The Wizard of Speed and Time!

Great! No more need be said.

NPR's Scott Simon Speaks Glowingly of an Amercan Idol

This morning, Saturday, February 13th, NPR has done one of those things that the media regularly does -- provided us with a case for comparison.

One of the US's better known idolaters of war, former Senator Charlie Wilson, died on February 10th. Scott Simon eulogized him very personally on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. It was a fawning string of inanities from an NPR host who has worked for years to perfect a breathless, simpering delivery.

Absent from Simon's treatment was anything even remotely resembling the slander attack of David Horowitz on Howard Zinn provided via Allison Keyes.

My suspicion (indeed, certainty) is that a thorough review of politically charged obits would reveal this kind of 'fair and balanced' treatment by NPR and most other so-called news organizations in America. Of course, in the eyes of NPR and Scott Simon, Charlie Wilson was _not_ a politically charged figure. He was adored by Democrats and Republicans alike -- which accounts for all of the political spectrum in NPR's field of vision.

Another illuminating comparison (albeit, not of two obits) is that of Yasser Arafat, who was gently villified (to put it as best I can) on his death and Ariel Sharon, who was lionized when he became comatose though he is every bit -- and far far more -- the war criminal Arafat was. Indeed, Simon himself offered another of his utterly hollow accounts on the occasion of Arafat's death. Simon recounted being held by Palestinian captors briefly. His captors pointedly asked whether Simon was Jewish. (It probably goes without saying that Simon has never noted virulent anti-Arab racism in Israel.) The point is that Simon felt no need to offer mealy-mouthed accolades for Arafat. Moreover, he made 'relevant' an irrelevant detail that had nothing to do with Arafat, but did serve Simon's purpose of demonizing, en masse, the entire Palestinian people -- just as the inclusion of Horowitz's slander served NPR's purpose of diminishing Zinn.

There are a great many critics of Zinn, some conservative, some liberal, some left-wing, who could have added some texture to any recollection, though it is plainly clear that the NPR and general US media standard is to offer near-unalloyed praise -- unless there is a 'need' to take the person down a few notches, or flaws so glaring that they must be at least acknowledged. Thus, in the case of Sharon, the briefest mention is made of Sabra and Shatila. Likewise, in the case of Reagan, the treasonable and impeachable crimes of Iran-Contra are mentioned -- but only in passing.

It is for the American Left that the special case arises, where it is necessary to slander the dead, lest their views be too popular.

The American Prospect

Below is my response to "Time Is Running Out," Bob Herbert's February 6 essay in The New York Times:

For most Americans, the economy Bob Herbert fears may develop has been an established fact for some time. The Reagan years marked the start of a steady decline in prospects. Younger Americans and many in middle age have little if any expectation of living better than their parents. The servile grovelling of Obama and Congress at the feet of Wall Street and the Health Insurers are really only a reminder that the US has institutionalized oligarchy in every sense but the constitutional one.

Worse, the uninterrupted militarism of the past 60 years is actually escalating under Obama, hard as that may be to believe. At least medicare and social security unambiguously help Americans, if (perhaps) somewhat inefficiently (certainly no more inefficiently than private insurers do). The obscene military budgets have been blown on needless wars evidently calculated to inflame hatred of the US around the world.

Frankly, the lives of people in Germany look pretty good. They have health care, five weeks of vacation for all, and need not fear a life of abject poverty after retirement. They still value science, engineering and art. And they are aware that it is necessary to live with the rest of the people of the Earth -- a fact most Americans flatly deny.

Below, the section of Herbert's essay that I respond to:

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

The conference was titled, “The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment.” It was put together by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm.

When Governor Rendell addressed the conference on Wednesday, he used words like “stunning” and “unbelievable” to describe what has happened to the nation’s infrastructure. His words echoed the warnings we’ve been hearing for years from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which tells us: “The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook and on the quality of life of each and every American.”

The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society, and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government.

I was struck by the absence of grousing and finger-pointing at the conference and the emphasis on trying to develop new ways to establish an economy that is not based on financial flimflammery, that enhances America’s competitive position in the world, and that relieves us of the terrible burden of reliance on foreign energy sources.

I was also struck by the pervasive sense that if we don’t get our act together then the glory days of the go-go American economic empire will fade like the triumphs of an aging Hollywood star. One of the participants raised the very real possibility of Americans having to get used to living in an economy “that won’t be number one,” an economy that perhaps is more like Germany’s.

The Newest Mandarins [in progress]

George Packer, Michael O'Hanlon, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Kenneth Pollack,....

These are among the Yes-Men in the realm between actual policy-makers and the public. They rarely if ever offer original thinking. They instead practice the art of balancing, positioning, triangulating to ensure their greatest possible acceptability to the mainstream — the received wisdom.

A Lexicon of Childhood

Here's an ongoing dictionary of the great expressions kids come up with. No particular order, not very long, and depends on whatever they come up with.

nastarola (adj.) generically, mildy nasty.

lasterday (n.) similar to yesterday, but specifically referring to the day of an event. (e.g., "Lasterday, when we went to the zoo, we got cotton candy." Thus, not the immediately preceding day, but the probably recent day when the zoo was last visited.)

the first beginning (n.) As adults, we think of a book beginning on the first page of the story or text, perhaps on the title page. But "the first beginning" is the first page of the book, literally — perhaps a flyleaf or an endpaper.

baby in a bird's nest (n.) A Christmas tree ornament of the infant Jesus in a cradle of straw.

Jesus Crisis (expletive) Corruption of Jesus Christ.

damage (expletive) Corruption of "damn it"

baby Zeus (proper name) Greek American child's answer to "Do you know what Christmas is about?"

"Fix the law." Anything that is broken can be fixed. So in response to "They broke the law," the response might be "Can you fix it?"

chocolate (adj.) Anything that tastes about as good as a thing can taste. Vanilla soy milk is 'chocolate'; Peach smoothie is 'chocolate'.

ganges (n.) Corruption of "gadgets," of the kind that Batman frequently uses.

stupidhead (n.) Means exactly what it sounds like. "Head" can be appended to many derogatory adjectives to produce an unflattering noun.

babyhead (n.) Much the same meaning as "stupidhead". Often said by an older sibling.

na-nana-poo-poo (?) Usually precedes "you can't catch me!" Meaning obscure.

ballgum (n.) Corruption of "gumball".

