"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it."
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
5 weeks ago
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Who are the Terrorists?
Terrorists use fear and intimidation for their political ends. It's not necessary to kill and physically maim to spread terror. It can be done, for example, with torture that creates physical pain and psychological maiming. Or it can be done, as it is being done, in other ways.
When the government sows fear as its official position, it sanctions intimidation. We've all seen it at the airport, all the useless humiliations, the no-fly lists created by unknown and unaccountable people for unknown reasons, and a police state atmosphere that leads to abuses like this --the death of a white upper middle class wife and mother who's last known words were, "I am not a terrorist!"
There are the radio talk show and right wing blog terrorists who know no boundaries of truth or decency in attacking those they disagree with, even if it involves terrorizing children. Right wing terrorists seek to frighten and destroy and otherwise silence anyone who dissents from their assertions.
They started in the 90s and they continue with unrestrained ferocity: the cultural/political terrorists, so that a high school band playing Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" gets a visit from the Secret Service, and fifty years after a court ruled it not obscene and it has become an American classic, a New York public radio station quakes in fear and won't allow Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" on the air. They help to create an atmosphere in which intimidation once again comes to the fore in expressing racial hatred.
And when the Supreme Court fails to defend Constitutional rights to free speech when it doesn't conform with the dogma of those right wingers in power, and fails to defend basic legal rights established by the Magna Carta, it too has become a terrorist institution.
The Bush White House uses fear for political purposes so often that it isn't even news anymore, but unfortunately, it is often still effective. They're trying it again now by using a supposed new terrorist threat to use fear both in Congress and in voters to help defeat a bill limiting its spying powers--though its opposition now is mostly to protect its crony corporations and its own individuals from paying fines or going to jail--because there is very good evidence that they all have violated specific laws with these penalties numerous times.
The Bushites didn't invent the technique--many despots and dictators have used it before--but they've mostly gotten away with it. But by using fear of terrorists to terrorize Congress, voters and American men, women and children into supporting the policies and beliefs the White House and its cronies want and which will benefit them, while silencing dissent with intimidation--the question by now should be painfully clear: just which terrorists threaten us the most?
When the government sows fear as its official position, it sanctions intimidation. We've all seen it at the airport, all the useless humiliations, the no-fly lists created by unknown and unaccountable people for unknown reasons, and a police state atmosphere that leads to abuses like this --the death of a white upper middle class wife and mother who's last known words were, "I am not a terrorist!"
There are the radio talk show and right wing blog terrorists who know no boundaries of truth or decency in attacking those they disagree with, even if it involves terrorizing children. Right wing terrorists seek to frighten and destroy and otherwise silence anyone who dissents from their assertions.
They started in the 90s and they continue with unrestrained ferocity: the cultural/political terrorists, so that a high school band playing Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" gets a visit from the Secret Service, and fifty years after a court ruled it not obscene and it has become an American classic, a New York public radio station quakes in fear and won't allow Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" on the air. They help to create an atmosphere in which intimidation once again comes to the fore in expressing racial hatred.
And when the Supreme Court fails to defend Constitutional rights to free speech when it doesn't conform with the dogma of those right wingers in power, and fails to defend basic legal rights established by the Magna Carta, it too has become a terrorist institution.
The Bush White House uses fear for political purposes so often that it isn't even news anymore, but unfortunately, it is often still effective. They're trying it again now by using a supposed new terrorist threat to use fear both in Congress and in voters to help defeat a bill limiting its spying powers--though its opposition now is mostly to protect its crony corporations and its own individuals from paying fines or going to jail--because there is very good evidence that they all have violated specific laws with these penalties numerous times.
The Bushites didn't invent the technique--many despots and dictators have used it before--but they've mostly gotten away with it. But by using fear of terrorists to terrorize Congress, voters and American men, women and children into supporting the policies and beliefs the White House and its cronies want and which will benefit them, while silencing dissent with intimidation--the question by now should be painfully clear: just which terrorists threaten us the most?
Monday, October 08, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1967
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1967
Guided Missiles, Misguided Men
Norman Solomon uses the above Martin Luther King quote in his essay published in the San Francisco Chronicle Insight section yesterday, in one of the more apropos and insightful pieces I've seen during this Sputnik 50th anniversary week.
He links the science and technology that got a big boost from the fears generated by Sputnik to a military-industial complex that has grown ever more powerful:
Sputnik accelerated a process that was already well under way 50 years ago. Schools were to produce America's intellectual pistons for the space race and the broader arms race. As the atomic physicist Philip Morrison had predicted in 1946, federal largesse would deftly hook the nation's colleges into active compliance. "The now amicable contracts will tighten up and the fine print will start to contain talk about results and specific weapon problems," he said. "And science itself will have been bought by war on the installment plan."
We saw this trend accelerate in the late 1960s, during Vietnam: the overt addition of the university to this miltary-industrial complex. Since then it has gotten worse--and so normal nobody seems to notice. Solomon charges:
Today, no educational institution more symbolizes the magnitude of that moral corruption than the University of California. The UC system avidly continues to provide key management functions - serving as a prestigious air-freshener for the stench of annihilation technology - at the Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratories.
On the broader disconnection of technology and moral values, Solomon points out that even though liberals are correctly championing the scientific evidence for the causes and solutions to the Climate Crisis, they should not deify science, for science does not in itself make the correct policy or moral decisions, and scientists work for harm and destruction as efficiently as for good:
For instance, the technical and ecological advantages of mass transit have long been clear; yet foremost engineering minds are deployed to the task of building better SUVs. And there has never been any question that nuclear weapons are bad for the Earth and the human future, but no one ever condemns the continuing development of nuclear weapons as a bipartisan assault on science. On the contrary, America's nonstop R&D efforts for thermonuclear weapons are all about science.
He concludes:
Fifty years after Sputnik, the American love affair with cutting-edge technology has never been more torrid. Everyday digital achievements are so fantastic that they fill our horizons and often seem to define our futures. The emphasis on speed, convenience and technical capacity keeps us fixated on the latest new frontiers. But technology cannot help with the most distinctly human and vital of endeavors - deciding what we truly care about most.
I would add one thought and a clarification. The thought is this: today's amazing technology will mean little or nothing, and the even more amazing technologies of the future that some say can transform human life, will never happen, if the world is thrown into chaos, with uncertain and unavailable energy, crippled infrastructure and more and more resources devoted to simple survival. Which all could happen if we continue to dither over the Climate Crisis.
The clarification is this: most of us would say we know very well what 'we truly care about most.' But we cannot begin to talk out a consensus on how best to preserve, protect and make those things better, or just make them happen, until we learn how to recognize and resist the lies and distortions thrown at us by the powerful who act in their own temporary self-interest, and not in the interest of anyone or anything else. For that they will destroy the future of most of humanity and of the planet itself. They are doing so now, with ever accelerating success.
He links the science and technology that got a big boost from the fears generated by Sputnik to a military-industial complex that has grown ever more powerful:
Sputnik accelerated a process that was already well under way 50 years ago. Schools were to produce America's intellectual pistons for the space race and the broader arms race. As the atomic physicist Philip Morrison had predicted in 1946, federal largesse would deftly hook the nation's colleges into active compliance. "The now amicable contracts will tighten up and the fine print will start to contain talk about results and specific weapon problems," he said. "And science itself will have been bought by war on the installment plan."
