Outcry over ‘Pinky’ and ‘Yellowy’ (right).

Battle of Kabul delayed by US row with Pakistan: “A deepening diplomatic rift between Washington and Islamabad has threatened to weaken the American-led campaign against Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. American use of Pakistani military bases and airspace is in jeopardy after President Pervez Musharraf objected to any decisive US military support for the Northern Alliance, the rebel group preparing to strike at Kabul.”

And: Taliban troops prepare for underground fight : “Afghanistan’s leading cave-fighting veteran from its 1980s war with the Soviet Union has been appointed head of the Taliban army. The move raises the prospect of British and American soldiers having to fight in the country’s labyrinth of tunnels and mountain caverns if they mount an invasion to find Osama Bin Laden… Allied forces, however, are likely to be far better equipped than the Russians were to beat Haqani’s veterans.” Sunday Times of London

The making of a master criminal “An anguished John le Carré says we wasted our cold war victory and are now assisting our enemy.” I’ve been following le Carré for twenty years, reading everything of his I could get my hands on, ever since one of my psychiatric mentors, Leston Havens, mentioned that le Carré had the best characterizations he had ever read in fiction. Here’s how he nails bin Laden:

The stylised television footage and photographs of Bin Laden suggest a man of homoerotic narcissism, and maybe we can draw a grain of hope from that. Posing with a Kalashnikov, attending a wedding or consulting a sacred text, he radiates with every self-adoring gesture an actor’s awareness of the lens. He has height, beauty, grace, intelligence and magnetism, all great attributes unless you’re the world’s hottest fugitive and on the run, in which case they’re liabilities hard to disguise. But greater than all of them, to my jaded eye, is his barely containable male vanity, his appetite for self-drama and his closet passion for the limelight. And just possibly this trait will be his downfall, seducing him into a final dramatic act of self-destruction, produced, directed, scripted and acted to death by Osama Bin Laden himself.

Read the entire essay, both for his tortured message and his eloquence. He concludes:

…please, Mr Bush – on my knees, Mr Blair – keep God out of this. To imagine God fights wars is to credit Him with the worst follies of mankind. God, if we know anything about Him, which I don’t profess to, prefers effective food drops, dedicated medical teams, comfort and good tents for the homeless and bereaved, and, without strings, a decent acceptance of our past sins and a readiness to put them right. He prefers us less greedy, less arrogant, less evangelical, and less dismissive of life’s losers.

It’s not a new world order, not yet, and it’s not God’s war. It’s a horrible, necessary, humiliating police action to redress the failure of our intelligence services and our blind political stupidity in arming and exploiting Islamic fanatics to fight the Soviet invader, then abandoning them to a devastated, leaderless country. As a result, it’s our miserable duty to seek out and punish a bunch of modern-medieval religious zealots who will gain mythic stature from the very death we propose to dish out to them.

And when it’s over, it won’t be over. The shadowy armies of Bin Laden, in the emotional aftermath of his destruction, will gather numbers rather than wither away. So will the hinterland of silent sympathisers who provide them with logistical support. Cautiously, between the lines, we are being invited to believe that the conscience of the West has been reawakened to the dilemma of the poor and homeless of the earth. And possibly, out of fear, necessity and rhetoric, a new sort of political morality has indeed been born.

But when the shooting dies and a seeming peace is achieved, will the United States and its allies stay at their posts or, as happened at the end of the cold war, hang up their boots and go home to their own back yards? Even if those back yards will never again be the safe havens they once were. Sunday Times of London

5 More at Florida Office Test Positive for Anthrax, company officials said today, raising to eight the number of workers for the South Florida publishing company who have been exposed to the deadly bacteria.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

An esteemed reader fired back at me:

“Not a shred of supporting evidence for the Goff allegations. You truly believe that we allowed 4 planes to be hijacked and sent into the WTC and the Pentagon to get some oil and knew they were doing this and said nothing? Wow.”

My response:

“You have at times reacted to things I’ve posted in my blog as if you think I’m endorsing them. Please understand that the only thing I’m endorsing is that they’re interesting to read and think about. Although I clearly have my selective biases, I don’t want to be construed as trying to tell people 100% of the time what to believe. FmH is far from having a party line; I hope that’s clear. Please continue your skeptical barbs if you ever think otherwise.”

I knew the Goff piece would provoke some querulous responses; in some ways, he sounds like the zealous conspiracy theorist he doth protest too much that he is not. But read his message; I too have been troubled by the lack of accounting for the amount of time during which the authorities probably knew they were tracking four improbably simultaneous hijackings that morning, by Dubya’s apparent non-plussed response to learning of the attacks, and by the shifting halftruths the administration has been feeding us since. What do other readers think, either about Goff, or about the ‘party line’ at Follow Me Here? [I don’t agree with Fukuyama (below) either, by the way…His argument seemed little better than gussied-up jingoism in 1989, and nothing I’ve seen or heard since including this update changes that….]

Francis Fukuyama: ‘We remain at the end of history.’ ‘I remain right: modernity is a very powerful freight train that will not be derailed by recent events, however painful’.

