God help Iraq, the world, our American souls. The antiwar movement faces the beginning, not the end, of domestic outrage and resistance to this abhorrent obscenity. Peace activists persevere as war begins:

• Protests sweep across the world and the United States;
• top
  
  10 ways to protest the war;
  
• “there is a roar of protest around the world that is rising in
  
  volume even now.” AlterNet
  
• 
  “Hours before the bombing began, the founder of Voices in the Wilderness
  
  wrote from Baghdad of the soul-sickness that plagues those forced to fight
  
  wars dreamt up in antiseptic think tanks“. — Kathy Kelly, Alternet.
  

• Peaceful Regime Change in 2004: “Instead of feeling comforted by America’s military posturing, many of us
  
  feel neither safe nor free. It’s time to retake, and remake, American
  
  democracy. — Farai Chideya, AlterNet.
  

• “Though most blacks are against the war, for a variety of reasons you won’t
  
  see many of them taking to the streets in protest.” — Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet.
  

• 
  “Today I Weep For My Country”, says Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) . From the Senate floor Wednesday, he asks, “Why can this
  
  President not seem to see that America’s true power lies not in its will
  
  to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?”.

• Although there have been rumors that the Pope has thrown his support behind the US effort (probably spawned by US disinfo sources), I find more credible the reports that he has been making impassioned pleas that the US and its ‘coalition of those who can’t afford to say no’ cease and desist. “The pope lost his temper with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi in recent discussions at the Vatican on a possible war in Iraq, a newspaper reported. ‘John Paul II used words and gestures bordering on a diplomatic incident,’ in his audience with Blair on Feb. 22, the daily said.” ArabNews.

• Casualties of War — First Truth, Then Conscience: “In the domestic media siege being maintained by top-notch spinners and
  
  shrewd political advisers at the White House, conscience is in the cross
  
  hairs.” — Norman Solomon, AlterNet.
  

• Why We Are Taking to the Streets: “A moral and pragmatic explanation for the mass civil disobedience now
  
  taking place in cities across the country.” — Father Louis Vitale and Sister Bernie Galvin, Direct Action to Stop the War
  

• 
  Face the Nation and Dick Cheney: “US anti-war demonstrators are invisible to the U.S. government.” — Ronda Hauben, Telepolis

Searchers seeking debris from the space shuttle Columbia have found a data recorder that captures information from dozens of sensor locations, a spokeswoman for the investigators said this evening, raising hope that investigators will soon have a new trove of data to aid their work.

The recorder was found near Hemphill, Tex., intact and dry, although it may have suffered some heat damage… NY Times

Will ignoring race impede progress in medicine, or is it a scientifically specious notion?“A view widespread among many social scientists, endorsed in official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association, is that race is not a valid biological concept. But biologists, particularly the population geneticists who study genetic variation, have found that there is a structure in the human population. The structure is a family tree showing separate branches for Africans, Caucasians (Europe, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent), East Asians, Pacific Islanders and American Indians.

Biologists, too, have often been reluctant to use the term “race.” But this taboo was broken last year by Dr. Neil Risch, a leading population geneticist at Stanford University.

Vexed by an editorial in The New England Journal that declared that race was “biologically meaningless,” Dr. Risch argued in the electronic journal Genome Biology that self-identified race was useful in understanding ethnic differences in disease and in the response to drugs.

Race corresponded broadly to continental ancestry and hence to the branches on the human family tree described by geneticists, he said.” NY Times

“The US government put together <a href=”http://www.ready.gov/

“>a website to prepare people in case of an attack on the country. However, the graphics they use are pretty ambiguous, and don’t really make a lot of sense on their own, so caption some!!” [thanks, Jim!] ROFL, really ROFL!

Asylum for Bush [via wood s lot]

Now it’s official: most Americans are idiots.

So why do these pinheads think such a thing? —Ted Rall, Yahoo! op-ed

Lisa Walsh Thomas: “She’s the nightmare that’s been clawing at your sleep lately, George W, and she’s … coming to get you!

(…)You can stop her for awhile with 800 missiles and a couple of MOABs, and you can stop her again with nuclear weapons that can turn a Garden of Eden into hell, and you can poison her and her family and her neighbors with your own endless and illegal chemical weapons. You can tear out her tongue and rape and pillage and steal everything she holds dear. You can tear her country wide apart and bury thousands in each explosion that rips through her heart.

But you cannot kill her.” America Held Hostile

The constitutional challenge to the Texas “homosexual conduct” law that the Supreme Court will take up next week has galvanized not only traditional gay rights and civil rights organizations, but also libertarian groups that see the case as a chance to deliver their own message to the justices.

The message is one of freedom from government control over private choices, economic as well as sexual. NY Times

Although planning is better than it was a year ago, when few crisis managers even realized that children had different needs, the experts said, actual preparedness is hardly better than it was before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Pediatric doses of medicines to counter nerve gas, anthrax or a dirty bomb’s radiation are not even standardized yet, much less distributed. Paramedics who could be called to a gassed school or a bombed bus do not routinely receive specialized training in things like finding smaller veins or using smaller tracheotomy tubes in children thrashing around in fear or in steeling themselves against the shock of having to treat a room full of dying children. NY Times

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning

to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door”…
…And I throw away the key.

Human rights and immigrant advocates Tuesday condemned a new policy from the Department of Homeland Security that calls for extended detention of individuals from mainly Muslim countries who are seeking political asylum in the United States.

Amnesty International called the policy “Orwellian.”

