is a risk. In most cases, I think that speaking one's mind is a positive risk -- even if you are wrong, someone can correct you, and it is known what sorts of patterns of thought are out there. (In the case of gene splicing, I think there is often less to gain and more to lose, with a greater overall risk, compared to talking. But that is a different discussion, which I am only forced to touch upon here by the analogy, which is meant to be illustrative. Another analogy might be to a module of code into a computer program, that positively influences the overall function. Perhaps this is a better one.)

Elections in Iraq

2005-12-15T11:46:00.000-05:00

On yesterday's elections in Iraq and their "high turnout", I posted the following to the BBC forum:

Hopefully this is an auspicious, new beginning for Iraq; only time will tell. It does not mean, Mr. Bush, that we should now condone the war that led to this point, or any war. War is always a terrible thing, and the consequences of this war will continue for a long time. What is really needed is to find ways to (nonviolently) break the worldwide cycle of violence.

Added the following 12/16/2005:

The most popular comments here seem also to be the most onesided and singleminded cheers for the war and all. Assuming this is not orchestrated by anyone, I think people are forgetting all the hell that has transpired and the lies that led to the war. I don't have space for a laundry list. Let us hope for the success of democracy in Iraq, but let us not tumble headlong into militarism, but consider also the successes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and Dennis Kucinich's proposal for a Department of Peace.

I may not have phrased this perfectly; "success" is meant to refer to Gandhi and King, whereas Kucinich's proposal has not happened -- yet. Just looking at the other comments surrounding my first one, I'd noticed that those with 25 or 30 "recommendations" did seem to be of the sort I described in my second comment, and of course I wouldn't put it past Karl Rove to try to stack discussion groups to some extent, similarly to excluding "antis" from Bush rallies and providing fake pro-Bush protesters after the 2000 election in Florida.

The Death Penalty and Stan Tookie Williams

2005-12-15T00:50:00.000-05:00

The death of Stan Tookie Williams has inspired me to start a new blog against the death penalty, accessible at http://stopdp.blogspot.com. This note, which I also emailed to the governor's office, is also part of the first entry.

Governor Schwarzenegger,

I'll never be able to watch your movies again. The man did everything he could to apologize for his legacy as a Crips leader in writing those books for urban youngsters who might be tempted by the gang life. It really looks to me like he might not have committed those murders, that false evidence was used against him. If this is so, we cannot have expected him to apologize for the murders themselves, to admit them. The death penalty is wrong to begin with; anyone who claims to have the power to decide who dies thinks much too much of themselves. This goes for judges and governors as well as "murderers". But to kill a man who might be innocent of the crimes, and who has in any case brilliantly proven that he has become a good man and done so much good, and could still have done so much good... The Terminator indeed. I will be publishing this on RavingModerate.com and stopdp.blogspot.com. Sincerely, Thomas Marshalek, The Raving Moderate

I would add that it some articles on the subject appear to suggest that Schwarzenegger was hedging his bets by complaining that Williams had not apologized for murders by Crips in general. If this were the case, he would truly be wrong in denying clemency, perhaps even abusing his power in a sense, because it is a principle of justice in this country that at least one should only be punished for the crimes for which one is convicted, not the ones for which one has not been convicted. Were he killed for someone's anger at murders by Crips in general, while the actual convictions for which he was sentenced to death were highly questionable, then the system has truly failed, and the Governor, in making this shift, would have a certain special responsibility. However, this is hypothetical at this point. I say, of course, that the system has failed whenever it executes a human being in the first place.

A Little Illuminati Fun | Observations on the Trials (Tribulations and Torturing) of "Terrorists"

2005-12-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

Posted the following on Jeff Goldstein's (apparently conservative) "Protein Wisdom" blog, where I ran across his year old satire of John Kerry placed in an Illuminatus context, channelling Robert Anton Wilson. In a moment of weakness, I added a smiley at the end.

Thought it was interesting at the time (of the 2004 Presidential election) that BOTH the "liberal" and the "conservative" candidates were members of Skull and Bones. Illuminati conspiracies running the world????? Also, there was a little historical subplot in Illuminatus in which George Washington was replaced with another George W. (I'd have to look up the name of the replacement). Now we have George W. B. fomenting chaos. Bush was also the 46th Governor of Texas, and Cheney is our 46th Vice President. 46 is 2 times 23, so we have 2 times 2 times 23 in the White House now, and 23 is of course an important Illuminati number. Hmmmmmmmm... :-)

Protein Wisdom item is here.

I also commented today on the BBC website on Condoleeza Rice's comments on the alleged lack of human rights abuses by the United States. The second and third sentences refer to another comment that we should remember that these folks are "terrorists":

Ms. Rice may at least be skirting the question of "extraordinary rendition" by only referring directly to the actions of Americans. Incidentally, two of the reasons prisoners are accorded rights are that not all are guilty of what they are accused of, and that governments often abuse the leeway that they are granted, hiding behind presumptions of guilt. There must be standards of evidence and procedure beyond arbitrarily slapping a label of "terrorist" on someone, thereby triggering a clause that says "do what thou wilt".

"Extraordinary rendition" refers to the practice of sending prisoners to prisons around the world, presumably so other countries can do the dirty work of torturing and abusing prisoners so the US can keep its hands clean. A recent conversation on Democracy Now also brought this practice to mind. The BBC thread is here.

Watched a great episode of the science fiction series "Babylon 5" while working out yesterday. The ISN (Insterstellar Network, or something like that) news crew came and shot footage of the space station, which was then edited together with innuendo from the reporter to recast our heroes as sick psychopaths trying to turn humans into aliens. A few overly broad strokes -- you could tell in advance at least one instance where the interviews would be taken out of context. Typical for the show: some great drama, a few klunkers, always keen insight into politics. You'd think sometimes that the show's creator, Michael Straczynski, knew in advance during the 90's about Bush II, not to mention Fox News. But this probably has more to do with the hackneyed but genuine fact that, as the show sometimes points out, "some things never change". At least not until the universe implodes. This episode really makes you question whether you know anything about anything, which brings up the interesting spectacle of Ramsey Clark working as a defense attorney for Saddam Hussein. Interviewed by Ted Koppel a few days ago, he refused to grant much about Saddam's guilt (gassing Kurds, raping and torturing etc.), insisting that we need to be openminded and that Saddam was "demonized" starting before the first Gulf War.

Now, personally, my inclination is to believe that Saddam is about as bad as he has been portrayed in the press. I opposed both wars on Iraq not on the basis of any sympathy for him, but rather because war almost by definition is horror and devastation for so many people, not just some targeted, "evil" leader, and because I believe, following the lead of such folks as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, that violence is a bad excuse for a lack of imagination in solving problems. In the Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov wrote "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- and the character uttering the phrase was no idealist. I carried this quote around on a sign in D.C. during a protest of the first Gulf War. I also did echo the complaint about demonization during both wars, and I think it is true, but my complaint is more that the bad things about Saddam were trotted out only when it was convenient, as part of making the case for war, whereas prior to the first war the United States actually aided and abetted his evil practices. Then the old charges resurfaced as one excuse for the present war. However, knowing what we know now about the ways that the current administration tries to manipulate the news, Clark's comments are not wholly to be dismissed. We need to keep asking ourselves, what do we really know? How much are we being spun? It is this uncertainty that makes conspiracy theories intriguing at times. Still, I really doubt Saddam is any kind of an angel. But Clark is also doing his job as a defense attorney; if an adversarial system of justice is to have any chance of succeeding, the defendant must be able to tell his side of the story and make his arguments. It may seem damned obvious that a defendant is guilty, but sometimes we will be wrong anyway. According a defendant his full rights and representation is the only way we have right now to minimize this risk; to make even one exception and summarily execute even the worst and most obvious dictator would tend to create a slippery slope towards wholesale witch trials, as it sometimes seems that the Bush Administration would like in the context of its other prisoners in the so-called "War on Terror". Furthermore, as Clark points out, in this specific instance it is even more important, and I think the Bush Administration understands this much, that the world sees a fair trial of Saddam so that others can respect the legitimacy of both the new Iraqi government and the United States -- although we have additional work to do in terms of regaining this respect in the wake of George W. Bush.

More Thoughts on Pattern Theory

2005-12-02T18:53:00.000-05:00

Yes, this is still a political blog. Hang on tight. By talking about the shifting, changing, and - yes - evolution of patterns, we can stand back a couple of feet from some of our emotional reactions to events in our own political and personal lives and be somewhat objective and analytical, from time to time.