Elmo Juice (proper name) More generally N juice, where N is the commercial pop-figure used to get kids to buy the product, in this case juice.

Hot tub powers (n.) The special category of superpowers acquired after a first childhood experience of a hot tub.

"If you shoot the moon, it will make fireworks."

Clark Klent (proper name, Tue. April 7, 2009) Alterego or alternative identity of Superman.

The Clue (proper name, Sat. June 13, 2009) Confusion of the name "Riddler" from Batman.

Turning wheel (n.) a doorknob

more to come . . .

Supreme Injustice Alito Performs for Millions

Some are asking whether Supreme Court Injustice Samuel Alito damaged the Court's credibility with his mouthing of "not true" during President Obama's State of the Union Address. But the Court had precious little credibility anyway. The Supreme Court (or, more accurately, the right-wing injustices) threw away the court's credibility with Bush v Gore. Whether it is hopelessly lost remains to be seen.

Individual injustices — namely Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas — have discarded credibility repeatedly with their predictable support of big business over individuals, the rich over the poor and conservative government over the rights of the people.

So the Supreme Injustices are predictable, reliable in some twisted way but certainly not remotely honorable.

As for Alito's performance during the State of the Union, he should count himself lucky Obama didn't dress him down more. The president used the most mild language. He could easily and rightly characterized the ruling of the Fallen Five as one of the worst decisions in American history.

The Supreme Injustices, the conservatives, are accustomed to being able to humiliate those appearing before the court. They are accustomed to asserting their opinions with the servile accolades of a captive audience. So it must have been tough for Injustice Alito to have to sit still while Obama treated his crimes so mildly.

It's Not Just Global Warming

In the public arena, environmental issues have been reduced to global warming. Big mistake. Here are a handful of headlines from the past month or so (and this is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg):

Common chemical found in everything from sofas, carpets to pots, pans linked to increased risk of thyroid disease. http://bit.ly/76NSH1

A common household chemical found in everything from sofas and carpets to pots and pans has been linked to an increased risk of thyroid disease, in the first major study carried out on its effect upon health.

The substance, used to make nonstick cookware, stain-resistant furnishings and greaseproof wrappers, is believed to get into the body through contaminated food or household dust. Once in the body it accumulates in organs and other tissues.

People with high levels of the chemical in their blood were found to be twice as likely to have thyroid problems as those with the lowest levels, according to a survey of medical records of nearly 4,000 otherwise healthy US adults. The study is published in the journal, Environmental Health Perspectives.

Scientists said they cannot be certain the chemical is directly responsible for the rise in thyroid disease but called for a full investigation to assess its safety.

Studies in animals have found that the chemical, PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid), and a sister substance called PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate), can cause thyroid problems and a variety of other medical conditions, including hormone imbalances, liver disease and cancer.

"It's been thought that because they're inert they don't cause any health problems, but we're starting to see some evidence that is suggesting that's not true," said Tamara Galloway, professor of ecotoxicology at Exeter University. "Because these chemicals are inert they are persistent and they build up in the environment and also in human and animal tissues."

We all have trace levels of PFOA in our bodies that we pick up from the environment. The substance is so stable that it persists for years. It has been detected in people around the world and in wildlife as diverse as birds, fish and polar bears.

From Bill Moyers Journal:

Chemicals In Our Food

May 23, 2008

There may be a potentially dangerous chemical leaching into our food from the containers that we use every day. BILL MOYERS JOURNAL and EXPOSÉ: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS examine why, even though studies show that the chemical Bisphenol A can cause cancer and other health problems in lab animals, the manufacturers, their lobbyists, and U.S. regulators say it's safe.

In a watchdog series for the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, a trio of reporters focused on Bisphenol A, a chemical contained in many plastics that is also found in 93% of human beings. The problem at issue? Congress ordered the federal government in 1996 to begin testing and regulating certain chemicals suspected of causing cancer and a host of developmental problems. Eleven years later, not a single compound has been put to that test.

You can read the full series "Chemical Fallout" online, plus ongoing coverage of the fate of Bisphenol A. On May 15, 2008, the SENTINEL reported on some new Congressional hearings:

Members of a Senate consumer affairs subcommittee faulted federal agencies for reacting too slowly to concerns that children are exposed to bisphenol A through leaching from common items such as water bottles, baby bottles and the linings of food and baby-formula cans.

More study and more debate is anticipated.

President Zero

President Obama, from now on President Zero, has demonstrated the success of Democratic political strategy of the past 30 years, a strategy best exemplified to day by the most powerful man in the administration ... Rahm Emanuel.

Martha Coakley exemplified this strategy in Assachusetts: Ignore the common American, kowtow to the rich powerbrokers, insult people needlessly.

Let's review key points of Obama's winning strategy:

• Do nothing to hold Bush administration war criminals accountable for their crimes.
• Reward Wall Street for its crimes.
• Pack your administration with advocates for Goldman Sachs and the Clinton-Reagan-Bush programs of deregulation, like Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Peter Orszag, Austan Goolsbee
  
• Blow off liberal economists and related thinkers like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Brooksley Born, Michael Hudson, Elizabeth Warren, Nouriel Roubini, . . . .
  
• Charge the American people to support Wall Street billionaires's bonuses.
• Do little or nothing to aid average workers in the work economic downturn in generations.
• Fight disclosure of White House visitor logs until forced to by bad publicity.
• Stop disclosure of US war crimes at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib by, among other things, keeping secret photographs of American atrocities.
  
