click on image for gorgeousness. From bushveld.co.za
2 days ago
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Normal Viciousness
For Bushites, (right) winger pols, media bobbleheads, bloggers, and often enough, Republicans in general, no "new low" stays new very long, before they take themselves and the political dialogue even lower.
There's the latest attacks on the children and their families who provided their stories to support what's called the S-Chip program, that helps working families pay extraordinary medical bills for their children. A couple of families made commercials explaining how the program made a major difference in their lives, and supporting its expansion to other families.
The attacks include the usual viral lies but also a call for them to be hanged. These are children severely injured in an accident, and even after extensive care, the boy speaks with a lisp and the little girl is blind in one eye. When Keith Olbermann asked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who'd just written about why Al Gore drives Republicans insane) if this attack didn't just leave him speechless, Krugman said it was not really exceptional, that it was "normal in its viciousness."
What happens to a democracy when viciousness becomes normal? Some say it has always been so, but I wonder if that's much consolation. I think we all wonder what happens to a society when viciousness really becomes normal. The answer would seem to be: it ceases to be a society. There is a continuum between civilization and savagery, and we are clearly moving towards savagery--faster than we realize.
But apart from the pragmatism of those like Krugman who are exposed to this political viciousness pretty much every day, this savagery can be seen to follow logically from the belief that this is a dog eat dog world, that the winners are those who destroy their competitors by any means necessary. Ironically, it is a twisted variation of Darwinism, a natural selection based on the simplistic but (to some) viscerally convincing criteria that the winners win by being clever (including deceptive) as well as by using power (including violence) without conscience.
Our "entertainment" these days is often about those situations in which survival depends on using any means necessary, especially violence. There is something reassuring about these movies and TV shows, in an elemental way--the way that children are reassured by stories in which the hero and heroine survive the wicked witch in the forest, the ghosts, the monster. It reassures us that the bad forces aren't all powerful, and in this bewilderingly complex society, we aren't powerless.
But we all know that these situations are relatively rare--that more often, in our human-dominated world, we survive through non-violent means--through responsibility and keeping our word, through negotiation, conciliation, cooperation--as well as by helping each other. That's the basis of every civilization, including (ironically again) the ones we consider primitive. It's not the kings and the armies--they change things, they destroy, but they mostly serve the rulers, not the society. For most people, it's playing fair and expecting fair play, it's empathy and altruism, and there's no getting around it. It's the Golden Rule, it's "you'd do the same for me."
And not very ironically, in fact both sadly and grandly, civilization depends ont is precisely the people the wingers are going after now: the families who are grateful that their government helped them literally save their children's lives, and provided them with help towards something like a normal life, but who haven't just taken what they were given--they want it for others, as many others as possible. And they have the courage to say so.
It's absurd to think we can't afford such a program. There are other reasons for Bushite opposition, which I'll get into later, but this isn't about the program--it's about who we are, what we value, and what kind of a society we want to live in. We might start with a civilized one. We're going to need it.
There's the latest attacks on the children and their families who provided their stories to support what's called the S-Chip program, that helps working families pay extraordinary medical bills for their children. A couple of families made commercials explaining how the program made a major difference in their lives, and supporting its expansion to other families.
The attacks include the usual viral lies but also a call for them to be hanged. These are children severely injured in an accident, and even after extensive care, the boy speaks with a lisp and the little girl is blind in one eye. When Keith Olbermann asked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who'd just written about why Al Gore drives Republicans insane) if this attack didn't just leave him speechless, Krugman said it was not really exceptional, that it was "normal in its viciousness."
What happens to a democracy when viciousness becomes normal? Some say it has always been so, but I wonder if that's much consolation. I think we all wonder what happens to a society when viciousness really becomes normal. The answer would seem to be: it ceases to be a society. There is a continuum between civilization and savagery, and we are clearly moving towards savagery--faster than we realize.
But apart from the pragmatism of those like Krugman who are exposed to this political viciousness pretty much every day, this savagery can be seen to follow logically from the belief that this is a dog eat dog world, that the winners are those who destroy their competitors by any means necessary. Ironically, it is a twisted variation of Darwinism, a natural selection based on the simplistic but (to some) viscerally convincing criteria that the winners win by being clever (including deceptive) as well as by using power (including violence) without conscience.