Physical patterns basically have three ways of surviving and/or propogating same/similar patterns, vis a vis other patterns. Let us create a term for survival and propogation as a single concept, since these are the two basic ways in a which a pattern can continue to be registered as having a place in non-abstract existence -- we'll call this concept "provival" The modes of provival are side by side coexistence, interdependence, and competition. Let us first consider these modes where they are relatively successful. In the first, coexistence, the primary pattern -- that is the pattern in question -- is basically indifferent to the existence of the secondary pattern, at least with regard to provival, because it is able to continue in its current state without significantly interacting or being affected by the other (pattern). In the second, interdependence, the primary pattern in fact exists in its current state, or achieves a subsequent state with strong provival qualities, in part because of the effects of the other. The primary pattern takes on qualities of the other, or is otherwise influenced by the other in a manner that at the "worst" has little effect on provival, and at "best" enhances it ("bad" and "good" being value-neutral designations in this theoretical discussion, because this discussion applies to any pattern). This process of influencing the other is likely to manifest itself as a two way street, since most patterns will have some effect, direct or indirect, upon each other when they come into contact. This is near the essence of chaos theory. But the degree and nature of the effects may be asymmetrical, as well as diffuse. Finally, in the mode of competition, the existence, survival and propogation of the other presents a threat such that the primary pattern, in order to provive, must contain the kinetic (active) ability to cause the alteration, diminishment, or extinction of the other. Which if any mode will be the most successful, where success is defined by provival, depends of course upon the how the mode is implemented, the nature of the other pattern, and the modes and methods it employs. In an inanimate world or when unaffected by intelligence, there may not be "choices" as to the mode or the methods; things simply "happen", although there may random or quasi-random factors involving such things as quantum and chaos theory. Chaos and other modes of randomness are important to take into account in any case, since the universe consists of untold numbers of patterns interacting with each other. But to a certain degree, we should be able to focus on discrete interactions between discrete numbers of patterns, just as physics can focus on Newtonian mechanics for many practical purposes even while allowing that there are chaotic and quantum factors to be taken into account; the latter factors also can be used practically in many situations.

However, this is a political blog, so the specific types of patterns I am interested in are human beings and patterns that directly and perceivably affect human beings, especially ones that human beings can influence. So I am interested in applying this theory of patterns to questions, most obviously, or war and peace, and also to issues such as our attitude towards our environment and towards one another as human beings. But let me also remind everyone that this theory of patterns, or if you prefer, way of looking at everything as patterns, applies to all realms of analysis pertaining to the physical or non-abstract world, for example chemistry, physics, and biology. The interesting thing when you get to human beings is really the question of choice. Without choice, patterns arise, jostle and affect each other, sometimes propogate, and then eventually disappear, perhaps replaced by their progeny of same or similar patterns. With choice and intelligence such as our own, the same things happen, but they don't just happen. We human beings are able to think about, choose, experiment with, and refine our modes of provival -- or choose indifference or extinction. Of course, any choice or strategy may backfire and produce the opposite of its intent, unless the actor is truly indifferent and so has no intent. So the discussion of provival becomes not just a question of examining uncaring forces, but of what we "should" choose to do about the condition of our existence, since we care -- whatever it is exactly that means!

An additional interesting wrinkle to the provival of human patterns is the aspect of guessing. Unlike, say a kaleidoscope or chemicals interacting in a beaker, humans try to look ahead at what the other pattern is going to do next and how it will affect them. Examples from game theory and economics are brought to mind. Both patterns are trying to maximize provival; it is possible to imagine instances in which provival is maximized by either cooperation or conflict, as generically outlined above, but that also depends what the other chooses. However, it seems to me that this is an argument for building mutual trust as a long term process; when our guesses at the behavior of the other become more reliable and we are working for either common or mutually compatible goals, cooperating, success will be maximized. Imagine our energies being directed as vectors, which are additive in their combined effect. If we combine them in a common direction, there will be greater progress for both (or more) patterns/people/civilizations. If we apply these vectors in opposite directions, our provivial efforts would tend to cancel out. Let us take war as an example: One side may defeat the "other" and declare "victory", but meanwhile many people have been killed on both sides rather than nurtured so that they could contribute to the provival of society; schools, hospitals, and other buildings have been blown up rather than built; violence has been given longer term credibility and inertia rather than discredited; and in general many patterns contrary to the pattern of human provival have been carried out and given inertia, and much energy has been expended that could have been applied more constructively and effectively to the provival of either humanity as a whole or to that of one side or the other. Two vectors pointing in the same or similar directions move much more quickly towards a common goal.

(It may be another interesting essay to consider the current Iraq war and of the so-called "War on Terror" in the context of the professed or likely goals of all sides involved. An additional factor in the dance of human patterns is the renegotiation of goals themselves, which takes place in the context of a hierarchy of goals, in which provival itself may be the "highest" goal, but the negotiation will affect the precise nature of what type(s) of pattern(s) provive(s).)

Like everything else on this blog, this is to be continued in future posts and/or edited above...

Alito Bit More

2005-11-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

Think they needled Alito in school with that pun?

Time magazine ran a story on Judge Alito this week, which portrays him as conservative, but cautious, analytical, one who carefully does the job of interpreting the law as it is handed to him, making it sound unlikely that he would overturn Roe v. Wade, and that even if he did help to chip away at it, it wouldn't be because of personal sentiments, but because of what the law told him to do. In the case where he supported spousal notification prior to an abortion, in his dissent he indicated he would have made an exception where the spouse was abusive. This would of course open up a can of worms in terms of defining and proving "abuse", and I think that anyway, while I sympathize with the expectant father and even with the sentiments of pro-Lifers, it is the woman's body, and it's up to her what she does with it. But, OK, let's say that, given the climate today, that Alito is sort of "moderate", moderately right, where I see myself as (ravingly) moderately left, although the scale has been tilted in recent years to make my moderation look far to the left (which will be another discussion to return to). Let's say that his version of "strict constructionism" is really just that, not an excuse to come to the conclusions he wants to and to bash "liberal" decisions, no matter how they were reached. That would be a judge being simply guided by what the law told him, doing his job in a wholly impartial manner, right? End of story?

But no, there is more to discuss... Stay tuned, I'll be back...

OK, I'm back. Hope you enjoyed the commercials. Like millions of people were waiting for me to continue writing this article. Since the previous paragraphs, Alito's opposition has found its "smoking gun" -- Alito's assertions 20 years ago that he thought the law should be used to fight against abortion. Maybe he would do so now, or perhaps 20 years later he will be truly scrupulous in upholding the law of the land, even if it is against his beliefs. But all of this raises exactly the question I've been trying to get to, one which is to some extent addressed in a book I studied in law school, Robert Cover's Justice Accused. When I thought about this book, I looked it up on Amazon.com and wrote a short review; I'll quote most of it here:

The book explores the conflict that occurs when a judge perceives that the law applying to a case before him is not a just one and will result in injustice if applied in the current case. Does the judge simply apply the law, or find some way around it to allow for a just result? This is an interesting question today, given the debate between "strict construction" of the Constitution and Holmes' popular notion that the Constitution is a "living document" whose interpretation must evolve with the times. The chief example used in this book is the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which a slave who had lived for many years on free soil, sued for his freedom, but was ultimately turned down by the Supreme Court.

I may have ended that review a bit too early. The point being, that Chief Justice Taney, wrote that decision on grounds of a lack of jurisdiction. He gave some indication that he new this was not "justice" in any grand sense, perhaps he even knew it was quite the opposite, but believed he was constrained by the Constitution. His Court had the opportunity to do a great justice, but presumably they could not do anything but allow the injustice to go on:

It is not the province of the court to decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. The duty of the court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

In theory, an "activist" court which also happened to be enlightened about the subject of slavery would have found a way to free Dred Scott, but a "strict constructionist" court, a court that felt constrained not to "legislate from the bench", had no choice but throw up its hands.

It's a difficult subject, because our country does have a separation of powers. The legislature legislates, the executive is supposed to execute the legislature's laws, and judiciary upholds those laws.

