Tag Archives: Science

What did you do against the war Daddy?

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Victims of Marine post-IED massacrePeople on all sides of the anti-war issue ask me what we’re doing with the peace camp. What are you thinking you can accomplish with it anymore?

I have to tell them it’s for conscience. For my part, I can’t let each further day of this country’s immoral actions go by without expressing my explicit repudiation. I’m struggling to know what more I could do, and I’ll participate in this meager gesture of objection until I do.

Will there be any changing of minds among the indifferent masses? I don’t know. Their passivity and pig-headedness has brought on this authoritarian dictatorship, and soon enough with the tightening of economic screws the people will feel the oppression they perhaps have coming.

And those complicit in these schemes today may prosper for a while, until they themselves are sheparded into the have-not classes.

Or, if you believe that truth and justice will ultimately prevail, then those complicit parties will meet their fate. Maybe it will be karma, maybe it will be a citizens tribunal. I’d certainly like to be there with the noose. A blacklist will suffice.

We had scheduled a sidewalk intervention today at a local public radio station. They’re kicking off their fund drive this weekend and we were hoping to lobby potential supporters to put in a word for adding DEMOCRACY NOW to the station’s lineup.

Well, a confrontation with the station manager this morning left us prematurely fatigued. He doesn’t want Democracy Now. Our hurdle is that not enough members know about the show to want it, and the manager won’t let Democracy Now be mentioned on the air lest more listeners hear about the grassroots effort to add the program.

It’s an uphill battle with little reward. There are too many ill-informed listeners who will think we are trying to harm their favorite station, and there are just enough misled radio station workers to stand in the way. In the end we are simply doing the station manager’s job by lobbying for better programming. He’s paid to do that. He’s entrusted to that.

Today is Earth Day and we’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Unsustainable argument making

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I attended Colorado College’s symposium about the expected effects of climate change upon the Rocky Mountain region. There was less discussion about adapting to the certain change than there was about hoping still to prevent it.

By focusing on trying to undo global warming, the discussion had to quantify the changes and of course explain their causes. This opened up the door to arguing the causal links, leading to the idea that perhaps we need do nothing at all.

I don’t know but I think I expected to see live scientists deny global warming. What scentist is going to deny global warming? Should be a good show! What I learned was how they deny it. It’s boring but instructive.

Our panel consisted of a student researcher who presented a study of current and forecasted climate change, a representative of the ski industry to present their plans and efforts, and two professors to explain the science. The professors were a father son team from UNC and USC respectively. While they might smilingly present themselves as advocates of environmental issues, I’d call them spoilers.

Elder Roger Pielke went into the technical gobbledegook concluding… nothing. Probably the scientific community needs those guys, but don’t put him on a public panel. His part: spirited, unquestionably qualified, perhaps even well meaning, obfuscation.

His son Robert Pielke explained the need for more unbiased research. Too many scientists have spoken out in alarm about global warming, thus they are biased and their research cannot be trusted. We’ll need more unalarmed scientists to weigh in before we can conclude anything. Follow that logic? This was Pielke’s lesson: always question the motive of a researcher.

Great lesson, in reverse! Someone seeking to deny the warming, underwritten usually by big oil, coal, and general industrial interests, that person’s research might be wise to scrutinize. What pray tell might be the ulterior motives of the 70% of scientists who are currently expressing their alarm about global warming?

Junior Pielke’s approach is the same argument we hear from the unIntelligent Design proponents. Question the motives. Scientists are biased against a deity apparently and therefore evolution findings cannot be trusted. It’s good advice to question the motives. What are the creationists’ motives? To further our understanding of the physical world or to bolster increasingly fallable-looking poppycrock?

Don’t we hear that argument everywhere? Never mind Bush’s motives for slaughtering now up to 250, 000 Iraqi civilians, question the protestor’s motives, no doubt they do not support the troops!

The 250, 000 casualty figure comes from the British medical journal The Lancet, previously unquestioned when they presented their estimates of civilian casualties in the Balkans and Africa. Question their motives. The Lancet figure, estimated to be lower than the probable casualty count, came from American, English and Iraqi doctors. No doubt their ulterior motive is to save lives.