Our "entertainment" these days is often about those situations in which survival depends on using any means necessary, especially violence. There is something reassuring about these movies and TV shows, in an elemental way--the way that children are reassured by stories in which the hero and heroine survive the wicked witch in the forest, the ghosts, the monster. It reassures us that the bad forces aren't all powerful, and in this bewilderingly complex society, we aren't powerless.
But we all know that these situations are relatively rare--that more often, in our human-dominated world, we survive through non-violent means--through responsibility and keeping our word, through negotiation, conciliation, cooperation--as well as by helping each other. That's the basis of every civilization, including (ironically again) the ones we consider primitive. It's not the kings and the armies--they change things, they destroy, but they mostly serve the rulers, not the society. For most people, it's playing fair and expecting fair play, it's empathy and altruism, and there's no getting around it. It's the Golden Rule, it's "you'd do the same for me."
And not very ironically, in fact both sadly and grandly, civilization depends ont is precisely the people the wingers are going after now: the families who are grateful that their government helped them literally save their children's lives, and provided them with help towards something like a normal life, but who haven't just taken what they were given--they want it for others, as many others as possible. And they have the courage to say so.
It's absurd to think we can't afford such a program. There are other reasons for Bushite opposition, which I'll get into later, but this isn't about the program--it's about who we are, what we value, and what kind of a society we want to live in. We might start with a civilized one. We're going to need it.
"Good Germans"
The earliest reference the Wikipedia has to the expression, "good Germans," is a New York Times report from 1945: "There's a saying among our troops, that there are no real Nazis in Germany, only 'good Germans.'" The phrase dripped with hypocrisy, and came to mean Germans who claimed not to have supported Hitler, but did nothing to oppose him.
The truth is, for a long while, that described many people in Europe and elsewhere, but the phrase stuck, and as the Wikipedia says, "The term has come to be used to refer more generically to people in any country who observe reprehensible things taking place — whether done by a government or by another powerful institution — but remain silent, neither raising objections nor taking steps to change the course of events."
Like anything to do with Hitler and the Nazis, the phrase is heavily weighted. And so when on Sunday New York Times columnist Frank Rich used it to describe contemporary Americans, it ignited a controversy that still rages across the Internet.
But it is an historical analogy that is work taking seriously, especially given the case Rich assembles. “BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves, he begins.
That the Bushites have been able to perpetrate a dizzying array of policies and activities that for at least the past few generations would have seen impossible, that no Americans would stand for torture, rendition, domestic spying, armed thugs, better equipped and much better paid than U.S. troops, acting beyond any laws in Iraq and then brought back to the U.S. to patrol the streets of New Orleans; the attempted hijacking of the justice system for partisan and ideological gain; the suffering being caused or tolerated in Iraq, Africa, so many places...the list just goes on and on. And a President, with the support of less than one quarter of the country, continues without effective public outcry. How in the world can this be explained?
"Good Germans" comes as close as anyone has. Maybe because people don't want to lose what comforts they have--and those closest to centers of power have quite a lot.
Rich begins at the centers of responsibility: Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
But he does not absolve the rest of us, nor should he: As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
He brings the analogy closer to the source: Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Sometimes such a shocking analogy cuts through the fog, helps us find a moral definition. The analogy of the Good Germans is much too close for continued comfort.
The truth is, for a long while, that described many people in Europe and elsewhere, but the phrase stuck, and as the Wikipedia says, "The term has come to be used to refer more generically to people in any country who observe reprehensible things taking place — whether done by a government or by another powerful institution — but remain silent, neither raising objections nor taking steps to change the course of events."
Like anything to do with Hitler and the Nazis, the phrase is heavily weighted. And so when on Sunday New York Times columnist Frank Rich used it to describe contemporary Americans, it ignited a controversy that still rages across the Internet.
But it is an historical analogy that is work taking seriously, especially given the case Rich assembles. “BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves, he begins.