But what is happening when the executive and the legislature cry out that the judiciary is "legislating from the bench"? Are they honestly policing the process and upholding the Constitution? A few of them may think so, but I think the situation tends to be more one of "jealousy over powers" rather than an objective view of the "separation of powers". Remember how the Dred Scott Court threw up its hands at freeing a slave? Most of those who currently crusade to stop judge's from "legislating from the bench" (let's call it "LFB" from now on) want the Courts to throw up their hands whenever they encounter a conservative bugaboo, especially any one that involves corporate economics or unbridled Executive power. The Courts, in strictly applying the Constitution and the laws written and sneakily passed in omnibus legislation by an increasingly conservative clique of politicians and lobbyists, cannot interfere with the destruction of the environment, the erosion of the rights of laborers and ordinary citizens, with human rights violations in the so-called "War on Terror", with the theft of our tax dollars funnelled into pork barrel corporate socialism... for interference with any of this is perceived as highly inconvenient to the powers that be. So no no, imply the strict constructionists, we can't have the Courts go around and actually dispense "justice", they need to just stick with "applying the law" as it is written.

Is there something wrong with this picture? Is there a way out?

Stay tuned...

My feeling is this. The Constitution is a compassionate document. The Preamble to this document reads as follows:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is the paragraph that kicks off the Constitution, and it explains why the document is being written. Unlike the Declaration of Independence or The Federalist Papers (oft-cited commentaries by framers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay), the Preamble to the Constitution is part of the document itself, and so cannot be ignored -- but it usually is, especially by "strict constructionists" who are trying to tell us that the Constitution is a cold set of rules that can only be read in the narrowest sense possible -- so that the other branches can do any favor that they want to for their corporate pals. Yet this is the statement of the purpose of the Constitution which was agreed to by all of the framers of the document, and it practically begs us to ask the big questions about the rest of the Constitution: how can we apply this or that clause to help so that it helps us a form a more perfect union, establishes justice etc. How could keeping slaves ensure the perfection of our union? What justice is there in that, and what does it have to do with the blessings of liberty? There must be another reading of the word "citizenship" such that the Dred Scott Court could have found jurisdiction to free the man!

Still, justices can't go around inventing the law out of "whole cloth", as the strict constructionists often accuse them of doing -- "LFB, LFB!" As a law student, I read enough cases to know that every case does cite the Constitution and/or the other laws of the land that are deemed by the justices to be relevant. They are at least making reference to these laws. It is quite certain that the logic is often difficult to follow, and this makes it easy to jump to the conclusion that the logic is "tortured". Indeed, Griswold v. Connecticut's and Roe v. Wade's "right to privacy" emanating from "penumbras" in the Constitution may sound like a stretch, even if one agrees in principle with the right to abortion subject to reasonable limitation and that people should have a right to privacy from the government, certainly stretching to control of their own bodies. It might seem that privacy is at the core of many of our rights, but unfortunately the framers of the Constitution and of its Amendments chose to enumerate the more specific rights, missing the big picture of privacy and the specific instance of abortion. But the actual language of Roe makes a fair amount of sense, particularly with regard to the rights of the mother, and does not ignore the notion of the rights of the unborn altogether:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment, Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969); in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 8-9 (1968), Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 350 (1967), Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886), see Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting); in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S., at 484-485; in the Ninth Amendment, id., at 486 (Goldberg, J., concurring); or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923). These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed "fundamental" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967); procreation, Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541-542 (1942); contraception, Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S., at 453-454; id., at 460, 463-465 (WHITE, J., concurring in result); family relationships, Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944); and child rearing and education, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 535 (1925), Meyer v. Nebraska, supra.

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive. The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

To be continued further soon...

Comments on Israel

2005-11-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

I've added a couple of comments to the BBC website recently, both on the subject of Israel. You can participate in these and other conversations at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm.

On the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's death:

Sunday, 13 November, 2005

Rabin came close to a big step forward in Israeli-Palestinian relations, making his assassination all the more regrettable. But before we romanticize too much, I seem to recall that practices like bulldozing the homes of the families of alleged terrorists -- the families, not just the terrorists themselves -- continued under his command as the Prime Minister. But at least he saw that a way to get along had to be found eventually, and he tried to do find it.

On the opening of a new border between Gaza and Egypt:

Tuesday, 15 November, 2005

I can understand the fear of weapons coming in through the border. Yet I find it hard to believe that Sharon would agree to it without knowing what he was doing. Maybe it is that the weapons would be no closer to Jewish families than before, when they occupied Gaza and lived on that border, or perhaps they've devised suitable precautions, or even developed some level of trust with the Palestinians. In any case, I'm beginning to develop some respect for Ms. Rice as Secretary of State, although I still think she was a shill for the Bush Administration in her previous post, stuck with the job of systematically lying about yellowcake uranium all over the TV.

Honestly, prior to the invasion of Iraq, I felt as though "Condi" was spewing yellowcake out of her mouth everywhere she went, as though taking a big bite just before going on camera and talking, without chewing it at all. However, in her new position Ms. Rice strikes me as patient and determined and interested in achieving some balance, although I am sure I disagree with her on many, many points, not least of all her determined loyalty to Bush and his band of thieves. At best, she may be using them as a means to an end -- power, perhaps with some noble intent for using it wisely, a difficult task given the karma of "yes-ing" your way to the top, the preferred means of climbing in this so-called "Administration".

Sam Alito and the Springboard to Democracy

2005-11-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

According to Democrats.com's petition to Senators to reject Judge Sam Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court:

George Bush's nomination of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court is unacceptable. In his 15 years on the Court of Appeals, Alito has compiled a record of right-wing judicial extremism: requiring battered women to notify their husbands before an abortion; prohibiting Congress from restricting the sale of machine guns; prohibiting Congress from enacting Family and Medical Leave; allowing employers to discriminate against workers with AIDS; even allowing police to strip-search a 10-year-old girl. Alito's financial dealings are also unacceptable: he ruled on a Vanguard case while he had a large investment there, and accepted an unexplained gift of as much as $250,000 in ExxonMobil stock. Bush chose Alito simply to reward his far-right supporters. Sam Alito would be the deciding vote on the most fundamental questions of our time, and he would invariably vote against personal freedom and in favor of a corporate theocratic dictatorship.

Petition is here: http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/74

I signed on with the following added note:

When new Supreme Court members are chosen, there is a lot of talk about "strict constructionism", the strict and literal interpretation of the Constitution, restricting its meaning to what is there in black and white. Similarly, there is talk of "not legislating from the bench". All of this is well and good in theory. Legislators legislate, the courts interpret. But the Preamble to the Constitution, a part of the actual document, needs to be kept in mind: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." This sets forth the purpose of the Constitution, and therefore the light in which it must be interpreted. Liberty and Justice are just two of the principles that seem to have been forgotten in the decisions by Judge Alito which have been set forth in this petition. Please keep the Preamble and these cases in mind when you consider this man's nomination.

Unfortunately, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh seems to have decided that these online petitions are spam; to write his office, you have to go through his own webpage, everything else gets bounced. He is missing out on seeing just how many thousands of people are participating in petitions and protests, and would like their voices heard even if they are not writing letters from scratch. Even some of those of us who write for ourselves also can use the springboard which is provided by these online petitions.

You can email Senator Bayh at http://bayh.senate.gov/WebMail1.htm

I forgot to mention that when a politician says that a judge is "legislating from the bench", it means "I don't like the judge's decision." "The judge was only strictly interpreting the Constitution" means "The judge made the decision I wanted, but a lot of other people are disgusted by it, so let me help him hide beneath the cover of the Constitution". At least this is how it works much, if not most, of the time.

I also love that phrase "corporate theocratic dictatorship". Boy, what would that look like? A curious blend, to be sure, but the natural result of Bush's habit of placating his two-faceted "conservative" base, corporations and the religious right. Actually, the country has already been close to that condition, when there were no labor unions and children worked sixteen hour days, and you could be thrown in jail for sodomy. Or having an abortion.

Scooter, Coulter, Halliburton

2005-11-01T11:18:00.000-05:00

Reading up a bit on the progress of the Valerie Plame leak investigation, I ran across the following excerpt from a CNN interview involving Ann Coulter:
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/28/coulter-leak/

O’BRIEN: So there you have it, Karl Rove apparently escaping indictment, but that’s the good news. The bad news is, on goes the investigation. What are your thoughts on that one?

COULTER: That is like the worse possible outcome.

O’BRIEN: Oh, an indictment would be better?