A stream of commentators has been asserting that the tragedy of 11 September proves that I was utterly wrong to have said more than a decade ago that we had reached the end of history. The chorus began almost immediately, with George Will asserting that history had returned from vacation, and Fareed Zakaria declaring the end of the end of history.

It is, on the face of it, nonsensical and insulting to the memory of those who died on 11 September ? as well as to those who are now participating in military raids over Afghanistan ? to declare that this unprecedented attack did not rise to the level of a historical event. But the way in which I used the word “history” was different. It referred to the progress of mankind over the centuries toward modernity, which is characterised by institutions like liberal democracy and capitalism.

Independent UK

A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: A Philosopher Counts 18: “A Martian who knew some of our literature and religion but nothing about our bodies might be forgiven for thinking that people have seven fingers. Why else would they be so puzzlingly keen to make lists of seven items? We have — or had — seven deadly sins, Seven Wonders of the World, seven liberal arts, seven sages of Greece, seven virtues, seven sacraments and (if we are highly effective people) seven habits. The list of lists could go on and on, and most of the collections would be as arbitrary as these, er, seven.

The virtues, to be sure, almost didn’t make it. In Plato’s day, there were just four cardinal ones: justice, courage, prudence and temperance. But luckily Christianity came along and brought the total up to quota with a convenient trio of theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. Today, it seems, we are more demanding or ambitious. André Comte-Sponville counts no fewer than 18 in A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: the four cardinal virtues, one theological one (namely love, of which charity, in its Christian sense, is a variant), plus politeness, fidelity, generosity, compassion, mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness, good faith (by which he means respect for truth) and humor. Humor? For the author, this important virtue is the capacity that prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously — an unusual sentiment to find in a philosophy book.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

More Executions, Fewer Deaths? “A new study suggests that the death penalty deters many more murders than most people thought plausible. A death-penalty opponent analyzes the evidence.” Controversial findings of recent studies using a new “econometric” methodology have included not only that executions save, on average, eighteen lives apiece by their deterrent effect, but also the salubrious effects on the crime rate from carrying concealed weapons and from legalizing abortions. The researchers, the essay’s author explains, went through contortions to explain some counterintuitive findings of the study which, although I’m not qualified to assess econometric analysis, make me dubious overall about this methodology; has it been seized upon because its findings serve conservative purposes? (Do I doubt it because it does not serve my purposes [grin]?) Many compelling studies have established the lack of a deterrent effect by demonstrating that the presence or absence of capital punishment in a constituency fails to correlate with the murder rate, and that the rates of change of the murder rate fail to correlate with changes in death penalty status. It’s probably worth noting that, while the author is advertised as a death penalty opponent, it is on religious grounds which have little relationship to one’s attitude about deterrence. From American Outlook, magazine of the conservative Hudson Institute think tank.

The roots of conflict: “Is western culture better than any other? Umberto Eco argues that what is important is not superiority but pluralism and toleration.” Guardian UK

A thread on kuro5hin discusses what is deemed The Utter Failure of Weblogs as Journalism. I entirely agree. Weblogging is not journalism, and should not pretend to be. It utilizes some of the presentation skills but none of the information-gathering and -verification ones. Adding personal commentary, or ‘spin’ to the items noted, or even just the act of selection, juxtaposition (and selective omission!) without explicit comment, makes weblogging much more akin to personalized editorializing rather than reportage. Please, please, no one should use FmH as their primary news source!

Not in my name: Anti-war protesters rally in London 20,000 in a CND-led march against the military air strikes on Afghanistan. BBC

Someone on a mailing list I’m on mentioned Dr. Michael Osterholm, former state epidemiologist for Minnesota until Jesse Ventura arrived on the scene. Osterholm has written a well-received and terrifying book, Living Terrors: What America Needs to Know to Survive the Coming Bioterrorist Catastrophe, (the link points to a Nov. 2001 capsule review in The American Scientist; here’s a Google search to further references to the book) filled with scenarios which

“show how just one person, with a little training in microbiology, could bring on immense suffering. Chilling revelations from former Russian bioweapons researchers illustrate, all too clearly, the accessibility of anthrax, botulinum toxin and, most frightening of all, smallpox. These organisms can be stored in modified fountain pens, brought without incident through high-security checkpoints and cultivated into weapons of mass destruction with only mail-order lab equipment.”

Here‘s more on Osterholm, also from Google, for those who wish to pursue this further. He now heads a consulting group called ican Inc. (Infection Control Advisory Network), and although his medical politics seem to be progressive (from what I’ve read; his resignation from the Ventura administration reportedly revolved around his opposition to privatization of public health services), he appears to be connected — at least in that he is featured as one of their notable quotes — to the Journal of Homeland Security, which is published by a retired US Air Force colonel and seems to have a strong rightwing bias in the direction of military involvement in domestic civil control. [Might it even have been an influence in Dubya’s nomenclature for his new cabinet post?] The webpage of the Journal’s parent agency, the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, run by the same retired USAF colonel, has links to suggested readings, federal organizations connected with domestic security issues, a virtual library, and outside links, among others.