We saw this trend accelerate in the late 1960s, during Vietnam: the overt addition of the university to this miltary-industrial complex. Since then it has gotten worse--and so normal nobody seems to notice. Solomon charges:
Today, no educational institution more symbolizes the magnitude of that moral corruption than the University of California. The UC system avidly continues to provide key management functions - serving as a prestigious air-freshener for the stench of annihilation technology - at the Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratories.
On the broader disconnection of technology and moral values, Solomon points out that even though liberals are correctly championing the scientific evidence for the causes and solutions to the Climate Crisis, they should not deify science, for science does not in itself make the correct policy or moral decisions, and scientists work for harm and destruction as efficiently as for good:
For instance, the technical and ecological advantages of mass transit have long been clear; yet foremost engineering minds are deployed to the task of building better SUVs. And there has never been any question that nuclear weapons are bad for the Earth and the human future, but no one ever condemns the continuing development of nuclear weapons as a bipartisan assault on science. On the contrary, America's nonstop R&D efforts for thermonuclear weapons are all about science.
He concludes:
Fifty years after Sputnik, the American love affair with cutting-edge technology has never been more torrid. Everyday digital achievements are so fantastic that they fill our horizons and often seem to define our futures. The emphasis on speed, convenience and technical capacity keeps us fixated on the latest new frontiers. But technology cannot help with the most distinctly human and vital of endeavors - deciding what we truly care about most.
I would add one thought and a clarification. The thought is this: today's amazing technology will mean little or nothing, and the even more amazing technologies of the future that some say can transform human life, will never happen, if the world is thrown into chaos, with uncertain and unavailable energy, crippled infrastructure and more and more resources devoted to simple survival. Which all could happen if we continue to dither over the Climate Crisis.
The clarification is this: most of us would say we know very well what 'we truly care about most.' But we cannot begin to talk out a consensus on how best to preserve, protect and make those things better, or just make them happen, until we learn how to recognize and resist the lies and distortions thrown at us by the powerful who act in their own temporary self-interest, and not in the interest of anyone or anything else. For that they will destroy the future of most of humanity and of the planet itself. They are doing so now, with ever accelerating success.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Sputnik Calling
Update: a version of this has been front-paged at European Tribune.
Update 2: A version has been rescued at Daily Kos.
By 8 pm it was dark outside, on this early October night. At the end of a long, multi-jointed arm, a green-shaded lamp focused light on the surface of the heavy, dark-grained wood desk, a hand-me-down undoubtedly older than I was. The rest of my room was in shadow.
I often had my radio on while I did my homework—a supposed shortwave set with a slate gray face and exposed, glowing tubes in the back, that sat on the bookshelf above and to the right of my desk, next to the globe. My father had put the radio together from a kit, and despite its impressive dials it seldom pulled in more than the local AM station. But for some reason the radio was off. I was absorbed in my homework, and I didn’t even notice the hum and murmur of the television set on the other side of the far wall, in the living room, where my parents were watching.
So when my bedroom door flew open I was startled. My father leaned in, and asked me if I’d been listening to the radio. I said “no” defensively, but he wasn’t checking on my homework diligence. He said the Russians had launched a satellite into space. It was orbiting the earth right now. They’d just announced it on television, and broadcast the actual sounds coming from the satellite. It was called Sputnik.
At my desk I turned on my radio, which eventually played the eerie, even- toned beeping sounds from space. I was stunned.
[continued]
Update 2: A version has been rescued at Daily Kos.
By 8 pm it was dark outside, on this early October night. At the end of a long, multi-jointed arm, a green-shaded lamp focused light on the surface of the heavy, dark-grained wood desk, a hand-me-down undoubtedly older than I was. The rest of my room was in shadow.
I often had my radio on while I did my homework—a supposed shortwave set with a slate gray face and exposed, glowing tubes in the back, that sat on the bookshelf above and to the right of my desk, next to the globe. My father had put the radio together from a kit, and despite its impressive dials it seldom pulled in more than the local AM station. But for some reason the radio was off. I was absorbed in my homework, and I didn’t even notice the hum and murmur of the television set on the other side of the far wall, in the living room, where my parents were watching.
So when my bedroom door flew open I was startled. My father leaned in, and asked me if I’d been listening to the radio. I said “no” defensively, but he wasn’t checking on my homework diligence. He said the Russians had launched a satellite into space. It was orbiting the earth right now. They’d just announced it on television, and broadcast the actual sounds coming from the satellite. It was called Sputnik.
At my desk I turned on my radio, which eventually played the eerie, even- toned beeping sounds from space. I was stunned.
[continued]
The news of Sputnik had spread quickly in government and scientific circles earlier that day. Around 6:30 PM on the East Coast, President Dwight Eisenhower was at Camp David when he was told. It was just a few minutes after 8 PM in New York when RCA technicians recorded the sound. Sputnik had already orbited over the U.S. three times by then.
NBC News broke into radio and TV programming coast to coast. “Listen now for the sound,” the radio announcer said, “which forevermore separates the old from the new.” (The announcement did not, as some stories say, break into broadcast of the World Series. October 4, 1957 was a travel day for the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves--no game was played. Besides, night games in the World Series didn't begin until 1971.)
It was rush hour on the West Coast. Commuters might have been listening to Jimmie Rodgers sing “Honeycomb,” the current number one hit, or the song it dethroned, “That’ll Be the Day” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. When they first heard the Sound.
NBC News broke into radio and TV programming coast to coast. “Listen now for the sound,” the radio announcer said, “which forevermore separates the old from the new.” (The announcement did not, as some stories say, break into broadcast of the World Series. October 4, 1957 was a travel day for the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves--no game was played. Besides, night games in the World Series didn't begin until 1971.)
It was rush hour on the West Coast. Commuters might have been listening to Jimmie Rodgers sing “Honeycomb,” the current number one hit, or the song it dethroned, “That’ll Be the Day” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. When they first heard the Sound.
A lot of attention this 50th anniversary of Sputnik has been focused on its role in beginning the Space Age. It did that, at least for adults. The technical achievement of humans sending a rocket into space to deliver an artificial satellite into orbit around the earth marked a monumental moment. For some, this very fact was profoundly shocking. “It is hard for people now to realize how stubbornly the idea of any form of space travel was opposed before that date, “wrote science fiction writer and historian Brian Aldiss, “and not only by the supposedly ignorant.”
But kids like me had been living in the Space Age for years. I’d grown up with Captain Video, and then Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet; Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, one after the other on Saturday mornings.
Certainly for me as well as for imaginative adults in America, the reality of it was a cause for wonder and excitement. But it was something I was looking forward to, even expecting. I learned about rockets and space travel from Disneyland's "Tomorrowland" hour. And I knew that the U.S. was planning to rocket a satellite into orbit as part of the International Geophysical Year—sometime between the summer of 1957 and the end of 1958. But I wasn't prepared for the Russians doing it first.