COULTER: I think so. I mean, I don’t think indictments are particularly big deal politically. They’re a big deal for whoever gets indicted, but I don’t think it really matters to the White House. I’ve just been thinking, this is going to be lancing the boil. Let’s just get it done one way or the other this Friday. Either they get indicted and they leave, or they’re not indicted and it’s over. To stay under investigation — that is not the best possible outcome.

Responding to this and quite a litany of ad hominem attacks on Coulter, of whom I am admittedly not a fan but have no desire to harm as long as I don't have to watch her on TV, I posted the following:

I think an indictment for leaking information in order to help to cover up other information used to deceive Congress and the public into supporting a war would indeed be a serious problem for the administration, and would and should open up more investigations. I also think the shots are going beyond cheap here (not that I haven’t seen worse on conservative bulletin boards, Jeremy), but I will go so far as to agree that Coulter’s arguments and opinions have never impressed me any more than any of the other so-called "conservative pundits", a job for which the chief qualification seems to be the unwillingness to back down from the latest spin. One has to be a sort of a cross between a bulldog and a parrot, metaphorically speaking. But today, I’ll give Coulter a little credit for showing a bit of humility on behalf of the neocons, who should be chastened.

I also saw Joseph Wilson on C-Span yesterday, talking to the National Press Club. Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband and former Ambassador to Iraq, is considered to have been the actual target of Plame's outing as a CIA agent, as he had begun publicly speaking out on the fact that he had travelled to Niger on a quasi-official trip and determined pretty conclusively that no yellow cake uranium from there had been sold to Saddam, contrary to what the Bush Administration claimed after they should have had his report, buttressing their case for war with the fear of nuclear weapons which they didn't know to exist and which in fact did not exist. All of which, if I may say it one more time, has produced enormous profit for Halliburton, the company which still pays Dick Cheney a stipend (always follow the money when watching the Bush Administration). So in other words, for those who are confused by the talk of indictments, the Administration is accused of illegally exposing the identity of a CIA agent, exposing her to possible danger, in order to retaliate against her husband for exposing evidence that the Administration lied to get us into war. Add to this that the real motive for sending American youths to Iraq to fight and die may have been profits for Administration cronies, e.g. Halliburton, and one can begin to see why many people are calling for Bush's impeachment.

On a sidenote, Wilson seemed a bit puzzled by the fact that everyone but his family refers to his wife by her "maiden" name. The Raving Moderate (doing his best imitation of Miss Manners by referring to himself in the third person) is perfectly in favor of women keeping their name, or men changing theirs with equal frequency, but is also quite willing to call people whatever they would like to be called, and occasionally to call them things they don't want to be called.

BTW, I'd like to thank those folks who are at least watching my blog closely enough now to reply with SPAM comments whenever I add a new post. This is progress. Perhaps I will begin replying on your sites.

Proof Bush is the Anti-Christ!

2005-10-31T21:16:00.000-05:00

I was going back through my previous posts, and was amused to note that I'd made a reference to Bush as the Anti-Christ. Just casually tongue in cheek, to be sure, and even then not an outright assertion that he was really the AC -- only that it might be hard to believe that he's not. It might (or might not) be appropriate on Halloween to note that, a few weeks later, I was flipping through the few channels on my television set (I have what you might call "sub-basic" cable, the minimum you can order) and landed briefly on a program discussing such phenomena as the rock group Black Sabbath and the so-called "religion" of Satanism. Although film clips of the group rocking out and of Satanism founder Anton Lavey looking silly playing cheesy organ in a cape might at first have seemed like an amusement and even a pretty good advertisement for Sabbath records, the show turned out to be a couple of relatively sincere evangelical guys warning about the DANGERS of Satanic -- er -- stuff. However, when they quoted (I think) the Bible to remind us that the Anti-Christ would come dressed as a preacher or a prophet, I could not help but to stop and think once again that perhaps "W" was the mark of the beast this season. True, George W. Bush is not a religious leader in the strict sense of the term, but much of his appeal is through his own claim of being "born again" (videotaping his conversion at the feet of the Rev. Billy Graham, no less -- but was this a calculated move?) and the perception he wishes to bring forth policies in the spirit of true belief. Yet with his ill-advised adventures in Iraq, his wholesaling of the environment and natural resources, his brilliant plans to make nuclear bunker busters acceptable and bury nuclear waste next to earthquake faults, to arm all Americans to the teeth and set us against each other (OK, that's a slight stretch, but not that far, given recent legislation in Florida), all of which seems to lead to the short term profits of his mega-wealthy but incompetent cronies... and on and on ... you can't help feeling he's leading us to Armageddon. By the time he delivers what the Religious Right presumably really wants -- an end to abortion -- we'll all be dead, from war, radiation, bullets, pollution etc. There will be no more babies to deliver and not much of a world for them to be born into. Now that's a macabre thought.

Boo! Happy Halloween from W!

Just another way of saying it here...

2005-10-12T13:52:00.000-05:00

Impeach Bush petition here:
http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/65

Here's the note I added to my Congress members:

In every regard, it becomes more clear all the time that the Bush Administration thinks it is running the government for the personal benefit of Bush's cronies, through laws, policies, and the appointments of yes-men and yes-women that benefit the Administration's best friends and contributors at the very top of the corporate ladder. It's already criminal to sacrifice what's left of our environment for these sordid goals. To sacrifice human lives directly in the cause of falsely conjured wars is the ultimate insult to the people.

I forgot to say, "If this ain't grounds for impeachment (high crimes and misdemeanours), I don't know what is!"

Hanging on to War

2005-10-08T14:36:00.000-05:00

Here's my reply to a young man in the local student newspaper, hanging on to the presumed righteousness of the Iraq war, in the context of the new terrorist bombings in Bali. I must admit that I failed to pay attention to the Bali question in my reply, and will have to give further thought to the connections. Brian Stewart's column may be found at
http://www.idsnews.com/subsite/story.php?id=31610&adid=opinion

Ah, "Publius", thou art but a young fool, daring to call over half the country "naive" when you still seem to believe that if things are bad enough somewhere, war must be the answer. Basically, you just ain't lookin' at the whole picture. But perhaps the testosterone coursing through your veins has blinded you only temporarily.

Hardly anyone disagrees that Saddam is a bad man, and made for one hell of a nasty dictator. Still, removing even the nastiest of dictators isn't necessarily synonymous with "liberating" the tyrant's country. First of all, the means to the end was horrible, and Americans mostly only viewed sanitized footage of what went on. Thousands of people, many of them innocents, were killed and mutilated by our bombs. Just about everybody else in Iraq has had their livelihood and survival plunged into lasting uncertainty, which brings us to a second issue, the actual outcome of the war, which has been mediocre at best, potentially catastrophic at worst. Sure, the war got rid of Saddam, taking power away from an evil dicator. But did we liberate the people of Iraq? Let me use an analogy. If you meet a family who is in chains, remove their chains, but then, whether or not it is your intention, leave them lying in a minefield without a map, have you liberated them? You can hardly deny that living in Iraq today is like living in a minefield. Aside from the literal minefields there, there is of course the minefield of terrorism.

Who created the minefield of terrorism? Surely it is the terrorists who conspire to create this unholy hell, which somehow they see as a holy act. They seem to believe (somewhat as you do, "Publius") that countering a perceived evil with evil can somehow result in good. They are wrong, wrong, wrong to be doing what they are doing. But, frankly, the war helped them to get there, by creating a vacuum of power and by making the United States occupation look bad enough, whatever our intentions (the subject of a future conversation, perhaps), to create a fertile recruiting ground for new terrorists. This was bound to happen, and saying so is not a matter of hindsight. Months before the invasion began, I downloaded a poster depicting Osama bin Laden dressed as Uncle Sam, pointing a finger and declaring "I Want You to Invade Iraq". A sad comment, indeed, but I knew it was true. Later, by allowing torture to happen and looking for exceptions to our own rules about treating prisoners, "our" side made things that much worse in the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people, of young Muslims, and of people everywhere.