The detention order is part of Operation Liberty Shield, a series of domestic security measures announced Monday by the Department of Homeland Security intended to make it harder for terrorists to strike here in reprisal for any U.S. attack on Iraq. LA Times

Thinking about the terror that Bush Jr. is about to unleash on the world tonight and the doomsday scenarios that may follow, I wondered — don’t laugh — whether the cautionary capacity to envision a radically different world, either post-apocalyptic or at least post-American, that seems so lacking in current strategic planning might bear some relationship to early exposure to speculative fiction. A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, Neville Shute’s On the Beach, Brave New World and 1984 of course, Asimov’s Foundation and, decades later, Delaney, Brunner, Zelazny are some of the formative things that come to mind for me. I’m sure you have your own list…

I’m pretty sure that Bush, since his intellectual limitations begin with — although are probably not limited to — dyslexia, never read any science fiction, but might we correlate the nature of the global vision of other U.S. Presidents or world leaders to their embrace of literature considering alternative futures? Does any reader have a clue about which 20th century Presidents might have read science fiction and related genres, if any? (It might be broadly inimical to choosing a career in politics and, arguably, American foreign policy decision making is largely not shaped by global vision at all…) Who might have had a close relationship with a science fiction writer, if any? (I know the reactionary Jerry Pournelle fancies himself a Presidential advisor, I mean other than him…)

For that matter, which American presidents or world leaders were shaped by serious literary pursuits, which might be expected to bear some relationship with ‘thinking outisde the box’, at all? Which did more than lip service to the influence of poetry?

Window Lights for Peace: “Around the world, thousands of us are putting lights in our windows to keep the light of reason and hope burning, to let others know that they are not alone, and to show the way home to the young men and women who are on their way to Iraq. Join us in sending this message of hope and peace by signing below…”

“The Bush administration and lawmakers have not followed through on their own concerns that terrorists could turn the nation’s chemical plants into weapons of mass destruction, congressional auditors said Tuesday.

Congress and the administration concluded after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that the plants were vulnerable, and the CIA warned a year ago of the potential for an al-Qaida attack on U.S. chemical facilities.” Nando Times

“International aid groups urged the United States and Britain on Tuesday to put the well-being of Iraqi civilians at the center of war plans, calling on them to avoid attacks on key civilian facilities like power plants.

Amnesty International and Oxfam also said the United Nations should enter Iraq as quickly as possible after a war to administer humanitarian aid and run a post-Saddam Hussein government.” Nando Times

The Iraq Body Count Project –  “This is a Human Security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003. Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available on this page and on various IBC counters which may be freely displayed on any website, where they will be automatically updated without further intervention. Casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.” [more]

Act Now As If The Future Depended On It: “In response to Bush’s ultimatum, Not in Our Name calls on everyone to begin massive opposition now to this war. We cannot go about our daily business as usual while bombs designed to flatten Baghdad and “shock and awe” the world into submission to U.S. might are loaded into planes. This war will be an outrageous crime against the people of Iraq and a blow to the very humanity of people the world over. We can’t wait for the bombs to fall.”

No Business As Usual When They Start Their War: “When we hear of massive bombing of Iraq, we must respond to this with massive resistance. There can be no business as usual that day. Don’t go to work, or to school. Don’t stay at home in your living room, watching this massacre unfold on TV. Plan convergence points in every city and community for that day now and spread the word. Gather in the day and manifest your resistance into the night. Hook up now with others in your city and make plans. Keep checking www.notinourname.net for updates.”

From Dave Farber’s IP mailing list:

If you have RealPlayer [and a broadband connection, I might add — FmH], this is worth a listen. It’s Robin Cook’s 11 1/2

minute speech today resigning from the government over the Iraq War. It is

measured, and eloquent, and reminds us again of why England’s is “the Mother

of Parliaments.”

In all the hours we have watched C-Span over the last two years it would be

comforting if one person, either for or against this war, had spoken so

eloquently. Regardless of how you feel about the coming conflict, this is

A-1 political theater.

“

A host of recent actions by government agencies, school boards and other

institutions attempts to limit what we read, see and hear — sometimes

with

debilitating effects.” — Kari Lydersen, AlterNet

My rant about Camille Paglia’s take on the Sixties (below) reminded a reader of the following, buried in a New Yorker review of To the Finland Station:

“When you undertake historical research, two truths that sounded banal come to seem profound. The first is that your knowledge of the past—apart from, occasionally, a limited visual record and the odd unreliable survivor—comes entirely from written documents. You are almost completely cut off, by a wall of print, from the life you have set out to represent. You can’t observe historical events; you can’t question historical actors; you can’t even know most of what has not been written about. What has been written about therefore takes on an importance that may be spurious. A few lines in a memoir, a snatch of recorded conversation, a letter fortuitously preserved, an event noted in a diary: all become luminous with significance—even though they are merely the bits that have floated to the surface. The historian clings to them, while, somewhere below, the huge submerged wreck of the past sinks silently out of sight.

The second realization that strikes you is, in a way, the opposite of the first: the more material you dredge up, the more elusive the subject becomes.” [thanks, walker]

A passel of interesting and/or important items in recent days:

Camille Paglia: Religious Vision in the American 1960s —

“Commentary on the 1960s has been massive. Law and politics in that turbulent decade are well documented but remain controversial, and the same thing can be said of contemporary innovations in mass media and the arts. One major area remains ambiguous or poorly assimilated, however—the new religious vision, which for a tantalizing moment in the American sixties brought East and West together in a progressive cultural synthesis. Its promise was never completely fulfilled, for reasons I will try to sketch here. But the depth and authenticity of that spiritual shift need to be more widely acknowledged.