I’d even heard one of the smartest men in America, the quiz show champion Charles van Doren, talk about it on a television documentary about the IGY. The newsman interviewing him asked if the Russians might orbit a satellite first. He just chuckled. Years later, of course, van Doren admitted that on “The 64 Thousand Dollar Question,” he’d been given the answers.
But kids like me had been living in the Space Age for years. I’d grown up with Captain Video, and then Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet; Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, one after the other on Saturday mornings.
Certainly for me as well as for imaginative adults in America, the reality of it was a cause for wonder and excitement. But it was something I was looking forward to, even expecting. I learned about rockets and space travel from Disneyland's "Tomorrowland" hour. And I knew that the U.S. was planning to rocket a satellite into orbit as part of the International Geophysical Year—sometime between the summer of 1957 and the end of 1958. But I wasn't prepared for the Russians doing it first.
I’d even heard one of the smartest men in America, the quiz show champion Charles van Doren, talk about it on a television documentary about the IGY. The newsman interviewing him asked if the Russians might orbit a satellite first. He just chuckled. Years later, of course, van Doren admitted that on “The 64 Thousand Dollar Question,” he’d been given the answers.
We’re now told that people in the know in Washington were expecting it, and that Eisenhower’s military people welcomed it, specifically because they wanted to spy on the Russians from space, and now the Russians could hardly object when the U.S. sent a satellite over their country. No doubt some also saw it as an opportunity to intensify Cold War fears.
Those fears were already in the air, and had been for most of the decade. So as I sat there in the pool of light surrounded by darkness, listening to the grim monotone from above, I opened my brown notebook and wrote about what had just happened. I still have that notebook:
"The Russians, Conquerors of Space. Oct.4, 1957. I have just heard some news which will affect my whole future. Russia has just successfully launched the first man-made satellite into space…How did the Russians do it? Out of their own ingenuity? Did they get information from a spy in America? A traitor? All the work our scientists and top brains did, what for? Will the Russians take advantage of this and use it to start a war?"
I was eleven years old. So was Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Steven Speilberg would turn 11 in a couple of months. George Lucas was 13.
Sputnik changed our lives, in some ways encouraging our dreams of the future, but also introduced a new dose of fear. (Clearly, Cold War paranoia was already in the air.) It gave us more (and more obviously useless) ‘duck and cover’ drills, and it started a national furor over our education, parodied for our generation by the Firesign Theatre pitting Communist Martyrs High School against More Science High. It also led to the National Defense Education Act, which provided loans for college, which is how many of us got there.
But there was also real basis for alarm. Although the U.S. had exploded the first true hydrogen bomb in 1952, it was too large and fragile for a weapon. The bomb the Soviets designed and exploded the next year was not as powerful, but it was already a weapon. The U.S. soon had created usable hydrogen bombs, but the Soviets had a brief advantage which had shaken the military establishment.
Now it seemed the Soviets had leapt ahead and were a much greater threat. Until then, an attack on the U.S. or Russia could be conducted only by using bombers. Although the U.S. was rapidly developing guided missiles, Sputnik (and especially the bigger Sputnik II launched a month later) proved the Soviets had built missiles capable of reaching the U.S. and delivering atomic bombs. Sputnik itself was beeping over America to remind them.
Missiles were much more of a threat--they were faster than bombers and harder to detect. Airplanes could be shot down, but not guided missiles. They didn't have to be particularly accurate, because hydrogen bombs were so powerful they didn’t have to be delivered to precise targets. To destroy New York or Moscow might require as many as 24 atomic bombs. The first hydrogen bombs were each as powerful as a thousand Hiroshima bombs. New York could be destroyed by one of them, which would also produce radiation lethal to the population of Washington, D.C., and would contaminate most of the Northeast, into Canada. The "lethal zone" in H-bomb tests in the Pacific after the Bravo test proved so powerful was equal to 20% of the continental United States.
Those fears were already in the air, and had been for most of the decade. So as I sat there in the pool of light surrounded by darkness, listening to the grim monotone from above, I opened my brown notebook and wrote about what had just happened. I still have that notebook:
"The Russians, Conquerors of Space. Oct.4, 1957. I have just heard some news which will affect my whole future. Russia has just successfully launched the first man-made satellite into space…How did the Russians do it? Out of their own ingenuity? Did they get information from a spy in America? A traitor? All the work our scientists and top brains did, what for? Will the Russians take advantage of this and use it to start a war?"
I was eleven years old. So was Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Steven Speilberg would turn 11 in a couple of months. George Lucas was 13.
Sputnik changed our lives, in some ways encouraging our dreams of the future, but also introduced a new dose of fear. (Clearly, Cold War paranoia was already in the air.) It gave us more (and more obviously useless) ‘duck and cover’ drills, and it started a national furor over our education, parodied for our generation by the Firesign Theatre pitting Communist Martyrs High School against More Science High. It also led to the National Defense Education Act, which provided loans for college, which is how many of us got there.
But there was also real basis for alarm. Although the U.S. had exploded the first true hydrogen bomb in 1952, it was too large and fragile for a weapon. The bomb the Soviets designed and exploded the next year was not as powerful, but it was already a weapon. The U.S. soon had created usable hydrogen bombs, but the Soviets had a brief advantage which had shaken the military establishment.
Now it seemed the Soviets had leapt ahead and were a much greater threat. Until then, an attack on the U.S. or Russia could be conducted only by using bombers. Although the U.S. was rapidly developing guided missiles, Sputnik (and especially the bigger Sputnik II launched a month later) proved the Soviets had built missiles capable of reaching the U.S. and delivering atomic bombs. Sputnik itself was beeping over America to remind them.
Missiles were much more of a threat--they were faster than bombers and harder to detect. Airplanes could be shot down, but not guided missiles. They didn't have to be particularly accurate, because hydrogen bombs were so powerful they didn’t have to be delivered to precise targets. To destroy New York or Moscow might require as many as 24 atomic bombs. The first hydrogen bombs were each as powerful as a thousand Hiroshima bombs. New York could be destroyed by one of them, which would also produce radiation lethal to the population of Washington, D.C., and would contaminate most of the Northeast, into Canada. The "lethal zone" in H-bomb tests in the Pacific after the Bravo test proved so powerful was equal to 20% of the continental United States.
Now we also know that the intent of Sputnik was precisely to demonstrate this threat, not to start an era of space exploration, though that was a common dream of some Soviet scientists as well as Americans. According to a recent AP report, the Sputnik launch was "a spur-of-the-moment gamble driven by the dream of one scientist, whose team scrounged a rocket, slapped together a satellite and persuaded a dubious Kremlin to open the space age."
"As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was born out of a very different Soviet program: the frantic development of a rocket capable of striking the United States with a hydrogen bomb. Because there was no telling how heavy the warhead would be, its R-7 ballistic missile was built with thrust to spare — "much more powerful than anything the Americans had," Georgy Grechko, a rocket engineer and cosmonaut, told AP. The towering R-7's high thrust and payload capacity, unmatched at the time, just happened to make it the perfect vehicle to launch an object into orbit — something never done before. Without the looming nuclear threat, Russian scientists say, Sputnik would probably have gotten off the ground much later."
"The key reason behind the emergence of Sputnik was the Cold War atmosphere and our race against the Americans," Chertok said. "The military missile was the main thing we were thinking of at the moment."
