The Curse of Complexity

It has been a disastrous week for my country. Two days before it recessed, the Congress passed a statue legalizing torture. At least nine Senate Democrats voted in favor of the bill. Shame, shame, shame. In a hurried few moments, and for purely political reasons, they overturned two hundred and thirty years of moral clarity. Not one Democratic Senator would launch a filibuster. Some in Congress spoke against the bill and then voted for it!

And, the most damning event of all, America just sighed and went on about its business. Nobody seems to give a damn.

Just like the children of Lebanon who were massacred by Israeli jets and helicopters (for a poignant article see here; h/t to MarkFromIreland), this momentous event has already begun to drift off into the mists of history, if that.

Complexity. There has been much written about this subject in the scientific literature. One of the areas that is so fascinating is the ability (or inability, so to speak) of humans to grasp the kinetics of simultaneous events. Let me give you an example: consider a forest that has a population of mountain lions and deer. If you told someone that there were one hundred deer and 20 mountain lions, and the lions killed 5 deer a month, most people could figure out that after a month the deer population would be zip.

What happens when you start putting other, kinetic, variables into the mix? What if lions reproduce at 5 lions per hundred and deer at 20 deer per hundred per year? What if lions are killed by 2 lions per 50 by hunters every three months? Could you figure this out in your head? Could you map out how many deer and lions were present after a year?

It turns out, as the people who created a nifty computer program called Stella have found, that humans are very poor at juggling changing events.

Is it no wonder that America is completely overwhelmed by Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Darfur, the Pope, Tony Blair, a new Prime minister of Japan, you name it? In addition to things like Iraq, Katrina and just trying to live? It is just not possible to think about all these things at once.

This is why Karl Rove and his constantly shouting "terror, terror, terror" is such a successful strategy. It was the same with Hitler and Jews. In a complex world, people will gravitate toward anything that is persistent. After a while, they come to actually depend on this stimulus. The Administration of George W. Bush would fall apart in a minute if there was an end to terrorism. In fact, Rove would invent it if he had to (and the latest ballyhoo is in large part an invention since it has been five full years since the last attack.)

Democratic Government was made for much simpler times. Times when individual citizens could grasp the complexities of the world and vote accordingly. Now we must depend on our surrogates, the politicians. By choice or necessity, they have been almost totally corrupted by the need for money to get elected. It is doubtful if they behave in our interests except in the rare case that they coincide. It is also doubtful that this situation will ever show substantive change. Human nature is built into genes and genes need millennia to mutate. We don't have millennia.

I wish I wasn't so pessimistic about all of this, but this week has been an eye opener. Even if the Democrats win the election, we still have been a country that voted for torture. We might as well hang up our hats and cash in our chips or any other euphemism you might want to employ. We have lost our virginity.

Friday Crab Blogging

What we are becoming

If John Kerry feels this way:

Let me be clear about something—something that it seems few people are willing to say. This bill permits torture. It gives the President the discretion to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. No matter how much well-intended United States Senators would like to believe otherwise, it gives an Administration that lobbied for torture just what it wanted.

Why the hell doesn't he filibuster this bill?

Many bloggers have weighed in on this and I agree. When this bill passes both houses of Congress and is sent to the President, we will be a changed country. We will not be able to retrieve that banner that we have held since 1776. We will no longer be the brightest star in the sky. We will have experienced Original Sin with no redeemer in the offing.

We might say along with T.S. Eliot:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Mammary Alert!

From here:

Art Teacher Loses Job After Kids See Nude Sculpture
Children Were On School-Approved Field Trip
........
FRISCO, Texas -- An award-winning Texas art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a trip to a museum has lost her job.

The school board in Frisco has voted not to renew Sydney McGee's contract after 28 years. She has been on administrative leave.

The teacher took her students on an approved field trip to a Dallas museum, and now some parents are upset.

First of all, who lives in Frisco! I thought it was a shortening. A friend of mine upbraided me once for being tacky because I told her "I left my heart in Frisco."