(…)Not since early nineteenth-century Romanticism had there been such a strange mix of revolutionary politics with ecstatic nature-worship and sex-charged self-transformation. It is precisely this phantasmagoric religious vision that distinguishes the New Left of the American 1960s from the Old Left of the American 1930s and from France’s failed leftist insurgency of 1968, both of which were conventionally Marxist in their indifference or antagonism to religion.” Arion

Paglia has a noble intent here which quickly turns misguided in some shockingly conventional, and insufficiently examined, assumptions in her next paragraphs —

• “Despite their ambivalence toward authority, however, they often sought gurus;”
  
• “One problem was that the more the mind was opened to what was commonly called ‘cosmic consciousness’, the less meaningful politics or social structure became;”
  
• “Drugs remade the Western world-view by shattering conventions of time, space, and personal identity. Unfortunately, revelation was sometimes indistinguishable from delusion;”
  
• “The neurological risks of long-term drug use were denied or underestimated: the most daring sixties questers lost the ability to articulate and transmit their spiritual legacy to posterity.”
  

What she misses in these jabs is that the ideal (even if it fell short in the reality in many instances) of the spiritual authority to which ’60’s seekers submitted themselves is different in essential fashions from the conventional moral and political authority being rejected; part of the difference being, of course, the discipline of voluntary submission and part the spiritual and moral accomplishment of the spiritual leader. Reams have been written by elegant thinkers — in the ’60’s, before, and since — reconciling social activism and spiritual striving, even —especially — in the Eastern traditions supposedly fatalistic about the inevitability of suffering. Someone blithely dismissing revelation and delusion as indistinguishable knows nothing about either, and someone blithely positing the inevitability of neurological damage from “long-term drug use” knows nothing about the distinctions among approaches to mind-altering drugs. There’s an old saying that anyone who remembers the ’60’s couldn’t have been there. Paglia clearly wasn’t there, and clearly misremembers, smugly and badly.

Typically, her vision deteriorates further into a smear campaign with the obligatory references to Charlie Manson, the fact that Leary and Alpert were dismissed from the Harvard faculty, the People’s Temple, the SLA’s kidnapping of Patty Hearst, Altamont, and Weatherman bombings, as if these were the only legacies of the era. And, of course, because ‘cults’ were a feature of the ’60’s, the ‘cult’-based tragedies of the ’90’s, like that of the Branch Davidians, are attributable to ’60’s values as well. Oh, and the “free love” ethos is responsible for the AIDS epidemic.

Paglia also makes the amazing assertion that “(t)he major Asian cult of the sixties was Transcendental Meditation, founded in India as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,” again proving she wasn’t there. TM was the Starbucks of meditation organizations, then and now.

I could go on. Paglia’s interests are erudite namedropping — she certainly mentions most of the pertinent trends and phenomena — and pseudo-profound analysis placing them in historical context — more namedropping. Making sense of it? That’s another matter. From her pitifully limited academic perch, she criticizes Sixties thinkers for not making contributions to academic cultural criticism, never considering the legitimacy of their position that that endeavor might be morally and spiritually bankrupt. Thinking of all Sixties seekers as cut from whole cloth, she is able to pontificate that “(t)he gap in the sixties’ artistic and intellectual legacy partly occurred because too many young people followed their elementary understanding of Asian religion by making sensory experience primary.” Every historical movement has produced a popularized, intellectually lightweight version for the masses emphasizing the superficial and appealing to the hedonistic urges, but that does not characterize the entire movement. Paglia, who should know better than to enact the fallacy of taking the part for the whole, just doesn’t know where to find the serious seekers and their legacy.

“Health experts believe a deadly flu-like illness that has killed nine people is likely a virus. They’re also encouraged that some victims seem to be recovering.” Wired News

SARS does not respond to antibiotics, and white blood cell counts drop in infected individuals, rather than rising as is typically seen in a bacterial infection.

A New York Times overview of where we stand on the threshold of the war, and how we got here.

“Victory in Iraq won’t end the world’s distrust of the United States, because the Bush administration has made it clear that it doesn’t play by the rules.” — Paul Krugman, NY Times op-ed

Related: War in the Ruins of Diplomacy: “This war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington’s worst in at least a generation.” NY Times editorial

Joe Conason: “Dick Cheney performs right off a John Birch Society script.”

Today’s lead story in the Wall Street Journal confirms what many observers have suspected for months now: The Bush administration has never taken the diplomatic alternative seriously, and the pretense of doing so has been scripted by the vice president from the beginning. The former Wyoming congressman is an unreconstructed, old-fashioned right-winger with about as little respect for multilateral organizations and alliances as that old John Birch Society bumper sticker, circa 1962: “Get the U.S. Out of the U.N.”

Cheney articulated this viewpoint with startling candor yesterday to NBC News’ Tim Russert, who asked about former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft’s publicly articulated concern about the costs of perceived U.S. unilateralism and arrogance.

Salon

from Peace Action

One click urges your member of Congress to cosponsor and support Reps. DeFazio and Paul’s legislation to revoke the unilateral grant of war making powers to the President. ActforChange

By David Plotz, Julia Turner, and Avi Zenilman: “You’ve seen them pontificate gravely on Meet the Press, explain military strategy to Oprah, denounce France on The O’Reilly Factor, and solve the war’s aftermath in 30 seconds on The NewsHour. But face it, it’s impossible to tell them apart.”