It is not that we should be afraid of angering terrorists. We can't capitulate to their threats and terror, thus allowing them to realize their ambitions of power. But that doesn't mean that just any old thing we do that is "against" them is morally acceptable, or even helpful. We must dissipate their appeal by acting morally ourselves; Muslims and all other people of good will should have little or no cause for grievance against us, of the magnitude that leads young people toward terrorism. Again, terrorism is always wrong, and, yes, the terrorists bear their own responsibility for choosing this path. But in almost any feud -- whether between families, clans, nations, religions or some combination thereof -- both sides almost always bear much of the responsibility for being stubborn and insensitive to the needs and grievances of even total innocents born on the "wrong" side, for exclusively blaming real and imagined enemies while refusing to look within for responsibility, and simply for either not realizing or not caring that even seemingly righteous violence sows the seeds for more violence, often lasting centuries into the future. Everyone must consider the consequences of their own actions, even if some of those consequences proceed indirectly through provoking "bad" people whose responsibility is therefore also great.

After all of this, we can only hope that a new Iraqi Constitution will not just be approved through the process that has been put into place, but that it will successfully provide the means to govern the country according to just principles, leaving both the people of Iraq and people everywhere better off. If, my young friend, and I do say "if", if that happens, we can reasonably ask "was it all worth it?" Even then, we must take into account the viewpoints of untold numbers of mothers who had their children killed and mutilated by both sides, as well as everything else that has been stirred up. Even if the answer is "yes, it was worth it, and it was the best we knew how to do at the time", we must further ask "Is there a better way for us to accomplish these goals next time?" We might start this inquiry by studying the work of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There's a lot more to this war thing than meets the eye, "Publius", and a lot more than I've said here. But consider my words well, my young friend, and perhaps we shall speak again.

Cronyism: The Bigger Picture

2005-10-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

I took the Moveon.org "How Are We Doing" Survey today, which ended with the open-ended question, "is there anything else you'd like to share with us?" This is my reply to that question.

I don't know if we have to go rabid over every single so-so appointment Bush makes. What we need is to go after and educate people about the Big Picture. In the case of the Bush Administration, the Big Picture is what is finally being recognized as cronyism. But it goes well beyond rewarding Yes-men and Yes-women with good jobs that they're not qualified to do, the way Time magazine recently portrayed it, albeit as a cover story. Jim Hightower (Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush, Thieves in High Places) and Greg Palast (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) have nailed it more precisely. The really key jobs are going to exactly the people who want to do the opposite of what the jobs are for, often for their own or for their own cronies' profit, like giving control of the EPA to anti-environmental corporate lobbyists, with Bush Pioneer fund raisers benefitting in particular. So the country is being sold out; the environment that sustains us and the lives of our young men and women who, bravely if perhaps foolishly, become soldiers, are being traded for profits in the forms of avoiding regulation, allowances for pollution, and war profiteering. The government is being run essentially by a criminal network, a gang if you will, of "business" people who are willing to quite literally destroy everything we hold dear to make a quick buck! To build a movement, people need to see the fundamentals of what's going on, and this extreme of Faustian bargaining is what's dominating the current Administration's policies. Some appointments and policy maneuvers are more crucial and emblematic of the phenomenon than others, and those are the ones we really need to focus on.

Let me add what has become somewhat of a common place disclaimer, but one which bears repeating. Bush and Co. did not invent cronyism. They have just taken it to new extremes, and these extremes threaten untold lives, and almost everyone's way of life. At best, as I've mentioned before, maybe they know not what they do; but make no mistake, they're doing it.

Rolling Stone on Bush the Polluter

2005-09-23T16:54:00.000-05:00

I have to say that Rolling Stone has put out some of the best, bravest, and to the point articles criticizing the Bush Administration. My question is, could he and his cronies really be so evil, or is it possible that they just comprise a culture of spoiled brats with too much power who knoweth not what they do? Of course, the theft of our natural resources -- of the very environment that allows us to live and breathe -- for the short-term gain of cronies and contributors, figures prominently. Check out this one, full text at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7605389.
If you happen to be one of those who still sees Bush as some sort of war hero or savior to family values, well, follow the money, baby. The spoiled brat scenario is about the best we can hope for, but with that much power behind his indulgences of his personal friends at the expense of, well, all of humanity and the very environment that supports our existence, sometimes it's hard to believe that Bush isn't the anti-Christ.

A Polluter's Feast

Bush has reversed more environmental progress in the past eight months than Reagan did in a full eight years

By TIM DICKINSON

What can you say about the environmental record of an administration that seeks to test pesticides on poor children and pregnant women? That argues in court that a dam is part of a salmon's natural environment? That places a timber lobbyist in charge of the national forests and an oil lobbyist in charge of government reports on global warming? That cuts clean-air inspections at oil refineries in half, allows Superfund to go bankrupt and permits the mining industry to pump toxic waste directly into a wild Alaskan lake?

Only this: It's about to get even worse.

Read on.

Fractal Love

2005-09-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

One thing that's encouraged me to remain interested in spirituality and optimistic about the human condition is the theory of fractals. You know those beautiful, psychedelic looking, brightly colored, swirly patterns generated mathematically from Mandelbrot sets (or something like that)? What got me about fractals was that they were patterns within patterns. When you zoom in on the picture, you see the same picture. And to a certain extent, it appears that these patterns within patterns do well at depicting aspects of physical reality.

So, it occurred to me one day that perhaps if there is a fractal nature to the universe, then patterns of goodness, of morality, of caring, of love, which we do see manifested at the social level, may not only exist in this finite and transient microcosm of earthly life, but may be writ larger in the very nature of existence. The same goes for consciousness -- our little lights of awareness may be part of greater awareness. Of course, the same would then likely be the case for the "negative" aspects of our existence -- or, if we look at things in a somewhat more detached manner, the "yang" to our "yin" -- such as hatred and war. But still, with a grain of hope that our little bit of paradise is not all there is in some vast, cold universe.

Spouting Spirituality, Religious Rambling, Theological Thoughts

2005-09-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

Since I've mentioned God a few times, I should probably add, for the curious, that I'm not a "Christian" myself, just what you might call a "fairly spiritual person", who is far from perfect himself but has real values, and that's some of what is driving this blog. I waxed a little "theological" in a previous post, and that's a side of being human that's worth a look every now and then. The reason I don't affiliate with a specific, organized religion is that I personally feel that whatever "God" is, it/he/she is greater and more unfathomable than any codification or understanding created by humans, which I suppose makes me closer to some forms of Buddhism than anything else. One might refer to my ramblings about chaos theory -- as a finite human being, I can barely begin to fathom the physical universe or the workings of the society I live in. How can I fully fathom God, or expect any other human to do it for me? I think many, perhaps all, of the great religious works can point a finger in the right direction, but none is so complete as to preclude learning from the others, and all, if they are not occasionally misleading in themselves, can be misinterpreted and/or used to mislead. Religious wars are the most egregious examples of religion being used to mislead. God didn't create us to all be the same, nor do we need to eliminate conflicting points of view. We're all looking at the same thing, just from different angles. We'll probably get closer to the truth if we take as many angles into account as possible.

Crony Connections

2005-09-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

I posted the following, along with signing a petition to protect forest lands, on The Petition Site The particular petition can be found at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/202243741, along with many other petitions posted at thepetitionsite.com. In terms of the contours of Bush's cronyism, I'm not the expert, but I mainly want to point out some sources that are pretty hard to argue with once you've taken a look. To me it was always just kind of obvious; whenever I saw a new Bush initiative, I would just ask myself "What industry benefits from this". The answer was usually Energy (and I'm not talking about solar cell startups) or Defense (let's allow the tactical use of nuclear "bunker busters" and finally retake the lid off of Pandora's Box after 60 years!!). We the People are allowing "W" to sell our country from underneath us.

My impression is that cronyism drives both appointments and policy in the Bush administration. Agency appointments are given to contributors, friends and their lobbyists whose chief interest is to gut the agency they are appointed to in order to maximize profits. Policies and laws are composed by the same people, or with them in mind. See, for example, Jim Hightower's Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush or Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy for numberous examples. This pattern fits the administration's "work" on the environment and on Iraq. Nevertheless, the people must not be "cowed", and must continue to raise their voices, for instance through petitions like this one, if we're ever to slow down or stop this disgusting display of Pigs at the Trough (Arianna Huffington's book on the same subject).