Its not like these kids have never seen a breast. For crying out loud, they were looking at them with desire and glee for the first six months of life. Talk about oogling.

You would think they would have asked about the arms, not the mammaries.

Janet Jackson would be proud. So would Miss October.

The Blue Eyed Girl gets the Dump

(she once was blue eyed, see below)

From First Draft:

People involved in Florida politics say they've never seen anything like it: Deep in her campaign for U.S. Senate, Katherine Harris, is all but shunned by her party. On President Bush's recent trip, she was pointedly avoided and was not invited to travel to another GOP event with the president on Air Force One.

I mean, this was the lady that almost single handedly put the Boy King in the White House:

Katherine Harris was immortalized at 7:30pm on 26 November 2000. In a live press conference carried worldwide by CNN, Florida's 5'4" Secretary of State finally got to declare: "In accordance with the laws of the State of Florida, I hereby declare Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for the President of the United States."

I mean, I have no love for Katherine Harris, but isn't this a little sophomoric? But, I forgot. This is a guy that likes to blow up frogs and brand butts with a fraternity sign. Next he'll be having a toga party in the West Wing with Condi.

Ole Blue Eyes Once Upon a Time

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Torture is morally wrong. Of this there can be no doubt. Yet, just this week, George W. Bush has submitted legislation to Congress, via the Republican majority, that will allow “aggressive interrogation,” a euphemism that includes treatment the World considers torture.

Do not take my word for it. In an editorial on Friday, 22 Sept. 2006, The Washington Post said:

“ The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation.”

Torture is morally wrong. It depraves those who practice it. You may wave your hands and jump up and down shouting “terrorism” all you want, it cannot be made acceptable. Now it may become the official policy of the United States. Shame.
We survived and triumphed in two World Wars and did not have to resort to torture though it was used extensively by our enemies. There is only one chance that this catastrophe can be averted, and that will be if Democratic Senators can launch and sustain a filibuster. We should support our Senators in this task. Our moral clarity depends upon it.

Women and Children

It happens every day:

Baghdad, Iraq - A fiery explosion tore through a line of people waiting to buy fuel Saturday and killed at least 38 people, mainly women and children, continuing the wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killings that have defied U.S. efforts to stanch the bloodshed.

The horrific blast sent women engulfed in flames screaming through the streets. Two preteen girls embraced each other as they burned to death, witnesses said. Later, wailing mourners thronged the scene of the blast, which was strewn with the shoes of victims and a woman's bloodied cloak, and voiced doubt that the reprisal violence would ever end.(emphasis added)

It is just not possible for this to go on any longer. I thought it was not possible to go on any longer years ago. I'm not a very good prophet.

Oh, the article continues:

By midafternoon, the street where the explosion took place was still littered with abandoned yellow, red and blue jerrycans. Bits of flesh flecked the muddy ground, and blood pooled in front of Um Ali's home, left by a woman who clutched her infant child as she bled from a wound in her neck.

"She mumbled some words incoherently," said Um Ali, 40. "Then she fell at my doorstep and died."

No sane person with a speck of decency can let this go on. There must be immediate political change in the United States, the prime cause of the carnage. How, though, I don't know.

The Bowels of Rhetoric

Is this man dangerous or is he made of straw? I'd say the latter. But what should disturb you is that the rumbling train of discourse has certainly jumped the tracks. Read on from here:

"It has been one of the most shrill displays of anti-Americanism in recent years," noted one Security Council envoy, referring to the Chavez and Ahmadinejad double-act. Nile Gardiner, of the Heritage Foundation, said: "This is a huge public diplomacy challenge, but also a strategic threat." He called the Chavez Devil invocation "the strongest attack from any foreign leader on US soil in decades". (emphasis added)

Now I ask you, how on earth is Hugo Chavez mouthing off at the UN a strategic threat? Perhaps his Foreign Minister had stolen state secrets and that was why he was detained, and strip searched when leaving the U.S., in violation of every diplomatic protocol in existence.