“Why stop with Evian, Total gasoline, and the Concorde (just only the Air France flights)? Let’s get to the heart of the matter thing: A huge big percentage of the words in modern today’s English are of – gasp! – French origin beginnings. What if, as a result of the current diplomatic dispute today’s falling out between lands, the French demand ask for their words back? We could all be linguistic hostages captives…” Christian Science Monitor commentary [via walker]

…of haiku. iSciFiStory

Review: Consciousness: A User’s Guide by Adam Zeman: “Every morning, we wake up. How do we do it? What is happening when awareness dawns? Why do we need to be conscious? Where are we when we sleep or – the immemorial root of religion – when we die?” Telegraph/UK

“It is the open-ended war to dominate the Middle East and not the impending encounter with Iraq that is likely to prove truly costly and dangerous.” AlterNet

Related: Why the U.S. Inspires Scorn: “Other nations, and especially the Arab world, fear the start of an American empire.” LA Times news analysis [requires free registration; or read it at truthout]

The Left’s Nightmare Scenario: “What will be the antiwar movement’s response be if a quick victory and the

illusion of instant democracy play well on TV? Better start thinking about

it now.” AlterNet

“Elizabeth Smart is back home. Her parents are happy, the world is happy. But is she happy?”

Certainly, I’ll never know for sure. But it is an interesting question, whose possible answer is being muddied by all the talk of “brainwashing” and “mind control” being tossed around.

Those concepts, which one might have thought a nostalgic relic of the days of Charlie Manson and Patty Hearst, are being called into service to address a question obvious to anyone who thought twice about the resolution of this public drama: Why didn’t Elizabeth make any attempt to run away, at any point? Why, even upon being found by her saviors, the police, did she refuse to admit she was Elizabeth Smart? In my favorite touch, her response to police insistence that, come off it, she was Elizabeth Smart, was a coyly Biblical “thou sayest.”

Of course, if someone takes control of someone else’s very survival and controls all the information that person receives—which seems to be what happened to Elizabeth vis à vis the strangely charismatic street freak “Emmanuel” (and is not unlike what happens in any strict religious family)—it becomes easier to implant certain ideas and make them stick. In other contexts, this is called “socialization,” but when we don’t like the ideas and thoughts thus influenced, it becomes mind control. Reason

Unlike this essayist, it is not simply because it offends my notion of free will that I question the ‘mind control’ assertions in the Smart case. While brainwashing exists, it simply may not be an applicable notion in this case, where Smart may have just chosen to be with her ‘captor’, period. Don’t I recall from news coverage of her disappearance that questions of her cooperation with her ‘abductor’ arose from the start?

I agree; it bears repeating that ‘brainwashing’ or ‘mind control’ are merely socialization where we don’t hold with the outcome. In a similar fashion, ‘sects’ or ‘cults’ are arguably merely groups sharing a common belief, perhaps with a charismatic leader, which we find objectionable. Sociologically, for example, is the U.S. Army distinguishable from a cult? Induction is sui generis to indoctrination. I have yet to see a good definition of these terms that is not relative or value-laden. Perhaps we can reach a consensus on the social dangerousness of various groups — do they use manipulative or misleading tactics to proselytize or recruit? do they prey on the weak? exploit recruits’ resources or labor? have a double standard of values for the leader(s) as contrasted with the rank and file? prevent members unsupervised freedom of expression? Perhaps we should be very careful not to call a group a ‘cult’ unless all or most of these criteria are met, and then to acknowledge that it is just a matter of social consensus in labelling a particular group offensive or undesireable.

It also bears noting that the kidnapping of members back from ‘cults’ to be ‘deprogrammed’ by their families may, arguably, do similar harm to that we claim the ‘cult’ did. At the start of my psychiatric career, I was a close observer of a case in which an adult child of professional, affluent Boston parents was kidnapped back from the Hare Krishnas when he was about to sign his trust fund over to the group as a donation. The parents had him committed involuntarily to a local psychiatric hospital, claiming he was unable as a result of mental illness (what mental illness?) to care for himself. They had hired a famous deprogrammer, so much in demand that there would be a delay before he could take on the care of their son, and they were hoping to keep the young man hospitalized pending that outcome. The psychiatric assessment he received at the hospital suggested he was not suffering from a mental illness although he had some deficiencies in social skills that probably made the structure of a religious discipleship useful to him! He successfully fought his commitment and planned to bring countersuit against his parents for kidnapping him. No one is suggesting it is easy, and I am not sure what I would do as a parent in a similar position, but, yes indeed, it does appear all relative.

Passenger finds ‘chilling’ note from bag handler: An airline passenger who had two “No War with Iraq” signs in his suitcase says the federal security agent who opened his luggage inserted a note criticizing his “anti-American attitude.” Perhaps the baggage handler should be forgiven as one of those 2:5 Americans who believe Saddam Hussein was behind the WTC bombing. I’ve wondered if it was only a coincidence that my car was towed on the day several months ago after I applied an antiwar bumper sticker (I restrained myself; nothing obscene or threatening). There would be a precedent. I was once, around twenty-five or thirty years ago, severely hassled during a routine traffic stop for a bumper sticker reading “Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.” The police officer in a suburb of Boston told me he thought he understood what I meant by it and, if so, he didn’t like it. Is my current bumper sticker abit obtuse as well: “Blame Florida, Not Iraq” ? Now I can understand extending the right of free expression in the direction of considered violation of the law in the service of higher principles, intentionally inviting arrest — it will come to that, it probably will — but this is far short of that. Freedom of opinion with moral clarity in Ashcroft’s America takes courage and defiance…

Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. Adopted by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, 1950:

Principle II

The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III

The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V

Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle VI

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

Crimes against peace:

Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of

aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or illtreatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII

Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.

[via Warblogging.com]

Robin Cook has resigned from Tony Blair’s cabinet as the build-up to war with Iraq gathers pace.

