One of my cold war heroes is gone. R.I.P Paul Warnke ‘…who has died aged 81, was a Cold War arms negotiator and, as President Jimmy Carter’s director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, among the first government figures in America to support reductions in nuclear arsenals.
He was well known as a “dove” before he joined Carter’s administration.’ Telegraph UK [via dangerousmeta]
Bill Moyers:
This Isn’t the Speech I Expected to Give Today:
‘…(T)his is their game. They’re counting on your patriotism to distract you from their plunder. They’re counting on you to be standing at attention with your hand over your heart, pledging allegiance to the flag, while they pick your pocket!
Let’s face it: they present citizens with no options but to climb back in the ring. We are in what educators call “a teachable moment.” And we’ll lose it if we roll over and shut up. What’s at stake is democracy. Democracy wasn’t cancelled on the 11th of September, but democracy won’t survive if citizens turn into lemmings. Yes, the President is our Commander-in-chief, and in hunting down and destroying the terrorists who are trying to destroy us, we are “all the President’s men”-as Henry Kissinger put it after the bombing of Cambodia. But we are not the President’s minions. If in the name of the war on terrorism President Bush hands the state over to the energy industry, it’s every patriot’s duty to join the local opposition. Even in war, politics is about who gets what and who doesn’t. If the mercenaries in Washington try to exploit the emergency and America’s good faith to grab what they wouldn’t get through open debate in peace time, the disloyalty will not be in our dissent but in our subservience. The greatest sedition would be our silence.’
Read the whole thing. [via CommonDreams]
“The universe wants to play. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed & choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity–those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance at divinity–those who mold themselves blind masks of Ideas & thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead men’s eyes.”
— Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone
US mum over performance of combat UAVs — “The United States has acknowledged the first deployment of its new combat unmanned air vehicles.
But neither Pentagon officials nor military commanders will assess the performance of the UAVs during the current offensive in Afghanistan.”
Take the bin Laden Halloween mask off the anthrax threat Boston Phoenix
Missing Person: Where’s Dubya when it comes to addressing the nation about the anthrax threat?
Compare what Bush has been talking about over the last few days to what everyone else has. Last Thursday a State Department employee contracted inhalation anthrax, and deadly spores were found at the CIA and the Supreme Court, where all nine Justices have been put on doxycycline and sent to deliberate across town. That day, Bush spoke at an elementary school, where he urged students to make pen pals with their counterparts in Arab countries. (Remarkably, Bush’s one new initiative in the midst of the anthrax mailings will assure that the country is flooded with letters from the Middle East addressed in children’s handwriting.)…
Clinton aides used to wake up in the morning thinking of how to inject the president into whatever the country was talking about. The more disciplined (or rigid) Bush team, by contrast, figures out in advance what the president should be talking about, and doesn’t let intervening events get in the way. Problem is, at a time of overwhelmingly bad news, they’ve decided he’s a good-news guy. The New Republic
Flight 93 shot down? ‘Recent news sources have reconfirmed the possibility that the hijackers of Flight 93 intended to ram the plane into the Three Mile Island nuclear facility, a mere 15 minutes from the crash site, and that instead of plummeting into the ground on its own, Flight 93 was actually shot out of the air by U.S. fighter jets.
As the Sunday Times of London reported on October 21, 2001:
“[Flight 93] then made a series of sharp turns before going into a steep descent. Aviation experts say that at this point there were three nuclear power stations between the plane and Washington and directly in its line of flight: Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom and Hope Creek.”
“Investigators cannot understand why the plane would have descended so early, unless its intended target was much nearer than Washington. The descent could have been an error by one of the hijackers, but if so, they cannot understand why the plane did not then climb again once control was regained.” ‘ Much circumstantial evidence is listed — jets were known to have been scrambled that morning; Pennsylvania witnesses reported fighters nearby and there is a report that air traffic controllers noted multiple blips on their screens; one passenger calling from the flight reportedly noted an explosion before the plane went down; the debris field was quite wide, suggesting a midair breakup… Seattle Independent Media Center
“It will be a cold day in hell before I vote for anything he’s sponsoring. He has lost any credibility in the House that he ever had.” House GOP says McCain will pay for ‘humor’: ‘Angered by Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) gibes at the House, some House Republicans warned last week that they will never again support his proposals…
House members’ ire was triggered by McCain’s recent appearance on the David Letterman show when he ridiculed House members as “real profiles in courage” and folks who “head for the hills” after the House shut down because of the anthrax scare while the Senate stayed in session.’ The Hill