Sputnik was an important moment, but it didn’t begin the Cold War or Cold War paranoia (like the early 1950s Blacklist) or the subterranean fear of nuclear war (we’d been watching those radiation monster movies most of the decade.) It did threaten to make space another battlefield.
"As described by the former scientists, the world's first orbiter was born out of a very different Soviet program: the frantic development of a rocket capable of striking the United States with a hydrogen bomb. Because there was no telling how heavy the warhead would be, its R-7 ballistic missile was built with thrust to spare — "much more powerful than anything the Americans had," Georgy Grechko, a rocket engineer and cosmonaut, told AP. The towering R-7's high thrust and payload capacity, unmatched at the time, just happened to make it the perfect vehicle to launch an object into orbit — something never done before. Without the looming nuclear threat, Russian scientists say, Sputnik would probably have gotten off the ground much later."
"The key reason behind the emergence of Sputnik was the Cold War atmosphere and our race against the Americans," Chertok said. "The military missile was the main thing we were thinking of at the moment."
Sputnik was an important moment, but it didn’t begin the Cold War or Cold War paranoia (like the early 1950s Blacklist) or the subterranean fear of nuclear war (we’d been watching those radiation monster movies most of the decade.) It did threaten to make space another battlefield.
This could well be the real significance of this anniversary for us now. Beginning with his dream of space-based weapons that to the eternal chagrin of George Lucas came to be called Star Wars, Ronald Reagan began what George W. Bush wants to intensify and expand. The Russians have picked this moment to warn that if any country puts weapons in space it will lead to a new arms race. Only the US has shown any inclination to do so. And several peace organizations have chosen this week for an international week of protest to stop the militarization of space.
Apart from the threat of nuclear warfare from space, there is a very real ongoing threat to what’s up there in space now—the most tangible legacy of the Space Age, such as communications and global positioning satellites, and the space-based technology behind the ground level gadgets we increasingly depend on and take for granted—including the Internet, cell phones and GPS.
Apart from the questionable drift to total dependence on these technologies, so vulnerable to accident and attack, there is the simple fact of space garbage. At the speed it moves, a tiny piece of debris can kill a satellite. And there is an awful lot of it up there. According to David Wright in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "Some 4,500 launches have taken place since Sputnik, and there are currently 850 active satellites in space, owned by some 50 countries, as well as nearly 700,000 pieces of debris large enough to damage or destroy those satellites."
Put the danger of debris together with the whole idea of space warfare, which could create so much debris in orbit around the earth that no spacecraft would survive, and the Space Age would be over. Sorry, no Star Trek. And maybe no cell phones either.
These are some of the reasons that scientists and writers like Wright and Laura Grego (behind a pay wall) at New Scientist are pointing out the even greater significance of a 40th anniversary this month—the October 10, 1967 signing of the Outer Space Treaty, since ratified by some 100 countries. It states:
“The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.”
Of course it’s just one of many international treaties that the Bush administration ignores and wants to destroy. But as Laura Grego writes in the September 8, 2007 New Scientist:
“While we look back at the achievements of half a century in space, we should look ahead, too, and make it a priority to safeguard our common heritage in space and our security on Earth.”
Apart from the threat of nuclear warfare from space, there is a very real ongoing threat to what’s up there in space now—the most tangible legacy of the Space Age, such as communications and global positioning satellites, and the space-based technology behind the ground level gadgets we increasingly depend on and take for granted—including the Internet, cell phones and GPS.
Apart from the questionable drift to total dependence on these technologies, so vulnerable to accident and attack, there is the simple fact of space garbage. At the speed it moves, a tiny piece of debris can kill a satellite. And there is an awful lot of it up there. According to David Wright in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, "Some 4,500 launches have taken place since Sputnik, and there are currently 850 active satellites in space, owned by some 50 countries, as well as nearly 700,000 pieces of debris large enough to damage or destroy those satellites."
Put the danger of debris together with the whole idea of space warfare, which could create so much debris in orbit around the earth that no spacecraft would survive, and the Space Age would be over. Sorry, no Star Trek. And maybe no cell phones either.
These are some of the reasons that scientists and writers like Wright and Laura Grego (behind a pay wall) at New Scientist are pointing out the even greater significance of a 40th anniversary this month—the October 10, 1967 signing of the Outer Space Treaty, since ratified by some 100 countries. It states:
“The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.”
Of course it’s just one of many international treaties that the Bush administration ignores and wants to destroy. But as Laura Grego writes in the September 8, 2007 New Scientist:
“While we look back at the achievements of half a century in space, we should look ahead, too, and make it a priority to safeguard our common heritage in space and our security on Earth.”
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"There is no improvement on the Hopi way as an ethic of life...Take care of Mother Earth and she will take care of you. Take what you need, but not more than you need. Share what you have. Give thanks to the spiritual source of the universe."
Rudolph Kaiser
Rudolph Kaiser
Paint Them Black
The fallout from the Blackwater incident continues. The warm-up to congressional hearings today (Tuesday) is a congressional report citing the "security" (read: mercenary) company for some 195 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005. That's nearly two hundred in less than two years, more than one a week -- "in a vast majority of cases firing their weapons from moving vehicles without stopping to count the dead or assist the wounded," according to the New York Times report. In 163 of those cases, Blackwater gunmen fired first.
The recent incident that grabbed the attention of the Iraqi government--Blackwater allegedly killing civilians on September 16-- is being investigated by the FBI.
The Times also wrote: But the report is also harshly critical of the State Department for exercising virtually no restraint or supervision of the private security company’s 861 employees in Iraq. “There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting episodes involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation,” the report states.
This is entirely consistent with Bushite policy and practice: no-bid, no-oversight, no-accountability contracts to enrich corporate cronies and bankrupt the U.S. government. Blackwater's "security" mandate is to protect the private property of Halliburton--that is, the Green Zone--and Halliburton's in-country customers, the U.S. "officials" and the Army. And they do so outside and above the law, another Bushite favorite.
Blackwater and other mercenaries have already been seen on the streets of New Orleans, and if any other disasters happen while the Bushites are in charge, you can be sure the future is black.
The recent incident that grabbed the attention of the Iraqi government--Blackwater allegedly killing civilians on September 16-- is being investigated by the FBI.
The Times also wrote: But the report is also harshly critical of the State Department for exercising virtually no restraint or supervision of the private security company’s 861 employees in Iraq. “There is no evidence in the documents that the committee has reviewed that the State Department sought to restrain Blackwater’s actions, raised concerns about the number of shooting episodes involving Blackwater or the company’s high rate of shooting first, or detained Blackwater contractors for investigation,” the report states.
This is entirely consistent with Bushite policy and practice: no-bid, no-oversight, no-accountability contracts to enrich corporate cronies and bankrupt the U.S. government. Blackwater's "security" mandate is to protect the private property of Halliburton--that is, the Green Zone--and Halliburton's in-country customers, the U.S. "officials" and the Army. And they do so outside and above the law, another Bushite favorite.
