Ron Paul on Immigration.. and a critic on Paul

“I mmigration reform should start with improving our border protection, yet it was reported last week that the federal government has approved the recruitment of 120 of our best trained Border Patrol agents to go to Iraq to train Iraqis how to better defend their borders! This comes at a time when the National Guard troops participating in Operation Jump Start are being removed from border protection duties in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan! It is an outrage and it will result in our borders being more vulnerable to illegal entry, including by terrorists.”

More here.

Poor Ron Paul. Does he think rationality, sincerity, erudition, and plainspeaking are things people want?

The mob – in any class – likes to be told it’s always right. It disguises its self interest in high-sounding palaver. And that’s invariably the case whenever you turn away from some attempt (feeble, no doubt) at rationality and law to pure brute interest-group politics.

The same end awaits every foot-loose republic – it turns into an empire of cacaphonous voices, each more strident, self-righteous and ignorant than the next. Each so sure that any one who contradicts his self-serving image of reality is as much a charlatan as he is:

One of those who can always find logs, even redwood forests, in other people’s eyes but never one speck – not the tiniest sub-atomic antiparticle – in their own eyeballs speaks up against the Pauline menace:

The Ron Paul that Ron Paul doesn”t want you to know
By Richard Searcy. Staff Writer
Atlanta Progressive News
May 25, 2007

“Republican Presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul is making a name for himself by emerging as an antiwar republican in the 2008 race for the White House. While those of us who oppose the mindless war in Iraq welcome all voices of opposition, there are some troubling questions arising about Mr. Paul.

Paul has been consistent in his opposition to the war, but he hasn”t been very vocal or visible about that opposition. Most Americans knew nothing about Mr. Paul before this election season or had no idea thatsuch an animal as an antiwar Republican even existed….”

The letter goes on with even more ghastly logic, but I will stop there. There is only so much you can take at one sitting.

Anti-interventionism was not only the quintessential Republican tradition until Mr. Buckley took over the party and turned it into the All-Soviet Committee for Infinite Expansion into the Known Universe, it is the expressly designated constitutionally-defined role for the Federal government envisioned by Messrs. Jefferson and Madison.

That Mr. Searcy doesn’t know this is proof of his own limitations and not that of conservatives or libertarians – or for that matter, Republicans.

Not that Ron Paul has been silent either, as a glance at his archive will tell you. The media has, yes. For obvious reasons. And some people would sooner have the Middle East blown to smithereens and this country bankrupted than make common cause with a white male Republican who doesn’t fit their stereotype of a frothing redneck who chews glass and sacrifices babies by moonlight behind his double-wide.

So much for the opposition to the war in this country. It is bound up so completely and utterly in short-sighted unctuous self- interest that it is incapable for a nanosecond of reaching out generously to any one except someone made in its own insular – yes, despite all the lip-service to diversity, insular – image.

Ron Paul has apologized for the remarks that so offended the ayatollahs on the left.

 

But when are the ayatollahs going to start apologizing for their uninformed, divisive rhetoric, their incessant class-warfare, their male-bashing, anti-Christian diatribes, for the power politics that, fooling no one except themselves, they disguise as solicitude for humanity?

When?

But go and read Ron Paul’s archive. That will be the best antidote for this kind of know-nothing hatchet job.

 

 

Fundamentalism: flawed, but human….

This, in an email from Joey Kurtzman, editor at Jewcy (I posted his earlier piece where he sharpened his rather cutting wit on poor Naomi Wolf’s tender neck)

From: “Joey Kurtzman” joey@jewcy.com
To: “Lila Rajiva” <lrajiva@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Blog posting
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:00:24 -0700
“I agree with you that neither fundamentalism nor even supremacism is incompatible with democracy. These phenomena aren’t going anywhere, some people will embrace them to a greater or lesser extent in any society…democracy has to be able to accommodate them, just as it accommodates other streams of thought and other dubious political phenomena. Pat Robertson and Louis Farrakhan get to participate in the political system. If not, it’s not a democracy. For the rest of us, our job is to engage them as real people with coherent (if flawed) belief systems, rather than as crackpot caricatures. ”

My Comment:

How about that? Farrakhan and Falwell, even the BJP – they’re all human beings. What a twisted concept!

What next, a garden party with the National Socialists ?

You’ll notice I don’t say Nazi anymore – I am told by an anonymous poster who claimed he was a National Socialist (the blogosphere is notoriously prone to masquerades of all kinds) that they find it slanderous. And being both diverse (per-verse, my friends tell me), and inclusive, I hasten to address them as they wish. …..

But, of course, Mr. K, the more salient point is – since when do we live in a democracy anyway?

Do you see how many of our problems arise not because we don’t have answers but because we don’t have our questions right?

And why is that? Where are we getting our questions from?

How do the parameters of public debate get set? By whom? And why do people go along?

Questions…

And looking for answers, I came across this article in Salon, about Wiliam Buckley, perhaps the man most responsible for pushing conservatives into big government interventionism:

Buckley sees little reason to accord democratic privileges to Stalinists who plot to overthrow American democracy. Nor does he believe in extending constitutional protections to those who, if they ever came to power, would immediately rescind them. Certain ideas, he believes — such as Nazism and communism — are simply “unassimilable,” and have no place in a liberal society. He voices this sentiment through the character of Columbia professor Willmoore Sherrill (a proxy for Willmoore Kendall, WFB’s mentor and CIA recruiter at Yale), who argued that there are people who don’t fit under the “American tent.”

Of course, few people are going to let you know before they come to power they are going to take apart the Constitution and Bill of Rights. So, how do you tell in advance? You can’t.

In fact, it is Buckley’s intellectual proteges – all of them well within the American tent – who have torn it apart…..from within.

The Texan People Trust – Ron Paul In His Own Words

The ONLY Pro-Constitution Antiwar candidate in his own words (I sent this piece to a couple of sites early this morning):

Updated version (6/1) – I altered this so as to make it less of a political endorsement:

The Texan People Trust: The Only PRO-CONSTITUTION ANTIWAR Candidate
In His Own Words

What’s behind the recent swell of support for Congressman Ron Paul?
Supporters point out a number of refreshing differences in the maverick Texan, who has the blogs a-buzz. In no particular order, they are –

20. NOT A CHICKEN HAWK. Unlike Dick Cheney, George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul served in Vietnam for duty…not booty. He knows the costs – when they’re worth paying and when they’re not. That alone makes him credible to many people as an antiwar candidate.
“As an Air Force officer serving from 1963-1968, I heard the same agonizing pleas from the American people. These pleas were met with the same excuses about why we could not change a deeply flawed policy and rethink the war in Vietnam. That bloody conflict, also undeclared and unconstitutional, seems to have taught us little despite the horrific costs.”

— “We Just Marched In (So We Can Just March Out),” April 17, 2007

“Why is it that those who never wore a uniform and are confident that they won’t have to personally fight this war are more anxious for this war than our generals?”

“Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002

19. HAS FOUGHT FOR SOMETHING – for human life. As a medical doctor, he can actually do something besides shuffle paper and grease palms, which makes him an all but extinct species in the Beltway jungle. And while his training puts him squarely in the science-based community, he’s also a genuinely religious man who has the trust of social conservatives. Many people would rather hear hard science from a principled individual like Ron Paul than soft twaddle from front men for vested interests. They see him as both a strong libertarian and a social conservative and wonder if he just might be the person to shape the issues in a way that’s rational and sensitive to rights.
“The bottom line is that mental health issues are a matter for parents, children, and their doctors, not government…..It is important to understand that powerful interests, namely federal bureaucrats and pharmaceutical lobbies, are behind the push for mental health screening in schools. There is no end to the bureaucratic appetite to run our lives, and the pharmaceutical industry is eager to sell psychotropic drugs to millions of new customers in American schools. Only tremendous public opposition will suffice to overcome the lobbying and bureaucratic power behind the president’s New Freedom Commission.”

“Don’t Let Congress Fund Orwellian Psychiatric Screening of Kids,” January 31, 2005


18. KNOWS OPEN BORDERS DON’T MIX WITH WARFARE-WELFARE
Supporters claim that Paul is no ideologue who lets doctrinaire libertarianism trump considerations of law and ethics. His position on immigration, for instance, is not the usual “open borders” mantra of many soi-disant free traders:

“We’re often told that immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do, and sometimes this is true. But in many instances illegal immigrants simply increase the supply of labor in a community, which lowers wages.”

“The Immigration Question,” April 4, 2006.

“… immigration may be the sleeper issue that decides the 2008 presidential election.”

“More importantly, we should expect immigrants to learn about and respect our political and legal traditions, which are rooted in liberty and constitutionally limited government.

Our most important task is to focus on effectively patrolling our borders. With our virtually unguarded borders, almost any determined individual – including a potential terrorist – can enter the United States. Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding the borders of other nations than our own. We are still patrolling Korea’s border after some 50 years, yet ours are more porous than ever.”

“Immigration and the Welfare Stare,” August 9, 2005.
This is not xenophobia – it’s common sense in most countries in the world.

17. UNDERSTANDS THE NEED TO REIGN IN THE EXECUTIVE. Critics of our out-of-control Caesar can take heart from Paul. He is very clear on the importance of the separation of powers and the need for checks and balances in the government and he’s spoken out time and again for strengthening the power of Congress.

“…why not try something novel, like having Congress act as an independent and equal branch of government? Restore the principle of the separation of powers, so that we can perform our duty to provide checks and balances on an executive branch (and an accommodating judiciary) that spies on Americans, glorifies the welfare state, fights undeclared wars, and enormously increases the national debt. Congress was not meant to be a rubber stamp. It’s time for a new direction.”

“Searching For a New Direction,” January 19, 2006.

He’s also stood up against corrupt federal programs like the “war on drugs”:

“We have promoted a foolish and very expensive domestic war on drugs for more than 30 years. It has done no good whatsoever. I doubt our Republic can survive a 30-year period of trying to figure out how to win this guerilla war against terrorism.”

“The drug war encourages violence. Government violence against nonviolent users is notorious and has led to the unnecessary prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for all this so-called justice. Our eradication project through spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan, breeds resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these various countries.”

— “War on Terror? It’s as Bad as the War on Drugs,” October 30, 2001.

16. GETS VOLUNTARY SELF DEFENSE not only in the constitution but in Anglo-American political history. Ron Paul, say supporters, really understands what some eastern elites don’t – how central the second amendment is to the notion of a self -reliant, vigilant population. Especially now, the right to arms may be the only safeguard for citizens who don’t trust the police to protect them. That includes minorities who’ve been on the receiving end of police brutality.

“Gun control historically serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.”

“The D.C. Gun Ban,” March 12, 2007

In the same spirit Paul also opposes the draft, which allows the privileged and powerful to forcibly deploy less privileged young men as cannon fodder.

“I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but also preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. Five hundred million dollars have been wasted on Selective Service since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation’s veterans.”

“Rethinking the Draft,” November 28, 2006

15. SUPPORTS DECENTRALIZATION CONSISTENTLY by supporting national sovereignty against transnational organizations manipulated by global elites. The same principle leads him to support the states against the Fed – and turns power back to local communities and people, instead of bureaucrats.

“The superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically connected interests.”

“This will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced. The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles.”

“The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union — complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether . . .”

“The NAFTA Superhighway,” October 30, 2006.

“All federal aid for Katrina should have been distributed as directly as possible to local communities, rather than through wasteful middlemen like FEMA and Homeland Security.”

“Katrina Relief Six Months Later,” February 21, 2006.
That’s also why Paul is against a national ID:

“This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free republics.”

“The Worst Way to Fight Terror,” October 9, 2004.

To more and more people, increased decentralization is beginning to look like the only way to allow less central but polarizing social issues to take a back seat to the two-headed monster we face today — war and economic recession.

And, contrary to the way a largely hostile media has painted it, Paul’s pro-life position is only opposed to Federal funding of abortions and stem-cell research. Nothing stops the states or private entities from funding either. That’s a constitutionally sound argument that allows different points of view to flourish without allowing any of them to tyrannize the others.

In response, critics of Paul argue that federal funding alone allows science and research to develop and cite the Internet as an example. They’re wrong. It was not at the Defense Department but at a European research organization that Tim Berners-Lee created his browser-editor. And aside from that factual inaccuracy, the argument itself is illogical. Because some innovations have come out of government funding, it doesn’t follow that all research could only have come out of it. In fact, the opposite might be true. The Internet could as well have developed sooner and better at the state level and with private backing. Dollar for dollar, federal funding for all sorts of things – from NASA to cancer research – has been shown to be either grossly ineffectual or not needed.

14. KNOWS THE TWO-PARTY SYSTEM IS BROKEN and supports opening up the electoral process to more candidates from the grass roots:

“The two items I will be introducing on Tuesday embrace rather than disgrace the first amendment. The first is called the Voter Freedom Act of 1997. It will prohibit states from erecting excessive ballot access barriers to candidates for federal office. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to control federal elections, and I firmly believe that the more voices participating, the more likely it is that the entrenched, out-of-touch, Washington establishment will be swept to the side.”

“Another part of this vital process is opening the debates. So the second piece of legislation I am putting forward is the Debate Freedom Act of 1997……My legislation simply requires that if a candidate accepts the federal funding for his or her election, then that candidate can only participate in debates to which all candidates who qualify for federal funding – whether they take it or not – are invited to participate.”

“If someone accepts federal cash, then they must follow rules taxpayers set and deserve,” September 15, 1997

13. WILL DECREASE TAXES and eliminate the bureaucracy strangling small businesses that create jobs and wealth. Supporters point out that in Paul’s lexicon wealth doesn’t mean the paper-jive of money-sharpers on Wall Street. It’s hard work, innovation and savings.

They also find hope in Paul’s sensitivity to the privacy issues involved with the IRS. He has publicly stated his concerns about the IRS using strong-arm tactics with citizens – and elected representatives – for political reasons.

“Imagine that you have taken a position contrary to the official dictates of the government in your nation. Instead of simply facing criticism from opposing political sides, you find your life turned upside-down; every aspect of your life is closely scrutinized. Without warning, your life savings are seized, your personal, private records divulged far and wide.
Suddenly, how willing are you to continue holding your views?”

“The answer is not to simply revise the code, or to make the IRS more independent, or to have an added layer of judicial review, the answer is to fundamentally change the way we collect taxes in this nation. The nonsensical body of law which governs the IRS is too far removed from sanity to be saved. And the graduated income tax system is neither fair, economically sound, moral nor useful.

“In my mind, the jury is still out on whether a flat tax or a national sales tax is the absolute best way to go (my main goal is for lower taxes, across-the-board), but both will go a long way toward eliminating the politically powerful weapon known as the IRS.”

“Fear of IRS misplaced, the real problem is the system,” April 20, 1997.

12. BACKS SOUND MONEY Unlike other politicians with little sense of financial responsibility, Paul’s been speaking out for years against the destruction of the dollar. It’s one reason he’s popular. He’s been one of the very few who’ve spoken out again the cheap credit destroying savings and retirement money, pushing up the cost of living and devastating US standing in the international economy.

” I must diagnose an illness before I can treat a patient. In the current instance the diagnoses indicates that the squeeze of the middle class is caused not by low wages, but rather by increased costs resulting from central planning. And the key pillars of our current central-planning regime can be found in tax and monetary policies.

The fact that government creates money out of thin air must be addressed, because it is the entire reason why costs of living increase and standards of living decline….. Again, there is only one reason why prices are rising instead of falling. Because the government, through its credit-creation mechanism, is engaged in a sort of price controls, it is in fact following a policy that eventuates in price inflation as well as recession. Plus, this credit creation is at the heart of recent instability in the markets, thus threatening retirement security.”

“Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000

“The biggest rip-off of all – the paper money system that is morally and economically equivalent to counterfeiting – is never questioned. It is the deceptive tool for transferring billions from the unsuspecting poor and middle-class to the special interest rich. And in the process, the deficit-propelled budget process supports the spending demands of all the special interests – left and right, welfare and warfare – while delaying payment to another day and sometimes even to another generation.”

—— “Searching for a New Direction,” January 19, 2006.
11 UNDERSTANDS THE REAL REASON WHY THE POOR ARE BEING SQUEEZED.

His supporters also think that Paul is the only one willing to tackle the real reason low-wage earners are taking it in the neck. Instead of pandering with price and wage controls, he strikes at the root:

“Our tax burden is at its highest peacetime levels. This means wage earners are being squeezed by the cost of government as well as the cost of living. Had Congress not stopped the Clinton-Gore tax on BTU’s, (which they called an economic stimulus package), fuel prices would be significantly higher than they are right now. This points to why government is not the answer.

Increases in costs of living are a real problem, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale. Those costs will continue to rise if we allow central planning to continue, but the solution to central planning is freedom, not grant further control over wages to government.”

“Answering the Middle Class Squeeze,” March 27, 2000

10. STANDS UP FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY.

“The Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act also contains a blanket prohibition on the use of identifiers to “investigate, monitor, oversee, or otherwise regulate” American citizens. Mr. Chairman, prohibiting the Federal Government from using standard identifiers will ensure that American liberty is protected from the “surveillance state.” Allowing the federal government to use standard identifiers to oversee private transactions present tremendous potential for abuse of civil liberties by unscrupulous government officials.

I am sure I need not remind the members of this Committee of the sad history of government officials of both parties using personal information contained in IRS or FBI files against their political enemies. Imagine the potential for abuse if an unscrupulous government official is able to access one’s complete medical, credit, and employment history by simply typing the citizens’ “uniform identifier” into a database.”

Statement of Ron Paul on the Freedom and Privacy Restoration Act (HR 220), May 18, 2000

“This legislation gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to expand required information on driver’s licenses, potentially including such biometric information as retina scans, finger prints, DNA information, and even Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) radio tracking technology. Including such technology as RFID would mean that the federal government, as well as the governments of Canada and Mexico, would know where Americans are at all time of the day and night.

There are no limits on what happens to the database of sensitive information on Americans once it leaves the United States for Canada and Mexico – or perhaps other countries. Who is to stop a corrupt foreign government official from selling or giving this information to human traffickers or even terrorists? Will this uncertainty make us feel safer?”

— HR 418- A National ID Bill Masquerading as Immigration Reform, February 9, 2005


9. KNOWS CURRENT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS ARE BANKRUPT and has the technical savvy to deal with healthcare, where government interference has already created a disaster.

“Those future obligations (of entitlements) put our real debt figure at roughly fifty trillion dollars- a staggering sum that is about as large as the total household net worth of the entire United States. Your share of this fifty trillion amounts to about $175,000.
….. If present trends continue, by 2040 the entire federal budget will be consumed by Social Security and Medicare alone. The only options for balancing the budget would be cutting total federal spending by about 60%, or doubling federal taxes. To close the long-term entitlement gap, the U.S. economy would have to grow by double digits every year for the next 75 years.”

“The Coming Entitlement Meltdown,” March 5, 2007

The problems with our health-care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.”

“As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals. Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies.”

“Diagnosing Our Health Care Woes,” September 25, 2006.


8. OPPOSES CORPORATE SUBSIDIES that distort the market and burden tax payers, like the bailout of international speculators with tax payer money in the Mexican and Asian crises in the 1990s.

“But many investors today are eager to embrace the philosophy of free-market economics when it comes to making money and keeping their profits, but at the first sign of those investments going sour, they want the government to socialize their losses at the expense of the taxpayers.

And since these investors have also heavily “invested” in American politics, it is easy for the politicians to use your money to help them out. After all, it is very easy to be generous with other people’s money.”

“President opts to use taxpayer fund to bail out wealthy investors,” December 29, 1997

“For a long time I have advocated getting rid of the Export-Import Bank. It is unconstitutional for the federal government, using your money, to be subsidizing the risky business ventures of corporations. And often, these ventures involve giving large sums of money and aid to oppressive foreign governments, like China……..Subsidizing big corporations is unconstitutional and violative of the laws of free-market economics, no matter what Congress calls the mechanism. Those who are addicted to corporate welfare have no need to worry; USEX will be doing the same thing as Ex-Im.”

“US shouldn’t cast stones with Religious Persecution,” October 6, 1997

7. OPPOSES THE NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIST AGENDA and the charade of aid that funds foreign dictators. He also understands the dangers of national armies in the service of global international bodies, a position firmly rooted in the ideas of Madison and Jefferson — and firmly contrary to the delusional “liberventionism” of today’s humanitarian bombers who fancy themselves global Supermen.

“Neither, of course, does the Constitution allow us to subsidize foreign governments through such taxpayer-supported entities as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, OPIC, Ex-Im/USEX or any number of other vehicles through which the U.S. Congress sends foreign aid to a large number of countries (including those who engage in religious persecution). It is time we stopped both policing the world, and funding the totalitarian thugs of planet.”

” It is ironic that the same federal government which killed innocent children at Waco for their parents “odd” religious beliefs, now proclaims itself ready to judge the world’s nations on their religious tolerance.”

“US shouldn’t cast stones with religious persecution,” October 6, 1997

6. WILLING TO LOOK FOR OIL IN OTHER PLACES besides the Middle East. Fans point out that he’s not a crony capitalist, either. Paul isn’t piped at the umbilicus to energy companies or in bed with oil executives, unlike our current crop of carbon-dating fossils.

“Yes, we need Middle Eastern oil, but we can reduce our need by exploring domestic sources. We should rid ourselves of the notion that we are at the mercy of the oil-producing countries- as the world’s largest oil consumer, their wealth depends on our business.”

— “Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002 l

5. BELIEVES THE US GOVERNMENT SHOULD GOVERN THE US, not the World. Wow. What a revolutionary idea.

“We should stop the endless game of playing faction against faction, and recognize that buying allies doesn’t work. We should curtail the heavy militarization of the area by ending our disastrous foreign aid payments. We should stop propping up dictators and putting band-aids on festering problems. We should understand that our political and military involvement in the region creates far more problems that it solves. All Americans will benefit, both in terms of their safety and their pocketbooks, if we pursue a coherent, neutral foreign policy of non-interventionism, free trade, and self-determination in the Middle East.”

“Our Incoherent Foreign Policy Fuels Middle East Turmoil,” December 3, 2002

“The best reason to oppose interventionism is that people die, needlessly, on both sides. We have suffered over 20,000 American casualties in Iraq already, and Iraq civilian deaths probably number over 100,000 by all reasonable accounts. The next best reason is that the rule of law is undermined, especially when military interventions are carried out without a declaration of war. Whenever a war is ongoing, civil liberties are under attack at home. The current war in Iraq and the misnamed war on terror have created an environment here at home that affords little constitutional protection of our citizen’s rights. Extreme nationalism is common during wars. Signs of this are now apparent.”

“Iran: The Next Neo-Con Target,” April 5, 2006

4. STANDS UP TO BIG BROTHER.

Another reason for civil libertarians to cheer Ron Paul is his position on legislation like the Hate Crimes Bill. For opposing it, he’s been tarred by zealots as a closet bigot. But Paul – unlike his opponents – seems to be long-sighted enough to understand that the danger of creating a category of thought-crimes far outweighs any extra protection it might seem to afford the vulnerable in the short-term. Eventually, hate crime laws are frighteningly liable to be misused and only end up making political protest or the expression of religious conscience impossible.

“It’s also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech. Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we’re told it’s proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, “Congress shall make NO law.”

“Government and Racism,” April 16, 2007

Paul’s also made it clear that he’s against regulation of the Internet, one of the last remaining forums for free speech, especially on political matters, and one of the few places you can get independent news. People are rightly afraid of what would happen if that freedom disappeared too.

“I trust the Internet a lot more, and I trust the freedom of expression. And that’s why we should never interfere with the Internet. That’s why I’ve never voted to regulate the Internet.”

“California Republican debate transcript,” May 7, 2007

3. IS RIGHT ABOUT TERRORISM:

Unlike most of our reps, Paul look like he actually reads what US intelligence (and just about every other intelligence service in the world) has been saying about terrorism for years:

“Consider Saudi Arabia, the native home of most of the September 11th hijackers. The Saudis, unlike the Iraqis, have proven connections to al Qaeda. Saudi charities have funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups. Yet the administration insists on calling Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terror.” Why? Because the U.S. has a long standing relationship with the Saudi royal family, and a long history of commercial interests relating to Saudi oil. So successive administrations continue to treat the Saudis as something they are not: a reliable and honest friend in the Middle East.

The same is true of Pakistan, where General Musharaf seized power by force in a 1999 coup. The Clinton administration quickly accepted his new leadership as legitimate, to the dismay of India and many Muslim Pakistanis. Since 9/11, we have showered Pakistan with millions in foreign aid, ostensibly in exchange for Musharaf’s allegiance against al Qaeda. Yet has our new ally rewarded our support? Hardly. The Pakistanis almost certainly have harbored bin Laden in their remote mountains, and show little interest in pursuing him or allowing anyone else to pursue him. Pakistan has signed peace agreements with Taliban leaders, and by some accounts bin Laden is a folk hero to many Pakistanis.”

“Hypocrisy in the Middle East,” Feb 26, 2007

2. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

There’s a refreshing moral clarity about the man, say his supporters. Horses go before carts, he insists, in his revolutionary way.

“What is the moral argument for attacking a nation that has not initiated aggression against us, and could not if it wanted?”
“Why are we taking precious military and intelligence resources away from tracking down those who did attack the United States- and who may again attack the United States- and using them to invade countries that have not attacked the United States?”
“Was former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro wrong when he recently said there is no confirmed evidence of Iraq’s links to terrorism?”
“Is it not true that the CIA has concluded there is no evidence that a Prague meeting between 9/11 hijacker Atta and Iraqi intelligence took place?”
“Where does the Constitution grant us permission to wage war for any reason other than self-defense?”
” Is it not true that a war against Iraq rejects the sentiments of the time-honored Treaty of Westphalia, nearly 400 years ago, that countries should never go into another for the purpose of regime change?”
” Is it not true that the more civilized a society is, the less likely disagreements will be settled by war?”
” Is it not true that since World War II Congress has not declared war and- not coincidentally- we have not since then had a clear-cut victory?”

— “Questions That Won’t Be Asked About Iraq,” September 10, 2002

1. IS RIGHT ABOUT THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Ron Paul’s appeal may ultimately lie in his vision of the country. His America is a modest, self-limiting Constitutional Republic that tends its own garden– not the jack-booted empire of the neo-conservatives. And in search of that vision, he’s consistently defended the Bill of Rights against an arrogant executive and supine Congress who’ve sold them out to jack up their own power at home and abroad:

“It is with the complicity of Congress that we have become a nation of pre-emptive war, secret military tribunals, torture, rejection of habeas corpus, warrantless searches, undue government secrecy, extraordinary renditions, and uncontrolled spying on the American people. Fighting over there has nothing to do with preserving freedoms here at home.”