Illegal immigrant abuse

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Low wage construction workforce
If you absolutely must excercise your racist compulsions, here’s how you can do it and do your part to combat the illegal immigrant problem in your neighborhood. When you see hispanic workers, report them!
 
More specifically, if you see what look to be underpaid laborers where you might expect to see hardhat union workers, report what you’ve seen to your state labor board, or local union. Tell them the contractor or subcontractor name you see printed on the side of the truck. That’s who’s breaking the law.

It’s true that your domestic variety Americans are not queuing up for migrant worker jobs like picking produce. Those jobs do not pay very much, and possibly cannot pay very much. Needless to say, you never run across those workers anyway. Like sweatshop seamstresses, migrant workers labor in inhospitable environments far from Caucasian American consciences.

What you do see, at construction sites across from where you live, or in cleaning crews where you shop late at night, are hispanic workers who are doing jobs that could just as willingly be performed by non-hispanics. If white folks like you are hurting for jobs, this is where the so-called illegal alien problem is hurting you.

First off, there is nothing wrong with hispanic peoples working good jobs, and the non-white person you spy may be a perfectly documented American citizen like you. But if they are being paid below-standard wages, then that is against the law, regardless of whether the workers are undocumented.

If you report them, and the workers turn out to be illegal immigrants, then they will get in trouble and the asshole racist in you will get your little thrill. But more importantly their employer will get in deep trouble and that is critical.

In businesses like construction and cleaning, the contractor is charging relatively the same amount to contract the job as his competitors. Have you ever heard of housing costs going down on account of savings on construction labor? These contractors are simply pocketing bigger profits because they have access to illegal immigrant labor.

That is the illegal immigration problem in a nutshell. The problem is not the immigrants. Rather it is the illegal jobs offered by unscrupulous, greedy employers. It is for the benefit of such scumbags that Bush and Co are trying to ammend the laws dealing with illegal immigrants. They want to legalize the too-low wages already being paid to the immigrant workforce.

Report those employers to the labor board. Report them to the IRS. Report them to your city, county and state departments of revenue. Why? Because in order to hire undocumented workers, those employers have to undocument their work. This means those companies have to keep phantom accounting records to cover for the activity for which they cannot report having hired anyone. That’s breaking so many laws it IS funny. Report them!

Sheehan power

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Cindy Sheehan has no peer in the world. She can travel to any country and be received by their governments as a dignitary. Few celebrities or politicians can expect such treatment, and when they do, their entitlement comes from being plugged into the establishment.
 
Cindy Sheehan’s power comes from the people. It comes from our belief that an outsider could make a difference in the turn of events. The American media could easily have ignored Cindy Sheehan’s stand in Crawford Texas, but Sheehan had captured the public’s fascination. Why? Because she reflected the public’s idealism. As long as the ordinary people of the world believe that there exists someone who could call President Bush to the carpet, Cindy Sheehan will be imbued with her power. Who other than one improbable woman could face off the man who holds the fate of the world in his hands?

This Easter Cindy Sheehan is returning to Crawford Texas to lay siege one more time to President Bush in his lair. Since initiating her movement in August last year, Sheehan has participated in diverse actions, including a Thanksgiving reprise in Crawford which led only to several prompt arrests. The media has learned that as public attention wanes, it can ignore or temper their enthousiasm for Cindy Sheehan when it wants to. Again, Sheehan’s power comes only from us.

Perhaps it is again time to rally to Sheehan’s side. Maybe joining Sheehan’s vigil in Crawford for Easter can once more focus the world’s hope that the peace movement can plant itself before George Bush’s eyes.

We can rally in large numbers all over the world, but because the media can typify the effort as lacking cohesion, it can certainly pretend that the peace movement is peopled by malcontents who offer no alternative.

Cindy Sheehan offers a real alternative, and I think she has hit on an ideal strategy. Not just withdrawal from Iraq, but an appeal to Bush’s conscience. He may have one.