• Repeatedly exclude labor from discussions on the economy.
• Repeatedly exclude advocates of single-payer from discussions on health care reform while including lobbyists and executives for big health insurers.
• Coddle right-wing extremists, conservative Democrats and self-serving bigots like Joseph Lieberman while excluding or actively badmouthing progressives and liberals.
• Fail to end the war in Iraq.
• Expand war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• Continue extraordinary rendition while paying lip-service to closing Guantanamo and ending torture (but actually allowing it at Bagram, Afghanistan)
• Continue Bush violations of the Constitution by denying due process rights to prisoners at Guantanamo.
• Continue outrageous prosecutions of people like Syed Fahad Hashmi.

Such is the strategy of Democrats, 'lead' by Obama, President Zero.

Freezelight Magic Forest

The best animators I've met are intensely driven people . . . often to the edge of sanity (which is what gives the greatest work its wacky wonder). Via Vimeo, here is a Russian short film in which each frame is a long exposure. Roughly 40 seconds. If it was done at 30 frames per second (it probably wasn't), that would be 1200 frames. Assume half that — 600 frames — each one mapped out, storyboarded, tested, shot. If I were told that each frame took one hour, I would not be surprised. It could have been more. (Then again, it might well have been less.)

Freezelight Magic Forest from FREEZELIGHT.RU on Vimeo.

Delusions of the Economic Right-Wing

Ross Douthat has one of the stupidest, least informed (or most dishonest) essays on the economy that I've seen in The New York Times . . . ever. He does little more than toady for an equally dishonest though better-sounding (emphasis on "sounding") Jim Manzi in National Affairs.

Briefly, they offer a toned-down but otherwise very familiar conservative economic diet so that the US can maintain its economic primacy in the world — something they seem worried about in much the way that men fret over the size of their penises.

Here, my response:

A complete account of the flaws and misrepresentations in Ross Douthat's essay and Jim Manzi's in National Affairs would require more space than Douthat's essay takes in the first place.

Here are a few of the glaring problems:

1. Both Manzi and Douthat, particularly Manzi, treat American economic leadership as some kind of national security issue. They both come off as narrow-minded jingoists, or as men worried about their penises. We can be sure that the American companies relocating production and off-shoring labor to Asia are less concerned about American economic leadership than they are about lining their own pockets — in its sheer extremes, a decidely American ethos that the crimes of Wall Street and the health industry prove amply.

2. Manzi is absurdly sloppy in his use of language. He, and Douthat copying him, talk of "America's global output" compared to Europe, China, India. In dollars or tonnage or what? Is this the Europe including the eastern countries of the former Soviet bloc? Is the vaunted US output including the fantastically wasteful military production? (The US has effectively remained on a constant war footing for 30 years and has effectively been at war continuously for 60.) Does US output include the fools' wealth of the housing bubble and the ponzi schemes of Wall Street? Nothing in Manzi's or Douthat's essay provides any answer.

3. Most glaring: Standard of Living. Douthat and Manzi both make passing reference to the American standard of living and then let it drop — for obvious reason: the US standard of living is a disgrace for a country as productive as Douthat and Manzi claim. All of the major western European nations, with the likely exception of Britain (which of the European nations has most closely tried to copy the American Standard), have a higher standard of living than the US. The Scandinavian countries, with the most 'socialistic' economies have the highest standards and the greatest levels of satisfaction among their populations.

4. Our "politics are polarized"? Hardly. The vast majority of Democrats have bent over double to copy the Republicans. It is the right-wing Republicans, who now constitute the entire Republican party in Congress, that have sought at every turn to torpedo political and economic consensus.

5. Obama Democrats returning to "European-style social democracy"? Does Douthat read the news — at all. There is little if any Obama or Democratic move to reregulate Wall Street or to regulate the health industry beyond a few token measures that will likely be easily evaded. Obama offers environmental measures as "suggestions". The FDA may get some regulatory teeth back, but only after 3 decades of disaster, thanks to Reagan and Clinton. "Micromanaging industry"? How? Where? Can Douthat offer even one example beyond, perhaps, the banning of denial of health insurance coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions? There is simply no basis in fact for Douthat's or Manzi's assertions. They offer nothing more than Friedman/Greenspan style conservative economics.

6. Partnerships "between Big Business and Big Government"? What partnership? We the People bailed out Wall Street after vague threats by overpaid executives? We bailed out the auto manufacturers only after it became clear they really would fail, taking with them tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of jobs. Republicans fought the aid to Detroit tooth and nail. Our health insurance and Wall Street "partners" continue to fight any change that might threaten their grossly over-sized bonuses. Again Douthat shows a childish ignorance of or a willful (very Republican) indifference to fact.

Last, "We're all in this together"?! You've got to be kidding. If the past two years prove anything at all, it is that we are *not* all in this together. The wealthiest 1% to 5% of Americans (or fewer) and their paid representatives in Congress have immunized themselves against the conditions of the vast majority. In this respect, the US is doing quite well at keeping pace with China.

A Comment on Chris Hedges's "One Day We'll All Be Terrorists"

Chris Hedges has a disturbing essay on TruthDig.com surveying the US crimes against American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi. My response directly below.

The Bush-Obama bailout of Wall Street, costing US (that's you and me), trillions proved that the United States is an Oligarchy. The coddling of health insurers further supports that conclusion.

The Bush-Obama assault on the rights of all people, including especially Citizens of the United States, is proof that the US is fast exiting its time as a democracy.

The question I return to again and again: Is Obama doing this intentionally? Some in the US are simply dogmatic true believers in the divine right of the few over the many. Others are merely craven, self-serving opportunists. My sense is that Obama is one of the latter -- one who knows he is acting against the common good, acting against the Constitution, but is determined to carry on because it serves his own vile self-interest.

Chris Hedges's essay:

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/one_day_well_all_be_terrorists_20091228/

Posted on Dec 28, 2009

By Chris Hedges

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.

“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.

“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.

“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”

Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.

“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”

Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”

The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.

“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”

Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.

There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.

Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).

Stanley Fish on Divine Vengeance!

December 29th's New York Times has Stanley Fish considering the joys of divine vengeance in film — the license we are granted to relish violence in film when the perpetrator is unqualifiedly justified because of some awful wrong done him or her. My response below.