“Getting Iraq War Funding Wrong Again,” May 1, 2007

“It is clear, however, that the Patriot Act expands the government’s ability to monitor us. The Act eases federal rules for search warrants in some cases; allows expanded wiretaps and Internet monitoring; allows secret “sneak and peek” searches; and even permits federal agents to examine library and bookstore records. On these grounds alone it should be soundly rejected.”

“Trust Us, We’re the Government,” August 26, 2003.
“We shuld remember that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone do anything to America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

“The Irrelevance of Military Victory,” January 16, 2007.

Psychologists helped frame US torture techniques

Details of the declassified Inspector General’s Report on how the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was taught through a program that was framed in league with the psychology profession, in this article by psychologist and activist, Stephen Soldz:

“As part of the SERE program, trainees are subjected to abuse, including sleep deprivation, sexual and cultural humiliation, and, in some instances, waterboarding, described by one SERE graduate thus:
“[Y]ou are strapped to a board, a washcloth or other article covers your face, and water is continuously poured, depriving you of air, and suffocating you until it is removed, and/or inducing you to ingest water. We were carefully monitored (although how they determined these limits is beyond me), but it was a most unpleasant experience, and its threat alone was sufficient to induce compliance, unless one was so deprived of water that it would be an unintentional means to nourishment.”

More at his blog, “Psyche, Science and Society,” which has plenty of information on how the mind sciences are deployed in the services of the state. Put that next to the information we have about programs like TeenScreen and TMAP, and it should be clear that the sciences are not immune to the temptations of power and money.

We know we liive in a propaganda state. Now we know the extent to which the state is willing to employ science against any population, even its own. Several of the tortured detainees were American whistle-blowers who had alerted authorities to corruption in the military.

The end of the classless society: Eloi and Morlocks…

Excerpt from a thoughtful commentary by Martin Hutchinson at Prudent Bear (reposting this piece, as I had some trouble with the old post):

“H.G. Wells postulated in his 1895 “Time Machine” the ultimate destination of a Latin American–style social system. In his future 800,000 years hence the human race has divided into two species, the eloi, who do no work and live only for trivial aesthetic pleasures and the morlocks, sub-men who work underground keeping the mechanical civilization running. Wells’s fantasy seemed far-fetched after 1920, as equality increased and the working classes became both educated and comfortably off. However the fantasy looks a lot closer to reality in 2007 than it did in 1957, when the movie was made.

 

In the United States, one would expect political activity to begin showing Latin American characteristics, including a breakdown in social cohesion, as Gini rises towards Latin American levels. This appears to be happening. One example is the doubling since 2000 of the number of Washington lobbyists, whose objective is primarily to divert public resources to private uses. A second is the growth of earmarking in legislation, up 10-fold in the decade to 2005; earmarks are generally inserted in order to benefit some private interest at the expense of the general good. U.S. politics has always been corrupt, and was especially so during the 1870-96 Gilded Age, the previous high point for inequality, but the increase in the proportion of Gross Domestic Product spent on lobbyists, the proportion of GDP spent on corrupt government spending and indeed the proportion of GDP spent on elections themselves suggests that systemic corruption is rapidly increasing.

 

The new immigration bill is above all an example of class legislation. The choice between a low or a moderate level of immigration depends primarily on non-economic factors — a voter’s interest or otherwise in increasing the diversity of the society, and the recognition that the global economy may work better and produce more wealth for all if there is a certain amount of migratory lubrication between different societies. However, the effect of more than modest immigration on inequality and therefore on class structure is highly significant. The Immigration Act of 1924, which largely restricted immigration to the richer countries of northwest Europe, produced the greatest social leveling the United States has ever seen, with the Gini coefficient declining by around 10 points between 1920 and 1965, the years of its salience (the 1924 Act replaced previous restrictions introduced during World War I.)

 

After 1965, immigration policy was reversed, to encourage a larger flow of immigrants, primarily from developing countries. Initially, this had only a modest economic effect. Then the 1986 amnesty encouraged low skill immigrants, allegedly now numbering 12 million, to try their luck with the overstretched immigration bureaucracy. Even large companies, knowing that immigration laws would not be enforced, seized the chance for some cheap labor.

 

Whatever the economic effect of moderate amounts of skilled immigrant labor, almost certainly positive, the economic effect of large amounts of unskilled immigrant labor is very clear: it drives wage rates down to rock bottom levels, particularly in personal service sectors where training is minimal and employment informal. That’s why a haircut costs less in real terms now than it did 30 years ago, it’s why even modest middle class households now have a cleaner and a gardener, which they usually didn’t 30 years ago and it’s why enormous numbers of dubiously constructed houses appeared when finance became available in 2002-06.”

More at the Bear’s Lair.

Sovereign Immunity and V-Tech

A comment on my V-Tech posts from Equitas – a human rights organization:

Eq Nunc | eqnunc@yahoo.com | eqrolc.ca/vatech.html | IP: 24.122.48.168

Good R&D LR. Take a look at this EQ Gateway and see what you can dig out of it. Pertinent links and legalogistics to wit! Perhaps some answers may be provided there too:

http://www.eqrolc.ca/vatech.html

Happy Researching!
The EQ Team.

I looked through their site and found this article from last month on FindLaw by Professor Anthony Sebok of Brooklyn Law School.

I wish I had come across it earlier, as it answers some questions I’ve had about why the shooting was being framed by the school a certain way. But it substantially agrees with what I earlier (based on a conversation with a well-known attorney, who had pressed victims’ claims in a previous school shooting case) that gross negligence would have to be the standard here.

From Sebok’s article:

“Let’s suppose Cho had, in fact, gone to counseling, and that his therapist, concerned about his threats about certain students, warned those students about the threats. To fulfill its duty to take reasonable care, would the university have to assign security officers to follow those students – or Cho himself – around? And what if the threats were more general, or to an entire class full of students? Would the university have the duty to expel Cho and remove him from campus?”And more:
“The Second Key Question: Does It Matter that Virginia Tech Is a Public University?

Let’s suppose for a moment that the wounded victims and the families of the deceased victims can, in fact, prove that Virginia Tech failed to take adequate steps to protect its students. Unfortunately, their case would still fail – for the doctrine of sovereign immunity makes it almost impossible for the plaintiffs to collect significant damages even if they can prove negligence.

Sovereign immunity literally means that the government cannot be sued for its torts, even if it acts negligently (or worse). Originating in England before the American revolution, the doctrine has been largely abandoned in the U.K. and Europe. But it is alive and well – though partially waived by both the federal government and the states — in the United States.

Virginia’s waiver of sovereign immunity is pretty typical: The Virginia Tort Claims Act, Code §§ 8.01-195.1 through -195.9, states that “the Commonwealth shall be liable for claims for money . . . on account of . . . personal injury or death caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any employee while acting within the scope of his employment under circumstances where the Commonwealth . . ., if a private person, would be liable to the claimant for such . . . injury or death.”

You might think that Virginia Tech could be sued under this waiver. But you would be wrong. As the Virginia Supreme Court noted in the 2004 case of Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va. v. Carter, only the Commonwealth of Virginia has waived its sovereign immunity, but the Commonwealth’s agencies – such as the University and its various schools — have not.

Thus, in that case, Tina Carter’s medical malpractice suit against the University of Virginia Medical School was dismissed — although she, in theory, could have then refiled the suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, if it was not barred by the statute of limitations. That’s because the Commonwealth of Virginia can be sued for the actions of its agents under a theory of vicarious liability.

Couldn’t the Virginia Tech plaintiffs just sue the Commonwealth, then? Yes, but here is where the final indignity comes in: The same Act limits the liability of the Commonwealth to $100,000 per tort. This amount, while not insignificant, is dwarfed by the amount of damages that might be won in a wrongful death claim brought on behalf of a college student or her surviving family. (By comparison, the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, which I have discussed in earlier columns such as this one, provided a minimum of $250,000 to the victims’ families, and in the case of young people who would have looked forward to long and lucrative careers, often much more.)

The Best Potential Basis for Suit: Evidence of Gross Negligence, If It Arises

In the end, the only realistic way for the plaintiffs to receive anything like the amount of the damages they have actually suffered, is to show that Virginia Tech acted with gross negligence.

As a Virginia-based federal court held in the 1995 case of Coppage v. Mann, sovereign immunity does not protect doctors employed by the state from tort suits if they acted with gross negligence. So too, the doctrine would presumably not protect university administrators and other employees if they acted with gross negligence. Nor would it protect their employer, even if it were an agent of the state.
In sum, if an investigation reveals negligence by Virginia Tech, and it can plausibly be argued to be gross negligence, then perhaps the wounded victims and the families of the deceased will be able to recover for the damages they actually incurred. But the law – thanks to the archaic sovereign immunity doctrine – sets the bar too high. Proof of negligence, even short of gross negligence, should be enough.”

President Cheney Approves Israeli Plans to Strike Iran

“There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy,” writes Washington insider Steven C. Clemens on his Washington Note blog. “On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.” This is “worrisome” because the “person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney.”Clemens cites a Cheney aide as indicating “that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake” by supporting the diplomatic approach to Iran apparently favored by the State Department. So Cheney plans to deploy an “end run strategy” around the president (who’s more swayed at present by Condi Rice’s “realists” than Cheney’s neocons) if his flank doesn’t prevail and Bush resists the demand of the neocons and the AIPAC lobby for a bloody showdown.

“The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles This strategycould be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulfas to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.”

This is the most frightening piece I’ve read some time, along with Justin Raimondo’s latest column on antiwar.com that draws upon it. Raimondo citing a recent CNN interview with Seymour Hersh links Cheney and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams (the most powerful neocon presently in the administration) to U.S. support for the Sunni Fatah al Islam militia in Lebanon as a means to weaken Hizbollah. “George W. Bush,” he declares, “is totally out of the loop” in what Raimondo calls “the Cheney administration.”

More from Gary Leupp.

The politics of anti-politics

I offer this to a reader who criticized me for not examining the good parts of the immigration bill more closely.

It’s true that some good may come out of the thing. That may not really be relevant. Some good might also result if I parked myself on my neighbor’s lawn, on anarchical principles, until I acquired squatter rights. We can’t judge actions by outcomes alone. [This is simply an analogy – there is a distinction obviously between priavte property and the state; still, it’s not entirely dissimilar because immigrants also use public services – from roads to schools – that are paid for by taxes. That some illegal immigrants pay taxes is true, but not all do. And what they pay in is, from the latest Heritage report, less than what they take out. The Cato institute disputes that research, but even those who are pro-immigration suggest that the costs are higher than we have been prone to believe].

Not that I dispute the existence of squatter rights. Or claim that migrant workers don’t theoretically have every right to move to find work wherever they wished.

Actually, I fervently wish that there were no borders and no laws about migration anywhere in the globe. I personally don’t feel the state has any right to curtail commerce and migration.

But my wishes and my rights under the law as it is constituted are two different things. And since nowadays, law is the only language in which we can meaningfully converse about rights — especially with people different from us in their beliefs and culture, I want to stick to it.

Migrants are free to move, but they aren’t equally free to be subsidized by the state or to violate its laws.

Ex-post facto legislation that subsidises migrants is, I think, practically unviable. But even if it were viable, I don’t think it can be justified under laws easily.

But, you will argue, what about all those other people who break the law in other areas and are then absolved of the consequences? Why pick on vulnerable people on this issue?

I don’t disagree here. Certainly, it’s not migrant workers who have dismantled habeas corpus or undone privacy laws or circumvented the ban on torture.

But the correct response to the objection is that every extension and intrusion of government power needs to be attacked constitutionally and limited – if not entirely dismantled. It’s no defense of a wrong-headed position in one instance to point to other instances where it has prevailed.

And, to my mind, the laws governing citizenship should be observed – at least theoretically – with more zeal than others, especially in times like these, when they are vulnerable to being diluted. And that is a danger that haunts us increasingly.

I may be wrong, of course. But, we can’t justly claim the protection of the law to save us from being stripped arbitrarily of our rights as citizens, if at the same time we trivialize the law by arbitrarily investing people with those rights.

My practical position is this: the matter can be dealt with at the local level by the communities involved. There doesn’t need to be a power grab by the federal government. A small fine (not the huge one in this new bill) can be imposed on people who’ve entered illegally, but it should be proportionate to their means and not harsh. It shouldn’t be so large that it creates a perverse incentive for corruption among the government agents who would be in charge of collecting it. Legal immigrants from the same communities could help in sending back those who’ve come here illegally to prevent any abuse. The “illegals” needn’t be barred from re-entering lawfully, but I think they should re-enter the process, after those who’ve followed the law. That’s only fair.

And maybe the government could make the legal entry simpler and quicker, so that people wouldn’t be motivated to break the law in the first place.

Those are my thoughts, for now, so far as I’ve studied the matter. It boils down to this – don’t have a law and then not follow it.

As I said, I could be wrong….

B’nai Brith Shuts Down Peace Activists in Canada

My earlier post, reworked as an article at Dissident Voice:
Chris Cook of the University of Victoria Gorilla Radio (GO-rilla, as in, our furry friends… or cousins…..or descendants, depending on your evolutionary perspective and level of optimism about the human race) writes:

“For American readers who value and feel protected by the 1st Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically, and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.”

Cook’s problem is that one edge of this sword just fell on a web-site he edits, the Peace, Earth & Justice News (PEJ.org), “a non-profit, all-volunteer, non-hierarchical media organization” based in Victoria whose mission (as described in its Constitution) is to report on “climate change and other environmental issues, war and peace in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and human rights and other matters of social justice.”

PEJ has been operating since 1996 and is owned by the small (annual budget of a few hundred dollars and volunteer staff), non-profit Prometheus Institute, British Columbia, where Cook was a senior editor until February this year.

On May 17 PEJ publisher Alan Rycroft received a letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, signed by the deputy secretary general Richard Tardiff, claiming that PEJ had violated Canadian law by posting anti-Semitic material, according to a complaint filed with its legal department by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman and British Columbia representative for the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith, Canada, which joins him in the complaint.

PEJ publishes materials from activists around the world, including some who have published on American websites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Lew Rockwell. It is an alternative paper that by definition carries news not covered in the mainstream press and those stories are naturally controversial, often criticizing the actions of powerful entities, including governments. Naturally, that includes the Canadian government. And naturally, also, the Israeli government.

As soon as PEJ received the letter, it removed from its web-site the eighteen articles that Harry Abrams alleges were anti-Semitic.

PEJ did this as a matter of courtesy to Abrams and to show goodwill, according to Joan Russow, one of the directors, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. PEJ does not endorse articles or comments published on it, to begin with. But, PEJ is, in addition, expressly non-discriminatory. As Dr. Russow, said in a letter to Mr. Abrams on December 31, 2006:

“Anti-Semitism and other prejudicial materials are not allowed on our site – after all PEJ News exists to promote equality and freedom for all – we are the Peace, Earth & Justice News. To the best of our knowledge no anti-Semitic or hate material is on PEJ.org.”

Indeed, it was she who invited Mr. Abrams (in December 2006) to inspect the articles on the site and see if anything was anti-Semitic, including comments from the public.

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) whose “General Expectations of Canada” (as posted on the web, “CJC Brief to DFAIT on UN Human Rights Commission,” Feb 19, 2004 ) is not nearly as objective or non-discriminatory.

The CJC tells Canada’s Jewish citizens to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:

1.blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2. indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.

3. deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East (my emphasis).

4. employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as [“genocide”(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.

5. are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.

6. predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.

At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:

1. will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled [sic] as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.

2. highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism – which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions – on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.

3. draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”

And B’nai Brith’s positions are even more partisan than this.

Thus it is that Anita Bromberg, in-house legal counsel for B’nai Brith, Canada, has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint against PEJ’s peace activism, because, she says, the articles “are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism.”

What, according to the complaint, is anti-Semitic?

“The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state,” says Mr. Abrams. Also, any comparison of Zionists to Nazis.

Were there such articles? In the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon, several pieces did compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews. One, by Chris Cook, “We Should Nuke Israel,” for instance, was a parody of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Cook simply replaced the word “Iran” with “Israel,” “Amadinejad” with “Olmert,” “Muslim” with “Jew” and tagged the following paragraph at the end, ironically recommending that the article be acted upon by the Human Rights Commission:

“This amazingly ignorant, hateful, and frankly criminal article has been redacted. “Israel” appears where the murderous and racist author, Michael Coren originally wrote “Iran.” Likewise other slight alterations have been performed. There is, in what remains of this country Canada, hate crime legislation. Unlike Mr. Coren’s, and his Toronto Sun publisher’s heroes in the United States, Canadian media is expected to live up to certain standards. Promoting hatred and proposing the destruction of human life fail miserably to live up to the expected, and legislated, mandates for publishers. I recommend those offended by Mr. Coren’s modest proposal write the Sun, Coren, and the CRTC. Mr. Coren can be reached here”

Now, that’s strong language admittedly. But why, we wonder, does the Canadian Human Rights Commission not also write a letter to the columnist in Toronto Sun, which proposed a real nuclear hit on Iran with a straight face. Why instead attack a column written in transparent satire in response to the former? Are the human rights of Iranians – or of Palestinians – less worthy of attention than the human rights of Israelis?

By the way, in the US, words such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” have been applied to the torture at Abu Ghraib in academic and law journals, such as Gonzaga University 10 Gonz. J. Int’l L. 370 (2007). If torture of prisoners in Iraq can be described in this way without American human rights activists objecting, it’s hard to see why the killing and dispossession of the civilian population in Palestine shouldn’t be called ethnic cleansing or genocide.

And, would the CHRC also rush so zealously to investigate on behalf of an organization that claimed Canada – or the U.S. – was a Christian country?

After the letter was received at PEJ and the offending articles removed, Ingmar Lee, one of PEJ’s editors posted a piece by a scholar, Shaheed Alam, one that just appeared in Counter Punch and other sites, and makes a scholarly criticism of Jewish exceptionalism as “inseparable from Israeli exceptionalism and Israeli history” (“Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism”) in a manner no different from and more measured that any number of dissections of American exceptionalism and some forms of Christian fundamentalism, which PEJ has also published.

The fact that it has shows clearly that PEJ was, in this instance, simply following its mission of attacking injustice wherever it finds it and defending human rights, no matter whose. Its criticism of Israel as a race-based state was simply part of its universal secular defense of human rights.

But defending universal secular human rights, which by the way, is policy in the State Department, turns out now to be the promotion of “ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel,” for in his complaint, Harry Abrams and B’nai Brith state that Abrams has “reasonable grounds for believing that I have been discriminated against.”‘
The only trouble with that statement is that the criticism in the articles is directed at the policies of the state of Israel, not at Mr. Abrams personally.

Should we conclude that Mr. Abrams sees himself as indistinguishable from the Israeli government? Or that B’nai Brith’s interest in human rights is indistinguishable from the vested interests of the Israeli government?

So far, Canada’s Globe and Mail, which published the story on May 24, has also published PEJ’s vigorous characterization of the charges as “calumnies.” But for how long?

Yesterday, Ingmar Lee was forced to resign as editor of PEJ for the bad judgment of publishing Alam’s article after the complaint was received, because the article is “slanderous to all Jews,” uses the word Zionist as a “slander,” like Nazi, and may be a “hate crime” under Canadian law (in the words of PEJ publisher, Rycroft).

A semantic question: Is it also a slander to refer to Nazis as “Nazis”?

The hare was shot by the hunter in the field: Nuremberg and innocence

Just watching – intermittently – Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) – with Montgomery Clift in the role of the mentally defective man questioned by Maximilian Schell (who won an Academy Award for his performance) about his sterilization under the Nazis. Clift is riveting in his scene but to my mind Schell is even better as counsel for the defense.

In the scene following, there is a dialogue about the culpability of ordinary people in the government’s actions. I don’t necessarily agree, given the power of the government to propagandize and coerce and its apparent immunity to criticism. But it still makes you think..

“There are no Nazis in Germany – the Eskimos invaded and took over the country. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans; it was the fault of those damn Eskimos…. ”

And in a later scene about the concentration camps:

“They say we killed millions of people..millions..how could it be possible? How?”

And the response:

“It’s not the killing that’s the problem..it’s the disposing of the bodies…”

And after Marlene Dietrich denies knowing anything about what was going on,

“As far as I can tell, there was no one who knew anything…”

A lot of interesting performers in the film – Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Burt Lancaster, Spencer Tracy, William Shatner and the son of the conductor Otto von Klemperer. (A friend writes to tell me that he is T.V.’s Colonel Klink (in Hogan’s Heroes). I’ll take his word for it… 

Other quotes stand out:

“Once again it was done for love of country..”

“Maybe we didn’t know the details. But if we didn’t know, maybe it was because we didn’t want to know….”

“But if he is to be found guilty, there are others who went along who also must be found guilty”

“Why did we succeed, your honor? What about the rest of the world? Did it not know the intentions of the Third Reich, did it not read the words of Mein Kampf? Where is the responsibility of the Soviet Union….where is the responsibility of the Vatican…….where is the responsibility of Winston Churchill? Where is the responsibilty of those American industrialists who helped Hitler?Is Germany alone guilty…

the whole world is as responsible for Hitler as Germany is.

Ernst Janning said he was guilty..if he was guilty, then his guilt was the world’s guilt no less, no more.. ”

More:

“What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?”

And this, again, about the camps:
“Break the body, break the spirit, break the heart..”

But the best line may be at the end, when Burt Lancaster calls Spencer Tracy into his cell and says, “I never thought it would come to this,” and Spencer Tracy responds,

“The first time you convicted an innocent person you knew it would come to this.”

V-Tech – the psych time-line

At least as important as the shooting time-line – some would say more – is the psychiatric time-line that preceded the V-Tech shooting:

Wyatt v. Aderhold (Arizona 5th circuit panel decision) in 1974 and later, O’Connor v. Donaldson (Supreme Court), were regarded as having jettisoned the parens patriae basis (the state as custodian for the mentally defective) and left only the police-powers basis (the state as defendant of the community’s safety) for the state’s interest in confining the mentally ill. Both decisions came after numerous exposes and sociological studies of the conditions of state mental hospitals and treatment had led to a trend toward de-institutionalizing mental health patients. That trend became stronger with the discovery of anti-psychotic medications in the 1950s that held out the hope for outpatient treatment for many patients.
Another step in the rise of the psychotropic drug industry came with the expansion of the definition of bipolar illness (manic-depression) in the DSM-IV Manual, the official psychiatric diagnostic manual, in 1994. Now, conditions less intense but presenting similar symptoms were included as abnormal variations requiring treatment. The result was an explosion of bipolar illness in children between 1996 and 2004. While some see this as a legitimate refinement in diagnosis, others see it is a result of the new, expanded definition. Then there are those who say there just isn’t enough known to conclude definitively one way or about how much bipolar disease there really is and whether children are being under or over medicated.

Simultaneously, the FDA backed off putting stronger warnings on the psychotropic drugs:

“The FDA held a hearing in September 1990 at which its Psychotropic Drugs Advisory Committee (most of whose members got funding from antidepressant manufacturers) considered whether SSRIs can induce violent and suicidal thoughts. They voted 9-0 not to recommend a more prominent warning and 6-3 not to recommend a warning in small type that would have read, “In a small number of patients, depressive symptoms have worsened during therapy, including the emergence of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Surveillance throughout treatment is recommended.” (Fred Gardner)

Next came the marketing plan:

“It all started in the mid-90s while George W. Bush was governor. TMAP was developed by what’s referred to as an “expert consensus” made up of a group of “experts” already known to have favorable opinions of certain drugs, chosen by drug company sponsors, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Astrazeneca, Pfizer, Novartis, Janssen-Ortho-McNeil, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Wyeth-Ayerst and Forrest Laboratories.

In 1997–98, with pharma funding, a panel was assembled to determine which drugs would be used in treating children and decided that the same drugs used on adults could be used on kids. There were no studies conducted to test the safety of giving the TMAP drugs to kids and most had never been FDA approved for use by children.” (Evelyn Pringle)

 

The next step was taken when Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a “comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.” The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.

In April 2003 came the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health‘s radical recommendation is to screen the entire nation for mental illness, beginning with school children:

Schools, wrote the commission, are in a “key position” to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools. The commission also recommended “Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports” including “state-of-the-art treatments” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
The NFC Report promoted two controversial programs the pharmaceutical industry loves : Columbia University’s TeenScreen and TMAP (Texas Medication Algorithm Project), mental health prescribing guidelines formulated under Big Pharma’s sponsorship, including Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Janssen whose products were recommended through the algorithm).

As a Mother Jones article pointed out, while previously, drug companies had sold new products to doctors through ads and articles in journals or directly through television and magazine advertising, from the mid-1990s, they began to go through a handful of state officials who govern prescribing for large public systems like state mental hospitals, prisons, and government-funded clinics.

Furthermore, the focus moved away from anti-depressants – a very broad market – to the smaller but much more lucrative (since they cost about ten times as much) anti-psychotic drugs.

Meanwhile, in a glaring conflict of interest, NFC chairman, Dr. Michael Hogan, served on the advisory committee of Janssen Pharmaceutical, and serves on the advisory council of TeenScreen, the program singled out to promote in the NFL Report.

But research was mounting that SSRIs, especially, were a significant danger –

“Lilly and the other antidepressant manufacturers made more finite, begrudging concessions in the years ahead as evidence linking SSRIs to suicide kept mounting. A turning point came in April 2004, when the British Medical Journal reported that GlaxoSmithKline had concealed data showing that Paxil more than quadrupled suicidal ideation among teenagers. A few months later the FDA acknowledged a study showing that SSRI use induced suicidal thoughts in two out of 100 adolescents and ordered a black box warning. Prozac sales dipped as a result and Lilly et al commissioned the study that JAMA published April 18, showing that SSRI use induces suicidal ideation in only one in 100. Suicidal ideation,” “Suicide gesture,” “Suicide attempt,” and other such terms do not accurately characterize the extremely bizarre flip-outs induced by SSRIs. Carefully planning to annihilate the student body fits the profile. Biting your mother 57 times. Driving your car around in circles until you smash into a tree…”

More by Fred Gardner here at “Prozac Madness.” and at “Fuel for a Killer.”

The dangers were exacerbated by the rates at which psychotropic drugs were being recommended:

“That same issue of JAMA, April 18 [2004], contained a study showing that for-profit dialysis chains give patients much higher doses of Epogen than non-profit clinics. Epogen, made by Amgen Inc., is a synthetic version of a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. During dialysis it is added to the blood as toxins are removed.

The for-profit dialysis chains get a quarter of their income from the sale of Epogen -plus rebates from Amgen based on how much product they move. Investigators from the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute looked at 134,000 patients treated in 2004.