Jill Carroll mainstream media medium

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pictureWhen reporter Jill Carroll was released after being held hostage for 84 days, fellow reporters wanted to confirm: surely Carroll had been coerced to say the things she did on a video interview made by her captors.
 
They accused Carroll of Stockholm Syndrom, of showing too much sympathy for her captors, and ultimately of being in a “Fragile” mental state.

What was it that Jill Carroll said which was met with such disbelief?

Tens of thousands . . . have lost their lives here because of the occupation.
I think Americans need to think about that and realize day-to-day how difficult life is here.
[Iraqis are] only trying to defend their country . . . to stop an illegal and dangerous and deadly occupation.
The mujahideen are the ones who will win, in the end, in this war.

1. Try 25 x ten thousand, according to the latest Lancet study. 2. Shouldn’t Americans think about that? 3. & 4. These hard truths are getting harder for the media to deny.

pictureThis is more candid than anything Carroll was ever “forced” to report for the Christian Science Monitor.
 
In the end Jill Carroll was brought back to the fold. Here she is shown being escorted by an American commander, even though the U.S. military had everything to do with impeding her release. Note too the coat she is wearing. Carroll traded her head scarf for the occupier’s camouflage jacket.

Giving Catholicism its due

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I might never have imagined myself saying this, being somewhat agnostic in my practices, certainly atheist in my personal dialogs.

I had a Catholic upbringing, even some years at Catholic schools. I’ve railed against the dogma of organized religion, the counter-intuitive belief system that seemed always to oppose scientific philosophy.

I’ve felt victimized by the guilty self-restraint which tempers a Catholic’s view of pleasure. Sex for example seemed all the more exciting for what it shouldn’t be, as opposed to what it is. The vague admonition that a person should choose a mate within their faith took on real meaning for me when I discovered myself drawn to similarly prudish partners, Catholic.

Dirty laundry aside, in the civic and philanthropic realm, I am encountering a great number of Catholics, disproportionate to the other more predominant American religions. Why is this?

It’s true that many of these Catholics are no longer practicing, in fact many are rebelling still against their upbringing. In the do-gooder crowd this seems especially true.

From a humanist perspective it is hard not to condemn the Vatican’s stand against prophylactics and its resultant impact upon AIDs ravaged Africa. It’s hard also to regard the church’s patriarchal edicts as anything other than stubborn sexist recalcitrance. In fact when independent-minded people gather to rail against what are felt to be oppressive religious forces, they are most usually recovering Catholics.

Maybe we should give Catholicism its due. The Catholic Church may have launched countless lives into trajectories of self-doubt, but it implanted those lives with a spiritual center. Those brains formed themselves around spiritual ideas which, even if it rejected them, knew that some spiritual idea or other should reside there.

That’s my radical, none to complicated developmental theory.

I hit upon this topic when I read today about Cindy Sheehan having been a Catholic youth minister. Are there quite a few Catholics in the anti-war movement? There certainly are. Would the number seem disproportionate? Frankly, yes. In Colorado Springs, bastion of fundamentalist protestantism, the anti-war community is driven by a majority of Catholic or former Catholic activists.

Why is that? Catholicism can’t lay claim to being more spiritual or more ethical than any other religion. Where are the Protestant voices among the protesters? We need to wake the dormant consciences of that majority of American churchgoers.

Whatever the spiritual practices to which we now cling, ex-Catholics should be thankful for the awakened sense of humanity with which we were imparted.

Free the captives

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Shrine for war captivesFor Tom Fox,
Jim Loney,
Norman Kember,
Harmeet Singh Sooden;
for Jill Carroll,
all Western hostages,
all Eastern hostages;
for all detainees held without charges
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo,
and CIA black sites around the world;
for prisoners of conscience everywhere.

Tookie and the myth of non-violent protest

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A police beatingTonight the state of California is scheduled to execute Stanley Tookie Williams, co founder of the Crypts, after Governor Schwarzenegger made the determination that Williams was not sufficiently redeemed to merit clemency.
 