Blackwater and other mercenaries have already been seen on the streets of New Orleans, and if any other disasters happen while the Bushites are in charge, you can be sure the future is black.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Climate Weak
In an editorial last Saturday, the New York Times dubbed it Climate Week: "The coming week could set a record for the number of high-profile hours spent discussing global warming and what to do about it." First, the UN. Then several days of the Clinton Global Initiative. And finally, President Bush's speech to an international conference on the topic organized by the White House. Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie--the Earth is threatened (droughts, storms, Alaska becoming a sinkhole, disease, species dying off, the Arctic ice disappearing faster than anyone would have believed) so the world's Leaders meet to hear the scientists debate and come up with a Plan to save the World. Or something like that.
"The problem needs all the attention it can get," the Times opined. "But if talk is good, it is also cheap."
First of all, if you missed reports of this momentous week, that was easy enough to do: the media barely covered it. So much for the climate Crisis. So many more important stories than that.
The talkers were impressive. At the UN, California Governor Schwarzenegger said: "The consequences of global climate change are so pressing it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past.What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that means all of us." Al Gore spoke. He called for a global Marshall Plan to confront the Climate Crisis and world poverty. Then the organizer of the event, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon asserted, ""Our goal must be nothing short of a real breakthrough," Ban said. "Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term."
The Washington Post went on to say that this meeting was a preliminary to real negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, which will begin in December. Ban called on industrialized powers to show greater leadership in cutting emissions and said that poor countries will require incentives to lower emission levels "without sacrificing economic growth or poverty reduction." Although Ban did not outline a specific proposal for emission caps, a senior U.N. adviser said Ban believes a legally binding limit on industrial emissions is essential.
Other leaders were more specific, including the otherwise conservative president of France. "Let us together set objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, noting that the European Union is committed to a 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050. "Failure to act would mean going beyond the point of no return."
It's worth noting at this point that dealing with the Climate Crisis is not a political issue that always breaks along party lines in Europe--in the UK, the conservatives are, if anything, even more gung ho than the Labor Party. And in general terms, it isn't a political issue at all.
Then came three extraordinary days of the Clinton Initiative meetings, virtually uncovered by American media. Many large and less large programs were announced to address an array of problems such as poverty and disease, but here's a short list of what was accomplished on the Climate Crisis alone:
A coalition of eight American utilities collectively serving nearly 20 million customers in 22 states announced Thursday that they would focus on energy efficiency.
Over the next five years, Standard Chartered Bank will commit to underwrite $4 to 5 billion in debt to renewable energy projects with a total project value of $8 to $10 billion. The bank will target clean energy projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and focus their efforts in areas such as wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass and coal bed methane. The bank says it may play the role of lead arranger of debt, financial advisor or equity investor.
In another initiative announced Thursday, the X Prize committed to give prize money of up to $300 million to innovators making breakthroughs in energy and climate change, education, health, and poverty alleviation by conducting a dozen global competitions for large scale inducement prizes. X Prize defines a problem and then sets a challenge to find the solution. In this new round of prizes, innovators will have to show outcomes such as a reduction in CO2 or improved mortality rates. Innovators who reach the targets first will be able to claim millions of dollars in prize money.
Working with the Alliance for Climate Protection, Mark Buell and Susie Tompkins Buell will develop a $5 million project to continue moving the United States towards the point at which leaders in both major political parties and all sectors of civil society compete to offer effective proposals, policies, and programs that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
Then on Friday came Bush. The New York Times report began: Seeking to dispel the widespread impression that his administration is isolated on the issue of global warming, President Bush said today that the world’s biggest polluters can limit damage to the atmosphere while still promoting prosperity. At the international conference he called, Bush added: “The best way to tackle this problem is to think creatively and to learn from others’ experiences and to come together on a way to achieve the objectives we share. Together, our nations will pave the way for a new international approach on greenhouse emissions.”
But Bush again refused to endorse mandatory measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and in its own decorous way, the Times story said nobody was buying it. Noting that "the conference drew only midlevel officials from many participating nations," it said: Germany’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, took a detached view of the conference, noting that the Bush administration would be gone in less than 18 months, and that it was unlikely to change its position. He said he spent two days this week discussing climate change with Democrats in Congress with an eye toward the post-Bush future.
In its story on the conference, the Washington Post wrote: After nearly seven years on the defensive, Bush tried to assume a leadership role in crafting "a new international approach" to preserving the world's climate. Yet he found himself largely isolated at a meeting that he had organized to address the issue, lambasted by foreign officials, U.S. lawmakers and environmental activists who saw his effort as more show than substance.
The Post quoted John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change ("what has emerged at this conference, and also at the United Nations, is how isolated the administration is now on this issue, especially on the issue of mandatory targets") and some snark from Rep. Edward Markey, the Democratic chairman of a new House committee on global warming ("The president says his goals are aspirational, but his goals are really procrastinational . The UN is saying the planet is urgently sick, and the Bush administration is saying, 'Take two aspirin and call me when I leave office.' " )
The UK's Guardian was more blunt than that: European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush's failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change... A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December. "It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade," the diplomat said. "I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."
So for Bush, it turned out to be Climate Weak. But until he is gone, and unless a Democrat is elected, only incremental steps by individual cities and states, corporations and perhaps countries are likely to be possible--as well as initiatives like those announced at the Clinton conference, the most successful of the week's climate events. But those efforts won't be enough. It will take the world, and especially the United States of America.
There is more to say about the Bush position and what may be behind it, and about what the Democrats are and are not doing on the Climate Crisis. Stay tuned.
"The problem needs all the attention it can get," the Times opined. "But if talk is good, it is also cheap."
First of all, if you missed reports of this momentous week, that was easy enough to do: the media barely covered it. So much for the climate Crisis. So many more important stories than that.
The talkers were impressive. At the UN, California Governor Schwarzenegger said: "The consequences of global climate change are so pressing it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past.What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that means all of us." Al Gore spoke. He called for a global Marshall Plan to confront the Climate Crisis and world poverty. Then the organizer of the event, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki Moon asserted, ""Our goal must be nothing short of a real breakthrough," Ban said. "Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term."
The Washington Post went on to say that this meeting was a preliminary to real negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, which will begin in December. Ban called on industrialized powers to show greater leadership in cutting emissions and said that poor countries will require incentives to lower emission levels "without sacrificing economic growth or poverty reduction." Although Ban did not outline a specific proposal for emission caps, a senior U.N. adviser said Ban believes a legally binding limit on industrial emissions is essential.
Other leaders were more specific, including the otherwise conservative president of France. "Let us together set objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, noting that the European Union is committed to a 50 percent reduction in global greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2050. "Failure to act would mean going beyond the point of no return."
It's worth noting at this point that dealing with the Climate Crisis is not a political issue that always breaks along party lines in Europe--in the UK, the conservatives are, if anything, even more gung ho than the Labor Party. And in general terms, it isn't a political issue at all.
Then came three extraordinary days of the Clinton Initiative meetings, virtually uncovered by American media. Many large and less large programs were announced to address an array of problems such as poverty and disease, but here's a short list of what was accomplished on the Climate Crisis alone:
A coalition of eight American utilities collectively serving nearly 20 million customers in 22 states announced Thursday that they would focus on energy efficiency.