Some patients at for-profit clinics were found to be getting three times more Epogen than their counterparts at non-profits. “It’s clear there is a profit incentive,” says co-author Dennis Cotter.” (NOTE BELOW**) Industry payments to Minnesota psychiatrists rose 6 fold from 2000-2005 while antipsychotics prescribed to children in the state medicaid program rose 9fold. The story focuses on Minnesota because it is the one state that requires disclosure of industry payments to psychiatrists.


The NY Times story went on: Psychiatrists who received $5000 or more from manufacturers of atypical antipsychotics on average wrote three times as many prescriptions for those drugs in children as those who received under that amount.

—Psychiatrists received a median of $1750 each from industry from 2000 to 2005, more than any other medical specialty in Minnesota.

—The cost to the state of antipsychotic drugs used in children increased 14-fold from 2000 to 2005, from $521,000 to $7.1 million.

The Times quotes Steven Hyman, former director of NIMH: “There’s an irony that psychiatrists ask patients to have insights into themselves, but we don’t connect the wires in our own lives about how money is affecting our profession and putting our patients at risk.”

The drug industry pushed to expand its market despite strong expert dissent:

Here is Dr. Stefan Kruszewski’s criticism of TeenScreen made in an interview with the British Medical Journal:

“We can manufacture enough diagnostic labels of normal variability of mood and thought that we can continually supply medication to you. The shameful part is that there’s enough mental illness that requires careful and judicious treatment that we don’t need to find variants of normal. But when it comes to manufacturing disease, nobody does it like psychiatry.”

And about TMAP, another expert, Dr. Grace Jackson, writes,

“the algorithms have arisen from ‘Evidence Based Medicine’—a statistically based approach to studying treatment effects in populations, rather than a reality based approach to discerning treatment effectiveness in each unique individual.”

In brief, TeenScreen amounts to a dangerous intervention in the lives of 50 million children and about 6 million adults in the schools.

That is the background against which one should look at the move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws that was already in the works in October 2006.

Its goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an ‘imminent’ danger to themselves or others,” precisely what is now being demanded — as a result of the V-Tech shootings

Take, for instance, the case of 13 year old Aliah Gleason, one of 19, 404 Texas teens who underwent involuntary mental health treatement in a state funded program in July-August 2004.

Falsely labeled suicidal, she was given 12 drugs including 4 SSRI’s (Zoloft, Celexa, Lexapro and Desyrel) 3 anti-psychotics (Geodon, Abilify, and Haldol) 2 anti-convulsants (Trileptal and Depakote), anti-anxiety (Ativan), anti-Parkinson’s (Cogentin). When discharged she was on 5 of them to which Risperdal was added.
In early 2005, the FDA issued a warning that antidepressants can cause both suicide and violence and mandated a black-box warning – the most serious – about side effects from panic attacks to hostility, impulsivity and mania. Further, abrupt withdrawal from antidepressants can produce suicide, aggression or psychosis.

But, with what’s at stake financially, the drug companies continue to look for ways to expand their markets.

Eli Lilly paid out $1.2 billion to 28,000 people who claimed injury by the drug Zyprexa in the ten years ( NYT, Jan. 5), but it made $4.2 billion in just one year selling the drug, taken by 20 million people world over since it was introduced in 1996. (statistics from Alliance for Human Research Protection).

That, perhaps, is the rationale for such events as the “colloquium” for national science and healthcare journalists –“Children and Mental Illness”– held at the Columbia University School of Journalism and sponsored by The Columbia University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Carmel Hill Family Foundation which runs TeenScreen, which attracted plenty of media attention and was funded by Janssen Pharmaceutical Products, LP and McNeilConsumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals.

In May 2007, the Texas Attorney General joined a whistleblower suit filed in 2004 against Pharma giant Johnson and Johnson that charged it with improprieties in marketing its psychotropic drug Rispertal as part of the TMAP program.

NOTE:

As this petition against TeenScreen points out, there are also broader socio-political implications for the program

“Whereas antipsychotic drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children; the FDA’s “black box warning” states antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders; and drug safety experts have recommended additional “black box” warnings be placed on ADHD drugs: for the increased risk of stroke and heart attack;

Whereas potential recruits are ineligible for military service if they have taken Ritalin and other stimulants to treat the unscientific “disorder” called ADHD in the previous year;

Whereas most states have laws restricting the purchase of firearms based on an adjudication of mental illnesses or disorders, and mass screening of all American children for mental disorders will increase the number of persons labeled with a mental disorder, directly infringing upon the citizenry’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the 2nd amendment;

“Whereas TeenScreen only partners with and seeks to immediately refer students to “mental illness” practitioners and does not refer students to medical disciplines that could test for underlying health problems such as allergies, nutrition, toxicities and physical illnesses;

Whereas child suicides are very rare and have been on a decline for years; and even according to former TeenScreen director Rob Caruano, “suicides are so rare that you’d have to screen the whole country to see a difference in mortality between screened and unscreened students………”

Ron Paul again

On May 18, U.S. House Rep. Ron Paul introduced a federal legislative bill – H.R.2387 – http://thomas.loc.gov ( “Paul, Ron” under “Browse Bills by Sponsor”).

The title is: “To prohibit the use of Federal funds for any universal mandatory mental health screening program”.

On May 23, a bill granting the FDA powers to monitor drug safety was pared back during private meetings. And efforts to curb conflicts of interest among FDA advisers and allow consumers to buy cheaper drugs
from other countries were defeated in close votes.

* A measure that blocked an effort to allow drug importation passed, 49-40. The 49 senators who voted against drug importation received about 5 million from industry executives and political action committees
since 2001 – nearly three quarters of the industry donations to current members of the Senate, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data compiled by two non-partisan groups, Center for Responsive Politics and
PoliticalMoneyLine.

* Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he demanded removal of language that would have allowed the FDA to ban advertising of high-risk drugs for two years because it would restrict free speech. Roberts has raised $18,000 from drug interests so far this year, records show, and $66,000 since 2001. His spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said he “takes great pains to keep fundraising and official actions separate.”

**Note : I wonder if it is simply the ‘for-profit’ motive on its own that is the cause. Without the state, would we have the incentives of third-party pay, for instance, which distort markets forces? I think not. A genuinely competitive market would also do away with unfair monopoly-like conditions preventing the entry of lower-cost and alternative providers — which would help correct the problem. For the same reason, although I personally think the ideal should be private regulatory bodies in a free market, the immense lobbying power of pharmaceutical companies at this point means that what few regulatory restraints remain cannot be abandoned but must be shored up.

What is undisputed, however, is the need to slowly bleed the Federal government of money, power and influence and return power and autonomy to local and state bodies as far as possible.

We Need Secession

“The Constitution would be a major improvement over what we have today. But we need to realize that the Constitution itself represented a major increase in government power over the Articles of Confederation, which would have served us quite well had it not been overthrown. I’m not impressed by the bunch that foisted the Constitution on us. They were really up to no good. We’ve all but forgotten that most everyone opposed it at the time. It only squeaked through once the Bill of Rights was tacked on. The Bill of Rights isn’t perfect, but it at least had the advantage of spelling out what the government could not do. In a rather ingenious twist, even that has been perverted: it is now seen as a mandate for the federal government to tell lower orders of government what they cannot do, meaning that it ends up being a force for centralization. This is such a tragedy. If Patrick Henry could see what became of it, I’m sure he never would have tolerated it. The same might be true of Hamilton, for that matter. So long as we are talking about founding documents, the one that really deserves more attention is the Declaration of Independence. Now here is an inspiring document that shows us where we should go in the future!”

Lew Rockwell

V-Tech Panel ready to go to court for Cho psych records

AP had this report, May 23, on the panel’s readiness to go to court to get V-Tech’s Cook Counseling Center to cough up V-Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui’s counseling records, now apparently shielded by Federal privacy laws:

“We’re going to get what we need, one way or the other,” Massengill said. If that fails, “we’ll have to go to the courts.”

University officials say federal privacy laws bar them from sharing the records.

Cho killed 32 people in two campus buildings before committing suicide in a classroom on April 16.

A year and a half earlier, he had been found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization,” according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment, but there is no indication that he complied.

University counsel Kay Heidbreder said the laws, even for someone who is deceased, mean the records cannot be shared even among departments at the university.

As it is constituted, the panel cannot issue subpoenas to compel testimony and obtain documents. Delacey Skinner — a spokeswoman for Gov. Timothy Kaine, who convened the panel — said the governor has assured members the attorney general will help them get information.”

My Comment:
So, it’s federal laws which have actually kept this thing under wraps in the first place. Another instance where federalization has been a negative. Yet, people want more and more of it. If that is not an instance of pure brainwashing, I don’t know what is. It’s obvious that the problem is the federal government. The answer to the problem, by definition, cannot be more federal government.

And meanwhile, the press kept everyone distracted with chatter about gun control. Not a word yet about the medication supposedly found or at least observed by room-mates. Nothing about the toxicology report (yes, what about that?)

A piece on a site called Alliance for Human Research asks the same questions. It cites Dr. Anna Blake Tracy, author and  executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, who finds high-profile shootings almost invariably tied up with antidepressants and cites numbers of incidents in support:

“Other famous cases include the 1998 deaths of actor Phil Hartman and his wife, a murder/suicide committed by her (Zoloft); the 1999 home and office killing spree by Atlanta day trader Mark Barton (Prozac); the 1998 shooting deaths of four co-workers by Connecticut lottery accountant Matthew Beck, who then killed himself (Luvox); and the 1994 New York City subway bombing by Edward Leary, which injured 48 (Prozac).”

She goes on,

“Most people don’t know LSD once was prescribed as a wonder drug. Most people don’t know that PCP was considered to have a large margin of safety in humans. Most people don’t know ecstasy was prescribed and sold for five years to treat depression. Few know that history of drugs, and I think that’s our biggest problem. We’re just not educated enough to have concerns.”

She notes hundreds of similar cases.

But I found one particular incident especially interesting from the point of view of the Cho shooting:

“In February 2004 in Polk Township, Pa., Samantha Hirt, hours after taking a pill for manic depression, set fire in a bedroom where her two toddlers were playing, closed the door and sat on a sofa watching television while the fire spread, killing both children. Effexor.”

Remember that arson case on Cho’s record that didn’t make it into a police file? Why ever not? Did some drug company think it wouldn’t be good PR for their product?

More in my next post.

Lesser Evils and Greater Idiots..

Another reason to vote independently:

“But (someone protests), can’t you at least admit that the Democrats are better than the Republicans? And if you love the country, or care about the world, aren’t you obligated to support the lesser of two evils, even if it’s only slightly less evil?

To which I reply: What’s really evil is being forced to choose between people on the one hand who support the war, and accuse anyone who questions it of “helping the terrorists” — and people on the other who oppose the war, criticize the war, pledge to the end the war, and then vote to keep it going.

Or being asked to choose between the village idiot and someone who’s consistently outsmarted by him….”

Read more by David Vest…

Oakeshott revisited..

In an earlier post, I attributed to Oakeshott some words that actually came from a commentator, Ivo Mosley in a paper on Oakeshott’s “A Dark Age Devoted to Barbaric Affluence”. Apologies. I have modified the old post and reposted here.
(Sigh) a nice quote too.

The sentiments were Oakeshott’s certainly but the text was the commentator’s. I mention it because several readers wrote in asking for the source.I would like to go back and verify from the original text what Oakeshott’s exact words actually were.

Mosley again, in the same piece:

“Words such as ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘rights’ have long histories and their meanings have shifted over time. Further, when unscrupulous operators use them to rally supporters in some great cause, such words become hazy promises of better things to come. The warm glow of anticipation may be as deceptive as the witches’ promises to Macbeth…”

My Comment:

Macbeth is good here. We really should begin to recognize the difference between words used with a proper humility toward life and experience and words used like Blackwater mercenaries sent out to do our bidding – beating up innocent reality, plundering whatever meaning we want out of it and then setting off on some other fool task.

Those thoughts are in my head today, again, because of some rather silly criticism that one or two readers sent in last week. I suppose when you have one critic calling you an apologist for Islamism and the other telling you you are a closet Zionist, you must be doing something right.

“If you would be an alternative guru ala Chomsky, you must believe in ‘the people’; if you would be a free-market guru, you must worship the golden calves of affluence and corporate power; if you would be a progressive liberal, you must genuflect to the moos of rationalism and science.”

Which is exactly what I was trying to say about my Falwell obit in a previous post. Because I don’t support a theocracy or a theocrat, I don’t necessarily scoff at every assumption of the religious, either.

And though I may defend the rights of the people against the corporatocracy, it does not follow that ‘the people’ (and we are all people) aren’t also damned fools at times and as greedy, wrong-headed and unethical as their rulers.

Which is why I can appreciate many socialist insights, but I’ll stop short of making a golden calf out of the masses or the mass mind, thanks.

And by the way, I don’t think the mass is something out there, as in a derisive term like “unwashed masses.” The poor are no more likely to be herd-like than the rich or the well- educated. Look at the lemming-like behavior of hedge funds in the capital markets, for instance. Or merger mania or the rise in private equity or the art market. The ‘herd’ is in us as well as outside.
There is a never ending supply of wisdom in Oakeshott..

A good description of him:

” [Oakeshott] is a traditionalist with few traditional beliefs, an ‘idealist’ who is more skeptical than many positivists, a lover of liberty who repudiates liberalism, an individualist who prefers Hegel to Locke, a philosopher who disapproves of philosophisme, a romantic perhaps (if Hume could possibly be called one), and a marvellous stylist.”

Hume I buy, but I don’t know about that Hegel reference.

Loonies Tune Out: The Maple-Syrup Mafia Strikes

This from Chris Cook, of the estimable University of Victoria Gorilla Radio (yes Gee-Oh, as in, our furry friends… or cousins…..or descendants, depending on your evolutionary perspective and level of optimism about the human race)

“For American readers who value and feel protected by the 1st Amendment (right to free speech), it may seem strange that a country would enshrine in law the opposite condition; but Hate Crime legislation in this country is widely supported. Canada is an ethnically, and politically diverse country, consisting of minority populations from the world over, and it was deemed fair-minded to ensure all are protected from the “tyranny of the majority.” But it’s a double-edged sword, making possible an abuse of the statutes, allowing an equally odious tyranny, the stifling of dissent and criticism by a dedicated minority.

Such is, I believe, the case here.

To understand the nature of the B’nai Brith complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, it’s instructive to visit the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) website; there is explained the goals of the CJC, and their marching orders to regional branches of B’nai Brith in defending Israeli interests. The CJC’s ‘General Expectations of Canada,’ and presumably of Canadian Jews and Christian Zionists loyal to Israel, right or wrong, are to take “constructive interventions against resolutions or motions” made in Canada that:

i) blame only Israel and its policies for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ii) indict Israel’s legitimate counter-terrorism measures with no reference to or condemnation of Palestinian terrorism.
iii) deny or undermine Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East.
iv) employ existentially threatening language such as referring to Israel as a “racist” or “apartheid” state and apply terms such as [“genocide”(?)], or “ethnic cleansing” to the conflict.
v) are based upon inaccurate media information or Palestinian Authority propaganda.
vi) predetermine the outcome of direct, bilateral negotiations in keeping with UN Resolution 242 and 338 or circumvent such a process.

At the same time, Canada’s delegates must support and encourage efforts at the UNCHR that:

i) will ensure a comprehensive accounting of international human rights situations such that grievous international human rights issues are not ignored or soft-pedalled as a result of a politicized, anti-Israel agenda.
ii) highlight the crippling impact of continuing Palestinian terrorism – which has been explicitly legitimized in the CHR resolutions – on the peace process and on attempts to establish a true human rights regime in the Middle East.
iii) draw attention to the deficiencies within the Palestinian Authority regarding human rights and the building of a viable civil society for the Palestinian people.”

My Comment:

See how this works? Now, not only in Europe (for eg. even in Britain) and in Japan but right on our borders, it’s free speech for me but none for thee. Read more at the Peace and Earth Justice site.

Or as a reader writes:

"Let me get this right...
Its OK for Israel to be a Jewish state, but the US is NOT a Christian state and India is NOT a Hindu state...

just wanted to be sure..I am getting confused...

Is calling someone a RACIST not OK but you can still be one...what about BIGOT?

Or maybe some racists ae better than other racists...
by the way, what IS racisim..I've almost forgotten.

My head hurts..what about baby-killer, is that existentially threatening? Satanic spawn.. or rag-head... or how about Islamicist...or...subhuman vermin scum?

Can I kill you, but nicely? In an entirely politically correct, racially diverse, ethnically sensitive, gender-inclusive sort of way....?

For samples of the kind of offensive speech that would be classified as hate speech, see Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination and think about how far you’d be willing to go in shutting people up. What might the fall out be?

If what someone like Don Imus says is “hate speech,” why isn’t what Rush Limbaugh says too…or Al Sharpton…or any number of other people? Pushed to absurdity, practically everything can be construed as some form of hate of someone or at least of their strongest values. Free speech does have limits – usually when you incite people into some sort of dangerous action during war-time. When you advocate violence or assassination. But that’s not what we have here is it? Offending people shouldn’t be against the law. Sometimes it just might be our civic duty.

Here, folks, is why we need to support the one representative who has consistently fought for free speech, for the Bill of Rights, for constitutionality and the preservation of civil liberties every step of the way – Congressman Ron Paul.

Students for Ron Paul.

Top secret Osama tape found……

“The following are excerpts from a secret transcript found in a remote cave in Afghanistan from the summer of 2000. The government and the military have kept these contents under wraps, but an anonymous source has leaked them to me. Now, I share with the world what we deserve to know. This report should finally put to rest the questions of why they hate us. It also vindicates 9/11 hero Rudy Giuliani and his scathing attack on that extremist nutball Ron Paul.

Osama: Hey, al-Zawahiri, come here! Look at this!

al-Zawahiri: What is it, Sheik? What are you reading?

Osama: I don’t know, it’s some Satanic document written in English telling all kinds of lies!

al-Zawahiri: Let me see that. Hmmm, I think I read about this in my studies. I think it’s called the constitution or something like that.

Osama: Constitution? And what is all this other ridiculous stuff attached to it?

al-Zawahiri: Those are called the Bill of Rights. They give the Americans certain freedoms.

Osama: Look at this blasphemy! It says that their government can’t make any law about an official state religion. May Allah curse these heretics!…..”

Read all about it at Lew Rockwell.

For interesting stuff about Christian fundamentalism, visit Bill Barnwell’s Blog

And in case, you’re wondering what all the buzz about Ron Paul is, read this

…..and this.

V- Tech Stonewalling on Cho counseling

Even the V-Tech review panel is getting miffed with the ongoing stonewall from Virginia Tech, according to ABC, May 21:

“When members of the Review Panel asked University counsel Kay Heidbreder if Cho had received on-campus treatment or follow-up, she said she did not know. She added that the information was protected under state privacy laws, even after Cho’s death.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger admitted that the university should have a better answer on the question of whether Cho underwent treatment.

“Just saying we don’t know is not good enough. But we obviously need to follow the law,” Steger told the panel.

Members of the panel expressed frustration at being denied information on Cho’s treatment and follow-up.”

My Comment:

I am going to make a wild guess at what I think this means. As anyone reading this blog knows, I’ve been following this case as closely as possible, since it broke 35 days ago.

In an earlier post, I speculated that the formative event/treatment that drove Cho crazy happened in 2005-06. Not hard to guess. He was a shy guy and didn’t speak much, and he may have been prone to anger. But he didn’t snap until that year.

It’s beginning to look like V-Tech’s Cook Counseling Center is indeed the place he was ordered to go. And if the unversity’s refusal to release his records is any indication, he did go.

Let me take a risk and say I think he was prescribed drugs somewhere along the line, maybe an SSRI – that he began taking regularly (the pills his room-mates saw).

And that’s when the real trouble may have begun.

I don’t know what else might have happened.

Whether he had some sexual experience, like his relatively benign one with the escort he hired…or something that left him more humiliated.

I don’t know who his counselor was. Or whether some therapy session might not have either revealed that he had been abused or had led him, erroneously, to believe he had been abused in the way he suddenly began describing in his plays written in 2006 fall.

Who is the counselor who handled him at Cook? What sorts of pills are prescribed there routinely? Is there a pharmacy which might have records of prescriptions they could hunt up?

Can we have a closer look at the contents of the room that the search warrant disclosed?

Or, more information from his room mates about those pills?

The panel needs to be asking those questions.

And that’ s besides the questions it needs to be asking about that shaky time line.

An online comment on the ABC story follows the same line of thought I had:

“Bullets are the ultimate invasion of privacy. Anyone thinking Virginia Tech is acting out of concern for Cho’s privacy is sadly deluded. The only conclusion to be drawn from this secrecy is that Virginia Tech receives grants, scholarships or other funding from drug companies. Someone “made a phone call” to Virginia Tech administration to hush this up. And the administration withered. — America’s next bloody campus massacre may well trace back to the same psychiatric drugs that deleted Cho’s emotions and left him a robotic killing machine. Withholding facts that might correlate 33 deaths and hundreds of ruined family-members’ lives to prescription medicines cheats the medical community, researchers, patients and parents. — Is Virginia Tech only pretending to be an engineering and scientific institution? Hard science has ethical duties to publish truth, no matter whom it chafes. This institution’s secrecy casts shadows on all its research or academic work. Which studies were influenced by a phone call from a big donor? — Harvard divinity School gained international credibility by returning $2.5 million from the anti-Semitic United Arabs president. Yet Virginia Tech won’t open a file folder to do its scientific and humane duty.”
More news from a reader about V-Tech and some shady dealing there that might..or might not..have anything to do with this story. But, I want to check it out a bit. Stay tuned….and by the way, I do revisit posts to add material and links. I’ll let you know by changing the dates on the post.

I need to organize the V-Tech material so that the major posts show up as widgets – I’m just not that blog-savvy yet. Maybe, some one reading this labor of love can give me a little ‘puter advice as a reward??

T is for Trillion – Mike Chertoff will make a wreck of the border

Among other gag-worthy characteristics, the new immigration bill announced last week is said to cost over 2 trillion (yes, it seems we have a couple of trillion to spare, according to the new, new math).

A country already mired in debt and credit needs to shell out 2 trillion about as much as breaking the law is the prerequisite for citizenship under the rule of law.

The 380-page bill, fruit of three months of high-sounding wrangling, gives the immediate right to work (the Z visa), to some 12-20 million illegal workers who got into the United States before January 1, 2007. Heads of household would have to return to their home countries within eight years, and they would be guaranteed the right to return. Applicants would also have to cough up a $5,000 penalty. That’s thousand. Chump change for migrant workers, of course.
Confirmed. This administration’s math is delusional, its laws are contradictory, and now we also know its alphabet is backward:

“Z visa” is followed by “Y,” a guest worker program which has some merit to it, in so far as it emphasizes good education and skill sets. Brownie points for that. Never mind that guest workers families are broken up and they themselves usually end up held hostage to their employer’s whims and ever-changing paper requirements.

But “Y” follows “Z” in another way too. As in, Y bother. If you’re going to have a law, then apply it fairly to everyone. Or don’t have the law.

Ted Kennedy claims the whole business is about bringing people in from the shadows. If lurking in the shadows is the criterion, why not bring in the Sunni and Shia……that would also put an end to the killing of troops; it would supply cheap labor to businesses. And solve a crisis that, after all, the government did create.

Of course, the government created this one too.

Does anyone think migrant workers paid less than minimum wage are going to be able to cough up $5000? And if they could or couldn’t, would it matter? Because, we already know where this will end – with some border patrolmen hand-in-glove with criminals who will run a racket on it; with a whole industry of racketeers built on that, as there already is on fake documentation; with the innocent in trouble and the guilty off the hook. And then, finally, when the abuse stinks to heaven, there will be even more high-sounding wrangling in government (all at taxpayer expense), and everyone will decide the simplest thing is to cancel the whole thing and go home….until they come back with the next way to drive a nail into the coffin of the US economy.

So, when we are told that this alphabet of errors is not going to be recited until the number of border patrol agents has been doubled (adding 6,000 new agents, bringing the total to 18,000), border fencing strengthened (200 miles of vehicle barriers and new surveillance towers), and a verifiable, high-tech ID-card system for immigrants operational, all in the space of 18 months, let’s figure that the Noah Webster standard American usage definition of this is that it’s a whole new era of bungling bureaucracy about to be inaugurated.

And the only new money forthcoming to finance this fiasco-in-waiting will be collected from employers, who will now be fined for hiring undocumented workers.

Perfect. The federal government shunts the costs of its own inability to man the borders to tax-payers. Then it shoves off the mess of this guacamole onto its citizens.

If Americanness is defined by citizenship and citizenship is defined by law, can the government enforce its own laws while violating the law of the land?

If Americanness is not defined by citizenship, then we need a debate about that.

Nobody wants to demonize immigrants. Least of all an immigrant like me.
If money can go anywhere in the world to make a return on investment (and it should), labor should be free to move where it wants to find work.

But here’s the rub. Not all movement of capital is the genuine productive result of investment activity. A lot of it is driven by interference in the market in the form of state intervention in the money supply. The result of that is speculation – and speculative flows can flood a country, jack up the prices of everything and then in a trice flow out, creating financial disaster. That’s not the free market. That’s state-created financialization.

We know that. And the state affects the labor market like that too.

Letting labor move as it will is one thing. Subsidizing and incentivizing its movement through public services is another.

That imposes unbearable costs on local communities, bankrupts the state, and causes cultural and economic problems. Add to that another thick layer of DC bureaucracy and you have a recipe for disaster. Especially when the registration of these 12-20 million has to be done in 90 days.

In an article in the Washington Times, Emilio Gonzales, the director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services thinks that time-line should be doubled or tripled if the process is not going to go the way of the fraud-ridden 1986 amnesty of a mere 3 million people:

“We’re litigating cases today from 1986,” he says.

But, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff thinks it’s all fine and dandy.

“Chertoff told CNN that the bill would help him better focus his resources. “Right now, I’ve got my Border Patrol agents and my immigration agents chasing maids and landscapers. I want them to focus on drug dealers and terrorists. It seems to me, if I can get the maids and landscapers into a regulated system and focus my law enforcement on the terrorists and the drug dealers, that’s how I get a safe border.”

(“Immigration Breakthrough Could Pave the Way for Citizenship,” CNN, May 22, 2007)


By the way, Michael Chertoff, chief muck-a-muck of the Department of Homeland Security, knows all about how to handle terrorists.…and immigrants….and safety.

He’s the guy on whose watch New Orleans was hit, first with Katrina… and then with FEMA.