Great topic. Let's not forget the leading advocate of divine justice is the God of Judeo-Christian religion.

Vengeance is arguably one of two Great Motives in film, the other being love. Vengeance and violence are uniformly just in war films, especially if the war involves the US. Can any of us imagine a war film showing the US as fundamentally morally awful? If the US is at war, in fact or fiction, it is taken as axiomatic that the violence is just. Today, we even get POV reality footage of 'surgical strikes' -- surgeons are engaged in violent acts, are they (!)

Much sci fi involves sublime violence — Wars or the Worlds.

In some films, the vengeance is explicitly granted divine status -- take The Crow, with Brandon Lee, who died in a _representation_ of violence.

Look at the entire oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, who perfectly mashes the fine line between justice and absurdity. Lucy Liu's character in Kill Bill begins as a victim on a divine quest and becomes a violent beast.

I think my personal favorite is Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, which does a pretty good job (the best I can recall) of stripping away the veneer of justice. A woman horribly wronged, and an assortment of entirely unrelated men setting out to balance the scales of justice -- for money. Each of these men with his own vile violent past, including Clint Eastwood's Will Munny (hint hint), who of all the assassin's has the most terrible past.

And then there's Hamlet.

Roger Cohen in Defends the Faith of The New York Times

Roger Cohen offered a weak essay lauding the wonders of America. He was inundated with criticism. He responded with a tip of the cap and further defenses. Here, my response.

Dear Mr. Cohen:

Perhaps you can answer how the Times decides when to end new comments on op-ed essays. My guess is that the Times reacts against critical trends, and it's understandable why responses to you recent essays are overwhelmingly critical.

To be blunt, you sound like a 5th grade school teacher -- in keeping with a newspaper that doesn't remotely measure up to the standards it claims to set. More like Defender of the Faith than a defender of America.

The US has military bases in how many countries? One hundred fifty? More? The nation has been at war _continuously_ for over sixty years (undeclared and arguably all unconstitutional). No Third World War? Tell that to Vietnamese, Iraqis, Iranians, Cambodians, Laotians, Chileans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Timorese....

Racism towards Arabs (whom you neglect to mention in your quasi-mea culpa) is soaring. Members of Congress brazenly tar all Arabs, all Muslims.

Two successive administrations, including the one hailed as the most liberal in generations, have missed _no_ opportunity to attack civil liberties. Civil liberties "haltingly advanced"? Obama is halting, not advancing.

As your colleague Paul Krugman and many other moderates and liberals have noted, the US is substantively an oligarchy. The "American dream" is dying. Wealth rules, with the eager support of all three branches of government, including, again, the "most liberal" President Obama. The president has acted to advance poverty and inequality, which are growing rapidly.

Though environmental disasters are widely recognized, the government and people show, at best, blithe indifference. Perhaps on no other count can the worst of the US be seen. The Times takes part as it focuses attention on China, though the US towers in its responsibility for ecological catastrophe. The US has repeatedly fought legislation in Europe to regulate GM foods, pesticides and plastics. Some aim.

We are indeed heirs of fortitude and foresight. Obama shows NO sign of heeding this. And you do nothing for future progress by carrying on the grade school teacher's mission of indoctrination.

Ten Year Old Girl Surprised by Her Daddy's Return from Iraq

Does Obama have the decency or courage to view something like this? His own daughters are 8 and 11 years old.

Bill Moyers Interviews Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner

Below, my response to Bill Moyers's interview with Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner on Friday, 18 December. I'll post a link to the video when it is available.

Robert Kuttner is wrong in his assessment of Obama.

1. Obama is not so intelligent, at least not in the way that the US needs. (Obama is very smart when it comes to pleasing those in power.) As Tony Judt notes in the current New York Review of Books, the principle (perhaps only) criterion of policy evaluation is economic -- will the policy serve/make money (to put it a little too simply). Obama is squarely inside this school of 'thought'. He does not consider whether a policy is morally right or wrong. He just doesn't.

2. I believe that the largest private donor to Obama's campaign is not Goldman Sachs, but Harvard University. Granted, Harvard probably doesn't donate with the single-mindedness that Goldman does, but this does point to a largely unexamined component in the current disaster -- the role of Harvard Business School (More than Chicago, these days, the center of right-wing economics) and Harvard Law School (where Obama learned his 'obedience to authority').

The role of 'leading' universities in indoctrinating people into patterns of obedience to power cannot be overstated. This is no conspiracy theory but simply an observation of social fact.

3. In May 2008, Penn professor Adolph Reed wrote of Obama (whom he knew personally in Chicago) as a "vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him." This strikes me as right on the mark. Frankly, I think Obama is ripe for Freudian analysis. His father abandoned him when he was very young. He no doubt blamed himself, as children do. Now he is stuck in a pattern of endlessly trying to please those he perceives as superiors. In this regard, he bears a striking similarity to Bill Clinton.

4. From a vaguely scientific standpoint, the question is: What explains Obama's unbroken pattern of saying one thing to the public and doing another in private, of caving to power and wealth (if it really is caving, as opposed to Obama carrying out what was always his intended program).

5. Unlike Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner, I have almost no confidence that a social movement will rise up to force change. The US is a strange combination of the beaten down peasantry of 18th Century Eastern Europe and the violently jingoistic nationalism of Russia, China, Israel and (of course) the US itself. Dissent, especially public assembly, is — de facto — being criminalized in the US. Rights guaranteed us by the Constitution are being taken away by the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, by police forces and local policies across the country, by ever-growing and oppressive surveillance of our daily activity. We have a Supreme Court and a lower court structure that systematically rules in favor of power at the expense of The People.

The US is in very serious trouble. It really cannot be overstated. And this says nothing of equal or greater troubles on the environmental front, where Obama is also failing terribly.

My feeling is that the US is exiting its Age of Democracy. In the future, people will think of the US as a "Constitutional Democracy" in much the way we today speak of Britain being a Constitutional Monarchy. The US will be a democracy in a minimally legal sense, but it will be an oligarchy in practice and fact. Arguably, this is already the case.