Over the next five years, Standard Chartered Bank will commit to underwrite $4 to 5 billion in debt to renewable energy projects with a total project value of $8 to $10 billion. The bank will target clean energy projects in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and focus their efforts in areas such as wind, hydro, geothermal, solar, biomass and coal bed methane. The bank says it may play the role of lead arranger of debt, financial advisor or equity investor.
In another initiative announced Thursday, the X Prize committed to give prize money of up to $300 million to innovators making breakthroughs in energy and climate change, education, health, and poverty alleviation by conducting a dozen global competitions for large scale inducement prizes. X Prize defines a problem and then sets a challenge to find the solution. In this new round of prizes, innovators will have to show outcomes such as a reduction in CO2 or improved mortality rates. Innovators who reach the targets first will be able to claim millions of dollars in prize money.
Working with the Alliance for Climate Protection, Mark Buell and Susie Tompkins Buell will develop a $5 million project to continue moving the United States towards the point at which leaders in both major political parties and all sectors of civil society compete to offer effective proposals, policies, and programs that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.
Then on Friday came Bush. The New York Times report began: Seeking to dispel the widespread impression that his administration is isolated on the issue of global warming, President Bush said today that the world’s biggest polluters can limit damage to the atmosphere while still promoting prosperity. At the international conference he called, Bush added: “The best way to tackle this problem is to think creatively and to learn from others’ experiences and to come together on a way to achieve the objectives we share. Together, our nations will pave the way for a new international approach on greenhouse emissions.”
But Bush again refused to endorse mandatory measures to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and in its own decorous way, the Times story said nobody was buying it. Noting that "the conference drew only midlevel officials from many participating nations," it said: Germany’s environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, took a detached view of the conference, noting that the Bush administration would be gone in less than 18 months, and that it was unlikely to change its position. He said he spent two days this week discussing climate change with Democrats in Congress with an eye toward the post-Bush future.
In its story on the conference, the Washington Post wrote: After nearly seven years on the defensive, Bush tried to assume a leadership role in crafting "a new international approach" to preserving the world's climate. Yet he found himself largely isolated at a meeting that he had organized to address the issue, lambasted by foreign officials, U.S. lawmakers and environmental activists who saw his effort as more show than substance.
The Post quoted John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change ("what has emerged at this conference, and also at the United Nations, is how isolated the administration is now on this issue, especially on the issue of mandatory targets") and some snark from Rep. Edward Markey, the Democratic chairman of a new House committee on global warming ("The president says his goals are aspirational, but his goals are really procrastinational . The UN is saying the planet is urgently sick, and the Bush administration is saying, 'Take two aspirin and call me when I leave office.' " )
The UK's Guardian was more blunt than that: European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush's failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change... A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December. "It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade," the diplomat said. "I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure."
So for Bush, it turned out to be Climate Weak. But until he is gone, and unless a Democrat is elected, only incremental steps by individual cities and states, corporations and perhaps countries are likely to be possible--as well as initiatives like those announced at the Clinton conference, the most successful of the week's climate events. But those efforts won't be enough. It will take the world, and especially the United States of America.
There is more to say about the Bush position and what may be behind it, and about what the Democrats are and are not doing on the Climate Crisis. Stay tuned.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Debate and the Obama Difference
UPDATE: a version of this made the recommended list at Daily Kos. I've since revised this to reflect the kos version.
They just don't get it--the Washington media, the Washington politicians. They're all shaking their heads because Barack Obamba didn't "distingush himself" from the other candidates in last night's debate by going on the attack. One of Hillary's hit men said today, " I think people are still wondering what really Obama's strategy is." The talking bobbleheads agreed that he had a lousy debate.
Only he didn't. And I'll bet that any analysis of voter positive response, moment by moment, went up sky high on several of his responses.
Obama was asked about his experience. He gave examples to support his contention that the next President has to do three things: bring people together and get things done, stand up to special interests and win, tell the truth to the American people even when it's tough.
When asked about health care he told the plain truth, that the announced plans by the candidates are pretty similiar (except for Dennis Kucinich, who favors the only truly universal coverage, the single-payer plan), so the question is "who can inspire and mobilize the American people to get it done, and to open up the process"--and here he drew a clear distinction with Hillary's previous efforts to create a national healthcare system, one that voters could not fail to hear, even if it fell on the tone deaf ears of the media bobbleheads--"if it was lonely for Hillary [getting her healthcare plan passed in 1993], part of the reason is that you closed the door--80% of the American people at that time wanted universal health care, but didn't feel they were let into the process."
Now as an analysis of what happened in the early 90s, this is incomplete, but as a statement of what's at the core of his campaign, it's clearer. But there was more clarity to come. (These quotes are my own transcription and hence "unofficial"--I was unable to find a transcript or any reference to them.) Obama said: "One of the most important things the next President can do is to bring us together--instead of trying to fan the flames of division that has become so standard in Washington."
Lots of politicians, most notoriously Richard Nixon (whose minions coined the "bring us together" slogan) and G.W. Bush ("I'm a uniter, not a divider") have talked in similar terms, and most of them were lying. What few commentators notice but I'll bet voters see is that in the debates Obama is walking the walk. He is reasonable and tolerant and hopeful, as well as appropriately precise and forceful. The media in particular is never going to get it because conflict is their bread and butter. Novelty and conflict are the only two story lines they know.
Speaking of conflict, debate host Tim Russert (who I find so hard to watch because he is such an obvious bundle of psychological conflict himself) tried a gotcha question towards the end by saying that Democrats have a problem on issues of "faith and values" so he asked them all for their favorite Bible verse, as if challenging the atheistic secular humanists to come up with one. The question itself says volumes, because its premise is that the only people who can have faith and values are Christians, and maybe Jews. We needed Jerry Brown on somebody on that stage to quote a sutra.
Anyway, the first to get this question was Barack Obama, and he said the Sermon on the Mount.
"Because it expresses a basic principle I think we've lost in the last 6 years...part of what we've lost is a sense of empathy towards each other. We have been governed in fear and division-- and we talk about the federal deficit but we don't talk about the empathy deficit--a sense that I stand in somebody else's shoes, I look through their eyes..." He referred to those who are "struggling to figure out how to pay the gas bill or send their kids to college--thinking about them at the federal level--that's the reason I'm running for President, I want to restore that."
Earlier, Russert reminded Obama that when he was elected to the Senate in 2002, he said the idea of seeking the presidency immediately was absurd. Why had he changed his mind only 6 years later? Because, Obama said, his approach was what Americans want and need right now. He senses the character of this moment.
What if he's right? I think that he is. I would vote for any of the Democrats on that platform over any Republican running, no question. I am bothered by Hillary on specific issues, like her vote on Iran yesterday, and I don't like her political team. I am not crazy about Obama's positions on several issues, either, although in keeping nuclear power as an energy option on the table, he potentially raised the bar so high that it can't meet it in the forseeable future.
But this particular appeal transcends individual issues, and pertains in fact most directly to the meta-issue that once again was ignored by the questioners in this debate: the Climate Crisis. Responding to that is going to require much more cooperation and consensus and greater change. Just to overcome the entrenched interests, and the powers of disaster capitalism that the Bushites have put in place, is likely to be insurmountable without strong leadership that can change the terms of the political conversation. Here's something else he said:
"What the next President must do is stop fanning people's fears," Obama said. "If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful, conflicted and divided. If we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful."