It was he who ran the 9-11 investigation. Chertoff was the senior Justice Department official on duty at the F.B.I. command center just after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

With all but impossible speed, he ID’d the terrorists and made the link to Osama bin Laden. He pushed to merge domestic surveillance and foreign espionage which, until then, had been kept strictly apart under US law. (“The Patriot Act’s Impact,” Duke Law Journal, Nathan C. Henderson, November 15, 2002. Here’s the pdf file: http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+179+pdf. see also, “Crackdown,”Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker, November 5, 2001).

Chertoff also authorized the unconstitutional detainment of thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants – including Middle Eastern Jews–without charges. As head of the DOJ’s criminal division, he told the CIA how far to go in interrogations. (“Amid Praise, Doubts About Nominee’s Post-9/11 Role,” Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia, Washington Post, January 31, 2005).

With Viet Dinh, he co-authored the unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act, enacted on October 26, 2001. (“Homeland top job to Patriot Act architect,” AFP, January 13, 2005).

He’s even done a stint as defense in a terrorist trial.

Put in charge of the 9-11 investigation, Chertoff defended Dr. Magdy el-Amir, a leading New Jersey neurologist at the heart of a terrorist web based in Jersey City, alleged to have funneled millions to Osama. Some say Chertoff may have shielded el- Amir from criminal prosecution. (“Trail of Terror,” Chris Hansen and Ann Curry, NBC’s Dateline, August 2002 and The Record, Bergen County, NJ, December 11, 1998).

Nice resume.

According to CNN, Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray of California, chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, had this to say about the new immigration bill:

“The ‘compromise’ announced today by Sen. Kennedy will reward 12 million illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship — what part of illegal does the Senate not understand?” he said in a written statement.

At least, we already know what part of the Constitution this government doesn’t.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says the bill “wound up being about what it means to be an American … I think we’ve got a deal that reflects who we are as Americans.”

Maybe, under this administration, we have.

“Being nice to Falwell”- some grammar rules from Michael Oakeshott

“On Human Conduct” was one of the books I found most useful in my thinking in graduate school. And the uncivility of politics (although I doubt if politics has ever been anything but uncivil) brings me back to it today.

Oakeshott wrote of the adverbial rules of conduct, which very briefly, I could translate as the how of things, the way we do them. It’s what I meant when I spoke about style being more important than substance in my Falwell piece, a piece that provoked some criticism from readers who thought I erred in “saying something nice” about Falwell. But the article was neither an exercize in pragmatism nor in dissembling on my part. It was an acknowledgment (I hope) of complexity and the unknowableness of things…a kind of genuflection, not before evangelical Christianity (I am rereading this and immediately see that what I ought to have said here is ‘Christian Zionism’, not ‘evangelical Christianity’, which is unfairly conflated with it. I will leave the original statement here a bit longer, but will eventually delete it – it shows you how we often misspeak in a hurry, using the language “in the air” even when it’s quite inaccurate or downright misleading) . A genuflection not before an influential public figure, but before our own individual limitations as rational beings, before the complexity and ambiguity of moral practice and indeed language itself – not simply our laws about free speech.

“But a moral practice,” he writes, “is not a prudential art concerned with the success of the enterprises of agents; it is not instrumental to the achievement of any substantive purpose nor to the satisfaction of any substantive want. No doubt there may be advantages to be enjoyed in subscribing to its conditions: perhaps, honesty is the best policy; perhaps speaking the truth is a condition for all durable association for the satisfaction of wants. But a moral practice, unlike an instrumental practice, does not stand condemned if no such advantages were to accrue. Indeed, recognizing and subscribing to these conditions may be expected to add to the cost of these transactions. Nor is morality a court of arbitration in which the different and often conflicting purposes of engagement and their chosen action are reconciled to one another and mean satisfactions authorized. It is concerned with the act, not the event; with agents as doers making an impact on one another and not in respect of the particular wants for which they are seeking satisfactions. (my emphasis)

No action whether it be of self-gratification or of care for the satisfaction of others, is exempt from its conditions. And no agent, whatever the circumstances of his conduct, is outside its jurisdiction.”

That’s where the adverbial rules of engagement come in: courteously, civilly, nicely, politely, kindly, generously, compassionately….

Oakeshott differentiated between enterprise associations – which have a specific goal as their end, say, making’ x’ number of cars, and civil associations governed by procedural rules – among which, he placed the state. He would, I think, have been equally opposed to a theocracy and to a state which left no room for the religious – in any real sense.

Oakeshott also saw the the necessity of a minimalist state for the existence of true diversity, not the diversity of enforced outcomes. In that sense, many of the problems we face now become moot once we return the state to its proper limits.

Never Try to Baptize a Cat – Sound Political Advice In Unexpected Places………

A reader sent this in. I added a few pointers (in bold type) and found it could easily be read as useful advice on political engagement:

An Open Letter to Toby & April, Our Dogs

Dear Toby & April:

On Left and Right-Wing Zealotry
When I say to move, it means go someplace else, not switch positions with each other so there are still two dogs in the way.

On Dispossessing People of their Land and their Homes

The dishes with the paw print are yours and contain your food. The other dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the middle of my plate and food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food
and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

About the purpose of political debate

The stairway was not designed by Nascar and is not a racetrack. Beating me to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn’t help, because I fall faster than you can run.

On negotiating with those in power

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king size bed. I am very sorry about this. Do not think I will continue to sleep on the couch to ensure your comfort. Look at videos of dogs sleeping; they can actually curl up in a ball. It is not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space used is nothing but doggy sarcasm.

On respecting what’s valuable to other people

My compact discs are not miniature Frisbees.

On the right to privacy:

For the last time, there is not a secret exit from the bathroom. If by some miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is not necessary to claw, whine, try to turn the knob, or get your paw under the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I
entered. In addition, I have been using bathrooms for years, canine attendance is not mandatory.

On persuading your opponents:

The proper order is kiss me, then go smell the other dog’s butt. I cannot stress this enough. It would be such a simple change for you.

***********

And more, from kids:

On vigilance against the state:

Never trust a dog to watch your food.
Patrick, Age 10

On the dangers of confrontation:

Never talk back to a teacher whose eyes and ears are twitching.
Andrew, Age 9

On the vicissitudes of public service:

Wear a hat when feeding seagulls.
Rocky, Age 9

On readiness to act:

Sleep in your clothes so you’ll be dressed in the morning.
Stephanie, Age 8

On corruption in public life:

Never try to hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
Rosemary, Age 7

On the limits of resources:

Don’t flush the toilet when you’re dad is in the shower.
Lamar, Age 10

On the timing of negotiations:

Never ask for anything that costs more than five dollars when your parents are doing taxes.
Carrol, Age 9

On the unpredictability of grass roots campaigns:

Never bug a pregnant mom.
Nicholas, Age 11

On the occasional need for political correctness:

When your dad is mad and asks you, “Do I look stupid?” don’t answer him.
Heather, Age 16

On offering unsolicited advice:

Never tell your mom her diet’s not working.
Michael, Age 14

On government disclosure of economic data:

When you get a bad grade in school, show it to your mom when she’s on the phone.
Alyesha, Age 13

On the limits to social reform:

Never try to baptize a cat.
Laura, Age 13

On the proper forum for free expression:

Never do pranks at a police station.
Sam, Age 10

On intellectual discrimination:

Beware of cafeteria food when it looks like it’s moving.
Rob, Age 10

On the wisdom of keeping your own counsel:

Never tell your little brother that you’re not going to do what your mom told you to do.
Hank, Age 12


On the need for rationality:

Listen to your brain. It has lots of information.
Chelsey, Age 7

On associating with relentless negativity:

Stay away from prunes.
Randy, Age 9

On unwise rhetoric:

Never dare your little brother to paint the family car.
Phillip, Age 13

Whacko Indians……….and more..

“Arundhati Roy is a Left wing wacko. Dinesh D’Souza is a Right wing wacko. The only similarity between them, other than both being Indians, is both being pimps for the Allah/Mohammed LLC.”

And more in the same vein at Jihad Watch.

The only thing I can find here that I really agree with is that Marxism does dominate the elite schools in India. Although I’ve used Marxist terminology sometimes, I’m not very convinced by it, so I can’t say much more about the topic.

However, I do remember very warmly many fine Marxist scholars both in India and in the US, who almost made me think again…. As I said in earlier posts, generosity of spirit probably goes a longer way to intellectual agreement than one would think.

You always hope that the blogs, where there’s more space to explain yourself will encourage more cross-fertilization of thought. But when I read some sites, I worry that exactly the opposite might happen and we’ll be walling ourselves up, instead. We won’t need to understand anyone else’s point of view, simply because the net makes linking up exclusively with like-minded souls so easy.

In that vein, I looked for things here I could agree with and found that, well, it’s probably true that some of the crimes committed against other religions under the Muslim emperors in India have been downplayed in the name of secularism. And as always, lack of plainspeaking, even if it’s in a good cause, ends up provoking a backlash….

So, I can agree with that; accuracy in history (so far as it’s possible) is fine. Nothing wrong with that. But, I hope that argument doesn’t end in being a justification for war today…

I have commented on Arundhati, in a piece called “The Gratitude of Turkeys.” I think the venom directed against her is misplaced. She is an architect and writer, not a political philosopher or professional activist. There are things on which she is going to misstate or exaggerate her case, perhaps unknowingly. I have heard her speak a few times on TV and was charmed by her – hard not to be I think. I confess I only skimmed her book but she has a way with words, no doubt of it. Whether she is or isn’t Booker material, as some argue, I have no idea. A new writer is always a pleasure to read on their terms – not ours.

Also, I’d be curious to find out what it is that Dinesh D’Souza has said this time to have so offended so many people all over the place. This isn’t the only place I’m seeing him burned in effigy.

When I’ve heard D’Souza speak on TV, I haven’t usually found him terribly abrasive…a bit too cocky, on occasion. And not always engaged with what others are saying. His tendency to blame everything on the cultural left (and I think on the Carter/Clinton years) is simply wrong-headed.

You would think after having edited/written highly questionable material for the Dartmouth Review, and attacked Affirmative Action in a way that riled black conservatives, there would be nothing more controversial he could say or do. But I guess controversy sells.

In any case, I’m sure being consigned to the intellectual boondocks will do him no harm….

There’s more, though:

“There is a peculiar madness in the worldview of this Dsouza, a madness that seems to afflict certain people from the Indian subcontinent who are wrongly held in esteem as ‘intellectuals’-

Roy, as far as I know, never had anything to offer but slander. She does nothing but mudslinging and her whole scribble is a poisonous cocktail of anarcho-fantasies. I don’t believe anybody should give her a forum.”

Dear me.

Indians are all arrogant, too, it seems…….

Though, I wonder, arrogant about what? The last I heard, it’s been proved that we’re lagging a bit in the IQ department.

81, I believe is the average Indian IQ, according to an often cited study. But, since I didn’t read the original paper, I’m not sure about the methodology. Oh, the angst this must be provoking in some places.

Gene Expression, the site on which this tidbit is posted, is one I’ve come across before. The discussion is interesing here, although in some places on the net, the discussions about race and IQ are pretty startling …and raw..

I even thought I saw one thread like that on Gene Expression, but am not very sure — an elaborate riff about caucasoid Indians versus non-caucasoid Indians, upper and lower castes, dark and light skinned, which ethnic type dominates Silicon Valley..darker skinned Dravidians, apparently..

81….Hmmmmm, I guess that accounts for all those whacko Indians….

(Strictly humor…no offense intended).

Readers write in about that shaky V Tech timeline…

I received a lot of support on the V Tech article, for eg. :
Lila,

RE: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/rajiva3.html

Thank you for a thoroughly informative article about the government's many
failures in the VT shootings.

I thought you might want to know that there are some published timelines that
indicate that the police dallied for over twenty minutes (maybe even close to
30), rather than 5, 9, or 11.

Here's one link I found, with others in the discussion below, that suggest
different timelines than what the major media have been reporting:

        http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04212007.html

-- NAME DELETED

>Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:38:34 -0400
>To: NAME DELETED
>Subject: Fwd: Re: Crazed Maniacal Asian Killer
>
>
>By the way, the Times Dispatch said in a timeline they published on Sunday that
the first call actually came in at 9:21 or something.  The cops were on the
scene in two minutes (it was a brief run across the field where a hundred or so
already were at the double murder).
>
>The VT site still clouds the time they got the first call from the 2nd
building; it still says 9:45, as have several other news outlets.  I think they
know they screwed up, and they are trying to fudge the numbers in the hopes no
one notices.
>
>-- NAME DELETED

>
>>Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 10:17:48 -0400
>>To: NAME DELETED
From: NAME DELETED
>>Subject: Re: Crazed Maniacal Asian Killer
>>
>>
>>>>>I should have saved the links, but I didn't.  There were several articles that
said there was a 21 minute or 27 minute delay before they entered.  I do
remember one of the columnists on LewRockwell.com mentioned it.  It's eventually
going to appear -- buried -- in police reports, but by then the debate will have
shifted to gun control, and the entry delay will be off the radar like it was in
Columbine.
>>
>>I've seen it in several of the news reports.  One person can be heard saying
"why aren't they going in?" while he's capturing the video, and gunshots can be
clearly heard.  It was pretty obvious the cops were clueless, several can be
clearly seen walking around in the video, looking like they don't know where to
go or what to do.
>>
>>It may also be a lot worse than a twenty-minute delay before they went in.
Something is really fishy.
>>
>> From what NBC reports:
>>
>>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18138327/
>>
>>... the second assault actually started at 9:15 am.  I presume that's when he
put the chains on the doors, and then worked his way upstairs.  According to
witnesses, the shootings began at 9:20 am.
>>
>>Yet the police say they didn't get the first call until 9:45 am.  I consider
that really friggin unlikely, given that everyone and his brother now has a
cellphone, and since there are hardwired phones in every classroom.
>>
>>http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/timeline.php
>>
>>I'm tempted to do a FOIA request for the 911 logs.
>>
>>There's probably a bunch of people who still have their cellphone logs of
their 911 calls; but I bet the cops don't release the records they get from the
cellphone companies.
>>
>>The killer apparently shot himself at about 9:50.  Something's really wrong
when a shooter can do his work for 30 minutes without a response.
>>
>>Here's a couple more timelines:
>>
>>http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/timeline.text/index.html
>>
>>http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_9889.aspx
>>
>>The VT timeline says the cops took less than a minute to go in once they got
the calls at 9:45.  That may or may not be true (notice at the bottom of their
page says "Editor's Note: All times are approximate."); and that by the time
they got upstairs at 9:50, it was already over.
>>
>>The government had so many opportunities to prevent this guy from doing what
he did, and they missed every time.  Just like 9/11.
>>
>>You know, I wondered at first that this guy was railing against class and so
would have shot what looked to him like the white middle class wealthy people,
but he didn't.  It was entirely indiscriminate:
>>
>>http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html
>>
>>Lost in the gun controllers hot air is the fact that politicians railing
against gun control are all surrounded by teams of well-armed footsoldiers.  See
the article I added on, below.
>>
>>NAME DELETED
>>
>>
>>
>>At 11:20 PM 4/21/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>I have been ignoring all the crap from the media looking to find
>>>negligence on the part of the University or the police.
>>>
>>>I was very alarmed today when you said that the police waited outside of
Norris Hall for 20 minutes AFTER shots had been fired.
>>>
>>>What is the source of this information?
>>>
>>>Thank you,
>>>
>>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Tuesday, April 17th 2007 6:22PM
>>Campus security stirs feelings of safety
>>Michelle Rivera, CT News Reporter
>>
>>Today, whether for the security for the presence of high officials or to add a
reassuring presence to a community left in a state of shock, there is an
increase in security around campus. With President Bush and other high officials
present for the convocation at 2p.m. , there was a swarm of state troopers and
other security officers around Cassell Coliseum and Lane Stadium.
>>
>>"I actually just came to campus for the convocation," said Paige Barlow,
graduate student for the Department of Fisheries. "I saw tons of officers all
over Cassell and Lane." As she walked near the Squires Student Center to get a
late lunch, she felt safe. "We're all still a little shook up, but it's nice to
know that the issue is being dealt with," she said.
>>
>>Others agreed that the presence of high officials was at least one reason for
the heightened security.
>>
>>"I think there are so many officers on campus today one, because the president
is here and two, because of the scare of yesterday's events happening again,"
said De Monh, sophomore business major. "I don't think there are too many
officers here today."
>>
>>Virginia State Troopers are present on campus streets, outside of various
buildings, and near walkways across campus.
>>
>>"I believe it was partly for the (security of) high officials, but also for a
sense of security for the students," said Debbie Wilkins, Hokie parent of two.
>>
>>Though many felt that the purpose of security was for the protection of high
officials, others felt it was for a sense of safety for all those on campus.
>>
>>Sarah Sparks, senior theater major, was walking along Kent Street beside the
drillfield and passed a congregation of state troopers. "I think it's a great
idea that there are so many policemen on campus," Sparks said. "It makes us all
feel a lot safer, and having the visual of so much security adds to our feelings
of safety."
>>
>>Though the heightened security had the positive effect of helping students
feel secure, it also made it difficult to travel around campus. "Security made
it hard to get onto the grounds to get our child," said Wilkins. She however
stuck to her opinion that security was a positive measure. "A lot of the kids
still feel scared and insecure, and with security here, at least they know that
today nothing will happen," she said.
>>
>>-- end --
My Comment
I agree that the shooting probably took half an hour.
I was just being ultra cautious in my article.
Meanwhile, I'd like to enlist support for a FOIA request.
Any takers?




			

How do I colonize thee? Let me count the ways…

Just to underscore my earlier posts on Ali Eteraz’s criticism of Islamic fundamentalism and on “liberventionism” (human rights or other universal, liberal values used as cover for colonial policies), I am posting this, courtesy of William Bowles.

It was written by a senior diplomat, Robert Cooper, in his personal capacity, while working in Blair’s administration in the UK in 2002.

“What form should intervention take? The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the one most employed in the past is colonisation. But colonisation is unacceptable to postmodern states (and, as it happens, to some modern states too). It is precisely because of the death of imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the pre-modern world. Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse in the postmodern world. Today, there are no colonial powers willing to take on the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even the need for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century. Those left out of the global economy risk falling into a vicious circle. Weak government means disorder and that means falling investment. In the 1950s, South Korea had a lower GNP per head than Zambia: the one has achieved membership of the global economy, the other has not.

All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and demand for imperialism have dried up. And yet the weak still need the strong and the strong still need an orderly world. A world in which the efficient and well governed export stability and liberty, and which is open for investment and growth – all of this seems eminently desirable.

What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.

Postmodern imperialism takes two forms. First there is the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international consortium through International Financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank – it is characteristic of the new imperialism that it is multilateral. These institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance. Aid theology today increasingly emphasises governance. If states wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of international organisations and foreign states (just as, for different reasons, the postmodern world has also opened itself up.)

The second form of postmodern imperialism might be called the imperialism of neighbours. Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats which no state can ignore. Misgovernment, ethnic violence and crime in the Balkans poses a threat to Europe. The response has been to create something like a voluntary UN protectorate in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is no surprise that in both cases the High Representative is European. Europe provides most of the aid that keeps Bosnia and Kosovo running and most of the soldiers (though the US presence is an indispensable stabilising factor). In a further unprecedented move, the EU has offered unilateral free-market access to all the countries of the former Yugoslavia for all products including most agricultural produce. It is not just soldiers that come from the international community; it is police, judges, prison officers, central bankers and others. Elections are organised and monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Local police are financed and trained by the UN. As auxiliaries to this effort – in many areas indispensable to it – are over a hundred NGOs.”

My Comment:

Where to begin dissecting this thing? Oh, the embarrassment of riches…

Hitchens on Falwell, Bill Barnwell on Falwell’s Critics

I am posting this from Christopher Hitchens, who — until he inexplicably acquired a body double a few years back — used not to enjoy bombing, but was, of course, never above wearing his anticlericalism on his sleeve:

“The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God’s punishment if they hadn’t got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. The whole consideration of this — of this horrible little person is offensive to very, very many of us who have some regard for truth and for morality, and who think that ethics do not require that lies be told to children by evil old men, that we’re — we’re not told that people who believe like Falwell will be snatched up into heaven, where I’m glad to see he skipped the rapture, just found on the floor of his office, while the rest of us go to hell.

How dare they talk to children like this? How dare they raise money from credulous people on their huckster-like (INAUDIBLE) radio stations, and fly around in private jets, as he did, giggling and sniggering all the time at what he was getting away with?

How dare he say, for example, that the Antichrist is already present among us and is an adult male Jew, while, all the time, fawning on the worst elements in Israel, with his other hand pumping anti-Semitic innuendoes into American politics, along with his friends Robertson and Graham…encouraging — encouraging — encouraging the most extreme theocratic fanatics and maniacs on the West Bank and in Gaza not to give an inch of what he thought of was holy land to the people who already live there, undercutting and ruining every democratic and secularist in the Jewish state in the name of God?

I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud.

And I think, if he read the Bible at all — and I would doubt that he could actually read any long book of — at all — that he did so only in the most hucksterish, as we say, Bible-pounding way.

I’m going to repeat what I said before about the Israeli question. It’s very important. Jerry Falwell kept saying to his own crowd, yes, you have got to like the Jews, because they can make more money in 10 minutes than you can make in a lifetime. He was always full, as his friends Robertson and Graham are and were, of anti- Semitic innuendo.

Yet, in the most base and hypocritical way, he encouraged the worst elements among Jewry. He got Menachem Begin to give him the Jabotinsky Medal, celebrating an alliance between Christian fundamentalism and Jewish fanaticism that has ruined the chances for peace in the Middle East.

Lots of people are going to die and are already leading miserable lives because of the nonsense preached by this man, and because of the absurd way that we credit anyone who can say they’re a person of faith.

Look, the president endangers us this way. He meets a KGB thug like Vladimir Putin, and, because he is wearing a crucifix around his neck, says, I’m dealing with a man of faith. He’s a man of goodwill.

Look what Putin has done to American and European interests lately. What has the president said to take back this absurd remark? It’s time to stop saying that, because someone preaches credulity and credulousness, and claims it as a matter of faith, that we should respect them.”

My Comment:

Yes, Falwell’s contribution to the Iraq war was lamentable. So were those of many other Christian and Jewish Zionists. And secular liberals. But, what is amazing to me in Hitchens’ performance is that he completely overlooks the fact that he himself supported the invasion of Iraq……oh, I forgot, he has good liberal, secular reasons for doing it.

That doesn’t make me like religious extremism (I want to distinguish that from fundamentalism) any better. But it goes to show that there are any number of ways to rationalize murderous policies, if you want to. You don’t have to be religious to do that.
And to balance Hitchens, here is a libertarian antiwar pastor, Bill Barnwell, on Lew Rockwell ,who disagreed with Falwell’s position on the war, but finds Falwell’s critics as disturbing in their denunciations of him as he was in his war-mongering:

“The worldview of such people is to judge another’s personal worth solely based upon whether they are for or against abortion, pro or anti gay rights, or whatever other hot button issue riles them up. While I think Falwell got some issues wrong, this does not make him a piece of dirt in regards to everything else. I’m quite sure I don’t have it all together on everything either; and really, neither does anyone else for that matter. Therefore, we all should be careful about making blanket statements about a person’s worth or intentions.

Certainly many who are laughing off Falwell’s death regularly pat themselves on the back for being so much more tolerant than the “Religious Reich.” Many of Falwell’s critics despised him because of his “hate” (hate being defined as opposing abortion and homosexual behavior). But how does acting like a hateful, intolerant crank show ones love and tolerance? Or does love and tolerance only extend to people who think and act just like they do?

What are some of the nice words being posted around the web in remembrance of Falwell in the hours since he’s passed? Here’s a sample from this site:

You’re pulling my leg! No wonder everyone is so happy and shiny faced today. I think we all should have lots of premarital (or in some other way offensive to him) sex to celebrate. Yes, I see no ill in celebrating the death of a man who has caused so much pain and suffering to others. Not in the least.”

I had hoped the fat bastard would have pulled through and lived the rest of his life as a vegetable. Darn, there goes my veggie soup.”

I think a stake through the heart would be appropriate… just to make sure…”

“wow – this feels as good as the day Reagan died!”

“We’ve been singing this great song in my office ‘Somebody’s burning in hell,

Somebody’s burning in hell!’”

“Yeah – maybe if we’re all nice and respectful and Xtian about it, the fundies will be impressed and like us. Burn in hell you fat hateful lying hypocrite pig!”

There’s dozens of other nice, tolerant, and loving memorials that can be read at that site. But how about hearing from the diversity celebrating folks over here on this page:

“I hope he is gang-banged in Hell by Satan, Saddam, Hitler, and Liberace.”

“makes me want to sodomize as a tribute to him. now, if only I knew the sexual preferences of other gawker readers…”

“So how soon is the funeral, and where? Some serious grave-dancing is in order, here.”

“Our Father which art in heaven, please let Pat Robertson be next!!”

I could go on and highlight posts from plenty of other blogs, but I think you get the point. If these individuals want to act so uncivilized and uncaring, then they certainly have the right to think and say whatever they want, no matter how nasty it might be. But if they make the claim that they are more loving, kind and tolerant than Falwell, or really just loving, kind and tolerant in general, then they should stop lying to themselves. They ought to just admit that they are as uncaring and nasty as the next rigid ideological extremist.

The militant hard-left should stop pretending that it celebrates diversity and cares about all people. Individuals who make up this movement actually only tolerate and celebrate other people who think and act just like they do. Once you deviate from the party line, you become a worthless human being. And if we’ve learned anything from the passing of Jerry Falwell, it’s apparently a good thing if you die.

Celebrate Diversity.

My Comment:

Of course, Mr. Barnwell is forgetting something here. Unlike Falwell, none of his critics are advocating bombing large groups of people.

Still, he makes a good point. Whom are we trying to talk to?
Progressives have someone here who is on their side on this vital issue of war and they completely turn him off – quite needlessly – by their vituperation. It’s hard to get anyone to hear anything new or have a change of heart, when the tone of the discussion is so shrill.

It seems that people sometimes don’t really care whether they’re getting through to anyone. They simply prefer to say what they want to hear…to assuage their own feelings. Which, of course, they manage to do. It’s a form of therapy for them that also solidifies group feeling with other people who agree with them.

But isn’t the point of debate to clarify your position to people on the other side? To persuade them? Not just to justify your arguments to yourself? Otherwise, you might as well stay inside your bathroom and mutter at your face in the mirror. You’re tying to converse with people from very different backgrounds from yours, with different thoughts, different experiences, different conclusions – you have to make at least a small effort at civility. Get out of your pajamas so to speak, brush your teeth, put on some clothes and go down and meet your guests. Don’t snarl at them from behind your locked door. Be a hypocrite, if necessary.