On the redeeming side, the New York Times Magazine, in its cover story, reports that Bono Vox of U2, who is not only a rock star but an activist who manages to run in top government circles around the world, claims to be able to make some headway with "Christian Conservatives" by actually appealing to their Christian sides and quoting the Bible. So it may be worthwhile to find those CC's who are actually sincere about their beliefs and question then a little more closely. Is it possible that George Bush really cares about his professed Christian values, making it somehow possible get past the selfish, lying about his military service, crony-paybacking-at-the-expense-of-all-humanity, spoiled brat to show him the error of his ways? I hope somebody tries. Good luck getting past Karl Rove, his Machiavellian Mephisto. --The Real Raving Moderate

Smoking Guns in Iraq

2005-09-22T21:38:00.000-05:00

The thing is, that Downing Street memo is nothing special. It merely states someone's opinion that the Bush Administration was working backwards, twisting the facts to suit the theory rather than other way around, as Sherlock Holmes once observed of an adversary. It's a telling insider observation, but not a smoking gun. Similar observations have been made by Clinton and W's former terrorism czar Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies. Again, not quite a smoking gun, but Clarke does point in general terms to earlier "writings and speeches" by the likes of Cheney and Wolfowitz, and also to the fact that former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill also thought that these Administration insiders had been planning all along to attack Iraq (p. 264). The "writings and speeches" might provide a bit more of a smoking gun were someone to identify the key passages. Even without that, all the rest of the above, taken together with the cronyism evidenced by Bush's appointments (see my next posting) and by the administration's awarding no-bid contracts, in Iraq and now in Louisiana, to the likes of Halliburton, who apparently overcharges and in many people's opinion does a lousy job but still pays Dick Cheney a $194K annual honorarium, is enough circumstantial evidence to convict any ordinary defendant. And those things are all documented in the media, not speculative rumors. Bush is using his office, sending kids off to war and making a shambles of everything from the environment to foreign policy, for the profit of his inner circle.

A Society of Rules

2005-08-02T00:30:00.000-05:00

The pragmatic theory is that we live in a society of rules, which are created in order that things will function smoothly. The question for rulERs then becomes what it is it we would like to have function smoothly. Is it everybody's lives, all of society in harmony with the environment which sustains us? Or is it simply the lives of the rulers?

Then there is the meta-rules theory, which is that rules are rules because they are rules, either because they are created by a higher power, or just because they are rules. We don't need to understand them, they are there to be obeyed.

All of this can also be very convenient for people who are in the position of being rulERs, who may in fact be following the narrow version of the pragmatic theory (personal gratification) while preaching the broad version (fairness and/or equal opportunity, which may not be the same thing in a zero sum game) or some version of the meta-rules theory.

Either way, they're ripping you off.

Some would suggest responding violently. In general, though, violent revolutions are also rip offs, and their leaders are gratifying themselves in one way or another, whether through the sheer sense of power and "glory" or through the wealth that can come along with power, at the expense of those they lead, and certainly not in accordance with any higher power. If the early leaders are sincere, someone will soon come along in the chaos of revolution to steal a personal advantage.

Mahatma Gandhi, in titling his autobiography, termed his life "My Experiments With Truth". The truth about rules, I think, is that they are convenient creations of man which function best when they are created in accordance with Truth. Truth on some level can be equated with Tao, which I have seen defined as "the Way Things Work". So Truth is both practical and relating to whatever higher power exists; to me, it is both personal, somebody watching and listening, usually at the edge of consciousness, as I write and think and live, and speaking to me, telling me what it is, and it is everything, the way of things, the nature of existence itself and all the myriad qualities it takes on, he, she, and it. Verging on pantheism!

But I wax nutty. That's OK, we all have our version of that.

Does this help us to make better rules? What was the nature of Gandhi's experiment with truth, and what sort of rules does it suggest we follow -- and why? How are they practical? How are they spiritually motivated?

Tune in next week to find out! It's a cliffhanger, and I have no idea how it will conclude. Well, maybe I do, I just have to ferret out the answer. Or maybe this is just another loose end in the blog.

Well, maybe I'll ramble on a bit more.

Lesser leaders tend to fear the truth, because the Truth will suck out their power, if their power is based on lies. Truth is leverage, at least to the degree that Truth is embraced by the people and they allow it to decide whether they give or withdraw their support for the leader
(Impeach Bush!). It is usually then that the leader must rely upon violence. If the leader was right, violence would not be necessary, because the power of Truth does not rely upon violence for its existence. Truth against lies will win eventually, but must be buttressed by conviction and strong arguments, which can be derived by keeping the focus on Truth. Lies cannot be as strongly buttressed by those elements, and so tends to reach for violence as a crude way of silencing its competition. An alternative to physical violence is to simply shout down (Bill O'Reilly) one's opponent, which is nevertheless violence: spiritual and psychological violence to the person being shouted down, especially while trying to speak of the Truth, and violence to Truth itself.

Incoherent Ramblings Rave #2 (Updated 9/23/2005)

2005-07-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Note: I'm attempting selectively publish what I expect are essays in progress that will grow significantly longer over time, but allow the reader to eavesdrop to some extent on my "thinking out loud." After all, my primary goal is to stimulate thought and debate in the world at large, and only secondarily, for the sake of shelter and bread, to garner some sort of recognition for my own thinking and writing. So, since it's not about bread, why not start the discussion while it's still half-baked? (How noble you are, pretending not to be a raving moderate egomaniac, then throwing out your paltry humor!)

Outline:
Us & Them, You & Me
Order & Chaos

"It's Us versus Them." "It's Us against the World." "It's Me against You." "It's just Me against the World." "It's CONTROL versus KAOS. Would you believe it?"

"Pick your battles."

It's all a matter of perspective. Let me throw in one more.

"We Are the World."

Maybe I'd better take these little quotations one by one, although I'm supposed to be rambling incoherently to get the ideas out there. Anyway, these are all slightly different perspectives on how we view the world, on what we think are important units of organization. Do we identify with a group? Only with ourselves as individuals? Do we feel a part of a greater whole, of which all human beings are a part? So I don't mean to be too organized, but here we go. Most individuals, by the way, are, in my opinion, a blend of all of the following:

"It's Us versus Them." This seems to be the mindset of the so-called "War on Terror", or perhaps it is just as well termed a "War of Terror" depending on whose "side" one is on (or not) and how objectively one is willing to think about it. This is a competitive point of view in which the individual identifies with a greater whole ("Us") composed of some identifiable subset of humanity, which might be composed of one's family, or those of one's religious affiliation, nationality, ethnicity etc. Other subsets who are not a part of this subset (and are therefore viewed as "Them") are chosen as a focus of emnity and competition. The reasons for this may be realistic, largely historical, illusory, or intentionally or unintentionally promulgated to manipulate the group. In most cases it is a combination of the above factors, with further input from the motivation to rationalize some sort of political or economic gain, or even merely a catharsis of violence.

"It's Us against the World." The affiliation to the group has become so strong that everyone else is considered to have some sort of a problem. This can happen in at least two ways. One is that the group has such cult-like qualities that it acquires an extremely powerful primacy in the minds of its members. The group promulgates a worldview which the membership comes to accept as infallibly correct. Meanwhile the rest of the world, whether by birth or by training, is far enough off the mark that they must either be converted, suffer some egregious punishment, or even be eliminated.

Another factor in an "Us against the World" point of view may be one of historical and/or current persecution. Many religions and ethnicities have at least a mild sense of some such persecution; if it comes from several different quarters and the group does not form strong alliances with outsiders, to one extent or another the members may have trouble trusting anyone outside the group as much as those inside the group.

"It's Me against You" or "It's just Me against the World." To one degree or another, all of us are alone in our individuality, and we are fighting or working for our own survival or self-interest. Some may primarily feel a part of a group, but even then, the individual's worldview is bound to conflict at some points with the received worldview of the group and/or with that of individuals within the group who may be central figures in one's life. This may lead to conflicts with the other individuals, with one's own group, or with others in the world, in which one feels one is standing alone. At some point, an individual may feel his or her aloneness as having primacy over any sense of group affiliation, and thus stands as "Me against the World". This is usually harmless to the world at large, in some cases may be beneficial as it brings about unique ideas that might be stifled by "groupthink", but in extreme cases might hypothetically be an important factor in the behavior of psychopaths whether merely murderous or, as in the case of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, having a certain self-important sense of idealism.

"It's CONTROL versus KAOS. Would you believe it?" I throw this one in as a reference to the 60's spy spoof TV series, "Get Smart". Although the show was played mostly for slapstick laughs, there is some depth to the irony that the bumbling, chaotic US spy agency was named "CONTROL" and operated for the purpose of fighting "KAOS", another bumbling spy agency, roughly equivalent to SMERSH in the James Bond films. When we look at the efforts of the current US government administration to "control" terrorism or even control the chemistry of all the different groupings of people in competition across the world, if either is indeed their goal, we have to ask ourselves if they are not in fact stirring up a greater proportion of "chaos" than they are ameliorating in the process?