That the Bushites have been able to perpetrate a dizzying array of policies and activities that for at least the past few generations would have seen impossible, that no Americans would stand for torture, rendition, domestic spying, armed thugs, better equipped and much better paid than U.S. troops, acting beyond any laws in Iraq and then brought back to the U.S. to patrol the streets of New Orleans; the attempted hijacking of the justice system for partisan and ideological gain; the suffering being caused or tolerated in Iraq, Africa, so many places...the list just goes on and on. And a President, with the support of less than one quarter of the country, continues without effective public outcry. How in the world can this be explained?
"Good Germans" comes as close as anyone has. Maybe because people don't want to lose what comforts they have--and those closest to centers of power have quite a lot.
Rich begins at the centers of responsibility: Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
But he does not absolve the rest of us, nor should he: As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
He brings the analogy closer to the source: Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Sometimes such a shocking analogy cuts through the fog, helps us find a moral definition. The analogy of the Good Germans is much too close for continued comfort.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The China Syndrome
Bringing the Dalai Lama to the White prior to officially presenting him with the Congressional Medal of Freedom was a welcome distraction for the Bushites. Photographs with one of the most respected and beloved people in the world and especially in the U.S. helps diffuse the image of the vetoer of life-saving medical care for children, and it draws attention to the 1989 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and away from this year's winner, Al Gore, whose honor is yet to be acknowledged at the White House.
But it sure pissed off the Chinese government. Like most imperialists, it goes nuts when its brutal aggression and even more brutal colonial administration is even implictly, even theoretically or possibly questioned. In this case, China's armed takeover of Tibet included the murder of thousands of Buddhists, and its war against the Dalai Lama (the traditional political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet) has forced it into absurd embarrassments, the most recent of which is outlawing reincarnation without government approval.
But the White House doesn't want to piss them off too much. "We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in their eye for a country that we have a lot of relationships with on a variety of issues," said press secretary Dana Perino. " No, not with China financing the Iraq war and the further mega-enrichment of Bushites and their cronies, and leaving the piper to be paid by future American generations, one way or another.
Besides, China has become a kind of model for the Bushites: it has shown that a nation can get good p.r. for coming out against tyranny and murder in Darfur and Burma while still do nothing to endanger profits gained in relationships with those countries. And above all, the greatest lesson of China today, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that capitalism without democracy works just great. Something that the Bushites have certainly taken to heart.
But it sure pissed off the Chinese government. Like most imperialists, it goes nuts when its brutal aggression and even more brutal colonial administration is even implictly, even theoretically or possibly questioned. In this case, China's armed takeover of Tibet included the murder of thousands of Buddhists, and its war against the Dalai Lama (the traditional political as well as spiritual leader of Tibet) has forced it into absurd embarrassments, the most recent of which is outlawing reincarnation without government approval.
But the White House doesn't want to piss them off too much. "We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in their eye for a country that we have a lot of relationships with on a variety of issues," said press secretary Dana Perino. " No, not with China financing the Iraq war and the further mega-enrichment of Bushites and their cronies, and leaving the piper to be paid by future American generations, one way or another.
Besides, China has become a kind of model for the Bushites: it has shown that a nation can get good p.r. for coming out against tyranny and murder in Darfur and Burma while still do nothing to endanger profits gained in relationships with those countries. And above all, the greatest lesson of China today, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that capitalism without democracy works just great. Something that the Bushites have certainly taken to heart.
Monday, October 15, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Image
An unusual cloud formation, called lenticular
clouds. Click on image to enlarge.
It's Not Just the Heat
It's also the humidity, among other things. The planet is getting more humid as well as hotter, according to a new study. "This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study. According to this AP story:
The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
And that's just One More Thing. This same story says that climate scientists have now seen the man-made fingerprint of global warming on 10 different aspects of Earth's environment: surface temperatures, humidity, water vapor over the oceans, barometric pressure, total precipitation, wildfires, change in species of plants in animals, water run-off, temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and heat content in the world's oceans.