The other point is that, unfortunately, as Barnwell suggests, we don’t really celebrate diversity of opinion these days. We welcome different skin colors (which is good), but we want everyone thinking the same way – or at least in entirely predictable ways that have been scripted before hand. Again, an intelligent response to the ideological divide by Ali Eteraz:

“I always considered myself a humanist and do still. It just cannot be the case that only one “side” of a political divide have a monopoly on humanism. I know for a fact that Isaiah Berlin would not exactly be welcome in some parts of the left; nor Solzhenitsyn. [I also know that Burke would be ridiculed in some parts of the right]. I cannot in clean conscience engage against religious supremacism and exclusion if I engage in ideological supremacism and exclusion.

I believe in human solidarity. In the elimination of cruelty and humiliation. I believe in living beyond labels and identity markers. My motto is, and was, the following:

History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same troublous storms that toss the private state and render life unsweet. These vices are the causes of those storms. Religions, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.

Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.

Edmund Burke, Reflections On The Revolution In France

I trust in my ability to distinguish between those that advance the causes of liberty and those that undermine it.”


Louisa May Alcott – a poem

Update:

It’s a hymn by Bunyan, quoted in “Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott. I remember it from childhood and it sounded like Bunyan and when I looked it up, it was.

ORIGINAL POST

I’ve always been fond of this poem by Louisa May Alcott. It reminds me of something from Bunyan, for some reason.

Maybe it’s a quote that I don’t recognize. I’ll check.
The words evokes a sentiment probably as far as away as it’s possible to get from our consumer society and its partisan politics. Probably, it will be seen as trite, banal, or escapist by many people today.

But I wonder if that would be because of a failing in the verse or in the readers…

He that is down need fear no fall,
He that is low no pride.
He that is humble ever shall

Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,
Little be it, or much.
And, Lord! Contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.

Fulness to them a burden is,
That go on pilgrimage.
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age!

God’s Son, Falwell’s Mother And The Rest of Us Ho’s

Jerry Falwell, the evangelical preacher, who founded the Moral Majority, as well as Liberty University, died on May 15, 2007.

There were many things I liked and respected about Dr. Falwell. He built elementary schools and homes for single mothers; he helped alcoholics, the homeless and AIDS victims. He sent money to help the poor and sick in Africa. He built up a large university. When he debated Larry Flynt on TV, I remember he conducted himself with great dignity, generosity and humor.

I hope that he will be remembered for these things at least as much as for the pain his pronouncements over the years caused homosexuals, pagans, witches, abortionists (in his words), blacks and many other groups of varying ontological status.
Mind you, I say that as a childless divorcee, skeptical occultist, ethical pagan, and heterodox Christian whom Dr. Falwell would no doubt have consigned to the flames of hell.

Like most people today my primary difficulty is not with believing, but with not believing. Believing comes altogether too easily. The world – whether seen through the lens of science or through our own eyes – is so complex, variegated, fluctuating, and contradictory that we are ever more disposed to grope for certainty in areas where it may most be an illusion.

Some would say that Falwell’s fundamentalism was of that nature.

But there are other credulities besides religious ones.

How much easier and more comforting to our perpetually aggrieved sense of fairness, for instance, to think that all beliefs – if held with sufficient good will – are the same, all convictions equally plausible, all systems of economics – if only tried with good faith – equally productive.

How easy and – often – how wrong.

Jerry Falwell, for all his flaws – and they were clear enough – was not flawed in that way.

His beliefs were narrow. But by his lights and the lights of many who are fundamentalists, it was the narrowness of the way to eternal life preached in the gospels.

Progressives, who like to sample only what they find most palatable in Jesus’ teachings — like walnuts in an unfamiliar salad — have a tendency to ignore his words as they have actually come down to us. And no wonder. Taken literally (and that, I suppose, is why they are rarely taken literally), they would stick in our craws.

This is the Jesus who once said the gospel was for “the children” of the house (Israelites) and not for the “dogs.” (Samaritans). He may have stopped the adulteress being stoned, but he didn’t deny she was an adulteress. As for the Pharisees, the liberal, well-educated elite of his day, he routinely called them a nest of vipers for the hundred sophistries and metaphors with which they got around tedious religious rules. Jesus often seemed tiresomely literal to them, as well.

And he seems to have lived in expectation of an apocalypse too, even if he also died without seeing it.

But, of course, you will say — that was Jesus. This is Falwell.
And you would have made your point. Jesus was often deliberately opaque, ironic; he iced the sting of reproof with parables, poured compassion over the wounds his words inflicted and made his point as often with artistic silence – at crucial moments.

Falwell was rarely silent, and even more rarely artistic.
But among the many offensive quotes I see attributed to him, I have so far seen nothing that was much more than a blunt, unlovely articulation of some text of Christian or Jewish scripture.

If that is hate speech and potentially discriminatory under the law, as his many detractors claim, then we must outlaw substantial portions of the major religions.

Certainly those portions of the Old and New Testaments, which classify homosexuality among abominations, advocate killing diviners and witches, and celebrate crushing your enemies’ babies on rocks; which relegate women to subordination even in matters of conscience, and – like Falwell – attribute natural calamities and plagues to the wrath of a touchy deity. As a Christian, I speak of the Bible, but I’ll warrant that there are few scriptures that are entirely innocent in these matters.

Words, whether we think they come only from Jerry or directly from Jahweh, can offend.

They can cause immense pain. Ironically, Falwell himself suffered that pain once, very publicly. Pornographer Larry Flynt published a revoltingly nasty parody of a liquor ad, which had Falwell describing his “first time” with his mother in an outhouse. In 1988, in a seminal decision (Hustler Magazine Inc. Vs. Falwell), the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision to award the preacher damages for emotional pain, strengthening even further the protection of free speech about public figures. It was satire, said the justices, and satire has a venerable history, especially in America politics. To limit it would cast a pall over public debate.

Many applaud that decision unhesitatingly. It goes without saying, in our secular world, that pornographic imagery of that sort (I refuse to give it the great, good name of sex) – however maliciously intended – is never harmful in any ‘real’ way, and we are nothing if not realists…..or so we think.

Oddly, the also realistic CIA – whom no one could accuse of swooning sensitivity in these matters – thinks differently. By the 1960s, it had come to regard “no touch” torture – among which sexual humiliation occupies a prominent place – as more damaging than conventional physical torture in the long run. It “leaves deep, searing psychological scars on both victims and — something seldom noted — their interrogators,” writes Alfred McCoy, (The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America’s Road to Abu Ghraib, 2004).

Falwell was not directly injured in the same way, of course. But it seems at least odd, if not downright confused, to argue that the very malicious public humiliation of a religious figure respected by a large segment of the population is not
a real injury to him and his followers, while the strong but not vicious articulation of hoary religious doctrines about pagans and witches, for instance, is a real injury to those groups – one that borders on discrimination so powerful that it needs to be outlawed as hate speech, as some have suggested.

That’s to say, a woman like me – qua believer – is supposed to be devastatingly injured if a Jerry Falwell tells her she can’t get to heaven while reading astrology charts. (His heaven, by the way, is presumably something she either doesn’t believe in, to begin with, or if she does believe in, thinks has different entrance requirements).

Yet, the same woman – qua woman – is supposed to be serenely untouched, if not actually enthused, when a Larry Flynt concocts imagery depicting her violently humiliated in pornographic terms. And this schizophrenia is usually to be found in the same progressives for whom sexuality and gender is supposedly a much more serious business than theological doctrine.

There’s no denying that religion has often had a history of subordinating some people to others nor that we are right to regard religious dogma with suspicion when it imposes itself on non-believers through the mechanism of the state. But there are other dogmas besides religious ones. And, allied to the power of the state, they can become quite as oppressive.

It was not overtly in the name of Christianity, after all, but in the name of secular, universal values that the American government bombed Orthodox Christians and Muslims in their own countries in recent years.

It may be time to recognize that some dogmas, whether religious or secular, might be mutually exclusive and it is our refusal to recognize and respect that exclusivity that has led to the current sorry state of political debate. Yet, respect we must. For, while it is impossible to meld irreconcilable beliefs without changing their natures, what is not impossible is to co-exist peacefully as people, while admitting that our beliefs are irreconcilable.

For that to happen, precisely defining religious belief or artistic expression or political speech is less important than cultivating a will to extend generosity to even our most fervent opponents. Style is more essential here than substance.

Jerry Falwell, after all, did disavow hatred for any group, even while he characterized them in accordance with his religious beliefs. And, to all appearances, those beliefs were sincerely held.

It is double-think of the worst kind, then, to label this express disavowal of hate as “hate,” unless you have proof of some kind of disingenuousness. And if you misused language in that way, what right would you have to feel injured if you heard the same Orwellism issue from the mouth of some right-wing talk show host who characterized your own viewpoint about gender or economic policy as “man-hating” or “class warfare”?

None at all.

Here is a modus vivendi easily available to anyone willing to try some agon-istic respect. Left-wing critics of Falwell could simply look at what the preacher said as a form of art. Perhaps a subsidy from the government would even be forthcoming. And fundamentalists could simply think of sexual liberalism as a distinct dogma and let it enjoy the protected status of a minor church. They might then be able to argue against a religious establishment in the public sphere with better success than they have until now.

Some of Falwell’s critics would do well to take a leaf out of his book and at least profess to love fundamentalists no matter how much they hate fundamentalism.
.

Ideas Against Empire

Murray Rothbard, cited by Joe Stromberg:

“And this is how even a mighty and despotic State gets toppled. This is how ideas effect social and political change – through movements, through alternative visions, through struggle. And this is a change that should gladden the hearts of libertarians, for it shows that a Leviathan State, even a particularly brutal and dictatorial one, can be vanquished….”

What are some of those ideas? One, is to see through the facade of liberal warmaking states:

“…liberal states, by allowing considerable economic freedom, sit atop more productive economies than do backward states. With lower taxes, they can still raise great revenues and assemble superior armed force. They then wield this armed force in projects that interest them as state apparatchiks, while the busy commercial classes pay little enough attention.

Accordingly, liberal states such as Britain and the United States are likely to succeed in imperialist competition, while clunky feudal-mercantilist or dirigiste states are not. This is the key to the much-mooted “democratic peace” imposture. Liberal democratic states get more revenue and win most of their wars. This tells us nothing about the merits of those wars, and little enough about reasons for those states’ foreign policies. (Hint: doing good may not top the list.)

Long ago, John Locke saw the point: “that Prince who shall be so wise and godlike as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of Mankind against the oppression of power and narrowness of Party will quickly be too hard for his neighbours.” Thomas Paine, too, saw it, when he wrote that, “the portion of liberty enjoyed in England, is just enough to enslave a country by, more productively than by despotism; and that as the real object of all despotism is revenue, a government so formed obtains more than it could do either by direct despotism, or in a full state of freedom; and is therefore, on the ground of interest, opposed to both.” And Hans-Hermann Hoppe has made the same point at greater length. [48]

It would be interesting to look at the ambiguities of Locke as an early semistatist modernizer, [49] mercantilist, participant in the slave trade, etc., but there is no room here, and anyway, Locke has plenty of latter-day followers in providing a liberal façade for state activities. They are legion who stand for “free-market” Social Bonapartism – the imposing of “freedom” and “spontaneous order” by US weaponry. That so many Chicagoites are on board the imperial train suggests that the Chicago School always functioned as the right wing of Cold War liberalism. [50]

This is heady brew and one can easily see why enlistments are up in John Stuart Mill’s Own Lancers and the Bentham Berets. Instead of cultivating our own garden – dull work at best – liberventionists have enlisted to “Smash Someone Else’s State,” or to repudiate someone else’s national debt. This creates a bit of a problem.”

More ideas to end an empire:

“What can someone do, who sincerely believes that markets work better than states, that liberty is better than statism, or that life is better than death? Well, he or she can learn to separate America from the state, justifications from good intentions, morality from utility, American political realities from vanished 18th-century essences, freemen from Founders, defense from empire, and so on.”

Read more at “How Murray Rothbard Singlehandedly Brought Down the Saigon Government with Malice Aforethought,” Joseph Stromberg, Lew Rockwell, April 4, 2005.

Government Attacks on Civilians Also Have a Long History…

I wrote this for a progressive site more than a year ago. I thought it might be a good idea to dust it off and put it out again, just to remind everyone what governments are capable of doing to civilians:

“Washington is shocked, shocked by Seymour Hersh’s scoop about the Pentagon’s “Salvador Option,” an ambitious plan to deploy secret special forces in friendly and unfriendly countries to spy, target terrorists and their sympathizers, and conduct “hits,” all without Congressional oversight. Its model is the American counter-insurgency program in Salvador in the 1980s which funded nationalist death squads to hunt down insurgents.

What’s new today is that the program would be run by the Pentagon, not the CIA, and it would be much broader in scope. According to Hersh, the Pentagon’s gremlins are already at work in Iran prepping targets for possible US or Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Washington’s shock is misplaced. There’s nothing new about the “Salvador Option.” At the end of last month, Frank Cass in London released a new book by Dr. Daniele Ganser of the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich called, “NATO’s Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe,” which offers plenty of evidence that there was also a “Salvador Option” in post-war Europe. It turns out that during the Cold War, European governments and secret services conspired with a NATO-backed operation to engineer attacks in their own countries in order to manipulate the population to reject socialism and communism.

It was called “the strategy of tension” and it was carried out by members of secret stay-behind armies organized by NATO and funded by the CIA in Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and other European countries. The strategy apparently involved supplying right-wing terrorists with explosives to carry out terrorist acts which were then blamed on left-wing groups to keep them out of power.

Only three countries, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, have had a parliamentary investigation into NATO’s role and a public report. The US and UK, the two nations most centrally involved, are refusing to disclose details, so crucial pieces of the story are missing. Still, Ganser’s book offers some disturbing insights into a hidden aspect of the Cold War.

It all began during WWII when British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, ordered a secret army to be created to fight communism. Allen Dulles, the first chief of the CIA, worked out the original plan, and British MI6 and special forces teamed up with the CIA to train “stay- behind armies” in Western Europe to counter a possible Soviet invasion. It was all very James Bond – only grim – with forged passports, dead letter boxes, and parachute jumps over the channel, according to some of the trainees.

It turns out that what Washington meant by counter-terrorism, might often have been, well, terrorism.

Here’s the money part from one of the field manuals (FM 30-31B):

“…when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force ….US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger…”

That’s to say, if there wasn’t any terrorism to speak of, the secret armies were prepared to get some going.

According to Ganser, the secret army was behind waves of attacks in Italy in the 1970s. In Spain, it worked with Franco and may have supported over a 1000 attacks. In Germany, it had standing plans to murder leaders of the Social Democrat party in case of a Soviet invasion. It carried out terrorist actions against President de Gaulle and the Algerian peace plan in France. It seems to have been involved in the assassination of Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, prominent leaders in African liberation in the Portugese colonies. It was involved in the coup against Greek Prime Minister Papandreou and fomented terrorism against the Kurds in Turkey. In the Netherlands, Luxemborg, Denmark, and Norway, however, the secret networks don’t seem to have been linked with terror.

The secret armies were first outed in August 1990 when then Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the existence of Gladio, Latin for sword, a super secret group squirreled away in the military secret service, that had been manipulating the public with terrorist acts that it blamed on the Italian left.

NATO’s reaction to Andreotti’s revelation was first denial, then stone-walling, and finally a closed-doors admission to the ambassadors of the European countries. Since then, although a former CIA director William Colby has confirmed the creation of the stay-behind command centers and networks, NATO itself has withheld details. Asked about Gladio in Italy in 1990, former CIA director Stanford Turner angrily ripped off his microphone and shouted: “I said, no questions about Gladio!”

Today, with the Pentagon’s “Salvador Option” on the table, it’s time to revisit this hidden history of European counter-terrorism. While the Washington press corps seems convinced that the main problem with the “Salvador Option” is that the Pentagon is taking over what’s always been the CIA’s turf, the story of NATO’s stay-behind armies suggests that whether the CIA or Pentagon runs it, the new program will be a very ugly business.

As one of Gladio’s operatives said, “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

Despite repeated requests from researchers, the CIA, like MI6, refuses to release its files on the subject. Before the government begins the new “Salvador Option,” though, isn’t it time for the world to learn about the very first one?”

The Right to Self-Defense Has a Long History…

In “The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights,” David T. Hardy writes:

“The existence of an English militia, comprised not of specialized units but of essentially the entire male population, far antedates even the Norman Conquest.[12] By 1181, every English freeman was required annually to prove ownership of arms proportionate to his landholdings.[13] In 1253, even serfs were required to prove annually that they owned a spear and dagger.[14] Subsequent enactments ordered all healthy Englishmen to own longbows, to train their sons in archery from age seven, and to abstain from a variety of outdoor sports that diverted commoners from the archery ranges.[15] By the fifteenth century, Englishmen already regarded universal armament for national defense as a critical element in their development of “government under law.”[16] This perception of citizen armament as (p.8)a peculiarly English virtue was thereafter reinforced by the rise of royal absolutism on the Continent,[17] with consequent limitation on firearm possession in France and the Empire. Long after her continental counterparts had banned or severely restricted firearms ownership,[18] Elizabeth still struggled to stop her subjects from drawing pistols in church, or firing them in the churchyard.[19]

My Comment:

As the founders conceived it, the right to self-defense drew both from collectivist and individualist strands in Anglophone political thinking. The collectivist element came from the Classical Republican tradition, the individualist from the Radicals (who also styled themselves Republicans).

And the right to self defense found its theoretical and practical underpinning earlier than Locke or the Enlightenment, in the writings of Machiavelli and in the disorder of the English civil war. Actually, it goes back even earlier, to before the Norman Conquest, as Hardy points out.

From this history, we know that the right to bear arms is both a right of individuals to self-defense against the encroachment of the state and a right of states to have organized reserve units (“militias”).

Being free to defend yourself is absolutely central to the Anglo-American (as opposed to the European) political tradition.

More here at the blog, “Arms and the Law.”

Fining Landlords Who Rent to Illegals

The city council of Farmer’s Branch, a Dallas suburb, recently took a tough line on illegal immigration by approving fines for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, making English the city’s official language and letting suspects in police custody be checked for their immigration status.
In “Farmer’s Branch Follies,” Michelle Wucker at the Huffington Post writes:

“Without a doubt, the federal government’s failure to reform our immigration laws bears much of the blame for the counter-productive actions of small towns across the states. Let’s hope that if any good comes of the Farmers Branches of the world, it will be to add to momentum for reform.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on reason from the federal government either. In 1918, the lynching of a German immigrant in Collinsville, Illinois, for supposed “disloyalty” (more likely, for general obnoxiousness, including having accused Americans of failure to display Old Glory sufficiently prominently) pushed a sluggish Congress into action. The law that ultimately passed, however, was not one to prevent lynchings and irrational behavior, but rather to crack down on foreign-born suspicious characters and to muzzle the freedom of speech in general. The logic that turned a lynching at the hands of U.S citizens into justification for the passage of 1918 Sedition Act is, sadly, the same warped reasoning that this year got us Congressional approval of a border fence instead of a set of immigration laws that have something to do with reality.”

My Comment:

Putting the burden on landlords to prove that their tenants have their legal papers in order seems rather unfair to me. But of course, it’s much easier to collect a penalty from landlords. Once again, the state passes the buck to citizens……

The Espionage Act of 1917

From an article by Charles Adams, “The Land of the Not-So Free,” at Lew Rockwell:
“In 1917 five war protestors were handing out pamphlets on the streets of New York opposing US involvement in World War 1, and promoting Russian Revolutionary causes. They were arrested and charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which made it a crime to oppose the war, that is –

“Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States…(the war, the flag, the military, the navy, enlistments, buying bonds, uniforms, etc,)…in contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute, or …intended to incite, provoke or encourage resistance to the United States, or to promote the cause of the enemy shall be punished by…a $10,000 fine or imprisonment up to 20 years.”

It is a lengthy statute, covering everything imaginable, none of which amount to spying. It gives us a new definition of espionage that hasn’t yet found its way into dictionaries.

In the case of Abrams vs. United States, the protesters were give 20 years prison sentences. It was appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the convictions by a 7 to 2 decision. They had published a pamphlet with offensive words like,

“We the toilers of America, who believe in real liberty, shall pledge ourselves, in case the United States will participate in that bloody conspiracy against Russia to create so great a disturbance that the Autocrats of America shall be compelled to keep their armies at home and not be able to spare any for Russia…If they will use arms against the Russian people to enforce their standard of order, so will we use arms…”

The seven Justices who upheld the convictions rambled on about irrelevant matters like the defendants were Russian immigrants in the US from 5 to 10 years, never being naturalized. They were against the war and any action against the Russian revolution. They advocated a general strike against munitions factories so they could not produce bullets to be used against German and Russian revolutionaries. If the armies of America were kept busy at home they could not be used abroad, wrote the pamphlet. The Court said, A technical distinction may perhaps be taken between disloyal and abusive language…But it is not necessary to a decision of this case to consider whether such a distinction is vital or merely formal for the language of these circulars was obviously intended to provoke and encourage resistance to the United States in times of war…And the defendants, in terms, plainly urged and advocated a general strike of workers in ammunition factories for the purpose of curtailing production of ordinances and munitions necessary and essential to the prosecution of the war.

The dissent by Oliver Wendell Holmes with Brandeis has now become the majority decision with Holmes writing one of his greatly admired comments, that “the defendants had as much right to publish as the Government has to publish the Constitution of the United States.” I imagine the 7 Justices found Holmes remarks enraging. Holmes was known for his brilliant and pithy comments and this was one of his most remarkable. He then went on to state that unless there was an imminent and immediate danger, you can say anything no matter how loathsome and fraught with danger it may be. In time this became the rule in the United States and the resisters of the Viet Nam war can thank….”

My Comment:

This is a piece of history we ought to keep incessantly in our minds, especially with the so-called Hate Crimes Bill on the table and much talk of reviving the Fairness Doctrine.

Does the left really think that hushing Limbaugh and Co. on talk radio is going to redound to its benefit? Will it? Keep hammering on the idea that some speech is “hate speech” and we’ll soon have no speech.

Yelling fire in a crowded theater may be a bad idea a lot of the time, but not if the theater is on fire.

And for different reasons, a lot of people of all sorts of political persuasions have begun to think they hear the crackling of flames.

The End of National Currency

An excerpt from The End of National Currency, by Ben Steil in Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007:

“PRIVATIZING MONEY

It is widely assumed that the natural alternative to the dollar as a global currency is the euro. Faith in the euro’s endurance, however, is still fragile — undermined by the same fiscal concerns that afflict the dollar but with the added angst stemming from concerns about the temptations faced by Italy and others to return to monetary nationalism. But there is another alternative, the world’s most enduring form of money: gold.

It must be stressed that a well-managed fiat money system has considerable advantages over a commodity-based one, not least of which that it does not waste valuable resources. There is little to commend in digging up gold in South Africa just to bury it again in Fort Knox. The question is how long such a well-managed fiat system can endure in the United States. The historical record of national monies, going back over 2,500 years, is by and large awful.

At the turn of the twentieth century — the height of the gold standard — Simmel commented, “Although money with no intrinsic value would be the best means of exchange in an ideal social order, until that point is reached the most satisfactory form of money may be that which is bound to a material substance.” Today, with money no longer bound to any material substance, it is worth asking whether the world even approximates the “ideal social order” that could sustain a fiat dollar as the foundation of the global financial system. There is no way effectively to insure against the unwinding of global imbalances should China, with over a trillion dollars of reserves, and other countries with dollar-rich central banks come to fear the unbearable lightness of their holdings.

So what about gold? A revived gold standard is out of the question. In the nineteenth century, governments spent less than ten percent of national income in a given year. Today, they routinely spend half or more, and so they would never subordinate spending to the stringent requirements of sustaining a commodity-based monetary system. But private gold banks already exist, allowing account holders to make international payments in the form of shares in actual gold bars. Although clearly a niche business at present, gold banking has grown dramatically in recent years, in tandem with the dollar’s decline. A new gold-based international monetary system surely sounds far-fetched. But so, in 1900, did a monetary system without gold. Modern technology makes a revival of gold money, through private gold banks, possible even without government support.”

But then, the author goes on:

“As for the United States, it needs to perpetuate the sound money policies of former Federal Reserve Chairs Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan and return to long-term fiscal discipline. This is the only sure way to keep the United States’ foreign tailors, with their massive and growing holdings of dollar debt, feeling wealthy and secure. It is the market that made the dollar into global money — and what the market giveth, the market can taketh away. If the tailors balk and the dollar fails, the market may privatize money on its own.”

Sound money policies of Alan Greenspan? What might the author be thinking or wishing us to think with that?

But here’s a different take on the subject:

“You see, if central banking were an honest métier, there would be no reason to have it at all. Private banks could do the job better. But people are ready to believe anything. Somehow, they think that rich financiers and power-mad politicians get together to run a central bank for the benefit of the people! Well, I’ve got news: it doesn’t work that way.”
That, by the way, is from “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets,” forthcoming this fall from the joint pens of well-known financial writer, Bill Bonner, and yours truly…….

V-Tech Whitewash: Review Panel Finds University Response Very Effective and Very Successful

Telling It Like It Isn’t:

V-Tech Review Panel Finds University Response Very Effective and Very Successful

“I think we know enough about the response to know it was very effective and a very successful response,” said retired state police superintendent W. Gerald Massengill, the chairman of the review panel appointed to investigate the Virginia Tech shootings. That was in a May 11 article in the Washington Post called “Va Tech Panel Outlines Agenda.”

Agenda is about right. How does 33 dead over a two and half spree on a campus crawling with cops count as “very effective” and “very successful”?

About the same way as V Tech is now apparently about “breaking down bureaucratic barriers among the courts, the school and the state as it relates to mental health information.”

More federal undermining of privacy laws, in fact. Just what we need from an administration already up to its intrusive eyes in domestic surveillance.

Massengill, by the way, is the man who led the Virginia State Police in the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and the other panel members are Tom Ridge, the first U.S. secretary of homeland security, a top policy maker in state higher education, an administrator of the FBI’s center for the analysis of violent crime and two medical experts.

According to Massengill, the police gave him a timeline that “helped convince him that they responded as quickly as they could after the two people had been shot in West Ambler Johnston Hall.”

Since it’s the lynch-pin of the panel’s bizarre conclusion, that time line warrants more examination than the media has been giving it.

The timeline first entered the public debate on April 26, 2007 in this AP report: “5 Minute Delay Crucial in Tech Shooting.”