In fact, I think this question is one that any movement, organization, or effort to reform or improve the world, coming from any mix of the above perspectives, has to ask itself. We operate in a complex, interwoven world in which many forces are at play, so many forces that the system probably should be considered as "chaotic" in the scientific sense of the word that implies an exquisitely sensitive system in which small actions may have large consequences, such that our focused attempts at creating some desirable order may produce larger patterns of disorder in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Introducing a new force or stimulus amidst such complexity, though intended to create greater stability, may create greater instability, as it is arguable that George Bush's intervention in Iraq has done.

"We Are the World." The theme song from 1985's Live Aid concert may be hackneyed in some people's minds, perhaps even mine, but it's key phrase is philosophically important. It may even be important to the survival of humanity as a species. It is a shift in perspective that may be viewed spiritually, or may also be viewed mathematically from a systems viewpoint. To me, the two are intertwined, although I am neither spiritually all that high nor much of a mathematician. Simply put, each object or system we think of as a "thing" is part of a greater "thing". A fingernail is part of a finger is part of a hand is part of a person is part of a population (say, "Americans" or "Christians" or "Muslims") is part of a greater population (the population of the planet) is part of a greater system (such as the ecosystem of the Earth) is part of a still greater system (like the Universe)... is, perhaps, a part of "God" or "the Infinite". And we can go smaller as well; the fingernail is made up of cells, made up of molecules, atoms, subatomic particles... down to the most infinitesimal "thing" we can imagine or manage to talk about, and perhaps God is found there, too, the substrate to all existence. In any case, we are a part of everything, and we are intertwined such that everything is a part of us as well. Chaos theory, at least in layman's explanations, postulates that a butterfly flapping its wings may be a proximate cause of a hurricane thousands of miles away. It is only one of billions of tiny causes, but if it hadn't flapped its wings right then and there, and everything else had stayed the same: no hurricane. That is how connected our existence is.

Given this complexity, we have no choice but to simplify so that our brains can handle reality and make choices. If we were butterflies, we would have no choice but to flap our wings, and we have no choice but to act in the world. But if a butterfly can make the difference to a hurricane, what are the consequences of such choices as sacrificing large chunks of our environment for short-term profit or creating a power vacuum in Iraq -- choices whose enormity and absurdity are already evident, but whose ripple effects are almost unfathomable? So we must try to view things with some complexity even as we are forced to simplify our thinking relative to the vastness of existence and the infinite interactions of cause and effect.

Shot London Bombing Suspect "Not Connected"

2005-07-25T10:19:00.000-05:00

From BBC News:
The Met Police Chief has insisted that the policy of "shoot-to-kill in order to protect" should continue.

Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27 was shot dead in error by police at Stockwell Tube station as part of the inquiry into attempted bomb attacks. He was later found not to be connected to the incidents.

Met Police Chief Sir Ian Blair has apologised to the family and warned that more innocent people might be killed in the fight against terrorism.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/4711189.stm

My reply to this "Talking Point":

It's not entirely clear to me what evidence the police had to lead them to such drastic measures. What should be clear, however, is that there are thousands of relatively dark-skinned people in London carrying bags of one sort or another, the overwhelming majority (to say the least) doing so perfectly innocently. It should also be clear that yelling the word "police" does not conclusively identify one as a police officer, and that merely running from the police does not necessarily identify a person as particularly dangerous. Here in the US, many people would run from the police merely because they are carrying marijuana, or simply because they are distrustful of the local police's treatment of minorities. These are factors that armed police in London, dealing with terrorism, will have to learn to take into account. Shooting to kill is not "protecting" if the person shot is not a dangerous criminal. One has to accept a degree of ambiguity in society -- anybody could be a dangerous criminal, but most people aren't -- if the cure isn't going to be worse than the disease. Here in America, we are still wrestling with the problems presented when the government grants itself too much power in order to "protect" us from terrorism.

Consumer Kvetch Rave #1

2005-07-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

(Maybe I should start mentioning "rave" in all my blogentries. I hear the kids enjoy "raves", perhaps they will find me on Google when looking for another one. Then I put on ads for glo-sticks and make a fortune. Anyway, here is the rave, or blogentry, a new word I thought I just coined, except that it already has 70,000 hits on Google. But has anybody else pronounced it with the soft "j" sound yet, making it a general term for "the art of blogging"? OK OK, here it is, remember the title is Consumer Kvetch Rave #1...)

Artificial preservatives I kind of understand. Who hasn't savored the pleasure of eating eighteen month old pickles out of the jar? Personally, I thought the vinegar was supposed to do the trick, but hey, let's add a little Polysorbate 80 for good measure! Who says it causes cancer? And, hey, not everything is pickled to begin with. Personally, I'd rather eat fresh food (or merely 12 month old pickles), but OK OK, I understand. It might kill me down the line, but for now it saves me the horror of opening up the package and having something green and hairy walk out of it.

But artificial color and flavor I do not understand. Yuk! With those nice, bright colors, now I'm seeing with my own eyes the laboratory chemicals you're feeding me, which makes me feel the cells turning and multiplying into a deadly mass somewhere inside my body. But the FDA doesn't outlaw anything anymore, at least not when there's major corporate backing. And hey, Mr. Moderate doesn't really have cancer, he's just suggestible, hypochondria runs in his family. He's as healthy as an ox, and we feed livestock this stuff all time. And, oh, BTW, let's give an extra big dose of that to children, they love colorful stuff. What a great idea.

Artificial flavor? I get to smell and taste the test tube's contents, too? Oh boy! No, give me something real so I can have an ingredient list that doesn't make me scratch my head. How much could a half a teaspoon of real vanilla extract cost you, better yet the real bean, which should be cheaper because it hasn't been poked, prodded and "extracted" yet?

And, oh, BTW, I can add my own 800 mg of sodium if I really want, and you can keep the fraction of a cent you saved by leaving it out, instead of charging me 50 cents extra for being forced to continue storing it in your warehouse and making you print "low sodium" on the label. The same goes for the pesticides you didn't have to use on the head of organic broccoli that I splurged for, thinking I might actually get that fifteen seconds of added life from broccoli and not have it get cancelled out by sprays. No, I'm not libelling your *%#$ sprays and all those other chemicals, just, er, expressing my involuntary, knee jerk moderate response to them. But you all corporate interests are probably going to sue me anyway. Well, you'll be squeezing blood from a turnip. Of course, if it's a GMO (genetically modified organism) turnip, anything is possible. But that's another blogentry.

I WANT REAL FOOD! I AM CONSUMER, HERE ME ROAR! MAKE THAT "RAVE"!

Incoherent Ramblings #1

2005-07-21T13:16:00.000-05:00

If you've read anything else on this blog, you may think that this is not the first installment of incoherent ramblings, but this will take incoherence to a new level, until finally it all comes together and coheres. At least that's what I'm hoping for. I think. I'm looking for the grand structure of current events, politics in general, economics, religion, life... Oh yes, Douglas Adams said it best in one of his book titles: "Life, the Universe, and Everything." But mostly politics and economics, because these are controlled by humans, and have so much influence upon their lives.

What is the overarching struggle here? Greed and hunger for power v. compassion and caring. Greed and hunger for power, I think, are bred from fear and insecurity, and the whole package is taken to a nearly psychotic level in high level politics and economic activity. After all, if you have incredible amounts of wealth and power, why would you feel an insecure need to exploit those who are less advantaged? "I must have more." No, you have enough to live the rest of your life in comfort, pleasure and splendor. Why do you need to wring a few more dollars out of people who may not be able to pay for food or medicine? Part of this problem may be driven by the capitalist emphasis on competition. Competition is supposed to lead to better products at cheaper prices. Sometimes it does, but a continuous drive to become bigger and cheaper eventually leads to a downward spiral, as concerns for the environment and the conditions of labor are completely shouldered aside in order to gain every advantage to keep the corporation in existence, squeeze out every penny of profit, and keep the shareholders and an overpaid CEO happy. But in cases like Enron and Worldcom, even the shareholders and finally the concern for the existence of the corporation itself seem to get squeezed out, in favor of an overly powerful CEO and handpicked executive buddies who will even sacrifice the corporation and its constituents to make a buck or a hundred million, and have a nice party in the process. Currently, the United States government in particular appears to be in alliance with such greedy multinational corporations and entrepreneurs, and has no problem with their devastating refusal to take responsibility for the broad consequences of their actions. Meanwhile, the incredible machine that is our environment, our link to existence, is allowed to crumble, and deadly poverty is ignored, sometimes even encouraged to continue.