Here‘s a link to a description of Dark Winter, a wargame exercise they co-led recently whose scenario involves a smallpox attack on the U.S.

One dimension of the public health response to a bioterrorist attack would be the question of who would be in charge. Writing in one of a series of articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by members of the Working Group for Civilian Biodefense, a group of experts representing research, government, military, public health, and emergency management institutions and agencies (which includes Osterholm), Dr Thomas Cole warns:

Until recently… lawmakers never examined the legal authority for a response to bioterrorism. When the authors of the US Constitution were reserving public health powers to the states, all epidemics were local. Today, he said, “laws are so antiquated and unclear that no one even knows what our powers and duties are.” For example, said Gostin, it isn’t clear whether any legal authority has the power to force people to be vaccinated, treated, quarantined, or isolated. It isn’t clear whether hospitals can be confiscated, or doctors can be compelled to triage and treat patients.

I was pointed by Also Not Found in Nature to this discussion by Stan Goff, a former Special Forces operative and instructor in military science and tactics, of why we should not believe the official version of the events of Sept. 11th and their aftermath. “…the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept its

underlying premises… Those premises are twofold. One, there is the premise that what

this de facto administration is doing now is a ?response? to September

11th. Two, there is the premise that this attack on the World Trade Center

and the Pentagon was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion,

neither of these is sound.” It’s the oil, stupid, he says, and suggests that the Bush cabinet, which looks to him like a “military general staff”, has had designs on Afghanistan for a long time. bin Laden is a trumped-up villain. The gov’t had foreknowlege of the attack that was criminally covered up. The administration was facing a confluence of crises from which they were temporarily rescued by this event. The increased domestic repression that will arise from the crisis serve the powers-that-be well as they face “the beginning of a

permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production, the

beginning of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the unraveling of the empire.”

The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror — ‘ “Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is

just a violent cult leader,” said Michael Doran, a

professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. “But the truth is that he is tapping into a minority

Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history.”

Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion that their faith is being used to justify terrorism, Mr. bin

Laden’s advocacy of jihad, or holy war, against the West is a natural extension of what some radical

Islamists have been saying and doing since the 1930’s. These radicals were jailed, tortured and often

executed in their home countries, particularly in Egypt during the 1950’s and 60’s, for their attacks on

Western influences and their efforts to replace their own regime with an Islamic state.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

U.S. Has Received Additional Credible Threats of Attacks. New information amplifies on the sense of imminent threat the gov’t had announced earlier this week, and points to a possible attack by Sunday. But the euphemistic “senior gov’t officials” report that the information on which they base this assessment is “an accumulation of tidbits”, and frustratingly fragmentary. The Sears Tower in Chicago, Disneyland and Disney World are all mentioned but other sources downplay the information. They take pains to say, also, that there is no data linking the anthrax cases to the terrorist threat. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

The Times itself has editorialized that it is unlikely terrorists would target the supermarket tabloids. But William Powers, for one, finds it more plausible. They are both pillars of American morality and symbols of its frivolous excesses, he says. National Journal [via Romanesko]

My sense is that, if they are saying there are credible immediate threats, it is axiomatic that they know more than they are willing to tell us — cf. the delay in making news of the NBC anthrax case public — which makes sense from the point of view of the devil you know being worse than the devil you don’t (don’t let the terrorists know you’re on to their planned targetting, so they don’t change on you). The administration hasn’t found a safe path through the minefield between telling us too much and too little. There may not be a unified policy on this account either, as leaks — e.g. the unnamed sources who seem to be keeping the Times informed — would seem to indicate. Although the leaks don’t tell us much either…

Here’s a vignette from life during wartime. The Times has another headline today that filled me with a mixture of hope and curiosity, White House Said to Have Plan to Cover New Attacks. Looking at the article, however, I deflated when I realized they were only talking about insurance coverage.

‘Germs’: The Troubling Story of Biological Weapons. The New York Times reviews this book co-authored by its reporter Judith Miller, whose receipt yesterday of a mysterious powder-containing letter was responsible for the closure of the newspaper’s building in Times Square.

“In the case of the United States, the nation no longer stands for the enlightenment tradition, but rather for military-political hegemony and the total commodification of life.” Waiting for the barbarians A once-great empire, Rome fell into catastrophic cultural and economic decline. Morris Berman, author of The Twilight of American Culture, notes parallels with modern America:

“(In my book, I wrote that) (t)he contemporary American situation could be compared to that of Rome in the Late Empire period, and the factors involved in the process of decline in each case are pretty much the same: a steadily widening gap between rich and poor; declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organisational solutions to socioeconomic problems (in the US, dwindling funds for social security and medicare); rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness; and what might be called “spiritual death”: apathy, cynicism, political corruption, loss of public spirit, and the repackaging of cultural content (eg “democracy”) as slogans and formulas.

What I overlooked, however, was perhaps the most obvious point of comparison; obvious, at least, with the benefit of hindsight. This is the factor of external barbarism, destruction from without. The events of September 11 brought that possibility home, in stark relief.” Guardian UK [thanks, David!]