The article reported what is now regarded as the official version of the killings at Virginia Tech on 4/16:

Cho got to Ambler Johnston Hall a bit before 7 am; he killed his first 2 victims with a Glock 9 mm (a fairly ordinary handgun) with two rounds; his second bout of killing (30 people) was at Norris Hall and it took 9 minutes. Police supposedly took 3 minutes to get to Norris and 5 minutes to get into the building, where several entrances had been chained shut from inside.

Witness accounts are often contradictory and/or mistaken and a crisis, in recollection, can seem to have taken much longer than it actually did, but still, think about what’s supposed to have happened in 9 minutes:

Cho walked up and down the halls (2, 3 minutes, at least); he poked his head into a few classrooms a couple of times and left without doing anything; he fired steadily but with pauses in between, methodically breaking through doors that had been barricaded (that should have taken a minute at least), shot, left and returned to at least two classrooms (another minute or so each); stood over and shot students and fired individually at each (a minute?) in at least two classrooms. Although the students were trapped inside, they were barricading doors, running away, throwing themselves over each other, or jumping through windows, so they were moving targets that required him to aim and move too. And reload.

And then he shot himself. His last victim, wounded and on the floor, said he watched the gunman’s legs move to the front of the classroom, then heard a pause, then shots. No one actually saw the suicide, so what happened must remain somewhat tentative.

Why Nine Minutes

If Cho fired 170 rounds (or 255 – in at least one account) in Norris Hall, as reported, he fired almost 18 rounds per minute or a round roughly every 3 seconds. I’m not a marksman, so I don’t know if that’s likely or not. If you also take into account that he was reloading and pausing, he must have been firing an even higher number of rounds per minute than that most of the time. And, if we go by the multiple wounds in each body (3-4), he must have made about 120-130 hits (out of 170 rounds) in 9 minutes. So far as we know, he was an amateur with at most a few weeks of practice. I am not sure if that scenario is plausible or not. And again, I’m not trying to refute the timeline so much as evaluating it. But I do wonder how officials can be so sure of it. And why.

This was a time line posted on Wiki (it’s since been deleted, but you can find it, with the original footnotes, on my blog, which has collected material relevant to the case):

* 9:42 a.m.: Students in the engineering building, Norris Hall, make a 9-1-1 emergency call to alert police that more shots have been fired.
*9:45 a.m.: Police arrived three minutes later and found that Cho had chained all three entrances shut.
* Between 9:30 and 9:50 am: Using the .22 caliber Walther P22 and 9 millimeter Glock 19 handgun with 17 magazines of ammunition, Cho shoots 60 people, killing 30 of them. Cho’s rampage lasts for approximately nine minutes. A student in Room 205 noticed the time remaining in class shortly before the start of the shootings.
* Around 9:40 a.m.: Students in Norris 205, while attending Haiyan Cheng’s issues in scientific computing class, hear Cho’s gunshots. The students, including Zach Petkewicz, barricade the door and prevent Cho’s entry.
* 9:50 a.m.: After arriving at Norris Hall, police took 5 minutes to assemble the proper team, clear the area and then break through the doors. They use a shotgun to break through the chained entry doors. Investigators believe that the shotgun blast alerted the gunman to the arrival of the police. The police hear gunshots as they enter the building. They follow the sounds to the second floor.
* 9:51 a.m.: As the police reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. Cho’s shooting spree in Norris Hall lasted 9 minutes. Police officers discovered that after his second round of shooting the occupants of room 211 Norris, the gunman fatally shot himself in the temple.

From this Wiki account (which is quite conservative and can be verified from other published time-lines), the shooting really could have taken place any time between at least 9:30 and 9:50 – a space of 20, not 9 minutes.

But even on its own terms, the official timeline seems a little odd. If students heard gun shots (which could only have been at the very latest at 9:40), and if police reached the second floor at 9:51, that still makes 11 minutes, not 9.

Why, you might ask, am I quibbling about a few minutes? After all, no one could really have been sure of anything in all the confusion. True. But that’s all the more reason why insisting on those 9 minutes seems peculiar. Especially since we also have at least one account that the police got there much later than in the official story. Confusion again? What about the video footage of the scene and reports indicating police hiding around the building? Or reports they came out of nowhere (BBC, April 17). That doesn’t square with the official story saying they rushed straight from that 9-1-1 call to Norris. More confusion? Possibly. But each additional contradiction becomes that much less plausible as simple error.

But the insistence on 9 minutes does make sense if you think about the bigger picture.
If the gunman only took 9 minutes, then the onus on the police to explain their behavior becomes much less. It’s then no longer a question of what they were doing for the half hour or so in which Cho was rampaging through Norris Hall (not to mention the two hours before) but only what made them delay after they got to Norris at 9:45 (3 minutes after the call).

And that’s simple – the doors were chained shut. Ergo, they had to wait 5 minutes while – by this reckoning – Cho finished off his 9 minute spree.

That this is the significance of having a 9 minute time-line is pretty clear, since the police officers quoted in the article direct their criticism specifically at the 5 minute delay. The critics say it was those few minutes that most significantly increased the number of victims. Meanwhile, for some reason, they’re silent about what the police were doing for the two hours before.

Bringing in the Military

Then, tacked on to the criticism of the 5 minute delay is a discussion (for the first time in the media) of what is known as the ‘active shooter’ paradigm in police operations. The critics say the 5 minute delay wouldn’t have happened if V-Tech had been treated from the start as an ‘active shooter’ situation.

What is an ‘active shooter’ situation? It’s a sniper or shooter crisis where swifter and more aggressive police tactics are required because the perp is careless about his own life and therefore more likely to take as many down with him as he can. Those aggressive tactics, called, ‘Immediate Action Rapid Deployment,’ were developed in the nineties, but really came into prominence only after the Columbine school shootings in 1999. But they still aren’t operational everywhere, supposedly because of lack of funds and training.

But notice that ‘active shooter’ is being referenced in the 4/26 article only in terms of the 5-minute delay. Why? Maybe because it’s a strategy with several advantages:

1. It lets the police take some blame, but not so much that the massacre looks like a case
of negligence. That’s a move that makes it possible to take the focus off police failureand put it on policy changes requiring more laws, more force, and ultimately more
federalization.

2. It dampens public outrage at the individuals who really are culpable. A 5 minute delay isn’t going to work anyone up the way a 2 hour delay would.

3. It lets officials introduce the ‘Immediate Action Rapid Deployment’ (IARD) paradigm into campus policing without undercutting the decisions taken by the administration or the police.

Now, IARD is a distinct step in the militarization of police response and is very much a part of the trend to systematically erase the boundaries between wartime military actions and domestic policing. Domestic crises are more and more described and tackled in military terms, just as foreign military actions are being palmed off as policing operations.

Which is why the article goes on, ”This is a seminal moment for law enforcement as far as I’m concerned because it proves that minutes are critical”

Yes – it’s seminal. V-Tech is going to help put military responses squarely on campus.

What I’m suggesting is that the more officials can take the blame off V-Tech, the more they can push for additional federal policies and laws.

So, if my thesis holds good, officials should also be taking that 2 hour gap between Ambler Johnston and Norris off the table as fast as possible, because that’s where the administration’s culpability is most obvious. Are they?

Indeed they are. One of the first things the V-Tech review panel appointed by former Governor Kaine has done is to state flatly that shutting down the campus couldn’t possibly have done any good because the shooter could always have gone back into his dorm and shot the 900 or so people who lived there. I quote,

“On Thursday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said that the massacre may not have been averted if the Virginia Tech campus had been locked down after the two shooting deaths at the dorm. ”Well, if the campus had been locked down — because the shooter lived on campus — I mean he could have gone into his dorm with 900 people instead of going into a classroom (and) he could have shot people there,” Kaine said in his monthly listener-question program on WRVA-AM and the Virginia News Network.”

Well, surely this is a straw-man. Locking down the campus was not the only option. V-Tech could also have made an announcement on its PA system for students to lock themselves into their rooms or stay off campus. A siren could have gone off to alert people, instead of an email notice. Police could have been rushed in to guard buildings (they should have been doing that anyway, since there had been a couple of bomb threats in the weeks preceding). How did they manage to shut down the campus so efficiently in August 2006, when survivalist and killer, William Morva, was on the loose?

Kaine’s tendentious announcement also overlooks another bunch of really serious failures on the part of V-Tech. How was it that on a campus where the student population had been disarmed by policy, there were no monitoring cameras nor armed security guards near the dorms who could have stopped the shooter in the first place? Even measly little schools have them; why not this lush, plush campus with its own golf course, power station and airport and what the BBC calls “meticulously manicured” lawns?

How could V- Tech promise its students that the campus was gun-free, if they had no metal detectors or security checks to ensure it? How did Cho leave campus to post his video and re-enter loaded with ammo and guns and not set some detector or alarm off? How could he have even entered a dorm without a security card in the first place? And why were students entering and leaving Ambler Johnston until 10 AM (according to student reports) after the shooting at 7:15?

Is none of that worth noting? Would a little vigilance in any of those things not have helped at all? Does it really just boil down to those 5 minutes?.

Or is the media trying to frame what’s at stake? Seems like it, especially if we look at what else’s is going on.

Framing A Story

Quite early on, Time magazine had an opinion piece (“Va. Tech’s President Should Resign,” John Cloud, 4/19), which – with little serious argument – explicitly directed the public’s attention away from the delay between the two shootings and toward the danger signals Cho was sending up for two year before the shootings.

Now, those two years are problematic too. But the useful thing about focusing on the two years is that the failure to follow up on Cho’s problematic behavior – unlike the two hour delay – can always be blamed on policies.

And in fact, people are doing just that. Inevitably they’ll reach the conclusion that, mirabile dictu, none of it was V-Tech’s fault at all, either. It was the fault of laws, policies, programs, etc. etc…

Notice this report on 4/25 on MSNBC, for instance. It describes students standing firmly behind the V-Tech president and administration. It makes a striking contrast with earlier reports in which students repeatedly and loudly criticized the administration.

Looks a lot as if this show of student confidence developed later. But who’s pushing for the vote of confidence for the people at the top? Let’s see.

Quote: “Johnson plans to present the university Board of Visitors on Thursday with an online petition with thousands of signatures of support for Steger and Flinchum. Steger also received an endorsement from the governor.

”Charlie has been acting as a very, very good president,” Gov. Tim Kaine said. ”This kind of event could happen anywhere on any campus, and there has been an innocence taken away from the students. But the positive values, and academic tradition of this university will help the community stay strong, and keep this university attracting students.” End quote.

I’ve written about this kind of media framing before. First, the media sensationalizes. This is the pulp drama of personal narratives, human interest stories, emotion, drama, color, personalities… Then, when we get to the heart of the matter, the focus quickly shies away to broad questions of law and policy. No one’s ever at fault now. It’s always a failure to communicate, bad laws, not enough funding – anything that lets the bosses off the hook.

That was the MO of the media during the torture debate. Questions about what actually happened were quickly framed out and the debate focused on creating better policies rather than on punishing the people who created the bad ones. It was ultimately only the alternative press which pushed the debate back to where it belonged.

Likewise, at V-Tech, the mainstream public debate has been relentlessly about more federal laws of all kinds – more gun control…. or federalizing the mental health data base… or militarizing security…or imposing speech codes.

Which fits in perfectly with where this government wants to go, as a recent piece by James Bovard, “Working for the Clampdown,” in The American Conservative Magazine (April 27, 2007), indicates. Bovard describes how the Defense Authorization Act of September 30, 2006 makes it easy for the president to impose martial law in the event of what he calls public disorder — which might just be something like an antiwar protest on campus. (Not for nothing was it the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that held a hearing on college campus security on 4/23 and on 4/26).

Meanwhile Congressman Ron Paul’s Texas newsletter, “Straight Talk,” describes the dangers of an impending and unconstitutional ‘hate crimes’ bill (HR 1592) that has every potential to create a category of “thought crimes.”

With that in mind, you begin to see that despite the overwhelming focus on them, V- Tech is fundamentally not about these things:

It’s Not About More Gun Laws:

The gun control argument runs — Were guns not growing on Virginian trees, this would never have happened, ergo – we need new laws. No guns for nut jobs.

But the trouble with this line of reasoning is that Virginia Tech is already a gun-free zone. Theoretically at least. The university beat back an attempt (in just 2006) by the state of Virginia to allow student to carry concealed weapons on campus. And, Virginia’s gun laws already do prohibit deranged people from purchasing firearms. When Cho bought his two handguns, he was already committing a felony.

It’s Not About More Mental Health Reporting

OK, you ask, then how come Cho’s record of derangement didn’t stop him from buying two guns?

Well, that’s because he had no record. Forget the Feds. He didn’t have one with the state. No one gave him one.

But doesn’t that make the case for more laws regulating the mentally deranged? Not really. The real problem was that the laws already in place weren’t followed.

First, let’s be precise here – no psychiatrist ever saw Cho. A licensed social worker recommended sending him to a treatment facility (and got a special judge to do it) and then a PhD psychologist reckoned he was a threat only to himself (and had the same special judge release him) – all in about 24 hours flat. Some evaluation. It was not only shoddy on its face but in flat violation of state law, which requires an MD to do the job. (“Cho Seung Hui’s Commitment Papers,” Bonnie Goldstein, Slate, April 24, 2007). That’s strike two just there.

And now, strike three. Although Cho was ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, it turns out that no one kept track of whether he did or didn’t. Or kept records of any kind, apparently, all of which is a violation of existing state law.

More details have emerged about what happened at the three state institutions through which Cho passed (“Cho Didn’t Get Court-Ordered Treatment,” Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins, Washington Post, May 7, 2007).

These were V. Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, Blacksburg’s New River Valley community services board, and nearby Christiansburg’s Carilion St. Alban’s Clinic, which is where Cho ended up staying overnight. Each now says it had no reason, jurisdiction, or wherewithal to follow up. They all saw no evil, heard no evil….. and did nothing at all.

Says Mike Wade, the Blacksburg board’s community liaison, “Since we weren’t named the provider of that outpatient treatment, we weren’t involved in the case.”

Says Terry Teel, Cho’s court appointed lawyer, of the court’s role in overseeing the treatment, “We have no authority.”

Says Christopher Flynn, director of V-Tech’s Cook Counseling center, “I’ve never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, ‘This person has been discharged; he’s now your responsibility.’ That doesn’t happen.”

Really? What’s on paper contradicts all of them.

Re Virginia Tech. Here are VA state guidelines with which state universities have to comply (Act H 3064 approved by the Governor on March 21, 2007, not even a month before V Tech):

“The governing boards of each public institution of higher education shall develop and implement policies that advise students, faculty, and staff, including residence hall staff, of the proper procedures for identifying and addressing the needs of students exhibiting suicidal tendencies or behavior…….. Nothing in this section shall preclude any public institution of higher education from establishing policies and procedures for appropriately dealing with students who are a danger to themselves, or to others, and whose behavior is disruptive to the academic community.”

Re New River: Virginia state law says that community service boards “shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs” for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. The law also says these boards “shall monitor the person’s compliance.” [Wade claims that’s “news to him.”]

Re St. Alban’s, Virginia law says that if a dangerously mentally ill person ordered into treatment doesn’t go, he can be brought back before the special judge, and if necessary, in a crisis, be committed to a psychiatric institution for up to 6 months.

Let’s put it this way: If Virginia state guidelines for universities had been followed, Cho’s history would have been on record and campus police would have had an eye on him already. And if he had been properly evaluated and monitored according to state mental health requirements, he would have been labeled a danger to society and the state police would have stopped him buying a gun.

So tell me, why do we need more laws when people aren’t following the ones already on the books?

It’s Not About More Funding:

Was it because there weren’t enough funds, as some argue? Community service boards apparently handled 115,000 mentally ill people in Virginia in 2005 at a cost of $127 million. That works out – very roughly – to about a thousand bucks per person. I don’t know if that’s shabby or not. But it doesn’t really seem relevant here. What would it have cost additionally in time or money to call up and find out if Cho had gone into treatment? Ten minutes and the cost of a local phone call.

The whole business is that amazing – no one seems to have known anything or done much of anything. No one seems to have followed up or even thought they had to. For instance, reports say the Cho’s family didn’t seek treatment for him because they didn’t have enough money, yet the family lives in an affluent Virginia neighborhood, sent their children to elite private schools, and gave Cho enough spare change for videos, a car, a cell phone, an escort service (at least once), firearms, an ungodly amount of ammo and training at a firing range.

Isn’t it much more likely that if Cho’s family didn’t get help for him, it was because of the stigma attached to mental illness, which is much greater among Asian families? And would more money really have made that better?

Let states spend as much as they want on community mental health. But don’t tell me Virginia Tech happened because of lack of money.

It’s Not About More Federal Data Bases:

Some argue that reporting to the Feds has to be tightened because under federal law, Cho’s voluntary confinement would have automatically prevented him from buying a gun. (Richard Bonnie, chairman of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform).

Well, in the first place, as we’ve seen, if he’d been properly evaluated, state laws themselves would have stopped Cho. If people don’t comply with state laws, why are they any more likely to comply with federal laws?

According to the FBI, Virginia is already the leading state in reporting mental health dis-qualifications to the Feds. But, the problems is that Virginia state law is a tad different from the federal law. It lists only two categories that would warrant notifying the state police – “involuntary commitment” or a ruling of “mental “incapacitation” – neither of which applied to Cho, who was confined “voluntarily” and wasn’t ruled incapacitated.

Immediately after the shootings, Governor Tim Kaine (a Democrat) eliminated this distinction. He also said he thought V-Tech would help push through legislation he supports that would also subject firearms sales at gun shows to instant background checks (legislation introduced annually in Virginia that dies before a floor vote in the General Assembly).

[Interestingly, a move to expand Virginia’s mental health laws was already in the works in October 2006. It’s goal was to “modify the criteria for placing people in emergency care by eliminating a requirement that they pose an “imminent” danger to themselves or others.”
Precisely what’s now being demanded as a result of the V-Tech shootings.]

But will making every state law automatically comply with federal law on this make things better or worse? I’m not sure. If people know that their mental health evaluations automatically go into a federal data base, will that make them even more reluctant to seek help they might need? Is it a provision that might be misused by vengeful spouses? I don’t know. And what if, in the present political climate, expression of certain beliefs – say, conspiracy theories about the government – were classified as signs of mental derangement? And suppose you could be forced into psychiatric evaluation for that? What if the hate crimes bill on the table now makes even thinking or speaking a certain way a sign not only of derangement but of criminal intent toward society. You get my drift. I’m afraid that the unintended bad of more federalization might come to outweigh the hoped-for good of standardization.

In any case, to my mind, the real problem lies with the special justice who released Cho and then decided he had to attend outpatient – not inpatient – treatment  Whether Cho was sent to V Tech’s Cook center or not (Cook’s not returning calls), mental health advocates and state officials call it pretty unusual to order outpatient treatment for someone labeled a imminent danger to himself. Usually, it’s an inpatient order, says Mary Zdanowicz, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. And, a 1994 survey of special justices found that outpatient treatment was ordered in just 8 percent of the commitment hearings, among other things, because they’re hard to monitor (Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission).

In short, measured just by current laws and care standards, Cho’s evaluation seems to have been shoddy and the special justice’s remedy poorly conceived.
And I don’t see why more laws would change that.

In fact, part of the problem looks like too much regulatory apparatus and too many state bodies with orbits that were designed to mesh but ended up clashing and too little common sense and care.

The three agencies involved at V-Tech shared responsibility like the three crones in the myth shared one eye — they fumbled so much as they passed it around that they dropped it.

In short, what we have here is a full-throttle display of the Diminishing Utility of More Bureaucrats and Laws (DUMBEL), whereby what was everyone’s responsibility became no one’s job.

Meanwhile, the policies that should be discussed are not.
We still have no account of what medication Cho was taking, although his room mates have told us they saw him taking a pill regularly in the mornings.

And we have even less discussion about a matter of crucial importance now:

How to hold the state accountable for laws it expects us to follow but doesn’t follow itself.

A piece in the Chronicle of Higher Educatio, April 24, describes the potential for litigation at V-Tech and quotes lawyers who have suggested that the university showed gross negligence.
But of course, the panel’s swift and well publicized conclusion easily gets to trump that in the public debate.

Meanwhile, the media, which rushed to shove microphones and cameras in the faces of grieving friends and family, hasn’t shown much interest in reporting on what victims face if they do try to press their claims: The doctrine of sovereign immunity. A relic of common law, it protects a state university like Virginia Tech from litigation by citizens. States have relaxed the doctrine to allow state hospitals, for example, to be sued for malpractice, still, any plaintiff at V-Tech, I am reliably told, would have to establish a case of gross negligence and they would have only 6 months to press claims. That means any stalling by the university helps it to avert a lawsuit by reducing the amount of time victims have to collect information and prepare a case. It’s very likely that the victims don’t even know about the doctrine.

The doctrine of sovereign immunity, by the way, holds that a state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. On that count at least, it looks like the State of Virginia is already perfectly in synch with the Federal government these days.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – The Candle Indoors

A verse from “The Candle Indoors,” in ‘Poems’ (1918), by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

“Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire

Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:

You there are master, do your own desire;

What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault

In a neighbor deft-handed? Are you that liar

And, cast by conscience out, spendsavor salt?

Ali Eteraz On Extremist Islam

Ali Eteraz, a young human rights champion turned blogger, has a piece at Huffington Post, calls on Noam Chomsky to voice more criticism of Islamic extremism. He invited me to comment and I will be happy to do so, as it touches on an extremely crucial and sensitive issue for antiwar activists.

Eteraz lists sundry crimes – from honor killings to censorship and 9-11 – that he places at the foot of a politicized Islamic extremism funded by Muslim industrialists:

” Yet, the fact is that today, globalization, which Chomsky always said was the handmaiden of neo-liberalism, and a construction of powerful Western governments, has an equally sordid evil twin, and this is the globalized monstrosity of extremely extreme extremist Islam. By the way, when I talk about extremists, I am not referring to terrorists alone. Would it were that this globalized undercurrent of violence was merely political! There exists today a form of globalized lifestyle and cultural extremism galvanized and organized and idealized by millions. This extremism, where it is not suffocating art, scholarship, freedom and love, it is murdering, killing, and beating to death. It must be identified and spoken out against with the same gusto reserved for neo-imperialism and corporatism. Dissent against all three is not inconsistent as they each mutually feed one another and leave vast numbers of human beings without a voice, without life.”

And this:

“I just read that Hezbollah is now operating in South America (quite distant from Lebanon, no?), recruiting and drug-running like common thugs, and we have known this since 2002. I just read of “ninjabis” in Pakistan – veiled women who with sticks and rage beat brothel owners, music store owners and video store clerks. I just read of Iranian police officers who kick and beat women for daring to wear earrings. I just read that in some places (Saudi Arabia) women are being beaten so they will wear the veil; in other places women are being beaten (Mogadishu) so they will not wear the veil. I just read that in the world there are over 5,000 (reported) honor killings every year including in places as forward and progressive as Turkey, Italy and England, and in most places courts routinely fail to prosecute offenders. I just read of a German judge affirming that Muslim men are supposed to beat their wives (alternate view here). I just read of a British school where the Jewish Holocaust is no longer discussed because it hurts the feelings of the Muslim students. I just read of imported Muslim brides in the West who are shackled at their new home and beaten and expected to behave like slaves, and this behavior is given legitimacy by male and female scholars of Islam that they purport to follow. I just read that a powerful Iranian cleric called for the death of a journalist who published the Danish cartoons, while an American cleric on a mosque payroll wished that a popular female thinker should be removed to a Muslim country so she could be killed for being an apostate. I just read that a journalist in Canada was beaten with cricket bats after he questioned a Pakistani cleric’s metaphysical ability to reveal the face of the Prophet Muhammad on the surface of the moon.”

My Comment:

It’s an interesting post and one with which I agree on many points. However, it sets up an equation that I’m not entirely comfortable with. Is Islamic extremism really the “evil twin” of empire? To begin with, that denotes a measure of equality and power that Islamic extremism doesn’t seem to me to have. It’s also important to remember the extent to which this extremism was brought to the center of the political stage by systematic policy decisions and covert actions undertaken by the United States. In that sense, it’s a reaction — which is probably one of the reasons Noam Chomsky doesn’t engage it in the same way he does American foreign policy. One shouldn’t forget that there are many influential human rights organizations funded by the United States (to one degree or other) that are already busy evaluating and criticizing the abuses about which Ali writes.

Chomsky ‘s silence is meant to balance those pretty loud voices, I think. Voices that sometimes use human rights as a cover for imperial policies, as a number of observers have noted.

It would be as if a activist in Indonesia (to take an example), were to criticize the Indonesian government’s foreign policy in, say Island X, which involved killing a large number of Xers, and the criticism of the activist was that, well, various Xers are also involved in dope-smuggling in Country Y, why don’t you criticize that too. It’s essentially a red herring. If you object to the government bulldozing a neighborhood, it is no defense for the government to argue that the home owners weren’t that nice. It’s strictly beside the point. It’s even less relevant if the government’s defense is that some people who share the same beliefs of those home owners, somewhere else on the planet, are beating their wives.

A specialist in foreign policy is – unless he is exceptionally arrogant – going to stick to foreign policy. A self-avowed anarchist like Chomsky is going to be concerned with matters of the state, not of society. Honor killings are a social evil, just as child abuse in the US is. Chomsky also does not discuss child porn or sex abuse of children in the US or alcoholic wife beating or gang violence or any number of other social ills, as far as I know. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t evils too. They just aren’t very central to a discussion of foreign policy. Nor is honor killing, although some people would like it to be – liberventionists.

So – no. Of course, not all evils in the world are the fault of the US. That’s never been argued by any activist I know. But night after night, we see American and European TV journalists covering human rights abuses all over the world (quite selectively), with all the financial clout their huge networks have, making the opposite case — that all of the world’s ills stem from Islamic terrorism. So, if a few alternative journalists debunk that claim and actually have the cheek to hold the US government to its own standards, so what? That doesn’t mean we support Islamic terrorism, from which, I of Indian origin, have suffered about 20 times as much as anyone here in the US has (over 60,000 people killed by terrorist attacks) – I’ll check that figure – at the hands of Pakistan, a country whose military dictatorships have been funded and supported by – guess who? – the US.
So anti-Americanism is often ( I won’ t say always – because of course, there are always activists whose criticism of the US government camoflages their own political agendas, but they are not necssarily any more likely to be foreigners or immigrants as native born) simply a way to discredit activists and can reflect an inability to answer criticism.