BBC International Development Secretary Clare Short may follow Mr Cook’s lead and submit her resignation as well. How much precedent is there for the courageous resignation of cabinet-level officials faced with the immorality of their country’s course? Bravo, Mr. Cook!

Memo to George Bush: consider an offer of political asylum to Tony Blair. You are probably the only one who has any sympathy for him, and he is devoted to you like a pitiful puppy constantly kicked by its master and never realizing enough not to keep crawling back for more.

Four stories of the price the victims pay for the fallibility of modern medical practice. Malpractice awards and reportable errors are the tip of the iceberg. NY Times Magazine

Does everyone know already about former AP and New York Daily News reporter Christopher Albritton and his weblog? He’s planning on becoming the first independent war correspondent, posting war news from Iraq directly to his weblog. He’s attempting to obtain independent funding to defray the cost of returning to Iraq, so far logging $5000 in donations. Looking at his weblog, it is clear that, although he is an ndependent journalist, he is not an impartial one; as he reviews the ramp up to the war, he raises editorial questions about its wisdom and necessity. He should be careful in Iraq, especially if he uses a satellite uplink or otherwise allows his precise location to be ascertained; he sounds like just the type of journalist the US has warned of their safety. Here’s Wired‘s coverage.

Who Loves Ya, Baby? In his classic novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done— as Vonnegut describes it, “a team that do[es] God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing.” A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a “false karass,” a bureaucratic structure that looks like a team but is “meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.”

(,,,)

For most of the past 50 years, computers have been on the side of the granfalloons, good at maintaining bureaucratic structures and blind to more nuanced social interactions. But a new kind of software called social-network mapping promises to change all that. Instead of polishing up the org chart, the new social maps are designed to locate karasses wherever they emerge. Mapping social networks turns out to be one of those computational problems— like factoring pi out to a hundred decimal points or rendering complex light patterns on a 3-D shape— that computers can do effortlessly if you give them the right data. Discover

The article concludes by pointing out that mapping social networks may be useful in detecting antisocial behavior as well — a premise far more ntriguing and far more dubious.

“In the run-up to war, art matters more than ever…” Guardian/UK

‘One of the least defensible and intellectually questionable concepts raised in the often vitriolic debates surrounding art restoration practice over the past few decades is that of “readability.” … ‘ ArtWatch International

“A faith-by-faith guide to where the major religious denominations stand on war with Iraq.

Click on the group’s name or the check mark for more information about its Iraq position and related statements and articles.” BeliefNet [via Walker]

Devastating ‘Get Your War On’ sequence from last week. This guy is a national treasure.

Media face difficult call on reporters in war zone: ‘Defense Department officials have launched a quiet campaign in recent weeks to clear reporters out of Baghdad, issuing warnings that suggest an Iraqi conflict would be far more intense than the 1991 gulf war.

“If your template is Desert Storm, you’ve got to imagine something much, much different,” Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters recently. “I think that I would just be very, very careful about how you do your business. It’s not going to be like 1991.” ‘ Chicago Tribune

Air Force Base Authorizes ‘deadly Force’ Against Trespassing Protesters: “Security forces at Vandenberg Air Force Base are allowed to use “deadly force” in some cases if any anti-war demonstrators infiltrate the military complex, officials said.

Some anti-war activists have announced plans to trespass in hopes of disturbing Vandenberg’s mission and to vandalize sensitive equipment they believe helps the war effort.” Tampa Bay Online Are we headed for an early Kent State scenario in resistance to the Iraq War?

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When you say “black box”, the crash data recorder retrieved after airline disasters immediately comes to mind.

So, it may come as a surprise to learn that millions of cars and trucks are also equipped with a similar device imbedded (sic) deep in the airbag module. Boston Channel

There has been a lot of talk about mobile phone safety, but it has largely focused on distraction while driving as well as the possibility that cell phone use might cause health problems.

But now there’s another reason to be concerned. Mobile phones in Japan and Europe have been linked to harassment and sexual exploitation of both children and adults. — Larry Magid, PCAnswer

Cashier’s checks, Iraqi plea add two new flavors to old story: Two new flavors of the age-old Nigerian e-mail scam are making the rounds, and at least one of them appears to be gaining traction. Hundreds of victims have recently fallen for a variation that plays upon people’s misunderstanding about how bank cashier’s checks work. Meanwhile, other scammers are trying to take advantage of heightened interest in Iraq, posing as frightened Iraqis trying to move money out of that country before hostilities begin. The scam also took a deadly turn last month, when a victim in the Czech Republic allegedly shot and killed a Nigerian diplomat after losing his life savings to the scam. MSNBC

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Paul Krugman: Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with the captain. Is foreign policy George W. Bush’s quart of strawberries?

Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There’s a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush’s policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn’t want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people than you would think. NY Times op-ed

There are a lot worse things in country music than your wife leaving you or your dog dying. There’s stations not playing your music because you done gone and said some things against the president. CNN

With a force only one-third the size of the one that liberated Kuwait 12 years ago, U.S. commanders poised to attack Iraq have been given a far more ambitious mission: March hundreds of miles to Baghdad, neutralize the Iraqi military, overthrow President Saddam Hussein and then prevent a country the size of California from disintegrating into chaos.