Minor Annoyances and What They Teach Us — this is the article Phil Agre had just written when the terrorist attacks occurred. He shelved it then as trivial, in the scheme of things, but he of all people is entitled to decide that we can afford to return to petty annoyances as well as the big ones already. Here’s the ‘table of contents’ of his rant; I’m sure some of these will leave you shouting “Yes!” or at least swearing under your breath:
Part I. Dysfunctional Institutions
(1) U2
(2) Starbucks
(3) The “New Report Out Today” That Isn’t On the Web
(4) Untraceable Spam
(5) Cell Phone Companies’ Service “Plans”
(6) Ritual Humiliation of People Who Ask Questions at Public Talks
Part II. Abuses of Language
(7) Business Jargon in Government
(8) Trend-Mongering
(9) The Language of the Staff in Computer Stores
(10) Op-Ed Columns That Make No Sense
(11) Left-Wing Discouragement and Disempowerment
(12) “Generation X”
(13) Subscribers Who Irrationally Flame Me Out of Nowhere
(14) People Who Write Me Snippy Little Notes Saying “Unsubscribe”
Part III. Cliches
(15) The Fake Little Laugh That Screams “Bad Acting”
(16) The Word “Aggressive” Used As If It Were a Good Thing
(17) Anything Called “The Insider’s Guide”
(18) Being Told “I’m Sorry You’re Having Problems”
(19) The “Thoughtful Executive” Cliche in Business Ads
(20) Stereotyped Rhetorical Questions in PR Jargon
(21) Advertisements That Say “Over 43” When They Mean “44”
(22) Meaningless Technical Phrases on Consumer Electronics Gear
(23) “We’re Being Asked to Do More With Less”
Part IV. Bad Design
(24) Bad Information Design in Scholarly Books
(25) Computers That Can’t Learn What Needs to Be Swapped In
(26) Dryers in Commercial Laundromats
(27) Useless Rubber Buttons on Remote Controls
(28) Air Intake Vents Next to the Loading Dock
(29) Hotel Minibars
(30) Value-Added Marketing
Pakistan panics over threat to arsenal: ‘Fears of fundamentalist upheaval in Pakistan have aroused concerns in Washington that part or all of Islamabad’s arsenal of nuclear weapons may have to be moved to China for safekeeping from foreign attack.
Pakistan’s military establishment was said last week to have been shaken by reports that America, India or Israel might be planning pre-emptive strikes on nuclear sites to prevent weapons falling into fundamentalist hands. “The generals are panic-stricken,” said one Pakistani source.’ Sunday Times of London
Revealed: the bloody pages of Al-Qaeda’s killing manual — “A unique manual for Islamic terrorists, detailing every aspect of how to fight a guerrilla war, from biochemical attacks to finding the fatal pressure point during hand-to-hand combat, has been obtained by western intelligence agencies.
…
Filling 11 volumes and circulated both in book form and on CD-Rom to terrorist instructors, it offers guidance on how to inject frozen food with biochemical agents to create mass panic, rig up a door lock to explode when the handle is turned, and bring down a plane with a missile.” Sunday Times of London
Labour uses twin towers ad to boost tourism: ‘Two Labour ministers in the Scottish executive have been called “ludicrously insensitive” by relatives of British victims of the World Trade Center attack after launching a tourism promotion campaign with pictures of the atrocity beside the word “opportunities” .’ Sunday Times of London
The Victim may hold vital anthrax clue: ‘The death from inhalation anthrax of a Vietnamese hospital worker in New York last week has given American investigators what they believe may be the first important clue to catching the bioterrorists responsible, writes Sarah Baxter.
Because Kathy Nguyen, 61, the fourth American to die in a month of the disease, is believed to have received no letter containing anthrax, nor had any contact with other targets, the FBI is trying to establish whether she may have come into direct contact with the killers.’ Sunday Times of London
“The Central
Intelligence Agency’s clandestine New
York station was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack
on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting
United States intelligence operations while
bringing the war on terrorism dangerously close
to home for America’s spy agency, government
officials say.
…Immediately after the attack, the C.I.A. dispatched a special team to scour the rubble in search of secret
documents and intelligence reports that had been stored in the New York station, either on paper or in
computers, officials said. It could not be learned whether the agency was successful in retrieving its
classified records from the wreckage.
…The C.I.A.’s plans for finding a new permanent station in New York could not be
determined.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
And an editorial: ‘As much as the nation may yearn
for a crack intelligence service that can save the day, there is no such outfit
in Washington at present.
But there could be someday, if the White House and Congress are
prepared to address some longstanding structural and operational
problems that have hobbled the C.I.A. and its fellow intelligence services.’
An Intelligence Giant in the Making
Overshadowed by the public focus on new Internet surveillance and “roving wiretaps” were numerous obscure features in the bill that will enable the Bush administration to make fundamental changes at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and several Treasury Department law enforcement agencies.
Known as the U.S.A. Patriot Act, the law empowers the government to shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence. In addition, the Treasury Department has been charged with building a financial intelligence-gathering system whose data can be accessed by the CIA.