Another point ( I just added this) – who do you suppose shapes the U.S. government? Lobbying groups – many of them from all over the world, representing all sorts of interests, from financial to human rights to imperial. Our policy in Afghanistan was motivated by a Pole’s (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s secy of state) extreme distrust of the Soviets (stemming from Polish history) and his willingness to trade luring them to a debacle in Afghanistan by financing Islamic militants there against a world wide increase in Islamic militancy. Which is what we have now. So, it seems a bit thick to blame Islam for this, even though now Saudi financiers are probably fuelling what is already out there.

What I ask Americans is – why are you identifying with a bunch of people who are not acting much in your interests at all? The government – the state – is not America. Not in my view. It’s a part of it. A mechanism to protect the people and culture. It’s not the same thing.

And by the way, although my interest in foreign policy first came from reading Professor Chomsky, I am a right libertarian, and interested in Austrian economics — which is diametrically the opposite of Chomsky, in some ways. It’s simply that Chomsky’s critique of US foreign policy is, in fact, substantially the same as the libertarian right critique of Murray Rothbard or Garet Garett – nobody would call them anti-American would they? And also – apart from the statism – of the old right.

But unfortunately it’s not a well known tradition. This blogger also wonders about the influence of anti-Americanism in this debate. As I said, that’s a word that can sometimes have purchase, but in relation to US foreign policy, I believe it’s more than a little misplaced.

I’ve made the argument about liberventionism, by the way, in a piece about the abuse of Iraqi female prisoners. The condition of Iraqi women deteriorated on every count after the US invasion, despite a lot of prewar rhetoric from female commentators that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by a desire to liberate women from Islamic fundamentalism. That rhetoric overlooked the fact that Iraq under Saddam was a secular state with a well-educated female population. (“Iraqi Women and Torture: Part IV Gendered Propaganda, the Propaganda of Gender,” Dissident Voice, August 9, 2004).

Chomsky himself argues – more controversially – that US aid is often inversely related to human rights abuses.

I have n’t studied that proposition myself in any systematic way, so I won’t go there.

But in brief, I would say that Islamic extremism may be a foundling child of empire, but descent and equivalence are two different things.

Let me make it clear that, as an individualist, I have a special antipathy toward all forms of thought control. Other forms of coercion – physical or legal – seem far less intrusive and dangerous than power over our thought processes. In fact, I started this site hoping it would become a forum for dissecting some of the mental blinkers we routinely wear. So I do share Ali’s repugnance at what extremist Islamic clerics are demanding from their flock. Nobody could watch these pictures of the stoning of this poor girl in Kurdistan without horror.

That said, however, I think that, at least with regard to honor killings and proscriptions on brothels or sexually explicit imagery, he is comparing two incommensurate things.

Honor killings, to repeat, are more aptly seen as social evils, similar in type to female foeticide in India or of infanticide (the US, for example, has a high rate of infant homicide), or in some people’s view, abortion. Whatever we think of any of these practices, they are a coherent part – even if we think of them, depending on our point of view, as an appropriate or vile part – of a world view.

Let me clarify, that I am not directly equating the killing of a woman with abortion, here. I am simply saying that certain issues have to be discussed in cultural, societal terms rather than purely as legal individual rights. Otherwise, our ability to either understand them or effectively reduce them becomes limited. I, personally, am firmly pro-choice, and iterate that view in this piece on the right to death.

However, one part of opening a dialogue that enlarges human sensibilities is understanding the world views of those who differ from us. To dismiss anti-abortion activists as deluded fools or misogynists simply won’t do, any more than denouncing Islamic theocracy as nothing more than oppressive patriarchal chauvinism. That is, we cannot refuse to see the people we criticize solely in our own terms.

When a considerable number of intelligent and well-intentioned people believe something radically at odds with your belief, it pays to try to understand things first before acting. You have to affirm your common humanity with the other – and isn’t the religious world view most completely the other of the secular? – before you differentiate yourself.

If you subscribe to the idea that a woman’s sexual purity is part of her family honor and if that honor is given a premium in your society, then, putting to death a woman who violates that honor would be a coherent act, even if it were abhorrent to others who didn’t buy your world view. It would probably also be coherent to the victim, even if she rejected it.

It is that coherence that enables us to attack – or defend – infanticide, honor killings or euthanasia or other similar practices as social evils rather than simply criminal acts. In a similar way, if you believe that a woman’s bodily integrity and volition as an adult is of more consequence than a conglomeration of living cells in her body that you believe lacks ‘personhood,’ then abortion will not strike you as morally wrong.

That is, the participants in something like an honor killing genuinely subscribe to the set of beliefs from which the practice arises. Of course, I’m not talking about murders from some other motive (say, financial) that are simply palmed off as honor killings.

In India, the closest phenomenon would be dowry killings, I think. (On rereading this, I don’t think dowry kilings belong here as they are motivated by financial reasons primarily. The old practice of widow immolation – sati – is a better choice. Dowry killings don’t belong to a coherent moral universe).

In European history, something similar, perhaps, might be the old practice of killing wives found in flagrante delicto or, more recently, the passage of lesser sentences for crimes of passion.

A human rights expert writes, “In countries where Islam is practiced, they’re called honour killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable. The practice, goes across cultures and across religions.”

I strongly condemn these abominable practices, but I also think that they often predate the presence of Islam. They are socio-economic in nature and are exacerbated by poverty, war and economic dislocation as this Counterpunch piece describes.. I think the right way to effectively end them is through cultural critique, the empowerment of women (and men) through education and vocational training (the perception of economic dependence is one reason women are devalued), as well as the modification of religious laws or traditions shielding perpetrators. An extended and empathic approach has to supplement a purely legalistic one.

If you wanted to help, here is a site, Madre, which works to empower women in Iraq and other places to stand up to violence against them.

You can come out of an ethos of ‘universal values’ and find human rights at stake in such practices, but you should remain aware that they are at stake in what is also a universe, only one that has defined its values differently from ours. You could then undertake the difficult and delicate task of engaging and enlarging that world view, but only while being aware, simultaneously and humbly, that it is a coherent one and that your own position as arbiter of universal human rights is fraught with ambiguity and not quite Olympian.

I have written about this in an article on female foeticide, “Missing Women, Missing Selves” (Gowanus Review),
where I argue for leniency toward women who commit infanticide in India and compare it as a practice to abortion – rather than murder – in the West.

On the other hand, imperial war, The Global War on Terror, to give it its full capitalized dignity, is not a coherent project in the same way. Those who direct it, those who enact it and those who suffer from it are not equally participants in any coherent world-view. They are mechanically enmeshed by propaganda, inertia, ideology, lies, ignorance, greed and a host of fragmentary forces that arise from the nature of the state and its bureaucracy.

The state is not society…. nor culture.

One last point, I should note that my field of training was in Anglophone intellectual history, international relations and US foreign policy – I feel comfortable dealing with issues of the state and of politics for which I am equipped. I have no special expertise in Islam that would enable me to say something useful on the subject. Besides, being what I call a Christo-Hindu, I feel that the cultural or religious critique of a major religion like Islam, which is already at loggerheads with Christianity and Hinduism in many areas, is better left to liberal Muslim voices, such as Ali’s. There is thus the matter of who says what that needs to be considered here. I can feel comfortable criticizing the policies of a country in which I have been resident for over twenty years and with whose language and cultural traditions I am completely conversant. I am less happy to criticize a tradition to which I do not belong. That seems less than civil to me. It is entirely consistent and not to be taken as selective at all.

Those are my rather unfinished, not-completely-thought-out reactions to Ali’s thoughtful and heart-felt piece…

Meanwhile, I came across this wonderful piece that describes the accomplishments of Islamic scientists in the middle ages. I am linking it here, because the relentless association of Islam with only its most extreme elements fails to give the average American reader a fair picture of the past or present of this religion. It’s as though we were to judge Christianity only by the worst excesses of the Conquistadors or by the Atlantic slave trade.

Callimachus at his blog responds and a reader from foreign policy in focus adds a link: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4249

which is an interview with Chomsky about the rise of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic terror groups.

Well – I have not quarrel with any of that and it shows that Chomsky is fair and not one sided. But I don’t see that he focuses on honor killings or any other societal issues that are exacerbated, no doubt, by war.

I certainly have never denied the existence of Islamic terrorism. India has suffered about 60-65000 deaths from it – from both Pakistani groups and others. Here is a link referencing some of the groups and where they are funded.

Here are some pieces of mine that reference that terrorism; no one’s denying it exists but is it an equal and evil twin of empire?

http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva01042006.html

and again here, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb06/Rajiva23.htm

and here: http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva02272006.html

I don’t think that any of that sounds like I don’t think terrorism exists.

But this is the problem: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4624

selective human rights focus – taken out of context and used incorrectly. And I think HuffPo and other places do that all the time. As an antiwar activist, I will devote my time to providing the context.

Another Federal Power Grab – Bill on Hate Crimes – HR 1592

 

From Congressman Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk Newsletter:

Unconstitutional Legislation Threatens Freedoms

http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2007/tst050707.htm

May 7, 2007

Last week, the House of Representatives acted with disdain for the Constitution and individual liberty by passing HR 1592, a bill creating new federal programs to combat so-called “hate crimes.” The legislation defines a hate crime as an act of violence committed against an individual because of the victim’s race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Federal hate crime laws violate the Tenth Amendment’s limitations on federal power. Hate crime laws may also violate the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and religion by criminalizing speech federal bureaucrats define as “hateful.”

There is no evidence that local governments are failing to apprehend and prosecute criminals motivated by prejudice, in comparison to the apprehension and conviction rates of other crimes. Therefore, new hate crime laws will not significantly reduce crime. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement, hate crime laws undermine equal justice under the law by requiring law enforcement and judicial system officers to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Of course, all decent people should condemn criminal acts motivated by prejudice. But why should an assault victim be treated by the legal system as a second-class citizen because his assailant was motivated by greed instead of hate?

HR 1592, like all hate crime laws, imposes a longer sentence on a criminal motivated by hate than on someone who commits the same crime with a different motivation. Increasing sentences because of motivation goes beyond criminalizing acts; it makes it a crime to think certain thoughts. Criminalizing even the vilest hateful thoughts–as opposed to willful criminal acts–is inconsistent with a free society.

HR 1592 could lead to federal censorship of religious or political speech on the grounds that the speech incites hate. Hate crime laws have been used to silence free speech and even the free exercise of religion. For example, a Pennsylvania hate crime law has been used to prosecute peaceful religious demonstrators on the grounds that their public Bible readings could incite violence. One of HR 1592’s supporters admitted that this legislation could allow the government to silence a preacher if one of the preacher’s parishioners commits a hate crime. More evidence that hate crime laws lead to censorship came recently when one member of Congress suggested that the Federal Communications Commission ban hate speech from the airwaves.

Hate crime laws not only violate the First Amendment, they also violate the Tenth Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, there are only three federal crimes: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting. All other criminal matters are left to the individual states. Any federal legislation dealing with criminal matters not related to these three issues usurps state authority over criminal law and takes a step toward turning the states into mere administrative units of the federal government.

Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society. Fortunately, President Bush has pledged to veto HR 1592. Of course, I would vote to uphold the president’s veto.

Something more than politics needed…

Here are some insights from a spectrum of writers, excerpted from a lengthy piece here in the American Conservative.

Reading it, I found a lot of support for some of the things I’ve always thought we needed more of – less partisanship; less politics and more of the fundamentals behind politics; secession from the state, metaphorically and literally; conserving the past and the environment. And most of all, opposing the state and the pretensions of the group. That would be my starting point for a “new world order” that wouldn’t be either imperial or collectivist but a network of small, free-wheeling, self-selected communities, like nodes in a network.

Andrew Bacevich:

The real divide today occurs between those who buy into the myths of the American Century and those who see those myths for what they are: once useful contrivances that have become a source of self-delusion endangering the national interest.

The American Century is a morality tale. It instructs and inspires but also warns. It tells of how Americans, having lost their innocence on Dec. 7, 1941, rose up in righteous anger to smite a succession of evildoers. The American Century began when the nation finally embraced its providentially assigned mission to spread liberty around the world. Present-day adherents to this school—self-described liberals like Peter Beinart no less than self-described conservatives like William Kristol—do not doubt that the events of Sept. 11, 2001 simply inaugurated the next phase of this grand undertaking.

James Beer:

If there is ever to be truth in our political labeling, we need conservatives who will go home, or at least make homes somewhere, conservatives who will abjure Washington and New York and pick up the struggle in their own burgs to help (re-)build real communities, work to conserve the land and its resources, and ally with their naturally like-minded brethren in order to revive—locally—the religious and historic traditions that might sustain us. In fact, those are the only conservatives we need.

Austin Bramwell:

Rather than feeling responsible for the consequences of its actions, it may be that the conservative movement today, in Weber’s words, “feels responsible only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not quelched.” One may think of this attitude what one will. It is not, however, right-wing.

Patrick Buchanan:

In the foreword, Donald Davidson wrote that his friend had, upon reading John Crowe Ransom’s God Without Thunder, been taken with the idea that an “unorthodox defense of orthodoxy” might be feasible.

Weaver “was suddenly troubled by his realization,” wrote Davidson, that “many traditional positions in our world had suffered not so much because of inherent defect as because of the stupidity, ineptness and intellectual sloth of those who … are presumed to have their defense in charge.

John Derbyshire:

I am much taken with modern theories of brain function that describe our mental processes in terms of functional modules. One theory postulates (1) a “socialization” module that handles membership of groups: being accepted, defending the group, being aware of other groups, and (2) a “status” module that evaluates and promotes our status in the group (and other people’s statuses too), handling emotions like envy, ambition, humiliation.

If that is right, I would guess that liberals have more strength in their socialization module. They are more focused on co-operative action, group values, leveling, assigning importance to subgroups. Conservatives are stronger in the status module, not minding that some individuals stand above others and emphasizing individual action to enhance status.

Ross Douthat:

The picture is further complicated by the fact that because conservatism only really exists to say “no” to whatever liberalism asks for next, it fights nearly all its battles on its enemy’s terrain and rarely comes close to articulating a coherent set of values of its own. Liberalism has science and progress to pursue—and ultimately immortality, the real goal but also the one that rarely dares to speak its name—whereas conservatives have … well, a host of goals, most of them in tension with one another.

Rod Dreher:

 

 

 

 

Buying your meat directly from a local farmer might just be a more noble and useful political act than writing a check to the GOP. The work my politically liberal friend David Spence does in Dallas—buying abandoned historic properties in the inner city and restoring them lovingly for office and residential space—strikes me as one of the most authentically conservative things anybody in the country is doing. There is nothing ideological about it, either, but to grasp the real meaning of what David is doing, and what the Hale and Hutchins families—Christian fundamentalist farm families who raise meat organically, as they believe God intended—are doing out in rural east Texas, you have to think beyond superficial ideological categories.

Mary Eberstadt:

However it is ultimately judged by posterity, the war in Iraq is not, and cannot properly be called, a conservative war. It was dictated and justified in the first instance not by political principles but by an extra-ideological perception (correct or incorrect) of imminent threat. Thus the war, controversial though it is, does not re-draw the red-blue state divide that exists independently of it and for other reasons.

Nick Gillespie:

In his underappreciated 1955 masterpiece, The Decline of American Liberalism, Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. wrote that American history from the colonial period on has been a struggle between forces of centralization and decentralization in politics, economics, and culture. He fretted that the “liberal values associated with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment—and especially that of individual freedom—have slowly lost their primary importance in America life and thought.”

Paul Gottfried:

The Left assumed a new identity when its working-class base began to dwindle and when it traded that base for yuppies and self-assertive Third World constituencies. The Left then proceeded to move in a culturally radical direction, a development whose consequences we are now seeing.

Jeffrey Hart:

In the Reflections, more than a year earlier, Burke had not been Burkean enough. The complexities of society can include, as well as complex institutional structure, complex social forces that become irresistible: the French monarchy had been doomed by the accumulation of such forces.

Burke was a conservative in the sense of William Buckley’s definition of conservatism as the “politics of reality.” Unfortunately, many supposed conservatives—I will echo T.S. Eliot’s phrase—“cannot bear very much reality.”

Nicholas Von Hoffman:

In lieu of political parties based on stately essays by the great thinkers of the past, we can continue with what we have—which is crisis politics. Whoever comes up with the most frightening crisis wins. Of late it has been the Republicans, whether conservative or not, who have delivered the knockout punches. Dead babies, dirty bombs, men exchanging wedding bands with other men, toppling skyscrapers, evil Arabs, girl bishops—they’ve swept the Democrats, whether liberal or not, out of contention. Not that the D’s don’t have hopes. It has been said that the Democrats are but one Katrina away from seizing power.

James Kurth:

Nevertheless, what is true of all kinds of conservatives is that they are trying to preserve, to conserve, an existing and established state of affairs, be it involving the social, the security, or the economic realm. And what is true of all kinds of liberals is that they are trying to change this state of affairs, normally but not always in favor of more freedom for the individual (the exception being some kinds of regulation of the economy). The confusion arises from the fact that, as Tocqueville observed as long ago as the 1830s, in America what has always been the existing and established economic state of affairs has been free enterprise or the freedom of the individual. And, as Marx observed as along ago as the 1840s, it is the nature of this economic freedom, of capitalism, to undermine and eventually destroy the existing and established state of affairs in every other realm, including the social and security ones. Thus, in America, conservatism means conserving a liberal dynamic that is constantly in conflict with conservatism. American conservatism thus is simultaneously both conservative and liberal.

Michael Lind:

And what of ideologues in this ethnically-based political system? There will still be libertarians, social democrats, greens, populists, and others. If they have any strategic sense, they will not try to take over one of the two parties. Instead, they will organize themselves as non-partisan movements that seek to influence both of our identity-based national parties.

John Lukacs:

Most conservatives disliked liberals more than they liked liberty. Serial marriages, divorces, consumers of pornography, barbaric households with mannerless children were as frequent among conservatives as they were among liberals. Worse: conservatives came to believe in Progress even more than liberals; their inclinations to conserve shrank to near nothing.

Heather Macdonald:

So maybe religious conservatives should stop assuming that they alone occupy the field. Maybe they should cut back a bit on their religious triumphalism. Nonbelievers are good conservatives, too. As Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has advised, it should be possible for conservatives to unite on policy without agreeing on theology.

Scott McConnell:

When the United States has embarked on a course that may blacken its name for a generation, one must acknowledge that illegal aliens and their supporters had absolutely nothing to do with it.

When one sits down with a liberal, the aforementioned issues become something that can be discussed without rancor or passion, or simply ignored. Next to the war, they hardly seem more important (though surely they are) than whether the Yankees return to their rightful place in the World Series. On the Right, one has good conversations with those who are either antiwar or good friends of long standing. But it has become hard to imagine striking up a new friendship with a pro-Bush “let’s invade the world to make it democratic” type.

Kevin Phillips:

There is, to be sure, some utility is seeing a division between supporters of the more or less triumphant Washington status quo and those doubters, erstwhile liberals and conservatives alike, who increasingly disdain a failed bipartisan national leadership and its policy handiwork. But this is not a broad enough definition either—and perhaps there really isn’t one

James P. Pinkerton:

So that’s how the two big lumps are subdivided. Mostly libertarian Republicans preside over a populist-conservative base on the Right, while on the Left, mostly libertarian Democrats preside over a motley crew—everyone from Luddite socialist Greens to what Europeans would call “right-wing social democrats,” a teeming mass united by little except, paradoxically, anti-libertarianism.

Justin Raimondo:

Yes, war is a great clarifier. As the Bush administration sinks deeper into the Iraqi quagmire and the neocons plot another foray, this time into Iran, the geopolitical, financial, and domestic political consequences of our war-crazed foreign policy are all too apparent and whatever else one may say about them, what one cannot say—with a straight face—is that they are conducive to conservatism in any way, shape, or form. As, one by one, the pillars of our old Republic fall away—or are hacked to pieces—and the bloated grandiosity of an Empire rises above the ruins, real conservatives (and libertarians, such as myself) look on in horror—and are labeled “extreme leftists” for our trouble.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell:

But it’s never been as bad as it is today. They sometimes invoke the names of genuinely radical thinkers such as F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. But their real heroes are talk-radio blabsters, television entertainers, and sexpot pundit quipsters. They have little intellectual curiosity at all.

In many ways, today’s conservatives are party men and women not unlike those we saw in totalitarian countries, people who spout the line and slay the enemy without a thought as to the principles involved. Yes, they hate the Left. But only because the Left is the “other.”

This is why they fail to see that the Left has been making a lot more sense on policy issues in recent years. It is correct on civil liberties, on issues of war and peace, and on the critical issue of religious liberty. By “correct” I mean that in these areas the Left is saying precisely what the liberals of old used to say: as much as possible, society ought to be left to manage itself without the coercive intervention of the state.

 

Claes G. Ryn:

The word “conservative” was always problematic. It seems to imply that conservatism is all about conserving something already achieved. But conservatism wants to conserve the best of the humane heritage because the latter is an indispensable guide to finding and promoting the good, the true, and the beautiful in the present. The spirit of civilization must forever adapt to new circumstances.

Today highly destructive social trends have themselves become traditions of a sort. Hence the spirit of civilization will have to assert itself in sometimes radical-looking ways, not least in politics. It must free itself of incapacitating habits. One such habit is the increasingly philistine obsession with politics.

Kirkpatrick Sale:

I am convinced, believe it or not, that secession—by state where the state is cohesive (the model is Vermont, where the secessionist movement is the Second Vermont Republic), or by region where that makes more sense (Southern California or Cascadia are the models here)—is the most fruitful objective for our political future. Peaceful, orderly, popular, democratic, and legal secession would enable a wide variety of governments, amenable to all shades of the anti-authoritarian spectrum, to be established within a modern political context. Such a wide variety, as I see it, that if you didn’t like the place you were, you could always find a place you liked.

Phyllis Schlafly:

Bush ran as a conservative, but he has been steadily (some might say stealthily) trying to remold the conservative movement and the Republican Party into the Bush Party. And the Bush Party stands for so many things alien to conservatism, namely, war as an instrument of foreign policy, nation-building overseas, highly concentrated executive power, federal control of education, big increases in social entitlements, massive increases in legal and illegal immigration, forcing American workers to compete with low-wage foreigners (under deceptive enticements such as free trade and global economy), and subordinating U.S. sovereignty to a North American community with open borders.

Fred Siegel:

But 217 years after it accidentally imposed itself, a nomenclature devised for the semi-feudal society of late 18th-century France is bound to make a hash of describing American political life.
Taki Theodoracopulos:

But after the Evil Empire’s downfall, I saw a different America—not one dedicated to defending freedom but an empire out to exploit friends and imaginary foes alike. Why, for example, are we surrounding Russia with NATO bases? Why are we in Iraq? Why are we threatening Iran and Syria? Why are we not restraining Israel? Why is Bush inviting the Saudi head kleptocrat to Texas and holding his hand like a long-lost brother?

What are Right and Left any more? Who is a liberal and who is a conservative? When Madeleine Albright proudly announces that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children via the sanctions on Iraq were worth it, even God becomes suspect. Which liberal or conservative can explain to me the difference between an Iraqi insurgent’s roadside bomb that kills civilian passersby and a U.S. bombing raid that also causes the deaths of innocent women and children? Both are acts of savagery: in both cases one knows in advance that civilians will most certainly be killed. Bush and Americans in general claim the moral high ground, but both are terribly wrong. War is a barbaric business. Only defensive wars are justified.

Philip Weiss:

I marched against this war. I’m grateful for the company I’ve now gotten from American conservatives, and I see my own views as coming out of an estimable American tradition: tolerance, laissez-faire, don’t-tread-on-me values. There seems to be a lot of cross-pollination at work. Strands of isolationism and realism and fiscal conservatism have influenced me, while I sense that the Left has been able to persuade the Right on the importance of global warming and even affirmative action.

Those conservatives have other ideological baggage I don’t particularly care for. I think of myself as pro-Hispanic on immigration issues, and I’m pro-abortion. I can well imagine having clashes with my new friends over these issues some day. Not now. The country’s in crisis. Inasmuch as we can make any headway together, I don’t think we would allow these issues to jam the spokes. And by the way, when it comes to abortion, I’m distressed that so many Democrats seem to have whittled all their most urgent concerns down to that one issue. I don’t think it’s that important.

Chilton Williamson:

To the extent that “conservatism” is meaningless, that is because the word has been dishonestly used by modern conservatives with the conscious intent to deceive. Not so with liberalism, since liberals never attempt to pass themselves or their ideologically pure ideas off as conservative (except when they are running for something and want the conservative vote under false pretenses), since to do so would be to abdicate their intellectual and moral status as infinitely compassionate demigods and philosopher-kings.
Clyde Wilson:

On behalf of the imperial bureaucratic regime, the Democrats absorb and defang whatever liberal inclinations remain in their constituency, and the Republicans do likewise for the conservatives. The only difference is that the Democrats institutionally are wired to keep up the momentum of an already liberal state, while the Republicans’ conservatism has always been a pure fraud.
John Zmirak:

In one sense, the Left/Right dichotomy is like those chemicals that are so simple that they’re toxic. Why, when discussing the panoramic landscape of theories about how man shall live in community, should we choose a one-dimensional model—which offers no up or down, much less a diagonal? Can you imagine imposing such a primitive scheme on any other field of human life? Picture a Left-to-Right spectrum of painters, poets, or national cuisines. You could draw one up according to arbitrarily chosen qualities—such as realism, rhyme scheme, or wasabi content. It can be done, but why bother?

Aurobindo on the Soul

Churches, orders, theologies, philosophies have failed to save mankind because they have busied themselves with intellectual creeds, dogmas, rights and institutions, with acara, suddhi and darsana, as if these could save mankind, and have neglected the one thing needful, the power and purification of the soul.

Cho wasn’t treated -updated 5/8

Update: details of the three psychological/psychiatric bodies, through which Cho passed in this Washington Post piece

V. Tech’s Cook Counseling Center, Blacksburg’s community services board (New River Valley), and nearby Christiansburg’s St. Alban’s Clinic, where he stayed overnight. Each has its own reason for not following up, even though state and university guidelines required them to. Money is cited as an excuse, but they seem to have received $1000 (approx) for each mental case that went through their hands. If we use Cho’s evaluation as a basis, that would be a thousand bucks a day. Is that really too little? And how much more money and effort would it have taken to check whether the case had been followed up on? About what it takes to place a local phone call.

The Guardian has this piece which shows how the state failed completely to follow up on the court ordered outpatient treatment. The piece is amazing – no one seems to have known anything about anything. No one seems to have followed up or even thought they had to. And the outpatient treatment looks like it would have had to have been the responsibility of Virginia Tech. Pretty clear why they are stone walling there.

And, people think the government needs to be getting into even more social work.