(…)

The aspects of the operation that most worry planners here, and Pentagon insiders and experts in the United States, are the emphasis on lightning, simultaneous operations that could result in “friendly fire” incidents; the dependence on a 350-mile supply line; and the heavy reliance on Special Operations troops behind enemy lines. Overhanging the entire operation is the prospect that Iraq could use chemical or biological weapons. The other major fear is that U.S. forces could be bogged down in an urban battle that could turn Baghdad into a modern Stalingrad — a possibility that has resulted in some troops here being issued battle axes and battering rams. Washington Post

During the past week, WHO has received reports of more than 150 new suspected cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an atypical pneumonia for which cause has not yet been determined. Reports to date have been received from Canada, China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. Early today, an ill passenger and companions who travelled from New York, United States, and who landed in Frankfurt, Germany were removed from their flight and taken to hospital isolation…

There is presently no recommendation for people to restrict travel to any destination. However in response to enquiries from governments, airlines, physicians and travellers, WHO is now offering guidance for travellers, airline crew and airlines.

US policy could threaten international trade, aides warn: “In a break from years of unwavering public faith in the United States, top officials at the World Trade Organization are worried that the Bush administration’s go-it-alone policy is threatening international trade.

In the normally closed, clubby world of the WTO, envoys and officials said they feared that American moves within the organization and toward a war in Iraq would weaken respect for international rules and lead to serious practical consequence for the world economy and business.” IHT

“A classified State Department report expresses doubt that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.” LA Times

[free registration required; if you don’t want to register, view the article at truthout instead]

Sent from a friend: “What with all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment,

it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person who left us

almost unnoticed last week: Larry La Prise, the man who wrote “The Hokey

Pokey”, who died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for his

family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in, and then

the trouble started.” [thanks, Abby!]

Bring Them Home Now! “Bring Them Home Now is a network of concerned Americans who wish to protect our men and women in uniform. We believe that the proposed war on Iraq is unnecessary and immoral. Under such circumstances the only way to be pro-soldier is to be anti-war.”

Help get the

billboard put up.

How to talk to your children about the Elizabeth Smart case

Silent Soldiers on a silver screen

Framed in fantasies and dragged in dream

Unpaid actors of the mystery

The mad director knows that freedom will not make you free

And what’s this got to do with me

I declare the war is over

It’s over, it’s over

Drums are drizzling on a grain of sand

Fading rhythms of a fading land

Prove your courage in the proud parade

Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made

And they’re afraid that I’m afraid

I’m afraid the war is over

It’s over, it’s over

Angry artists painting angry signs

Use their vision just to blind the blind

Poisoned players of a grizzly game

One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame

Pardon me if I refrain

I declare the war is over

It’s over, it’s over

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride

Serve your country in her suicide

Find the flags so you can wave goodbye

But just before the end even treason might be worth a try

This country is to young to die

I declare the war is over

It’s over, it’s over

One-legged veterans will greet the dawn

And they’re whistling marches as they mow the lawn

And the gargoyles only sit and grieve

The gypsy fortune teller told me that we’d been deceived

You only are what you believe

I believe the war is over

It’s over, it’s over.

—Phil Ochs (1968)

The day the war starts, organizers vow to shut down financial districts — and even infiltrate a key U.S. Air Force base. Salon

“The Cassini spacecraft has photographed an extraordinary dark cloud on Jupiter twice as big as Earth itself.” NASA

to break out—not in Iraq, but in the Bush administration. I’m wondering what’s going through Colin Powell’s mind. The secretary of State is looking pretty grim these days, like a man going through the motions.” MSNBC

“If you choose to use herbal supplements, how can you reap the benefits they offer without risking your health and wasting your money? Ask yourself these questions… [more].” A thoughtful list of criteria on which to base your assessment of potential health claims of herbal supplements. PersonalHealthZone

Boycott Brand America “from the moment the war begins and to the best of my ability until the empire learns to listen.” AdBusters [Buy French?? — FmH]

The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie. In an interview with Irish radio, Ms. Adie said that questioned about the consequences of such potentially fatal actions, a senior Pentagon officer had said: “Who cares.. ..They’ve been warned.”

“The constantly updated catalogue

of Entrances to Hell in and around the UK.” [via bOing bOing]

The US Supreme Court stops what would have been the 300th execution since the death penalty was restored.  BBC News

Sorting out the hawks and doves in the presidential field: When it comes to war in Iraq, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates are all over the map. Howard Dean is against war in Iraq but in favor of considering war in North Korea. Bob Graham is against attacking Iraq unless we also attack Hamas. John Kerry is in favor of war if it works out but against it if it doesn’t. It’s gotten to where you can’t tell the players without a score card. So, here’s a score card. We’ve checked out the candidates’ positions on four key questions and three congressional votes, and we’ve ranked them in order of hawkishness, from most to least.. — William Saletan and Avi Zenilman, Slate

From Danklife: “FmH is first up against the wall when the shiny black boots go marching.”

…a fool to have thought he would be an equal partner in the second American century? Merrie Olde England joins Rumsfeld’s ‘Old Europe’, relegated to the dustbin of history? Guardian/UK editorial

even if Iraqis dance in the streets. One woman was in the Bali bombing, her boyfriend blown to bits. One mother had three sons at the front in the Gulf. One woman’s husband was a human shield at an Iraqi oil installation – would Blair promise not to bomb him? He writhed. An Iraqi victim of Saddam begged him not to attack her people. Worst of all, one mother lost her only child in the World Trade Centre and could not bear any other mother to suffer her agony. Their vehemence left him with a hunted air, his eyes flickering here and there, looking for escape. What’s more, against all the rules of balance, Trevor McDonald himself weighed in with “Aren’t you just Bush’s poodle?” questions. It was unfair and impossible. The war arguments are finely balanced – moral cause claimed by both sides – yet Downing Street is on the back foot every day now.Platitudes are crashing all around them, old diplomatic certainties among the broken crockery. Everyone is flying blind and now the British prime minister is at the mercy of a swindling old arms-dealing poseur in the Elysée, and even worse, the power-crazed global bullies in the White House. Guardian/UK

I love French Fries and won’t call them anything else (even though they were invented in Belgium). I eat Camembert and Roquefort, and I can’t do without French bread (because without French bread there would be no poor boys). I love Bordeaux, Sauternes, Cognac, Armagnac and Calvados. Bring on the P�rigord truffles and foie gras d’oie with gingerbread pain perdu (which is, of course, French toast!) and a cinnamon-caramel-fig sauce… yum yum yum). I have French doors in my house. I like to French kiss. I enjoy the sound of the French horn (although it’s properly called the “Horn in F”). Yep, I love the French, rude waiters and all. They can keep Jerry Lewis and that whole not-bathing thing, though. Looka!