All sorts of state and local organizations were abuzz about the possibility of riots should Williams be executed. The consensus was to urge every riot minded person to remember that the reformed Williams stood for non-violence.

Now isn’t that just like an authoritarian state to honor Stanley Williams with non-violence in word, while perpetrating institutional violence in deed against his defenseless body?

I’m not sure what could be accomplished by public violence in this case, but the threat of violence from the masses has always played a significant role in holding off the authoritarian ambitions of greedy bastards.

These days of protest against the war have raised profound anti-violence issues, extending from transcending human nature to the more applied martyrdom for the purpose of igniting support. But the immediate result and absolute result seems to be that the bullies get to keep all the marbles.

We are told to respect Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and now Tookie Williams for their seasoned non-violent teachings.

No one is prepared to point to Castro, Mao or Chavez as examples of rebels who resorted to violence and who brought their people to greater prosperity as a result.

I saw a documentary about Tibet recently, in which the Dalai Lama was praised for leading his people in non-violent opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama can be respected for governing his people in exile, for maintaining in them a sense of hope that their kingdom will be regained. That sense of hope is perhaps the most important motivation they have for keeping their language and cultural heritage alive. The other alternative is to face that they will be a displaced people forever. Each then might better embrace assimilation into their host cultures and prosper.

The reality is that even should Tibet be regained, the westernized and worldly Tibetans would probably not return to their feudal heritage. And the other reality is that Tibet will never be regained.

Holding firm to a policy of non-violence has certainly saved lives, but it has lost principles. The real wisdom of the Dalai Lama might have been the assessment that the Chinese forces would have proven insurmountable and that too many more Tibetans would have perished with the kingdom lost none the less.

Will non-violence prevail over the Chinese occupation? There is no precedence to offer that hope.

We like to credit Gandhi for having proven the efficacy of non-violence, but that is sorely inaccurate. Gandhi sat on the back of the dying elephant of British colonialism, until it collapsed. And it may have collapsed by his sitting on it, but it had been weakened and battered by a century of violent rebellions. British colonial rule in India ended because the elephant had been driven to its knees by many countless uprisings and massacres which the British public could no longer countenance. It took over one hundred years of struggle against oppressive rule to drive the British out, and Gandhi was fortunate enough to deal the death blow by sitting down.

Nelson Mandela too is credited with leading a non-violent takeover of South Africa. Anyone who has read Mandela’s auto-biography knows that this is a misrepresentation. Mandela’s struggle began with violence and then he was incarcerated. Involuntary non-violence.

Martin Luther King provides an example of non-violent martyrdom affecting the conscience of a democratic population. King would be the best model for non-violent protest were we to inhabit a similar circumstance. It is doubtful today that our media possesses a conscience to report about oppression and inhumanity. Likewise it is doubtful that we have retained any meaningful democracy. It remains our horror to discover that public opinion or outrage will affect our governance not one bit.

Isn’t it just like a bully to admonish the rest of the schoolyard to uphold principles of pacifism? The only thing that will bring down a bully is a collective agreement to take him down. Pacifism works against the bully because he knows that if he makes a martyr of somebody, the others will rise up like a mob. Behind non-violent protest lies a looming urgency of violence.

In defense of fundamentalism

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Mankind is going in circles.

When you look at the Greek histories you can see periods of democracy and liberty lead to corruption and oppression, until the next democracy emerges centuries later.

From the dark ages emerged the Renaissance whose sun is still shining on our times, if perhaps just our subconscience by twilight. For we are descending again into darkness, this time a secular dark age.

The common man’s adventures in self fulfillment are going off cycle.

Advances in medicine and science, our understanding of the natural world, make us think that humanity is progressing. But this is not progress. this is merely complication. Who’s to say that a scientist has any better grasp of the workings of the universe than does a shaman? Because you can read a book doesn’t mean you can throw it further.