V-Tech: Cho – fits of anger as a child, church suspected demons Updated 5/11

More details here about Cho’s interaction in church and an analysis (and criticism) of a 4/30 article in Newsweek describing bullying by rich members of a Christian youth group:

I am quoting the article in its entirety:

“It turns out Pastor K is the person Newsweek got this story from. He left the church almost two years before Cho graduated high school. In an interview published in various Korean language newspapers between April 18th and April 20th, Pastor K shared his experiences with Cho.

In this article dated April 19th, Pastor K says that Cho’s mother wanted him to join a Saturday youth group because she was concerned that he was too withdrawn and spending too much time playing video games. While at the youth group, Pastor K reports that he rarely spoke except to say “yes” or “no.”

But in this article from another Korean paper, Pastor K adds that Cho was picked on in the youth group though, as you’ll see, calling this “bullying” is a bit of a stretch. Here is the complete article translated into English [One of my wife’s co-workers agreed to translated it for me. I streamlined some of the wording]:

“When we watched his video manifesto explaining his reasons behind the massacre, all of our family said “that is not like Seung-Hui’. That’s because it was the first time we saw him talking in full sentences and not in pieces of words and because we were surprised to see him spitting out curses like bullets.”

As a Christian leader, I feel responsible when I see him cursing Christianity.According to the interview with Joongang Ilbo (Korean newspaper) on the 18th, Reverend K (age 50) — who taught Cho at the Korean Church in Centerville for 2 years beginning in 2000 when Cho was a 10th grader in High School in Fairfax County, VA — who wished to be remain anonymous, said “As a Christian leader, I feel responsible when I see him cursing Christianity. I am terribly sad.” The followings are excerpts from the interview:

– Have you seen Cho’s video?

“It was the first time I ever saw him so angry. I couldn’t believe it.”

– What was he like in the past?

“He was a loner. I never knew he could talk so fluently. In the past, he never spoke in sentences. If I asked him to pray, he usually didn’t say anything for at least a minute and then would say short sentences like “Let’s have a good time. Let’s be thankful.” Because he always had his mouth shut, even elementary school kids made fun of him. Some even pushed him a bit. So, often I told Seung-hui, “if you get annoyed by these little pranksters, why don’t you yell or get angry with them?” But his usual responses was to just nod and do nothing about it. Because of Cho’s inaction, teasing by some of the mischievous elementary age kids lasted for quite a while.

– Didn’t Cho’s behavior change as he came to church?

He was smart and quick to understand the biblical stories. But his understanding never materialized into faith. I’d say his faith was at about 20%. Every Saturday, I gave him a ride to our church so he could make friends his own age in the youth group. But he never got along with anyone. During snack time, he usually ate in the corner by himself.

– In his manifesto, Cho said ‘do you know how it feels to be insulted (or to suffer)?’ and showed his hostility toward the world….

When other kids made fun of him, he never reacted on the outside but perhaps he felt scorned and belittled inside. Among those whom I had to counsel not to bother Cho were some kids from rich backgrounds. Maybe these little things accumulated inside Cho’s mind for a long time and then exploded all at once.”

– Has he ever been rebellious in church?

No. However, once I recommended that his mom take Cho to see a doctor because he showed some autistic behavior. But his mom didn’t agree with my evaluation and refused to take him to the doctor. If Cho had received proper medical care from early stage, it’s possible this terrible thing might not have happened. I feel regretful for not persuading his mother more firmly at the time.”

So, according to Pastor K, Cho was indeed teased at his Saturday youth group, just as he was everywhere else. His pastor at the time was aware of it, took steps to shelter him from it and tried to get him to stand up for himself. The Newsweek story condenses all of this down into a single sentence that introduces the word bullying:

His parents turned to the church for help with his emotional problems, but he was bullied in his Christian youth group, especially by rich kids.

Is bullying what Cho really experienced in youth group?Is bullying what Cho really experienced in youth group? According to Pastor K he was teased and even pushed by some kids. That might sounds like bullying except for the fact that the kids involved were in elementary school. Cho was in 10th grade at the time. It’s not the image most people probably have in mind when they hear the word “bullying.” For me, that brings to mind a hefty kid who likes to hit people when they don’t hand over their lunch money, not a couple of 5th graders making wisecracks about a sophmore in high school.

It also appears that there were some wealthy kids who picked on Cho, but the pastor stepped in and told them to leave him alone. He wasn’t left to the mercy of these spoiled brats as the Newsweek piece suggests.

So here’s the real story. Cho was picked up and driven to a Saturday youth group so he could make friends, yet sat alone in the corner. He was protected from teasing by his pastor, but refused to protect himself from teasing by much younger kids. He was invited to join a Bible study; yet, until the manifesto appeared on TV no one had ever heard him utter more than a few words. His pastor recommended he be examined by a doctor but — possibly because of the shame associated with mental illness in Korean culture — his mother refused to take him.

Cho’s church made a sincere effort to reach out to him and help him fit in. For whatever reason, he was unable to respond. Perhaps he had a serious mental illness (schizophrenia has been suggested by some, autism by others). Perhaps he was physically or sexually abused by an adult, as his college writings seem to suggest. In either case, it’s hard to imagine what more Cho’s church could have done to help him.

Far from being just another part of the problem, church seems to be the only place Cho went where an adult stood up for him.A lot of people mocked and picked on Cho Seung-Hui. A few, in high school and college, reached out to him, including members of Tech’s Korean Campus Crusade chapter. But no one tried harder to reach out to Cho than the pastors at Centerville Korean Presbyterian Church. Evan Thomas’ story for Newsweek isn’t a lie since Cho was in fact picked on in his youth group, but it manages to mislead the reader about what really happened there. So far as we know, Pastor K was the only adult who attempted to teach Cho how to get along with others. Far from being just another part of the problem, church seems to be the only place Cho went where an adult stood up for him. That effort deserved a lot better treatement than Evan Thomas’ dismissive one-liner.

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My Comment:

Fair enough. I think the detailed analysis of the Newsweek piece was warranted. Those sorts of throwaway comments in the major media deserve intense examination. They’re not always as innocuous as they might seem to some one who isn’t familiar with media framing tactics.

More:

A report on 5/5 reports that a bomb threat written on a flyer was found in a classroom the morning of 4/16 by a professor who handed it to the janitor. Note that the note was written in red ink; Ismail Ax was written on Cho’s arm in red ink too. But there is nothing else linking the note to Cho. The janitor described as tall Asian in a maroon cap, black shirt and cargo pants with something jingling on him.

More reporting on Cho in this profile of the onset of his problems in the Washington Post.

Key new points:

*Turns out that Cho exhibited fits of anger as a child, not just taciturnity, as we heard earlier.

*We also learn now that his mother turned to the church rather than to medicine for help. She went to several northern Virginia churches, especially after 2005. The Pastor of the One Mind Church in Woodbridge, Dong Cheol Lee, thought Cho’s behavior showed demon possession and tried to help but didn’t do so in time. Cho’s behavior seems to have got worse in 2005-06, which coincides with his visit to the health center.

*We learn that Cho hardly attended classes in his senior year and spent most of the time in front of the computer. This squares with what his neighbors in Virginia have said – that they hadn’t seen him for some time. Apparently, his behavior deteriorated in his senior year (that is, after his brief encounter with the health care system and – possibly – with medication).

This is a distinct departure from what he was like as a student in earlier years. This report has information that Cho was a math whiz who started out at V Tech by working all the time and trying hard to fit in. His declared major in 2003-04 was business information, but later (by 2005 probably) he changed to English.

That’s about when he started sliding. Hmmm…maybe Limbaugh had a point about the English department (only kidding!)

Something changed and changed drastically for the worse in 2005.

* He is said to have studied a text on Deviant Behavior in class in that last year, which may show he had some awareness of his problem. The class was held on the second floor of Norris Hall, where the shooting took place.

* What’s also interesting to me is how university officials are guarding his records, citing privacy laws. I am sure it’s going to be a major embarrassment for them to explain how Cho managed to avoid being flunked for such incompetent writing, non-attendance, and generally erratic and dangerous behavior.

All this reflects poorly on Virginia Tech, I’m afraid, however much people spin it. What a pity. Apparently, the school has a great engineering faculty. Too bad that the administration and security don’t seem to have matched up, at least in this instance

Note: the more I see the different pieces of this puzzle, the more I am inclined to think that although we have a person with psychological/psychiatric problems at the center of it, we also have some other influences at work here. I suspect we may find some kind of traumatic incident in 2005, or some authority figure’s influence coming to bear on him…

Now we have a couple of more hints why Norris was chosen: Cho took at least two classes that we know of on the second floor – one where he read about deviant behavior and another where he studied the Genesis story of Ishmael.

We also know he was a very bright math student, a whiz according to at least two reports. If he chose to go into business management at first, maybe it was because he wanted to be more socially acceptable to the affluent Virginian kids he envied or resented (if we go by what he said on his video).

Karan Grewal, his suite mate, was puzzled by that comment, though, noting that most of the students were middle class and on scholarship of some kind. I haven’t studied the demographics of the school, but looking through the list of victims I found that, as you would expect in a Virginian college, a lot of his victims were Virginia residents:

1. Leslie Sherman, sophomore history and international studies student from Springfield, Va.

2. Maxine Turner, 22, senior majoring in chemical engineering from Vienna, Va.

3. Mary Karen Read, 19, freshman from Annandale, Va.

4. Reema Joseph Samaha, 18, freshman from Centreville, Va

5. Erin Peterson, 18, of Chantilly, Va., an international studies major

6. Lauren Ashley McCain, 20, of Hampton, Va., freshman international studies major.

7. Henry J. Lee, also known as Henh Ly, 20, first-year student majoring in computer engineering from Roanoke, Va.

8. Rachael Hill, 18, of Glen Allen, Va.

9. Emily Jane Hilscher, 19-year-old freshman from Woodville, Va., majoring in animal and poultry sciences.

10. Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, 24, of Chester, Va., graduate student in civil and environmental engineering.

11. Austin Michelle Cloyd, sophomore international studies major and member of the honors program from Blacksburg, Va. Previously from Illinois.
12. Daniel Alejandro Perez Cueva, 21, of Peru, sophomore majoring in international studies. He also had lived in Woodbridge, Va.

13.Brian Roy Bluhm, 25, civil engineering graduate student from Stephens City, Va. He had previously lived in Iowa, Detroit and Louisville, Ky

14. Jarrett Lee Lane, 22, senior majoring in civil engineering from Narrows, Va

14/32 means that nearly half of his victims were Virginian residents or had moved there. (The rest were foreign born or were from close by (PA, NY or NJ).

Was this, in fact, an attack on the Hokies, as Pat Buchanan puts it? Or is this simply the usual proportion of locals you’d find in any college?

I am going to hold off commenting on the fact that this is yet another murder/shooting in which a charge of demon possession has raised its head. It’s too easy to speculate irresponsibly at this stage on something like that. I wonder why we are not hearing anything more about the medication he was reported to be taking daily, according to roommates. I would think it would be easy enough to find evidence in his dorm room.

Meanwhile, I would like to find out more about the One Mind Church and what if any connections it had to the prayer circle Cho’s sister attended. I wonder if any other pastor had the same belief about Cho and whether anyone else tried to help.
Also, this new information doesn’t sit too well with jihadi theories. I wonder if the freepers will find a new classification – Diablo-fascist, or some such thing…

(no offense intended to Christians, Muslims…. or Satanists or anyone else…)
Where is Charles Krauthammer when you need him?

Buchanan links Virginia Tech to immigration

Pat Buchanan argues that the killer at Virginia Tech is a product of the misguided “melting pot” ideology behind present immgration policies:

“Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation’s doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.Cho was one of them.

In stories about him, we learn he had no friends, rarely spoke and was a loner, isolated from classmates and roommates. Cho was the alien in Hokie Nation. And to vent his rage at those with whom he could not communicate, he decided to kill in cold blood dozens of us.

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what’s been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.”

Here’s the rest of Buchanan’s article.

I am busy now, but want to comment on this post in detail. Perhaps on Tuesday, when my work lightens up. Hope some of you reading can check back then. Talking rationally about what we are not supposed to be able to talk about except irrationally is always a good thing. Meanwhile, here’s something that came to my mind when reading Buchanan’s article:

“Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came.”

It’s from Letter III from Letters from an American farmer, by J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur, reprinted from the original ed., with a prefatory note by W. P. Trent and an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn. New York, Fox, Duffield, 1904.

I suppose Buchanan would argue that the immigrants Crevecoeur referred to were legal, came from European countries and were assimilable. But between, say, the Irish or Eastern European immigrant of the nineteenth century and one from Germany or Holland, between a Catholic and a Protestant was a gap almost as large as the cultural gap between some immigrants today and the mainstream of American culture, although what that mainstream might be is not the easiest thing to define.

Buchanan also overlooks the fact that Cho’s parents followed the route generations of immigrants have taken and have been urged to take — hard work in a small business, owning your home, and scrimping and saving to send your children to the elite schools and colleges which presumably assimilate them into the mainstream.

Cho’s sister — immersed in Bible studies, Christianity, and humanitarian work — seems to me as much a part of “heartland” American values as any one can be.

The holes in Buchanan’s argument don’t end there, of course. The beleagured Hokies whom he calls “us” included a number of immigrants and foreigners — Lebanese to Israeli to Sri Lankan — several of whom gave their lives for their native-born and non native-born friends. I suppose, under fire, they didn’t have enough time to get the skin colors, features, and immigration status sorted out.

Buchanan takes principled positions on a number of issues where other people duck, so it’s a disappointment that on this one, he falls into the trap of demagoguery. Still, there’s no need to resort to shoving his argument into the outer darkness of public debate, as this blog seems to want to.

For one thing, while his view on race and culture can be called “nativist” (probably correctly) all day long, it’s still a view held – sometimes silently but not always thoughtlessly or maliciously – by a good number of reasonable people, not only in the U.S but across the world. It’s a view that has suffused the major religions of the world for centuries.

I know people might label it racist (and it might well be on some levels), but since that’s often a term used to shut people up and because I never know what anyone actually means when they call someone a ‘racist’, I will simply call his position ‘racial’ or ‘racialist.’ By that, I mean he defends racial feeling as a legitimate category of human experience and not on its face suspect.

So, while I don’t agree with his position on immigration, I think it calls for more than ad hominem.

The only way to get through the impasse on this subject is to talk about it candidly.

As I see it, there are two constraints on the government in either direction: on one hand, we can’t make arguments about the constitutional limitations on the state while we reward people for breaking the law, but on the other, I agree with Tibor Machan that it’s best to take a minimalist approach. Limit the state’s role in the whole business: require would-be immigrants to obey the law (penalizing those who don’t) and require them to be financially self-sufficient and not a burden on the tax-payer.

Really, that’s all any state can justifiably police or practically accomplish. Any more than that, and we’ll just be stuffing the already distended belly of cetus washingtonii — which is what’s got us where we are in the first place.

Anthony Gregory is close to the way I see this, although I have more of a “commons” approach to property ownership in some areas than he seems to.
Identify and rectify the perverse incentives driving illegal immigration; don’t demonize immigrants. They’re just doing what makes economic sense to them.

As for the cultural angle, Joe Sobran, who seems to partly share Buchanan’s belief in the need for a degree of homogeneity in culture (and I suppose race) for a society to hold together, has a good recent piece on the subject:

“Today conservatives nearly as much as liberals accept the deadly premise that the state is the answer for every problem, when most of our huge problems are created by the state itself. Immigrants don’t tax us; the state does (while also imposing trillions in debt on our descendants into the bargain). Immigrants don’t send our sons (and, now, daughters) to war; the state does. Immigrants don’t attack our traditional morality and the natural law itself; the state does. So whom do we need to be protected from — immigrants or the state?

While the tyranny Belloc predicted keeps growing new tentacles, we are constantly distracted from the implacable pattern before our eyes by momentary but essentially minor excitements — terrorism, same-sex “marriage,” elections, even politicians’ verbal gaffes. Truly, to quote one of Belloc’s friends once again, “Men can always be blind to a thing, so long as it is big enough.”

More later….

Crowds and Powers

Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Powers is a book that you must read if you’re interested in crowd psychology. Here is a sample of what you get:

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the fear of an unknown touch can amount to panic.

All the distances which men create around themselves are dictated by this fear. They shut themselves in houses which no one may enter, and only there feel some measure of security.

It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation into which the fear changes into the opposite.”

In my opinion the book is somewhat uneven, passages of great power and insight alternating with observations that are a little artificial…. even, at times, contrived.

But that’s an idiosyncratic response, since this is the book which won him the Nobel Prize in 1981. And the book’s style of argument is so suggestive that it makes up for that occasional weakness.

For the sustained complexity and richness that comes with a great work of literature, read his magnum opus, Auto da Fe — one of my favorite books. But really, the comparison of the two isn’t fair, or even viable, because this is a work of sociology, while Auto da Fe – with all its philosophical depth — is a novel.

And, despite all my quibbles, Crowds and Powers is filled with immensely fertile observations.

Worth a slow, meditative read.

Not the worst US massacre….

Carla Blank, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle (reprinted in Counterpunch), points out the way in which the media sensationalized the Virginia Tech story.

Her piece is thoughtful, but it does two things that I think are mistaken — it racializes the issue (what happened to Waco, for instance?), in this case I think in an unwarranted way; and it moves away from incidents involving one or two individual shooters to group confrontations. Intentionally, I suppose.

“The mass media coverage of how 32 students and faculty members were fatally shot and at least 15 injured on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., is punctuated by phrases such as, “the worst massacre in U.S. history,” or, as the New York Times put it, the “Worst U.S. Gun Rampage.” CNN called it the “Deadliest Shooting Rampage in U.S. history.”

This was followed by San Francisco Bay Area’s FOX affiliate KTVU Channel 2’s claim that it was “the worst massacre ever in the United States.” TV commentary did not qualify these claims, and at least one Virginia Tech student, an Asian American himself, echoed the phrase when interviewed on national television, pondering his presence at the “worst massacre in U.S. history.”

In reality, an accurate investigation of mass killings of this magnitude would quickly reveal that the Virginia Tech massacre, as horrendous as it was, was not the worst massacre to occur on U.S. soil.”

There were much bloodier massacres before Blacksburg, she writes, including the Gunther Island Massacre of 60-200 Wiyot Indians, committed on Feb. 26, 1860 and encouraged by a local newspaper; the massacre on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow, near Memphis, Tenn., by Confederate troops under Gen. Nathan Forrest of 227 black and white Union troops”; the Colfax Massacre on April 13, 1873 of 280 blacks by armed members of the White League and the Ku Klux Klan; the Ludlow Massacre in 1913 that killed more than 66 people, including 11 children, and two women (burned alive) and was sparked by a strike against the Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation by the mostly foreign born Serb, Greek and Italian coal miners after one of their union organizers was murdered;the 1921 shooting deaths of at least 40-300 people, most of them black, in an area known as the “Negro’s Wall Street,” home to 15,000 people and 191 businesses. Police eventually dropped bombs from private planes to break it up.

Read more here.

My Comment:

I think it’s fair enough to point out the sensationalism involved in the coverage of V-Tech. But, it’s also fair to say that people really do find crimes committed by identifiably psychotic or evil individuals more interesting, psychologically, than political or social confrontations between groups.

The media plays on that bias and lets something like V- Tech distract us from bigger issues, while also handing the state another excuse for imposing more security laws.

But that said, people are really interested in this case.

We’re always fascinated by stories that combine just enough of the visceral and the violent with the coldly analytical. It’s why Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy still fascinates us, even though statistically, the damage such killers do is miniscule next to more endemic social and political problems, like war.

People like to argue that it’s the violence in our lives that drives this fascination. But I wonder about that.

It might be, instead, that we don’t really run into violence much at all — outside our TV screens; our worlds are fairly antiseptic. We don’t deal routinely with anything as intense, sensual and emotionally raw as violence….which is why we can’t take our eyes off when it finds us.

We have a yearning for deep experience, even when it is savage and even if it is vicarious. That, I suppose, is what accounts for the popularity of war as a spectator sport…

Police Attack Largely Peaceful Crowd In LA

On Tuesday, there was a sample of what law and order can sometimes look like. I know a lot of people are going to dismiss this because they think it’s somehow about “illegals.”

I can understand how people might feel that way, especially with the ongoing threat of terrorism. But I think it would be mistaken in this case. The use of force really does seem to have been completely uncalled for:

Democracy Now has this account of a police attack on what looks to have been a peaceful immigration rally in LA. Apparently, there was also an incident in Detroit. Here are some excerpts:

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Amy Goodman:

In Los Angeles, an afternoon immigrant rights march ended when police fired dozens of rubber bullets and tear gas into the peaceful crowd. Families with young children were forced to flee for their safety. Eyewitnesses said police gave little or no warning before firing the rubber bullets….


For the second year in a row, May Day featured a massive display of solidarity for immigrant rights in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country. Marches were held in cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Denver, Milwaukee, Phoenix and New York……….Although the May Day events went off mostly without incident, one major confrontation took place in Los Angeles.An evening protest was disrupted when police fired rubber bullets and teargas at thousands gathered in MacArthur Park. LAPD officials said protesters had thrown plastic bottles and other projectiles. Protest organizers dispute the account and are demanding an independent investigation…

Jorge Mujica (journalist and union organizer, formerly of Telemundo):

One week ago, the FBI, in combination with Immigration Enforcement, sent over sixty federal agents to a shopping mall at 2:00 p.m., when mothers had just picked up their kids from school and they were doing their shopping. And these federal agents were carrying machine guns and M-16s, and they were looking for what is supposed to be a ring of fake ID dealers, you know, sellers of false IDs. Nevertheless, they handcuffed over 100 people. They made them sit on the floor. But they detained 160 people for a couple hours, and then they just let them go, because they knew exactly what they were looking for. They didn’t need to arrest anybody else or detain anybody else…….

Angelica Salas (executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, LA):

We voluntarily cut our program at 6:30. We had our permit that would go until 9:00. We cut it. We made sure that people — we told people to start leaving the park slowly, not to run, with their children.I stayed towards the end, and what I saw was, instead of isolating a problem group, they pushed them into the crowd.

They started shooting rubber bullets into a crowd of just innocent people. I was caught in the middle of all of this, as we were trying to send people out, had to cover a mother with some children….

…There were several members of the media who were actually hurt, who were hospitalized, especially, I think, our friends from Telemundo..

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My Comment:

The LA event seems to have drawn far fewer people than last year’s, only some 25,000, compared to 650,ooo in 2006. That’s really not a lot.And the police conceded that the crowd behaved peacefully, blaming some minor rock or bottle throwing, that seems to have instigated the police response and has been blamed on a few “anarchist” elements.

(For some reason, anarchists are always depicted as wild-eyed bomb-throwers right out of Dostoevsky).

Leaving that aside for the moment, as well as the whole vexed business of immigration — even though I know it’s one of the most important domestic issues today, notice how uncritical reporting sets up a false equivalence between unarmed civilians throwing plastic bottles or rocks and armed policemen responding with plastic bullets.

Actually, plastic bullets are quite capable of killing or maiming. But because they sound so innocuous, they’re likely to be used a lot more indiscriminately and with less criticism from the press.

This kind of non-lethal (a more accurate term would be semi-lethal) weaponry was developed in the 90’s under the Clinton administration. And the purpose was to shore up the US position in the post Cold War world. That is, non-lethal weapons initiatives came out of military and strategic imperatives. Only, now they’re being redirected at the domestic population.

That’s not a wild-eyed anarchist speculation, either. I’m drawing from memos penned by none other than the Pentagon.

(By the way, I will try to post something on other effective ways of dispersing or controlling a crowd, which would not leave permanent injuries. Obviously, there are many instances when police are within their rights to intervene).

Now, here’s the memo (I found it in the footnotes of my Abu Ghraib book, on p. 202 — and that is a plug (chuckle):

” A memorandum written by no less than Paul Wolfowitz to Dick Cheney states, ” A U.S. lead in nonlethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post Cold War world. Our Research and Development efforts must be increased.,” Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, memorandum to the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, subject: “Do We Need a Non-lethal Defense Initiative?”

More on the subject from the website of the Federation of American Scientists” Project on Government Secrecy:
“March 30, 1991.

Overcoming Non-lethal Weapons Secrecy

“As the Defense Department program to develop so-called “non- lethal weapons” gathers momentum, Pentagon officials are tightening controls on public information about the program accordingly.

Late last year, Greenpeace submitted a FOIA request for a copy of one of the early policy documents in this field, a 1991 memorandum from Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) Paul Wolfowitz entitled

Do We Need a Nonlethal Defense Initiative?”

The Pentagon denied the request in its entirety on May 3, claiming that the memo was “deliberative in nature” and therefore exempt from the FOIA.

But unauthorized disclosures of government information are growing almost as fast as the secrecy system itself, and Greenpeace was able to obtain a copy of the document through unofficial channels.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the memo are the comments handwritten in the margin apparently by then-DepSecDef Donald Atwood who noted that “non-lethality may be a misnomer.” And where Wolfowitz had indicated that “Nonlethal weapons disable or destroy without causing significant injury or damage,” Atwood wrote: “This claims too much.”

A copy of the memo is available from S&GB.

Jumping on the rhetorical bandwagon, the Air Force and the Energy Department are advertising a new nuclear weapon concept as “non-lethal.” The proposed High Power Radio Frequency concept is a “non-lethal, ICBM-delivered, and nuclear-driven device intended to damage electronics and/or electrical components.” (Energy and Water Development Appropriations for 1995, Part 6, House Appropriations Comm, page 494).”

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There’s a lot more stuff on the site worth reading.

My Comment:

Here, I am going to brag a little…you’ll have to excuse me. No sense having a blog if I can’t do that once in a while:

While I was finishing up my book at the end of 2004 (it was published only the next year, by the way — that’s publishing for you), I’d already noticed this memo. I was hunting for direct links between Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and the torture policy at the time — which I did find, and which showed up on the web after an FOIA request from the ACLU got the government files all out in the open.

But, this DOD memo only really seems to have got real public attention in 2006, two years later. These days, of course, a whole lot more people are alarmed by the police state issues involved and have begun to see what it means to have an official policy of torture while the government is also busy dismantling the constitution.

Ah well… (sigh)…we bloggers content ourselves with doing the dirty work ahead of the crowd and watching, gratefully but somewhat cynically, as people jump on board after the fact.

Crowd behavior — it runs every aspect of our lives. The herd is in us, as Nietzsche recognized.

Solzhenitsyn: What Intellectuals Need

“There is not a way left to us to pass from our present contemptible amorphousness into the future except through open, personal and predominantly public (to set an example) sacrifice. We all have to “rediscover our cultural treasures and values” not by erudition, not by scientific accomplishment, but by our form of spiritual conduct.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Smatterers,” from Under the Rubble, p. 273 (author’s italics).