I’m in total accord, Chuck, except with the part about Jerry Lewis.

Editor & Publisher generates a list of questions that “should have” been asked at Dubya’s press conference last Thursday. As if there’s a ghost of a chance there would have been anything other than a rote, evasive non-answer. He, indeed, was asked questions equally probing, calling for equal candor; for example, I counted four ways reporters posed essentially the same question to him about why the rest of the world thinks he’s so wrong if he thinks he’s so right, to paraphrase. Junior just wasn’t up to answering that one either. Perhaps it was the drugs.

Paul Krugman puts his money where his mouth is. With war looming, it’s time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I’m terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.

From a fiscal point of view the impending war is a lose-lose proposition. If it goes badly, the resulting mess will be a disaster for the budget. If it goes well, administration officials have made it clear that they will use any bump in the polls to ram through more big tax cuts, which will also be a disaster for the budget. Either way, the tide of red ink will keep on rising. NY Times

“After more than a million years of computation by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the SETI@home screensaver that crunches data in search of intelligent signals from space has produced a list of candidate radio sources that deserve a second look.

Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.” spaceref.com

Massive salary dispute threatens future of the show. “Lawyers don’t say things like this, but I’ll say it: He can’t win; he’s just dead; he is dead, he just won’t lie down.” NY Times

“A site dedicated to fiction and film depicting the end of the world, apocalypse and nuclear war. Plague, famine, drought and war all feature….. Populations decimated, survivors struggling to re-build after the apocalyptic event…” Study up now, be the most prepared on your block (and, no, this isn’t Tom Ridge’s site).

10 most dangerous intersections in the U.S. Also, search for the dangerous intersections near you.

Blair may find it politically impossible to commit UK military to the US-led offensive on Iraq. CBS News (Well, there’s always the Spanish!)

House cafeterias change names for ‘french fries’ and ‘french toast’. Much blinked to already; others lampoon this because of the waste of money, but more simply it is an embarrassment to come from the same country. CNN

“Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of the world’s most determined peace activists, is imploring Pope John Paul II to go to Baghdad as he is the “only person on earth who can stop this war” in Iraq. (see below)

Caldicott has organized a letter writing and e-mail petition, urging people around the world to write to the 82-year-old Pope asking him to travel to Baghdad and stay there until peace has been achieved.” CommonDreams

There’s more: “Deepak Chopra… proposed Wednesday that the Pope, the Dalai Lama and himself serve as human shields to avoid bombing in Iraq and to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.” GoMemphis

“The first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.” Times of London [thanks, walker]

over Iraq war plans Reuters

“Men who are fanatical about cars identify vehicles using the same brain circuitry used to recognise faces, new research shows.” New Scientist

I’ve often suspected that car designers, consciously or unconsciously, evoke facial expressions in the front end design of car models — or is it just my confused neurological processing?

Secretive U.S. ‘counter – disinformation’ office back

A Cold War-era office with a shadowy name and a colorful history of exposing Soviet deceptions is back in business, this time watching Iraq.

The Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team’s moniker is more impressive than its budget. It’s a crew of two toiling in anonymity at the State Department, writing reports they are prohibited by law from disseminating to the U.S. public.

The operation has challenged some fantastic claims over the years — a U.S. military lab invented AIDS, rich Americans kidnapped foreign babies for their organs, the CIA plotted to kill Pope John Paul II.

Since the office reopened in October, it’s been responding to Iraqi claims about America, which tend to be more plausible and sometimes remain in dispute. Salon

On this day in 1923, James Joyce wrote to his patron, Harriet Weaver, that he had just begun “Work in Progress,” the book which would become Finnegans Wake sixteen years later:

“Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughter-sons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” Today in Literature

Use of veto by permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: French President President Jacques Chirac said Monday that France was prepared to veto the U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq if necessary, joining Russia in saying it would vote against giving Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a March 17 deadline to disarm. Chirac, the most determined opponent of authorizing war, seemed to kill the chance the U.S-backed ultimatum would pass, saying his country, which has veto power in the Security Council, would vote against any resolution leading to war. The six undecided members of the U.N. Security Council weighed delaying a deadline for Iraqi compliance to April 17, a month later than demanded in a U.S.-British-Spanish draft resolution, diplomats said on Monday. Russian Foreign Minster Igor Ivanov said his country would vote against the U.S. and British resolution in its current form, but left open the possibility of approving an ammended proposal. Britain would consider a compromise U.N. resolution that extends an ultimatum to Hussein beyond the March 17 deadline already proposed, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said Monday. Columbia Newsblaster summary

full of juicy tidbits.

Could you stand listening to this? (scroll down)

(A)s the country braces for war, some liberal Democrats in Congress are preparing to introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and perhaps members of his Cabinet, according to lawmakers and congressional aides.