This is a profound point. To get to any civilized future without a century of catastrophe unparalleled in the past ten thousand years, we are going to need a change of soul: we are going to need reason, tolerance and hope, and we are going to need empathy. We are going to need it internationally as well as in America, and we are going to need to extend it to peoples we aren't used to considering as anything but alien.
Obama is right about the role of leadership in fostering this. As human animals we are capable of violence, greed and insane selfishness; we are also capable of cooperation, altruism, empathy, constructive sharing and peaceful means. No one can legislate or force which way we go. Mostly it is a matter of emphasis, of what is encouraged and expected. So especially in this country at this time, our chief leader, the President, can set a crucial tone. He or she can make the difference. We aren't going to eradicate parts of ourselves, but we can decide what principles will guide our actions. That's the reality of "values."
Some of us only need to imagine the difference, not only in policy but in our feelings and behavior towards each other and the world, if Al Gore had been President for the past six years, to understand the importance of what Obama is saying.
Can this message resonate? I think it can, but the experts will be the last to realize it. It is probably true, as Michelle Obama said in an unguarded moment, that Barack needs to win Iowa to have a shot at the nomination. But beyond that, there are hints as to what can happen. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first black governor (of Virginia),says that Obama could shatter the Republican hold on the South. There's also data suggesting that Obama is the most popular Democrat among Independents and Republicans. In fact, while Obama is currently in a close race for the Democratic nomination in Iowa, he was also polling third in the Iowa Republican caucus.
While Hillary--or John Edwards, or just about any Democratic candidate--has the better shot than the Republican nominee at winning the 2008 election, it could be quite close, providing no mandate or sense of divisions ending or old politics being over. Barack Obama's candidacy has the potential of leading to an electoral landslide, adding more young people, Independents and desperate Republicans to an even larger majority of people of color, women and Democrats in general. Other Democrats may be able to turn things around as President. But I sense that with Obama we may have the best chance at a future.
They just don't get it--the Washington media, the Washington politicians. They're all shaking their heads because Barack Obamba didn't "distingush himself" from the other candidates in last night's debate by going on the attack. One of Hillary's hit men said today, " I think people are still wondering what really Obama's strategy is." The talking bobbleheads agreed that he had a lousy debate.
Only he didn't. And I'll bet that any analysis of voter positive response, moment by moment, went up sky high on several of his responses.
Obama was asked about his experience. He gave examples to support his contention that the next President has to do three things: bring people together and get things done, stand up to special interests and win, tell the truth to the American people even when it's tough.
When asked about health care he told the plain truth, that the announced plans by the candidates are pretty similiar (except for Dennis Kucinich, who favors the only truly universal coverage, the single-payer plan), so the question is "who can inspire and mobilize the American people to get it done, and to open up the process"--and here he drew a clear distinction with Hillary's previous efforts to create a national healthcare system, one that voters could not fail to hear, even if it fell on the tone deaf ears of the media bobbleheads--"if it was lonely for Hillary [getting her healthcare plan passed in 1993], part of the reason is that you closed the door--80% of the American people at that time wanted universal health care, but didn't feel they were let into the process."
Now as an analysis of what happened in the early 90s, this is incomplete, but as a statement of what's at the core of his campaign, it's clearer. But there was more clarity to come. (These quotes are my own transcription and hence "unofficial"--I was unable to find a transcript or any reference to them.) Obama said: "One of the most important things the next President can do is to bring us together--instead of trying to fan the flames of division that has become so standard in Washington."
Lots of politicians, most notoriously Richard Nixon (whose minions coined the "bring us together" slogan) and G.W. Bush ("I'm a uniter, not a divider") have talked in similar terms, and most of them were lying. What few commentators notice but I'll bet voters see is that in the debates Obama is walking the walk. He is reasonable and tolerant and hopeful, as well as appropriately precise and forceful. The media in particular is never going to get it because conflict is their bread and butter. Novelty and conflict are the only two story lines they know.
Speaking of conflict, debate host Tim Russert (who I find so hard to watch because he is such an obvious bundle of psychological conflict himself) tried a gotcha question towards the end by saying that Democrats have a problem on issues of "faith and values" so he asked them all for their favorite Bible verse, as if challenging the atheistic secular humanists to come up with one. The question itself says volumes, because its premise is that the only people who can have faith and values are Christians, and maybe Jews. We needed Jerry Brown on somebody on that stage to quote a sutra.
Anyway, the first to get this question was Barack Obama, and he said the Sermon on the Mount.
"Because it expresses a basic principle I think we've lost in the last 6 years...part of what we've lost is a sense of empathy towards each other. We have been governed in fear and division-- and we talk about the federal deficit but we don't talk about the empathy deficit--a sense that I stand in somebody else's shoes, I look through their eyes..." He referred to those who are "struggling to figure out how to pay the gas bill or send their kids to college--thinking about them at the federal level--that's the reason I'm running for President, I want to restore that."
Earlier, Russert reminded Obama that when he was elected to the Senate in 2002, he said the idea of seeking the presidency immediately was absurd. Why had he changed his mind only 6 years later? Because, Obama said, his approach was what Americans want and need right now. He senses the character of this moment.
What if he's right? I think that he is. I would vote for any of the Democrats on that platform over any Republican running, no question. I am bothered by Hillary on specific issues, like her vote on Iran yesterday, and I don't like her political team. I am not crazy about Obama's positions on several issues, either, although in keeping nuclear power as an energy option on the table, he potentially raised the bar so high that it can't meet it in the forseeable future.
But this particular appeal transcends individual issues, and pertains in fact most directly to the meta-issue that once again was ignored by the questioners in this debate: the Climate Crisis. Responding to that is going to require much more cooperation and consensus and greater change. Just to overcome the entrenched interests, and the powers of disaster capitalism that the Bushites have put in place, is likely to be insurmountable without strong leadership that can change the terms of the political conversation. Here's something else he said:
"What the next President must do is stop fanning people's fears," Obama said. "If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful, conflicted and divided. If we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful."
This is a profound point. To get to any civilized future without a century of catastrophe unparalleled in the past ten thousand years, we are going to need a change of soul: we are going to need reason, tolerance and hope, and we are going to need empathy. We are going to need it internationally as well as in America, and we are going to need to extend it to peoples we aren't used to considering as anything but alien.
Obama is right about the role of leadership in fostering this. As human animals we are capable of violence, greed and insane selfishness; we are also capable of cooperation, altruism, empathy, constructive sharing and peaceful means. No one can legislate or force which way we go. Mostly it is a matter of emphasis, of what is encouraged and expected. So especially in this country at this time, our chief leader, the President, can set a crucial tone. He or she can make the difference. We aren't going to eradicate parts of ourselves, but we can decide what principles will guide our actions. That's the reality of "values."
Some of us only need to imagine the difference, not only in policy but in our feelings and behavior towards each other and the world, if Al Gore had been President for the past six years, to understand the importance of what Obama is saying.