Our Place in the Universe

Great visualization of our place in the universe developed by the Hayden Planetarium and The American Museum of Natural History.

Recent Web Bites

"If you're so rich, how come you're so dumb." — Paul Samuelson

"The Wall Street shenanigans are much worse" than in the Great Depression. "Fiendish, financial Frankenstein monsters." — Paul Samuelson

A key problem in US politics: Fear & ignorance (commom in dictatorships) are deemed standard political tools, esp by rightwing.

Another Bicyclist Killed in New York: DJ Reverend Soul (Solange Raulston) Killed in Greenpoint, Struck by Truck http://bit.ly/6WmmyT

US talks endlessly re 'responsibility.' -> neocon/neolib newspeak for "poor, middle class & disadvantaged pick up tab for rich & big biz"

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing w/o a demand. It never did & it never will. — Frederick Douglass

The US blathers about Iraq et al 'stepping up to the plate.' Will the US do so on climate or is it just more American hot air? @whitehouse

Brooklyn - School bus runs crosswalk in front of school while kids are crossing. Driver is on cellphone. [8:20 Monday morning, 14 December]

Pentagon asssumes the worst treating climate change as security threat. Conservatives assume worst on war, Why not on climate?

US says it won't sign on at Copenhagen unless there're binding rules for developing nations. Funny, US always wants voluntary for Big Biz.

On 60 Minutes, Obama said he'd know by end of 2010 if his Afghanistan plan is working.... around about Tuesday, Nov. 2nd.

Outraged Brits want Blair Prosecuted 4 War Crimes: http://bit.ly/8RMGLX Bush's poodle admits he'd have supported war knowing Iraq had no WMD

RT @NYTimeskrugman Disaster and Denial: "I actually believed that influential people could be moved by evidence." http://bit.ly/8VGFrC

AlterNet Robert Reich: How a Few Private Health Insurers Are on the Way to Controlling Health Care http://bit.ly/8fDvWU

doctorow Open Colour Standard http://tinyurl.com/y8hnlyb has wide-reaching consequences for what we wear, what we see, what we pay

haaretzonline Jewish town won't let Arab build home on his own land http://bit.ly/6F0Xxs

US response to Amanda Knox verdict = A vicious, xenophobic attack on Italian justice | Marcel Berlins http://bit.ly/7uqXiw via @GuardianUSA

World to be Protected from Knowledge of Tony Blair's War Crimes! http://bit.ly/6cYyuM Bush's Poodle Will Give Evidence in Secret.

Hopenhagen? Ha! The folks in Europe don't have a friggin' clue about Obama. (photo) http://tinyurl.com/ycdaygt

NYTimeskrugman Paul Samuelson, RIP http://bit.ly/6I8Gir

seasonothebitch "To be 'realistic' in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth." — Zinn

@MargaretAtwood Sobering Monsanto exposé, preview of DNA-based capitalism: http://bit.ly/61mBir /better livin thru Frankenseeds

The Haves Arm Themselves

Barack Obama's good friends at Goldman Sachs are picking up handguns to "defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank." Evidently, Michael Moore and the public whose views Moore's captures have the US-endorsed robber barons spooked.

Seriously, this extraordinary in a city in which the mayor has repeatedly railed against guns, especially handguns.

Here, the essay from Bloomberg News:

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

To the Barricades

He tried to buy a house elsewhere without attracting attention as the financial crisis unfolded in 2007, a move that was foiled by the New York Post. Then, Blankfein got permission from the local authorities to install a security gate at his house two months before Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed.

This is the kind of foresight that Goldman Sachs is justly famous for. Blankfein somehow anticipated the persecution complex his fellow bankers would soon suffer. Surely, though, this man who can afford to surround himself with a private army of security guards isn’t sleeping with the key to a gun safe under his pillow. The thought is just too bizarre to be true.

So maybe other senior people at Goldman Sachs have gone out and bought guns, and they know something. But what?

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and -- oh yes -- the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

Torn Curtain

There you have it. The bailout was meant to keep the curtain drawn on the way the rich make money, not from the free market, but from the lack of one. Goldman Sachs blew its cover when the firm’s revenue from trading reached a record $27 billion in the first nine months of this year, and a public that was writhing in financial agony caught on that the profits earned on taxpayer capital were going to pay employee bonuses.

This slip-up let the other bailed-out banks happily hand off public blame to Goldman, which is unpopular among its peers because it always seems to win at everyone’s expense.

Plenty of Wall Streeters worry about the big discrepancies in wealth, and think the rise of a financial industry-led plutocracy is unjust. That doesn’t mean any of them plan to move into a double-wide mobile home as a show of solidarity with the little people, though.

Cool Hand Lloyd

No, talk of Goldman and guns plays right into the way Wall- Streeters like to think of themselves. Even those who were bailed out believe they are tough, macho Clint Eastwoods of the financial frontier, protecting the fistful of dollars in one hand with the Glock in the other. The last thing they want is to be so reasonably paid that the peasants have no interest in lynching them.

And if the proles really do appear brandishing pitchforks at the doors of Park Avenue and the gates of Round Hill Road, you can be sure that the Goldman guys and their families will be holed up in their safe rooms with their firearms. If nothing else, that pistol permit might go part way toward explaining why they won’t be standing outside with the rest of the crowd, broke and humiliated, saying, “Damn, I was on the wrong side of a trade with Goldman again.”

(Alice Schroeder, author of “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life” and a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Alice Schroeder at aliceschroeder@ymail.com.

A Brave New America {in progress}

Paul Krugman pulls his punches. He writes in two Times pieces today, one on the op-ed page and the other on his Times blog, of the issues of unemployment, the Obama administration's failure to act and the elite's indifference to the suffering of many now that the Great Recession has officially been declared over.

Looking a year or two forward in his blog, Krugman writes,

[There] will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right and demoralized the movement that brought him to power.