At least one senior House Democrat has produced a draft impeachment resolution. It accuses Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft of more than a dozen “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including bombing civilians in Afghanistan and constitutional violations in the domestic war on terrorism. National Review

by Francis A. Boyle, professor of law, University of Illinois School of Law. CounterPunch

Reviewed: The Philosopher’s Dog

by Raimond Gaita: “Stephen Law enjoys Raimond Gaita’s attempt to get inside the heads of animals.” Guardian/UK

Let me put it succinctly: I don’t think serious education is possible in America. Anything you touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of this system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only education that can be permitted is if it acculturates to the status quo, as happens in the expensive schools, or if it produces people to police and enforce the status quo, as in the state school where I teach. Significantly, at my school, which is a third-tier university, servicing working-class, first-generation college graduates who enter lower-etchelon jobs in the civil service, education, or middle management, the favored academic concentrations are communications, criminal justice, and social work–basically how to mystify, cage, and control the masses. Democratic Underground

Daniel Dennett tells

…a story you probably haven’t heard, about how a team of American researchers inadvertently introduced a virus into a third world country they were studying. They were experts in their field, and they had the best intentions; they thought they were helping the people they were studying, but in fact they had never really seriously considered whether what they were doing might have ill effects. It had not occurred to them that a side-effect of their research might be damaging to the fragile ecology of the country they were studying. The virus they introduced had some dire effects indeed: it raised infant mortality rates, led to a general decline in the health and wellbeing of women and children, and, perhaps worst of all, indirectly undermined the only effective political force for democracy in the country, strengthening the hand of the traditional despot who ruled the nation. These American researchers had something to answer for, surely, but when confronted with the devastation they had wrought, their response was frustrating, to say the least: they still thought that what they were doing was, all things considered, in the interests of the people, and declared that the standards by which this so-called devastation was being measured were simply not appropriate.

These researchers were not biologists intent on introducing new strains of rice, nor were they agri-business chemists testing new pesticides, or doctors trying out vaccines that couldn’t legally be tested in the U.S.A. They were postmodernist science critics and other multiculturalists who were arguing, in the course of their professional researches on the culture and traditional “science” of this country, that Western science was just one among many equally valid narratives, not to be “privileged” in its competition with native traditions which other researchers–biologists, chemists, doctors and others–were eager to supplant. The virus they introduced was not a macromolecule but a meme (a replicating idea): the idea that science was a “colonial” imposition, not a worthy substitute for the practices and beliefs that had carried the third-world country to its current condition. Butterflies and Wheels

Hottest new headset for your cellular phone.

Mizuko Ito takes a look at the keitai generation in Japanese society, where we see perhaps the highest penetration of mobile media capability and reliance and with it, “sweeping changes to how we coordinate, communicate and share information.” I was led to this piece via bOing bOing, which led with the observation that leaving your phone at home is “the new taboo.” Instant mobile availability has also changed the dynamics of meeting-making; the appointment appears to be becoming a thing of the past. No one calls anyone’s home numbers anymore either, leading to a sense of parents’ losing control over their children’s social contacts. Interestingly, one “knocks before entering”, i.e. sends a text message asking if the recipient is available to talk on the phone before the intrusion of a sudden phone call (I wish my wife learned to do that sometimes…). Being in persistent contact with one’s intimates means a person has a “portable virtual peer space” with them at all times, changing the parameters of privacy and anonymity profoundly. Online Journalism Review

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker about Richard Perle, suggesting politely he might have a conflict of interest between his role as a primary defense department advisor and proponent of the current war fever on the one hand and his being a principal partner in a venture capital firm called Trireme Partners which was formed to capitalize on fear of terrorism by investing in goods and services of value to homeland security and defense. In response, Perle says that Hersh is “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.” IMHO, Hersh ought to take it as a compliment…

[I’ve received this a number of times already via email. — FmH]

Here is a one question multiple choice test.

In the answer you will find the

value of bombing Iraq.

World History 101 – Mid-term exam

This test consists of one (1) multiple-choice question (so you better

get it right!) Here’s a list of the countries that the U.S. has bombed

since >the end of World War II, compiled by historian William Blum:

China 1945-46

Korea 1950-53

China 1950-53

Guatemala 1954

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-60

Guatemala 1960

Congo 1964

Peru 1965

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Guatemala 1967-69

Grenada 1983

Libya 1986

El Salvador 1980s

Nicaragua 1980s

Panama 1989

Iraq 1991-99

Sudan 1998

Afghanistan 1998

Yugoslavia 1999

———————————————-

NOW HERE IS THE QUESTION:

In how many of these instances did a FREE government, respectful of

human rights, occur as a direct result? Choose one of the following:

(a) 0

(b) zero

(c) none

(d) not a one

(e) a whole number between -1 and +1

Addendum: A reader quibbles with me:

“Eliot, I think you’re slipping. First of all, like every e-chain letter I have ever received, this one is not true, or it at least leaves out as much as it leaves in. I think. In particular, I don’t think we ever bombed Nicaragua–we did support the Contras, but I don’t think we ever bombed the place. In Grenada, Reagan’s ridiculous interference amounted to the removal of our med students, and the local strong man. Panama? I think it was a democracy, and remained so. Yugoslavia? It’s more democratic than it was.

I agree with your intent, but feel it is incumbent on us to try to tell the truth. Even if the truth is complicated. This makes us better than our opponents.”

He’s right; I’m guilty of intent, but should not be distorting in its service. Here, perhaps abit more precise, is what Molly Ivins said in a similar vein this week:

In the more potentially disastrous category of “What happens when we win?” the numbers are not good. Of the 20 regime changes forced by U.S. military action in the last century, only five produced democracies; and of the five unilateral actions, only one produced a democracy — Panama. Afghanistan, the closest proximate case, is not looking good beyond Kabul.