Can this message resonate? I think it can, but the experts will be the last to realize it. It is probably true, as Michelle Obama said in an unguarded moment, that Barack needs to win Iowa to have a shot at the nomination. But beyond that, there are hints as to what can happen. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first black governor (of Virginia),says that Obama could shatter the Republican hold on the South. There's also data suggesting that Obama is the most popular Democrat among Independents and Republicans. In fact, while Obama is currently in a close race for the Democratic nomination in Iowa, he was also polling third in the Iowa Republican caucus.
While Hillary--or John Edwards, or just about any Democratic candidate--has the better shot than the Republican nominee at winning the 2008 election, it could be quite close, providing no mandate or sense of divisions ending or old politics being over. Barack Obama's candidacy has the potential of leading to an electoral landslide, adding more young people, Independents and desperate Republicans to an even larger majority of people of color, women and Democrats in general. Other Democrats may be able to turn things around as President. But I sense that with Obama we may have the best chance at a future.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
Everywhere there's lots of piggies
Playing piggie pranks
You can see them on their trotters
At the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To thee, Pig Brother
the lost (unused) verse of "Piggies"
by George Harrison
Playing piggie pranks
You can see them on their trotters
At the piggy banks
Paying piggy thanks
To thee, Pig Brother
the lost (unused) verse of "Piggies"
by George Harrison
Raised on Robbery: The Neocon Conspiracy
In the wake of an analysis by a Nobel Prize-winning economist that the war in Iraq is costing America a million dollars every two minutes, President Bush has announced he will veto a bill to expand a proven children's health program, just passed by the House.
The war is costing some $720 million a day, according to the study by economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and public finance expert Linda J. Bilmes, issued last week by the American Friends Service Committee. That one day's spending could buy health care for nearly a half million children. It could buy homes for 6,500 families and provide 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the analysis. It adds direct long term costs resulting from the war(such as health care for soldiers) to current spending, but not indirect future costs, like higher oil prices, lost productivity and trade.
The expansion of the children's health program amounts to $35 billion, which would pay for about 40 days of the Iraq war, according to these figures. Yet Republicans in Congress as well as the White House complain that this constitutes excessive government spending, among other specious arguments.
But any standards of accountability let alone wise use of resources don't apply to their war for profit in Iraq. According to a spokesperson for the American Enterprise Institute, the organization most responsible for the Bushite neoconservative agenda, " If you think national security won't be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant."
There are several insulting fallacies here, but the most serious is that the Iraq war is necessary for U.S. national security, which nobody but the neocons believe, and the vast majority of Americans clearly don't accept. But it is certainly the excuse used by Bushite big spenders (some of whom may believe it, but I doubt that all really do) for their no-bid contracts worth billions given to their corporate cronies, not to mention the unaccounted for billions, the clearly wasted billions, and the stolen billions. This of course is the work of the party that's against Big Government, at least when it comes to children's medical care.
The truth of the matter I am convinced is closer to what Naomi Klein writes in The Shock Doctrine: to Bushite neocons "the acceptable role of government in a corporatist state - [is] to act as a conveyor belt for getting public money into private hands." Certain private hands, like Halliburton's. That's one big reason why there are more contractors than soldiers in Iraq, and why the cost of this war is nearly three quarters of a billion dollars a day--the most outrageous robbery in history, and one that future generations will long be paying.
And that's why government can't support health care for poor children and children of families who can't otherwise afford it, in America, but any limit on pouring money down the drain of Iraq is irrelevant. If this keeps up, there really won't be any money for anything else, for a long time. Which is exactly what some neocons intend.
In many essential ways it's all elaborate dressing for extreme pigginess by a few. So let's all bow down to the unitary executive of Pig Brother.
UPDATE: The Shock Doctrine is getting a lot of good attention, including a video interview of author Naomi Klein by actor John Cusak. If you really want to understand what this book is about and what is has to say about all this, in a succinct 17 minutes, don't read my review, watch this interview. You can also find it on Huffington Post.
The war is costing some $720 million a day, according to the study by economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and public finance expert Linda J. Bilmes, issued last week by the American Friends Service Committee. That one day's spending could buy health care for nearly a half million children. It could buy homes for 6,500 families and provide 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the analysis. It adds direct long term costs resulting from the war(such as health care for soldiers) to current spending, but not indirect future costs, like higher oil prices, lost productivity and trade.
The expansion of the children's health program amounts to $35 billion, which would pay for about 40 days of the Iraq war, according to these figures. Yet Republicans in Congress as well as the White House complain that this constitutes excessive government spending, among other specious arguments.
But any standards of accountability let alone wise use of resources don't apply to their war for profit in Iraq. According to a spokesperson for the American Enterprise Institute, the organization most responsible for the Bushite neoconservative agenda, " If you think national security won't be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant."
There are several insulting fallacies here, but the most serious is that the Iraq war is necessary for U.S. national security, which nobody but the neocons believe, and the vast majority of Americans clearly don't accept. But it is certainly the excuse used by Bushite big spenders (some of whom may believe it, but I doubt that all really do) for their no-bid contracts worth billions given to their corporate cronies, not to mention the unaccounted for billions, the clearly wasted billions, and the stolen billions. This of course is the work of the party that's against Big Government, at least when it comes to children's medical care.
The truth of the matter I am convinced is closer to what Naomi Klein writes in The Shock Doctrine: to Bushite neocons "the acceptable role of government in a corporatist state - [is] to act as a conveyor belt for getting public money into private hands." Certain private hands, like Halliburton's. That's one big reason why there are more contractors than soldiers in Iraq, and why the cost of this war is nearly three quarters of a billion dollars a day--the most outrageous robbery in history, and one that future generations will long be paying.
And that's why government can't support health care for poor children and children of families who can't otherwise afford it, in America, but any limit on pouring money down the drain of Iraq is irrelevant. If this keeps up, there really won't be any money for anything else, for a long time. Which is exactly what some neocons intend.
In many essential ways it's all elaborate dressing for extreme pigginess by a few. So let's all bow down to the unitary executive of Pig Brother.
UPDATE: The Shock Doctrine is getting a lot of good attention, including a video interview of author Naomi Klein by actor John Cusak. If you really want to understand what this book is about and what is has to say about all this, in a succinct 17 minutes, don't read my review, watch this interview. You can also find it on Huffington Post.
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Shocks That We Are Heir To
I've mentioned The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein's new book before, but now it's out in the U.S. I reviewed it in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, and this is how I began:
The connections are daring in journalist Naomi Klein's new book, "The Shock Doctrine," but the result is convincing. With a bold and brilliantly conceived thesis, skillfully and cogently threaded through more than 500 pages of trenchant writing, Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time. And because the pattern she exposes could govern our future as well, "The Shock Doctrine" could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade.
The rest of the review is here.
There's also a good review in the Guardian.
The connections are daring in journalist Naomi Klein's new book, "The Shock Doctrine," but the result is convincing. With a bold and brilliantly conceived thesis, skillfully and cogently threaded through more than 500 pages of trenchant writing, Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time. And because the pattern she exposes could govern our future as well, "The Shock Doctrine" could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade.
The rest of the review is here.
There's also a good review in the Guardian.
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