If it was this guy spouting off I would be a little more worried:

Two Reasons to Vote Democrat

Somehow this child's pain just doesn't seem to sink in.


Five doctors; five teachers; five farmers; and five career soldiers

Friday Crab Blogging

Blast from the past (no new crabs this week; end of summer)

Torture

Update Below

It is quite likely that we have reached the crux of our political life as a Nation. Apparently, certain Republican Senators, including Senator McCain, reached an agreement with George Bush regarding a bill which will allow a number of things that many of us consider completely intolerable. The President will be allowed to continue to use torture in secret prisions on those prisoners suspected of being terrorists (whatever that means these days).

But, don't take my word for it. An editorial in the Washington Post is pretty straightforward (for a change) saying:

In short, it's hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that "there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved." In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism. (emphasis added)

Since, after the election the House may be revert do Democratic control, this bill will be pushed through the Senate and the House, through the conference Committee, and then voted on by both Chambers, within the next week! This will complete the certification process for Rogue State that Mr. Bush has been working towards for so long.

What is reasonable, let alone what is moral, has been shoved aside in favor of short term political gain. Namely, Bush's War on Terror, a War that has no true battle in 5 years, may yet tip the scales in the mid term elections.

We will be a Nation that tortures. And, because we are a democracy, you and I will share the responsibility. No matter that our leaders are mentally deranged. Those us of who are not, still bear the same burden.

God help us.

Update.: I have called both of my Senators and my Representative. Neither Senator seems to have any interest in this issue (one "hadn't developed a response" as if responding to torture was difficult) and all the Representative's spokesperson wanted was my address so they could send me campaign literature. Crimminy!

Statistics, Cold Grey Statistics

From Juan Cole:

The United Nations, which has access to statistics from Iraqi morgues and the Ministery of Health, reported that 6,599 persons were killed in political violence in Iraq in July and August--a 13% increase over the previous two months.

Please note that this is over twice the number of people killed in the World Trade Center attack. Yet fearless leader wants to continue pouring lives and money into this infinitely sad place.

Can't resist this

Oliphant had this cartoon today:


Every time we try and go downtown these days we get blocked by the black SUV's of these idiots dining out. I guess they think that mixing with the proles is something the royalty should do, now and again. I wonder if they get all that protection after they are out of office (2 years max, just think about it).

I'm waiting for Dick "The Hunter" Cheney to blow somebody else's head off this year.

Dream Team

Just think what the world would be like if we had President Clinton and Vice President Gore?

Friends; what would we do without them?

Glenn Greenwald picked up on this but I found something more interesting than he:

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says
After Tip From Ally, U.S. Sent Muslim to Syria for Questioning
.....
Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found. (emphasis added)

Syria. Syria? Why I thought that:

Defiant Bush assails Iran, Syria at U.N
.....
Bush said Syria's leaders had made their country "a crossroads for terrorism" and told Syrians: "In your midst, Hamas and Hizbollah are working to destabilise the region, and your government is turning your country into a tool of Iran."

Tool of who?

You just can't make this shit up.

What a Yo Yo. A Dangerous Yo Yo

From here:

01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. (emphasis added)

That's this guy:

John Choon Yoo (born 1967), a professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall). A Korean-born American, he is best known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the United States Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

He contributed to the PATRIOT Act and wrote controversial memos in which he advocated the possible legality of torture and that enemy combatants could be denied protection under the Geneva Convention as a means of diminishing legal challenges regarding war crimes

I feel like I'm watching a grade B movie. You can't make shit like this up. This is the man who has set the moral tone for the Bush Administration.

Torture is morally wrong. Why is this such a difficult concept to get through the idiot brain of John Yoo and his enablers in the White House?

Answering a Critique

Recently I was taken to task by an occasional reader for being overly emotional about the Israeli excursion into Lebanon and its effect on children. The commentator felt that this resulted in a lack of critical thinking on my part. I’d like to respond to that accusation.