And from his Times op-ed essay,

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

Not long ago, in an interview with Eliot Spitzer on Bill Maher's show, Krugman sounded far more pessimistic. "Sometimes I wake up and think I'm in a third world country." And "The American dream isn't dead, but it's dying pretty fast." And still more: "If the US was a third world country, the IMF and others would be saying, 'You have to get rid of your oligarchs.'"

Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert are the most critical — and incisive — voices on the Times op-ed page, but the Times still tones them down, I suspect.

The Shape of Things to Come

I've been reading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood (which for some reason I invariably think of as In the Year of the Flood, perhaps following H. G. Wells's In the Day of the Comet). Atwood's vision of a possible future is sobering — rampant wonder-species spliced by Frankengeneticists, a plastic two-tiered society, packaged everything. Including synthetic meat.

Today, Gizmodo reports on Dutch scientists synthesizing pork — not yet up to lip-smacking goodness, but on the way.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Journey Through Your Blogger's Mind

A rehash of recent comments from Twitter and Facebook, in no particular order or organizing schema.

The White House Bash Crash of 25 November 2009

Network Cameras Followed White House Crashers http://bit.ly/777b9I Why not crash the Prez bash? It's good TV!

Terrorists really haven't got it figured. They just need to make Terrorism into a Reality TV show and they'll have it made.

On Wall Street, Health Insurers and Money Money Money. Just how much wrong-doing can be 'justified' by profit — a question I have yet to hear any banker or insurer answer. But the impression I get is that, given enough money, ANY moral crime can be justified.

Credit, Consumption, Collapse - Environmental Collapse, Financial Collapse, Economic Collapse. Any guesses what all that adds up to?

Does any Wall Street or Health Insurance or Banking Executive ever say "We can't do that because it is just wrong."

Have Karen Ignani, AHIP, Angela Braly, WellPoint, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs, Nessa Feddis, ABA ever found something too immoral to do?

To the bankers and health insurers: Does a sufficient sum of money trump ANY moral consideration?

More to come....

Lowell Bergman Investigates the Credit House of Cards

America's Constitutional Oligarchy

Outstanding scholar of the credit crisis, Elizabeth Warren, is on NOW on PBS this evening, Friday, 13 November 2009.



Here are some comments I made on the program:

The importance of public airing of the dissenting views of Elizabeth Warren and others like her cannot be overstated.

Obama, Geithner, Bernanke, Summers and the majority of the Harvard-Chicago School of Economics have stopped just short of damn lying. They have done the same thing with the economy of the United States that Bush & Co did with the war in Iraq: "IF you knew what we do, you would agree with us, but we can't tell you." Obama's openness and transparency is that of Orwell's 1984.

Representative Marcy Kaptur and a handful of elected officials, a number of prominent economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and others across the US have said what is increasingly obvious. The US is no longer a democracy, it is an oligarchy. A constitutional oligarchy. We are locked into the "two-party" system that many clearly think is constitutionally mandated. The effect of this is to render our votes irrelevant. Democratic or Republican, the government will serve the oligarchs at our expense. The housing crisis, the financial crisis, health care, endless war abroad -- on all counts, first consideration (often the only consideration) is given to the demands of the oligarchs.

In an interview with Bill Maher, both Paul Krugman and Eliot Spitzer agreed that the "American dream is dying pretty fast." Krugman noted that, if the US were a third world country or one like Russia, the IMF and others -- especially the US -- would be saying "You have to stop the oligarchs."

Paul Krugman on the Demise of "Commie" as a Term of Abuse

Paul Krugman notes that the right-wing of the US has turned from charging their liberal and progressive opponents with the being "Commies" to being "Nazis".

Of course, opponents of health care reform have regularly been calling single-payer and the public option "socialism". Hasn't had much effect. Maybe too many Americans are just too young to be able to tap into the hysteria that term once provoked. (I myself remember the vile Wyoming senator Alan Simpson leveling the charge of "comsymp" at those who dared suggest that Reagan had committed impeachable offenses in the Iran-Contra scandal.)

By contrast, the image of the Nazis as the greatest evil ever to visit Earth (and even the greatest evil that could visit Earth) is alive and well.

I believe that the charge of "Nazi!" can rightly be leveled in some circumstances — certainly not idly as some on both right and left do. Much of the rhetoric of Reagan, George W. Bush and many on the right extreme is strikingly similar to that of the Nazis. If I remember correctly, for example, former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani referred to the notorious Saatchi show at the Brooklyn Museum as "degenerate art".

What language would be too strong to characterize the Ann Coulters, Glenn Becks, Bill O'Reillys, Dick Armeys, and others who tar with one brush the world's entire Muslim population as terrorist. Ann Coulter called for the bombing of Muslims — all of them. The right wing of John Yoo, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and others has endorsed the bombing of civilians, the torture of any person on the president's say-so, and the effective conversion of the president to a monarch or dictator. What is the appropriate name for this?

Some would say that the term "Nazi" should be reserved exclusively for the members of the National Socialist Party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. But what then of the term "neo-Nazi"? What of "fascist"?

As for the American right-wing and its casual abuse of the term: I believe the right-wing is undergoing a fully-fledged psychotic break. They are genuinely, deeply divorced from reality. As their connection to reality has become ever more tenuous, they have adopted rhetoric that is similarly divorced from reality.

They are consumed by rage, ignorant of and indifferent to fact, largely incapable of rational or critical thought, and most importantly, incapable of one of the key requirements of the Christian religion many of them formally endorse — compassion for those different from or less fortunate than themselves.

They oppose health care for 300 million in the interest of preserving billions in income for a handful of insurers.

They go ape over something as innocuous as the move of a few words on a coin (as Sarah Palin did over the move of "In God We Trust").

They oppose 1 trillion for the well-being of the American people while supporting unknown trillions for disastrous wars.

They deny climate change and oppose action on such change despite glaring evidence that action is needed.

They persist to this day in trying to foist "creationism" or "intelligent design" on students.

They rave about freedom while supporting the systematic erosion of Constitutional rights.