Most significantly, the CIA will have the authority for the first time to influence FBI surveillance operations inside the United States and to obtain evidence gathered by federal grand juries and criminal wiretaps. Washington Post
The central role of the parietal lobes in consciousness
There are now various approaches to understand where and how in the brain consciousness arises from neural activity, none of which is universally accepted. Difficulties among these approaches are reviewed, and a missing ingredient is proposed here to help adjudicate between them, that of “perspectivalness.” In addition to a suitable temporal duration and information content of the relevant bound brain activity, this extra component is posited as being a further important ingredient for the creation of consciousness from neural activity. It guides the development of what is termed the “Central Representation,” which is supposed to be present in all mammals and extended in humans to support self-consciousness as well as phenomenal consciousness. Experimental evidence and a theoretical framework for the existence of the central representation are presented, which relates the extra component to specific buffer working memory sites in the inferior parietal lobes, acting as attentional coordinators on the spatial maps making up the central representation. Consciousness and Cognition
A Deliberate Strategy of Disruption, “… a campaign of detentions on a scale not seen since World War II. As investigators race to comprehend the ongoing terrorist threat, the government has adopted a deliberate strategy of disruption — locking up large numbers of Middle Eastern men, using whatever legal tools they can.
The operation is being conducted under great secrecy, with defense attorneys at times forbidden to remove documents from court and a federal gag order preventing officials from discussing the detainees. Law enforcement officials have refused to identify lawyers representing people who have been detained or to describe the most basic features of the operation.”
A Washington Post analysis of the 235 cases they have been able to identify shows it “appears to be less an investigative search for accomplices to the Sept. 11 attacks than a large-scale preventive operation aimed at disrupting future terrorism.
That is evident, in part, from the fact that none of the detainees has been charged in the plot or with other acts of terrorism. In addition, the pace of detentions has accelerated visibly as government officials have received information about new threats and issued public warnings — spiking sharply, for example, after rumors of planned attacks Sept. 22.”
Coming Soon: Harry Potter and Hollywood’s Cash Cow: ‘On the one hand, the company wants to draw as much profit as
possible from J. K. Rowling’s mega-best-selling stories and lay
down a franchise for future movies and products that will feed
corporate coffers for a decade. But on the other, it worries about
tainting the golden glow that surrounds the floppy-haired little
wizard with too much hype and commercialism, alienating his
fanatical fans.’ I’ve previously written about the controversy about Warner Bros.’ giving Coke sponsorship rights, mentioned here. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
Who reports to the Office of Homeland Security? One truly mind-boggling organizational chart related to this article. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
G.O.P. Not Relying on Aid From Bush in ’02 Elections. ‘Despite President Bush’s
colossal job approval ratings, many Republicans who are
running in the midterm elections next year say they do not expect
him, even if he remains enormously popular, to help their own
campaigns.
If anything, some Republican lawmakers and strategists fear that
the war and Mr. Bush’s desire to appear bipartisan could prevent
him from doing much to benefit them next year. And they are
worried that the sagging economy — underscored by the surge
in unemployment announced this week — could eclipse the war
as a political issue and that voters could blame the Republicans.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
Oh, what a ‘wobbly’ war — “On Sunday 28 October, the UK Observer’s front-page
headline announced ‘Blair rallies Britain as war nerves fray’.
On Monday 29 October, The Times (London) led with ‘Don’t
wobble, warns Blair’. On Tuesday 30 October, the Sun
splashed with ‘Cobblers to the wobblers: Blair’s rallying cry
to halt war doubts’. ” spiked
United States: all-powerful but powerless: ‘…Bush and his retainers want to fight nations; they don’t understand
21st century threats. The US has now demanded that all nations decide if
they are “with us or against us”. And Bush is getting the funding and
authority from Congress to spend ever more on military and spy
superstructure; US civil liberties will be curtailed; Bush will change our
lives to pursue an enemy he can’t find. Bin Laden should be pursued, as
should his collaborators and protectors. But the real target of our energy
should be to change the underlying conditions; to get smart, be modern.
The cold war is over.
The costs of not realising that will rise until the US comes to terms with
the new reality.’ Le Monde Diplomatique Essentially, the argument is that the US is stuck in an outmoded empire-maintenance mode. In contrast, Oxford historian Neil Ferguson argues in the Guardian that “the US must make the transition from informal to formal empire… Indeed the best way to understand this is not as Islam or fascism, but as Islamo-Bolshevism. What it represents is a challenge to a particular kind of power, namely the informal imperialism that the US has preferred to rely on since 1945… There is no excuse for the relative weakness of the US as a quasi-imperial power. The transition to formal empire from informal empire is an affordable one. But it does not come very naturally to the US – partly because of its history and partly because of Vietnam – to act as a self-confident imperial power. The US has the resources: but does it have the guts to act as a global hegemon and make the world a more stable place?”
“The Central
Intelligence Agency’s clandestine New
York station was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack
on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting
United States intelligence operations while
bringing the war on terrorism dangerously close
to home for America’s spy agency, government
officials say.
…Immediately after the attack, the C.I.A. dispatched a special team to scour the rubble in search of secret
documents and intelligence reports that had been stored in the New York station, either on paper or in
computers, officials said. It could not be learned whether the agency was successful in retrieving its
classified records from the wreckage.
…The C.I.A.’s plans for finding a new permanent station in New York could not be
determined.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]
And an editorial: ‘As much as the nation may yearn
for a crack intelligence service that can save the day, there is no such outfit
in Washington at present.
But there could be someday, if the White House and Congress are
prepared to address some longstanding structural and operational
problems that have hobbled the C.I.A. and its fellow intelligence services.’