In philosophy as well as science, there is a sense that through time, each successive thought builds upon our past. Yet you’d be hard pressed to find a scholar who could say that any philosopher or scientist has surpassed yet Aristotle. As Eisenstein was to be with film, so Aristotle was to rational man: medium fully explored.

From an Eastern perspective, Buddhism has for quite a long time been trying to raise the world’s consciousness. An admirable goal, but has it succeeded from one generation to the next?

Man’s personal development certainly goes in circles. Development leads to entropy and decay. Vitality flourishes then becomes decadence. By the time you have a culture preoccupied with its sex life, you’ve got a people with a spirituality going nowhere.

You can look around today and see signs of this decay everywhere. Look at the ultra-violent video games or at a mass media obsessed with sex: a sexuality absolutely removed from procreation.

While it’s hard to explain why any of these preoccupations are vices per se, they are traditional signs of end times. They accompany the death of culture, as the decline of the Roman Empire, as before them the Greeks. They signal biblical end times like Babel, Sodom and so on.

To champion personal freedoms may feel righteous. What feels more natural than the motivation to explore and indulge our personal proclivities? But perhaps this is only hastening the end of our cycle.

Why not instead try to transcend this downward curve?

Fundamentalist religions do this. They deny human nature because they want to transcend it. They see mankind’s weakness to succumb to idolatry and self destruction and they think maybe this time they can avert it.

That’s my guess as to what they think they are doing.

Hubris-gate

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A big question regarding Rove-gate, ignoring for the moment that it’s taken the Downing Street Memos off the table, is how could the man who is Bush’s brain have committed such a blatant and easily prosecutable act?

It is being argued that the man who got Bush elected, the man behind the most nefarious machinations of the current regime, has orchestrated even the accusing fingers pointing his way. It is contended to be his plan that he’ll be vindicated on the revelation that it wasn’t actually him but a subordinate. Henceforth Rove will be be beyond critique for having been falsely accused.

The theory is plausible, considering again that it has taken the Deerlove revelation off the radar, which threaten a larger indictment of our administration. It might be a better strategy not to pursue Rove at this time.

But let’s address what may have happened as opposed to the debate over whether it matters.

I contend that it was hubris, ego maniacal hubris that lead Rove to leak the CIA identity of Valerie Plame to the press. The same battle of egos that sees our leaders on the left wishing to see Rove fired.

Hubris

The Plame leak is being summarized as a politically motivated reaction for Ambassador Wilson’s stand against the war. Well that would be half the story. It’s seen as a warning to others who might consider blowing the whistle. That would be another half. Can you see the Republicans as spoilsports, saying “damn that Joe Wilson, let’s burn him?” Maybe. I can envision an even less flattering scenario.

Wouldn’t it be more likely that Valerie Plame’s CIA role, and the safety of all her friends and contacts worldwide, was the Achilles heel that kept Joe Wilson in line? That might even be the technique used with most of our diplomats overseas: recruit their family members and friends into the CIA where they will forever be compromised?

It is often contended by host nations that our diplomatic corps are ridden with security operatives. Memoirs and historical accounts bear this out. We’re learning with the Plame revelation that there’s an acronym for operating under diplomatic cover, just as there is an acronym for operating without diplomatic cover. And it seems the former is more common than the latter, without the black passport that’s a get out of jail free card.

Yes the Plame leak revealed much about how our intelligence agencies work. But let’s get back to what may have happened to Joe Wilson.

Joe Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate suspicions that Iraq tried to buy uranium. Was this a real fact finding mission? The letters which suggested such a transaction were already considered to have been fake. Let’s not forget that they were faked by someone, and it’s hard to imagine it would have been anyone but us who would have produced them. No other interest is served. So let’s say Joe Wilson is sent to Niger to confirm the suspicions and build upon our case for a war against Iraq.

Joe Wilson was a safe choice. In the lingo of the mob, he was a made man. His wife being a CIA operative, their friends and acquaintances in every country they’d been would be in jeopardy if Plame’s identity was revealed. Plame’s coworkers at the fake firm which gave her cover would be suspect and jeopardized, as would all their contacts and friends.