Criticizing the US government or capitalism is not to deny the tremendous corruption, greed, and decadence that occurred under the heyday of Communism. Either way, you have those who are in a position of wealth and power taking advantage of their situation to get more of the same for themselves, at the expense of the people. The Cold War, we should realize, was not mainly fought as a struggle over what system would most benefit the people of the world. It is better explained as simply a struggle over power (and wealth and privilege), which is why so many committed Communists became committed to capitalist "reforms" after the fall of the Soviet Union. There are genuninely committed socialists, and even genuinely committed "capitalists" who aren't particularly greedy. But the Cold War had a name for them, which was slyly batted around by both sides in reference to the other: "dupes". Not that their idealism lacked beauty, only that it was irrelevant.

"I must have more." But what for? To deny death? We will all die someday. To prove oneself to some other neurotic figure in one's life, who also clings to excess wealth, power, and/or privilege for a sense of self-worth? This neurosis feeds itself with success: when the greedy get what they want, their drive is psychologically reinforced, and their coffers, their means to run roughshod over human beings and the planet in pursuit of even more, have grown larger.

In a hypothetical world where people have been brought up to believe that the role of a human being is to care for other human beings, one will have the security of knowing that others will help one to look after oneself, and this will give the individual the freedom to reciprocate, taking care of others, knowing that this is the fabric that enables human existence to not just continue, but thrive. In a competitive world, the role model one sees is to compete. If the competition is harsh, one must be harsh, or such is the feeling one gets.

Our world is a blend of these hypothetical worlds, but competition has been exalted and then spun out of control, so that the rich are in a state of desperate neurosis, while the poor are increasingly in a state simply of desperation. If we continue this way, we will destroy ourselves. And yet, this is only a small piece of the puzzle.

BBC: Muslim leaders in call for action

2005-07-15T22:19:00.000-05:00

Muslim leaders in call for action

Muslims protest against terror at a rally in Leeds

Britain's top Muslims have branded the London suicide bombings "utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely un-Islamic".

Click on the title for full story.

Thank you to these leaders -- very nice to find this after my last rave a few minutes ago!

And the World Goes a Little Blinder

2005-07-15T20:50:00.000-05:00

And now I hear that someone started a fire in the Islamic Center mosque in our peaceful little hamlet of Bloomington. It was at night, so no one was hurt, thankfully. The leader of the mosque has gone out of his way to say that he condemns both this firebombing and the recent bombings in London, and that the Islamic community and the Bloomington community at large get along well. I agree with every word. But some fools had to do this anyway, though Bloomington Muslims had about as much to do with London or 9/11 as local Christians had to do with the Crusades or the Inquisition.

Let me reiterate the quote from Asimov: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." You local boys (girls??), you firebombers -- do you know who blew themselves up in London? Ignorant kids just like yourselves, although probably guided by a few more experienced -- yet still ignorant -- folks with more connections to create more impressive devices and orchestrate a media event. They gave you an excuse for more of the same, so now perhaps you've given them an excuse for still more of the same. It was apparent to me as a nine year old, reading a book about ancient Scottish klan wars (no offense to today's Scots!), that this type of eye for an eye behavior was both a continuing horror and an exercise in futility. Then, a couple of decades back, I begin to perceive that the same thing was happening in Israel/Palestine and in Northern Ireland. Then 9/11, followed by Bush's forays into Afghanistan and Iraq. Who do terrorists -- whether "Islamic radicals" or "radical right-wing Republicans" or whoever -- think they're benefitting? They're just digging a deeper hole for everyone, including those they claim to be representing. There are always legitimate issues to be discussed, sometimes very serious ones pertaining to grave injustices, but violence helps no one.

So who are the competent, who do not need to resort to violence? Well, I'm not sure that the fellow in Asimov's Foundation novels who uttered that line is the best role model -- there was a sort of a neo-Machiavellian storyline, as I recall. But the people who do strike me as the epitome of highly competent non-violent activists are Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. Gandhi was instrumental in freeing India from the British raj by harnessing the power of love -- as he himself would have understood his actions. He refused, condemned and sometimes fasted against violence in any form, but took direct and dramatic action to illustrate the will and resolve, as well as the plight, of his people. One can easily get a taste of an understanding of Gandhi through the 1982 movie bearing his name, although more study would be helpful for any serious activists. King was an admirer of Gandhi's methods, and his marches and sit-ins paved the way for anti-discriminatory legislation, while his speeches continue to echo in our hearts to this day.

I personally don't have as solid reference points in the Islamic traditions, but a search on Google for islam and non-violence quickly turned up this excellent article, reminiscent of Gandhi's point of view, near the top of 150,000 hits:
Non-Violence and Islam by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. Coincidentally, the website is associated with another "Islamic Centre", located in India.

If one cares about God and Love, as Gandhi and King did, and author Khan does, it is assuredly better to rely on non-violence than violence. We tend to justify violence by saying that there is no other way, that we are dealing with hopelessly bad people (who after being knocked about a bit will, along with their friends, consider us hopelessly bad people). But if we have any kind of faith -- mine is a bit abstract, so I think even more so if you are truly religious in a spiritually connected way -- then it must be true that there is a better way, and that it can and will win. And for those who have no faith left at all, who have turned cynical, a bit Machiavellian perhaps, nevertheless I say that violence is but a blunt club and you are only smashing things when you resort to it. A violent solution to any problem will only disillusion you once again, as it did in Vietnam, as it is doing in Iraq, in Israel, and now across the world, as the world keeps going a little blinder. But there is hope here, as more people grow disillusioned and frustrated with leaders from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush, as more people stand up for justice (millions of people physically attended Live8, to say nothing of watching in on TV -- we can only hope that there consciousness was raised a little! Mine was!), as more people disown violence on every side and realize that the greater community (on every side) wishes to live in peace with justice, although we must work our way out of a system that is rife with violence and injustice, some intentional and some systemic.

Ethics and Efficacy

2005-07-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

For the moment, other than obvious anger and sorrow, my response to the bombings in London, and to the past four years since "9/11", is simply to reference two of my favorite quotes. These should be given due consideration by those from any quarter, whether government or rebel, who are contemplating immoderate actions:

"An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind." --Mahatma Gandhi

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." --Isaac Asimov, in the Foundation trilogy

G8 (Short for Gee, I ate the whole world!)

2005-06-29T15:10:00.000-05:00

Heading to Philly for the Live8 gatherings, if not the concert, with my buddy Kathy, without whom I would not do anything quite so crazy. Posted the following related comment to the BBC, concerning the G8 Summit that these gatherings are scheduled to coincide with (again, not expecting it to get posted. Need to find a good, real bulletin board!):

The most powerful countries exploit the rest of the world and leave it in desperate shape, then offer loans to fix things, but only in return for concessions aimed at facilitating further exploitation. Of course these loans should be forgiven. Perhaps Nelson Mandela said it best: "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is manmade, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings."

Whaling

2005-06-23T00:38:00.000-05:00

Seeing that whaling nations are lobbying for bans and restrictions on whaling to be lifted, I sought out the area on the BBC website where you can leave comments. Not that they ever publish my comments. Even bulletin boards that don't screen comments tend to censor me, though, so I figure it doesn't make a lot of difference. The main reason I read the BBC, besides that American news these days tends to pussyfoot even more than the stodgy old Brits, is that I can put their newsfeed in my toolbar in Firefox. Anyway, I was kind of shocked that the debate looked to be about 50/50, lots of people willing to let other people kill and eat the few whales that are left. So here's the comment I left at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4104044.stm. It may not get published there, but it's sure getting published here! BTW, is anybody reading this?? Hello? Hello?

If we can hunt and eat animals as intelligent and sensitive as whales appear to be, I see no reason why we humans are generally prohibited from eating each other. There's a few billion of us; I think that would be sustainable, and oh so tasty. Of course we should all believe it when whaling nations tell us that whaling is sustainable, just as we believe it when tobacco companies say that smoking cigarettes is healthy and promotes youthful vitality. If you are caught eating whale, by the way, say that it's "just a fluke".