The Climate Crisis will continue to offer surprises to nonscientists and scientists alike, because one big shift like this leads to consequences that result in other changes. Some, like drought, are big and obvious. Others, like excessive pressure on plants (including trees) and animals, play out over time, but when plants and animals leave an ecological niche, a cascade of effects can follow fairly quickly. And then there are more prosaic problems: for instance, U.S. retail clothing sales had a bad September, partly because it was a warm one and people weren't buying fall or winter clothes. That's likely to happen again for October, and also likely to happen more regularly in autumns to come, so there will be changes in the shopping mall.
But let's get back to the humidity. High humidity causes physical stress to humans, but as we all know it also shows up in behavior---people get short-tempered and miserable, and their judgment is often impaired. The Nobel committee officially recognized the part that the Climate Crisis can have in causing warfare over resources. But it is also likely to cause other stresses that can make warfare an impulsive choice, when cooler heads don't prevail, because there might not be any.
Right now humidity isn't rising everywhere. Australia, South Africa and the western U.S. are getting very dry. There's drought in the American southeast and now in the Great Lakes region (although that is probably caused by warmer winters and less ice melt.) But the humidity is getting higher in the eastern U.S.--you know, where New York and Washington are.
The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
And that's just One More Thing. This same story says that climate scientists have now seen the man-made fingerprint of global warming on 10 different aspects of Earth's environment: surface temperatures, humidity, water vapor over the oceans, barometric pressure, total precipitation, wildfires, change in species of plants in animals, water run-off, temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and heat content in the world's oceans.
The Climate Crisis will continue to offer surprises to nonscientists and scientists alike, because one big shift like this leads to consequences that result in other changes. Some, like drought, are big and obvious. Others, like excessive pressure on plants (including trees) and animals, play out over time, but when plants and animals leave an ecological niche, a cascade of effects can follow fairly quickly. And then there are more prosaic problems: for instance, U.S. retail clothing sales had a bad September, partly because it was a warm one and people weren't buying fall or winter clothes. That's likely to happen again for October, and also likely to happen more regularly in autumns to come, so there will be changes in the shopping mall.
But let's get back to the humidity. High humidity causes physical stress to humans, but as we all know it also shows up in behavior---people get short-tempered and miserable, and their judgment is often impaired. The Nobel committee officially recognized the part that the Climate Crisis can have in causing warfare over resources. But it is also likely to cause other stresses that can make warfare an impulsive choice, when cooler heads don't prevail, because there might not be any.
Right now humidity isn't rising everywhere. Australia, South Africa and the western U.S. are getting very dry. There's drought in the American southeast and now in the Great Lakes region (although that is probably caused by warmer winters and less ice melt.) But the humidity is getting higher in the eastern U.S.--you know, where New York and Washington are.
Friday, October 12, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing...It is the most dangerous challenge we've ever faced but it is also the greatest opportunity that we have ever had to make changes that we should be making for other reasons anyway."
Al Gore
upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize
October 12, 2007
Al Gore
upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize
October 12, 2007
Nobel Prize for Peace
I learned that Al Gore had won the 2007 Nobel Peace
Prize (together with the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) from an email from Al
Gore, that began "Dear Bill." One of the sometimes
silly, sometimes breathtaking features of the Internet.
(It was of course a bulk email, basically to say that the
prize money would be going in total to the Alliance for
Climate Protection.) The award confirms Gore's tenacity
and foresight on the Climate Crisis, and his status as
(according to the Washington Post) the most effective
advocate for addressing it. It also confirms the dangers
of the crisis, which the Nobel committee recognize,
could very well include war. As for Gore, he told journalists,
"I'm going back to work on this right now. This is just the beginning."
Nobel for Literature
Yesterday it was announced that Doris Lessing is the 2007 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here's an article about her career but this brief interview in Newday (from which this photo comes) is an even better suggestion of her work and her approach. Throughout a long career she has refused to be categorized or stereotyped, and she was a pioneer in working in "genre" forms, notably science fiction, paving the way not only for other women writers but other women writers like Margaret Atwood (my favorite for the award, but who can begrudge it for the elder Lessing) who found resonance in science fiction and fantasy settings. Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Dreaming Up Daily Quote
"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
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
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
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