And so Joe Wilson had too much to lose if he come back from Niger and reported that the documents were fake, as was the fabrication that Iraq was accelerating its acquisition of uranium.

And Joe Wilson did not make a big deal about it when he came back. It was only on the verge of war that Wilson had a pang of conscience and he made his case. Again, not as a spoilsport but as leverage to stop the inevitable war.

What would you do if you held a whistle blower’s secret? Would you sing to the press and wreck every future job prospect for having shown disloyalty or would you go to your boss and try to influence a rehabilitation?

Joe Wilson did just that. He contacted his superiors in hope that the truth about the false charges against Iraq would deter the administration from going to war.

And so it would have been a battle of wills. Who does Joe Wilson think he is?! We can burn your wife, you know that?! How dare you think you can upset our plans! You are made and we can break you.

And Joe Wilson was playing a similar tack, I can show this Niger story to be false, how dare you nutcases go to war!

And as the cat got out of the bag, the administration threat couldn’t be seen to come to nothing. If Wilson was a made man, there had to be some means to make it mean something.

I see it very likely that Rove made the call himself to Robert Novak. Rove has top billing as the brains of the outfit, he may have felt invincible. And to remain invincible you have to cut Johnny come lately off at the knees.

When someone says “fuck you!” How hard is it not to say “fuck you” back? There’s not much satisfaction in having someone else say it for you. You certainly don’t creep off and have an underling go back and say it for you.

When you’re powerful, you want to say it yourself. Joe Wilson can’t cross me. Imagine the phone call. “If you cross me Joe, I will personally see your world destroyed.”

A season of French hurricanes

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Hurricane Pepe

Who is naming these hurricanes? Hurricane Gaston? Hurricane Frances? Hurricane Ivan?

Sounds like a republican in the National Weather Service is naming this season’s major storm systems, recalling the countries who most opposed the war in Iraq. Is that idea too far-fetched?

GASTON? That’s a common name for a boy, in France! FRANCES? Well I suppose that’s something a little less subtle for Americans who don’t recognize any french. And IVAN? Let’s see, who else opposed us about the war?

What’s next? Hurricane Fritz? Gunther? Maybe just GERRY! The fourth signatory against us was Belgium. What’s a Belgian name? Hurricane JACQUES BREL!

It shouldn’t come as a suprise that the NWS might be politicized. After all, even The National Science Foundation is being made to refute the cataclism that is global warming, against all international consensus. Which leads me to another worry:

Absentee ballots. Everyone is hyping absentee ballots as a means to pre-empt republican operatives from stealing the elections. But those ballots have to be mailed in. We have to be able to trust the US Postal Service to deliver our ballots. Do we know there aren’t republican directors planning to re-direct non-republican votes into a circular file?

This just in. The next storm system after Ivan… brewing in the Atlantic… threatening the Dominican Republic… It’s… Hurricane JEANNE! JEANNE D’ARC?

It occured to me that weather systems are usually named in alphabetical order. They’re named early on, and the ones to hit shore are the ones we hear about. It looks like there were two other minor storms they thought might make the news: DANIELLE and HERMINE!

Kerry’s French some people say.

Janet Jackson’s boob

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Boob Non-grataWhat exactly happened at this year’s superbowl haltime show? Pop sub-luminaries Nelly and Kid Rock lead the extravaganza. Then a fading Janet Jackson closes with a decade old number, and bares her breast, creating a furor over the uncontrolable nature of live TV.
 
Now the networks got a reason to put a time delay on two upcoming events, the Grammies and the Oscars: the two forums at which left-leaning Hollywood types might have wanted to speak their minds about the war and the state of the nation.

Now anything untoward can be bleeped. And knowing they would be bleeped, celebrities can ease their consciences that there wouldn’t have been a point to even try.

Would it be conspiratorial to wonder if someone approached Janet Jackson with the idea? Jump start her lagging career with an idiotic stunt, handing the yellow press an excuse to silence Hollywood in this year of Vietnam Revisited and a president moron trying to stay in office?