These are not the behaviors of rational or compassionate people. Granted, the charge of irrationality should not be made lightly, and the charge has been abused (notably by Stalin), but frankly, it is time to admit that the 20% of the US population that constitutes the right-wing hobbling the United States is simply not rational, simply not in touch with reality. That includes, sadly, some of Paul Krugman's colleagues at The New York Times, like David Brooks.

The systematic denial of fact (regarding health care, or the political health of a nation in the face of monstrous disparities in the distribution of wealth, or any of a number of other things) is best explained as an irrational delusion.

The Balance of EVIL (Pure, Not from Concentrate)!

New York City's two tabloids, The Daily News and The New York Post, both splash news of the Fort Hood mass murder across their front pages. "Evil!" the watchword. I'm struck by the American Sense of Evil, particularly that of the American Right Wing, the Arrrrwwww!

Personally, I think there is such a thing as evil. The architects of Nazi mass murder were evil. I would say those who attack a population with every reason to believe that civilians, including children, will be the principle victims are evil. (Here I have in mind the likes of Henry Kissinger, Condoleeza Rice, Benjamin Netanyahu, Dick Cheney, among others.)

So I do not object in principle to the characterization of people or their acts as evil. I just find the Right Wing Sense of Evil strange, disturbing. The 'mainstream' of American thinkers and certainly the right would strongly object to my calling Kissinger or Cheney evil, so who knows, they might say the same of me.

Let's review, beginning with Monday, November 9th's, newspapers:

Also evil, according to the right wing:

• national healthcare, bringing an end to private health insurance;
• moving "In God We Trust" to a less central location on American coins;
• higher taxes of any kind (except sales taxes);
• any who criticize the United States in any thorough-going way (as opposed to criticizing elements of the US, like liberals or taxes);
• environmental conservation;
• anyone who votes against the Republican Party line (witness the response to Rep. Cao's vote for the health care reform bill)

More soon.....

Civilization Collapse Disorder

Saturday, I saw the documentary Collapse, directed by Chris Smith, on the thinking of Michael Ruppert, Peak Oil and the implications for modern civilization of a systematic collapse in the oil economy of the world. Sobering.

______________________________

From the Wilderness, Michael Ruppert's website chronicling his views

Bluemark Films, makers of Collapse

When Reporters Try to Make News

The torrent of hate speech is flooding forth after the mass-murder at Fort Hood in Texas. Never willing to pass up on a chance to foment hatred, Fox News is doing it's best to bait people, lead those it interviews, cast the events in the worst possible light.

Here is my letter to Shepard Smith after he lead the already-happy-to-lynch Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison:

Dear Mr. Smith:

After the murderous rampage at Fort Hood, you asked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison -- rhetorically, to judge by the sound of it -- "The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?" Senator Hutchison replied, "It does. It does, Shepard."

Do you think Sen. Hutchison plans to introduce legislation to ban certain names? Or that she might call for the arrest of people with those names?

Perhaps you can clarify for people around the world just what is in a name. What does it tell us, Mr. Smith?

Hugh Sansom

Maureen Dowd's Apology for a Pathetic President

Maureen Dowd offers one of the weakest apologies I have yet seen for the miserable excuse of a president, Obama. On the occasion of Obama's visit to Dover Air Force Base to salute the fallen returning from Afghanistan, Dowd prates:

It may have been a photo op, another way Obama could show he was not W., the president who started the Iraq war in a haze of fakery and then declined to ever confront the reality of its dead.

Certainly, as Obama tries to figure out how to avoid being a war president when he’s saddled with two wars, he wants as much military cred in the bank as he can get.

But it was also a genuinely poignant moment. It is how we want our presidents to behave, doing the humane thing especially when it’s hard. And Obama, who called it “a sobering reminder” of sacrifices made, signaled to Americans that he will resist blinders as he grapples with the byzantine, seemingly bottomless conflicts he inherited.

...

President Obama bore witness just as he is deciding whether to accede to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s request for up to 80,000 more troops in Afghanistan.

He should keep in mind Cyrus Vance’s warning before President Carter decided to send a Delta team to rescue the Iranian hostages (an ill-fated decision that provoked Vance’s resignation as secretary of state). “Generals will rarely tell you they can’t do something,” he said. “This is a complex damn operation, and I haven’t forgotten the old saying from my Pentagon days that in the military, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Barack Obama, the wunderkind who came out of nowhere to win the presidency, was supposed to push America out of the ditch and into a glittering future. But modernity is elusive when you’re in a time machine to the 14th century called Afghanistan. The tableau of Obama at Dover evoked the last line of “The Great Gatsby:” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

As Obama comforted families at a tragic moment, he also had to contemplate a tragic dimension of his own presidency: It’s nice to talk about change, but you can’t wipe away yesterday.

Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans.

But what he had in mind for renovating American society hinged on spending a lot of money on energy, education, the environment and health care. Instead, he has been trapped in the money pits of a recession and two wars.

For now, the man who promised revolution will have to settle for managing adversity.

My response:

"Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans."

Really.

Obama releases photos from Dover and suppresses photos from Abu Ghraib and Gitmo -- photos by Americans of American war crimes. Obama, "social engineer", has carried on most of what Bush had started in bailing out Wall Street and the American Oligarchs, to whom he clearly feels more allegiance than he does to the American People. He has guaranteed the profits of health insurers. He is reneging on commitments to close off vast tracts of wilderness from logging and roads. Obama has advocated Bush-era violations of the civil and Constitutional rights of Americans.

Obama, "cosmopolitan president of the world", threatened Britons' safety in order to suppress facts about American atrocities. He has defended and extended the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the 'brave' use of pilotless drones. He will not go to Copenhagen and his representatives are likely to be a drag on progress towards solving climate problems. This month we will almost certainly not become the first president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Before Israel, after some vague promises, Obama has caved repeatedly, condemning Palestinians to some of the worst conditions confronting any people on Earth.

Obama promised a great deal. He has given every indication that those promises were never anything more than words to win votes. This is the explanation that accounts for his wide-ranging, repeated failures to live up to the promises -- not Maureen Dowd's thin apologia that he has to "manage" diversity.