Of course I have no way of proving that my critical thinking has been clouded by my deep revulsion of the slaughter of innocents that occurred in Lebanon and continues to occur in Gaza and Iraq. Of course I am aware that the same slaughter has occurred throughout history, in particular in the Nazi concentration camps of WWII. But the slaughter in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza are different, for me, because they are either directly the result of intervention by the U.S., or have occurred with our acquiescence in the case of Israel. The hypocrisy of mourning the 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center from five years ago while not doing so for the 1,000 dead in Lebanon and the continuing carnage in Gaza has not escaped me. As for Iraq, the daily death toll is horrendous. As Juan Cole reports, the police found 48 bodies in Baghdad on Saturday. Many of these had been tortured and executed.

This just does not seem to phase us, even though we in the U.S. are ultimately responsible for this horror. When people die for useless reasons (not disease or old age), I get upset. When children die for useless reasons, I go ballistic. Call it emotional if you wish, but it is not acceptable.

It is not sufficient to say that these deaths were perpetrated by terrorists or radical extremists. It is certainly not sufficient to say that Hizbollah is responsible for the deaths of children because they provoked Israel to attack. THAT is a lack of critical thinking. I have no desire to rehash the stupidities that have gotten my country into the mess it is in the midEast. But we have made a big mess of Iraq, and our unalloyed support of Israel may yet lead to the ultimate disaster, nuclear weapon use either by Israel or ourselves in an attack on Iran. (Isn’t it interesting that the democratically elected head of Iraq, that we have bragged so much about, is now on intimate terms with the President of Iran and has also condemned Israel for its Lebanon attack. Isn’t it interesting that the is a Shiite.)

I felt, up until recently, that I belonged to a democracy. I also believed, since it was instilled into me from the cradle, that being an American meant that I was exceptional. That somehow we came equipped from birth with a set of morals that would always, through the democratic process, triumph over any temporary civil or political evil. You may castigate the youth of the 60’s and 70’s as hippies, radicals and druggies. They did get us out of the Vietnam War. And they got us out for the right reason: it was immoral. We took some hits in Vietnam, particularly our mind and body scarred Veterans. Those young men “born on the fourth of July” who still carry the mental weight of the jungle. (It would be another whole blurb on what the scars of Iraq may mean in the future, if we have a future.)

So, up until recently I felt that, even though I didn’t vote for the bastards that have created the quagmire of Iraq, I still held responsibility. As for the disaster that is Israel, I confess to cowardice in the face of the threat of the antiSemitism label. I have also worked at institutions and departments that were dominated by Jews and to speak one’s mind was to suffer marginalization at best and termination in the future. Israel is a foreign country and we should be allowed to criticize it for its errors just as we can criticize America. That’s what a democracy is all about. To fall into the trap of political correctness with respect to Zionism is the same as political correctness with respect to any other “ism.”

But now, all is different. We have a President that is out of control by the electorate. He is potting war against Iran, when only Congress can declare War. He desires to torture prisoners even though he denies that we do so. He holds prisoners in secret detention (14,000 by today’s account) in flagrant violation of the most basic of human rights. He does these things, impeachable in the old days, plus many, many more that rub against the grain of the majority of Americans. And he gets away with it.

So, pardon me if my posts on this blog offend your sensibilities. I have no intention of changing. That is the good thing about blogs, you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. There is no test in the morning.

All the News....

Astronauts allowed

extra hour of sleep

"We've been very, very busy so the chance to sleep in was very much appreciated," rookie astronaut Heidimarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said during a news conference from space.

Isn't that nice.

Meanwhile:

Spinach?

Can you believe it?

A Defining Moment for America
The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.

Do you believe that this is an editorial in the Washington Post? One of the most prestigious newspapers in the World. I mean, the President of the United State lobbying for torture!

At some point we have to agree that the man is losing his grip on reality. He must be removed from power. We can't wait two years. This leaves only one solution: Impeachment

God help us.