The Lighter Side of Lite Beer

Carter-Ruck and the Law of Evil

Americans may be unfamiliar with the case of Carter-Ruck, Trafigura and press freedom in Britain.

Britons enjoy substantially less press freedom than Americans. The leading British law firm, Carter-Ruck, proved just how much less in the past few days. Trafigura, a Swiss multinational, has been implicated in a number of crimes, most recently illegal waste dumping. It is also tied to the infamous Marc Rich, billionaire criminal several times over and beneficiary of Bill Clinton's notorious last-minute pardon.

Carter-Ruck has been representing Trafigura. As Wikipedia now records, "On October 12, 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by legal injunction from covering remarks made in Parliament. " That injunction was secured by Carter-Ruck. Twitter and the internet blew the lid off Carter-Ruck's attempts to do an end-run around democracy and freedom of the press.

It is one thing to defend the accused, a right all have (even criminal corporations, polluters, health insurers, Wall Street thieves). It's another to abet a crime by suppressing the public's right to know.

We the People shouldn't underestimate the actions of Carter-Ruck nor should we let Trafigura or Carter-Ruck get off scot-free. Below is the email I sent to Carter-Ruck:

To Whom It May Concern:

For an essay on practical issues of professional ethics and justice, I would like to enquire on Carter-Ruck's response to the overwhelmingly negative press received following your attempt to suppress the truth in the case of alleged misconduct by Trafigura.

In particular, do Carter-Ruck's senior officers feel any sense of shame or are they simply breathing a sigh of relief that worse publicity was averted? Do they view their attempts to suppress truth and subvert democracy as unethical? Do they view themselves as effectively complicit in the any crimes of Trafigura?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

Outer Space, Man

Two graphics. First from I'm not sure where, representing the many planetary and other missions going back to Pioneer, Voyager and before. The second, my own render of what the Sun roughly looks like from Voyager 1, now near 10 billion miles, 16 billion kilometers, from Earth and the Sun — a damn long way, but still just 15 light-hours from the Sun. So a photon would take just 15 hours to catch up with Voyager 1, which has been traveling for 32 years.



See the full size space exploration graphic here.

The Hunter's Defense

The hunter said the guy he shot looked like
a house which looked like a deer . . . running.

Obama — The Audacity of Hype

Health Insurers' Willing Executioners

Baucus, Grassley, Hatch, Snowe. These are the murderers. Murderers for hire. They have been bought, or have willing sold themselves, to the Health Insurers — Wellpoint, Aetna, Cigna, United.... We remain ill, we die so they can make money.

In mythology and religious history, these vile creatures have their ancestors. In Dante, the Baucuses, Grassleys, Snowes suffer in the lowest levels of hell.

We the People must give them Hell on Earth, now.

NASA's Messenger Spacecraft Flies by Mercury

Today, September 29th, the Messenger spacecraft will approach to within 142 miles (about 229 km) of the surface of Mercury. That's damn close — closer than many satellites are to Earth's surface.

Using the freeware Celestia, I created this image of what Mercury and the Sun would look like at a distance of 3000 kilometers, much further away than Messenger will be. The Sun looks a lot bigger there. Mercury is just 58 million km from the Sun, as opposed to Earth's 150 million km.
Further down, check out the comparison of how the Sun looks here on Earth with how it looks on Mercury (courtesy of messenger-education.org or here too). Click on the images to see full-size.

Twittering Again (too lazy to type)

Be afraid, be very afraid. Taser & all the Brave New Weapons can kill. But the gov't is sure they can be 'safely' used domestically & abroad

Less than Lethal Weapons: US et al (Brits, French, Israelis..) r all hot & bothered re Brave New Weapons LRAD sound cannon, Silent Guardian

Dept of Newspeak, 'Non-Lethal Weapons': LRAD Sound Cannon Used on Pittsburgh G20 Protesters http://gizmodo.com/5369190

Guess this is to make us feel better given we'll never be able to retire: "Workers thriving at 70, 80, and even 100" http://bit.ly/dM52N

RT @wired Fun fact: Colorado River Toads are psychoactive - skin contains hallucinogenic tryptamines which can be harvested by stroking toad

This is a Colorado River Toad. That's doing his best Spock impression. http://bit.ly/bUizU (via @nerdist) (via @wired)

Scary: Bullet Makers Can't Keep Up With Demand http://bit.ly/XjqG7 (via @AlterNet)

RT @bobfertik Historic first! Netroots crowdsourcing produces Bush Torture Indictment 2.0 http://bit.ly/U61Au @davidcnswanson

RT @thenation Arundhati Roy: So, is there life after democracy? Read "What Have We Done to Democracy?" @thenation http://tinyurl.com/ye63nwh

US dollar set to be eclipsed, World Bank president predicts http://bit.ly/11h8HW (via @GuardianUSA)

HuffPost - Obama Adviser Signals White House Giving Up On Climate Change Treaty - http://tinyurl.com/yamhnnw

HuffPost: Senator Schumer Receives $1.65 Million From Wall Street - http://tinyurl.com/ycdm4cx

Micheletti government suspends civil liberties in Honduras http://bit.ly/VuSQu And Obama & US support Micheletti - another Obama triumph

Stunning US successes in Iraq, Afghanistan so GOPs Jon Kyl & Kit Bond are calling for a 3peat in Iran http://bit.ly/p2mf0

Why is Obama pushing harder for Chicago's Olympic bid than he is for real change on the climate policy?

2 Parents, 5 Jobs, STILL not enough Health Care. Republicans, incl Olympia Snowe, think this fine. Obama grovels http://bit.ly/13qdfX

NYC is 49th in the Americas in Quality of Life. http://bit.ly/84WRB @mikebloomberg @Thompson2009

Mercer survey of quality of life finds the top 5 cities in the Americas are all in Canada: http://www.mercer.com/quali...

MAP: India as a growing global power. From Le Monde. http://mondediplo.com/maps/...
about 13 hours ago from web