You Say War Crimes

‘ “Whether I hate Saddam or not, and I’m not saying I do,” one man told me quietly during my recent trip to Iraq, “I hate America – the government, not the people – for what it did and is going to do to our children.”

His is not a lone voice. The vast majority of the Iraqi people I spoke to believe the United States committed war crimes during the last Gulf war in 1991 by using depleted uranium (DU) weapons deliberately to cause cancer and inflict birth defects for generations to come.’ — Terry Allen, New Scientist [via AlterNet]

Maureen Dowd: The Xanax Cowboy:

You might sum up the president’s call to war Thursday night as “Message: I scare.”

As he rolls up to America’s first pre-emptive invasion, bouncing from motive to motive, Mr. Bush is trying to sound rational, not rash. Determined not to be petulant, he seemed tranquilized.

But the Xanax cowboy made it clear that Saddam is going to pay for 9/11. Even if the fiendish Iraqi dictator was not involved with Al Qaeda, he has supported “Al Qaeda-type organizations,” as the president fudged, or “Al Qaeda types” or “a terrorist network like Al Qaeda.”

We are scared of the world now, and the world is scared of us. (It’s really scary to think we are even scaring Russia and China.)

She goes on:

It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we’re about to bomb one that didn’t attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn’t intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn’t financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn’t home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn’t a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria). NY Times op-ed

Saying No to War. Not that it matters to the Cabal, and it certainly is a day late and a dollar short, but the Paper of Record comes out against the war. Citing the evidence of Iraqi cooperation with the inspection process under duress, the editorial notes,

“By adding hundreds of additional inspectors, using the threat of force to give them a free hand and maintaining the option of attacking Iraq if it tries to shake free of a smothering inspection program, the United States could obtain much of what it was originally hoping to achieve.. Had Mr. Bush managed the showdown with Iraq in a more measured manner, he would now be in a position to rally the U.N. behind that bigger, tougher inspection program, declare victory and take most of the troops home.”

Of course, this takes at face value that it is disarming an imminent threat that Bush seeks in Iraq; the Times does know better. It acknowledges that Bush’s demand for regime change paints him into a corner where he cannot accept Saddam’s compliance under duress, although the tone of the editorial suggests it thinks this was an indication of Bush’s lack of skill rather than what is more likely, that it is with full intent. Bush’s only mistake may be that he is not craftier at hiding his intent.

Similarly, The Times notes dysadministration waffling on the rationale for the invasion among

• self-defense against imminent danger (which the Times dismisses),
  
• Iraq’s refusal to obey UN orders to disarm (an argument that obviously cannot be made when the UN itself believes disarmament is occurring),
  
• and the transformation of Iraq into a showplace democracy that will inspire the rest of the Middle East to follow suit (a notion so ridiculous that it is not worth the column inches the Times spends addressing it).
  

Again, it appears that the Times takes this waffling simply as an indication of confused thinking and lack of clarity to our intent rather than simply an ineptitude about what the dysadministration tells us when it can’t fully disclose what it is really after in Iraq. Will we ever see a NY Times editorial with a headline like “If You’re Going to Lie to Us, Mr. President, At Least Get Your Story Straight”?

The piece concludes by citing the longterm damage to our alliances and the irreparable weakening of the United Nations. No mention is made of several other important important potential consequences. Pity; when midtown Manhattan is taken out by the next massive terrorist backlash against this latest US arrogance, the New York Times might no longer be there to remind Bush that it was his fault.

Court Reverses Ruling on Jane Akre’s rBGH Suit:

Accepting a defense rejected by three other Florida state judges on at least six separate motions, a Florida appeals court has reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information.

In a six-page written decision released February 14, the court essentially ruled the journalist never stated a valid whistle- blower claim because, they ruled, it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

Now there’s a court that knows what it is talking about. It doesn’t usrprise me, but is to their shame, that the lower courts had ruled differently. We have freedom of the press, yes — if you own the medium. Let this be a lesson to anyone who gets their news from Fox in particular and — I shudder to go with the larger generalization — the mass media at all…

Denny Henke, from the Memphis Digital Arts Cooperative, starts weblogging. Welcome in, Denny. Give him a look.

The trouble with weblogs: “People used to worry about the government compiling a database of everything they knew about you and everything you did. But who’d have thought we’d be so keen to keep updating our own entries?” — Dave Green, co-editor of the irreverent technology weekly Need To Know, Guardian/UK

Blogging’s Killer App. wholelottanothing

or a Just War?

What about America’s world standing if we don’t go to war after such a great deployment of military forces in the region? The heartfelt sympathy and friendship offered to America after the 9/11 attacks, even from formerly antagonistic regimes, has been largely dissipated; increasingly unilateral and domineering policies have brought international trust in our country to its lowest level in memory. American stature will surely decline further if we launch a war in clear defiance of the United Nations. But to use the presence and threat of our military power to force Iraq’s compliance with all United Nations resolutions. — Jimmy Carter, NY Times

On the subject of North Korea, there are two groups of people in Washington today: People who are terrified, and people who aren’t paying attention. Unfortunately, the latter category seems to include the president of the United States. — Peter Beinart, The New Republic

Related: Pyongyang: We’ll put a torch to New York:

North Korea would launch a ballistic missile attack on the United States if Washington made a pre-emptive strike against the communist state’s nuclear facility, the man described as Pyongyang’s “unofficial spokesman” claimed yesterday.

Kim Myong-chol, who has links to the Stalinist regime, told reporters in Tokyo that a US strike on the nuclear facility at Yongbyon “means nuclear war”. Sydney Morning Herald

Also: North Korean Fliers Said to Have Sought Hostages:

The North Korean fighter jets that intercepted an unarmed American spy plane over the Sea of Japan last weekend were trying to force the aircraft to land in North Korea and seize its crew, a senior defense official said today.

One of the four North Korean MIG’s came within 50 feet of the American plane, an Air Force RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft, and the pilot made internationally recognized hand signals to the American flight crew to follow him, presumably back to his home base, the official said. NY Times

Paul Krugman asks, ‘Why does our president condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials? Has ‘oderint dum metuant’ really become our motto?” So reads the resignation letter of John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat who recently left the Foreign Service in protest against Bush administration policy.

“Oderint dum metuant” translates, roughly, as “Let them hate as long as they fear.” It was a favorite saying of the Roman emperor Caligula, and may seem over the top as a description of current U.S. policy. But this week’s crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations – a crisis that has been almost ignored north of the border – suggests that it is a perfect description of President George W. Bush’s attitude toward the world.’ NY Times op-ed [via IHT]

“American military officials acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners captured in Afghanistan in December had been killed while under interrogation at Bagram air base north of Kabul — reviving concerns that the US is resorting to torture in its treatment of Taliban fighters and suspected al-Qa’ida operatives.” Independent/UK

“reveal(ing) further details of its plans to explore the Moon – the first unmanned probe could be launched by 2005, say officials. They also hinted that the motivation for the missions is to mine the Moon’s resources.

The lunar program, named Chang’e after a legend about a fairy that visits the moon, would be in three phases. First an orbiter would be sent to the Moon, followed by a lander, and then finally a sample return craft.” New Scientist

“Google, properly leveraged, has more intrusion potential than any hacking tool,” said hacker Adrian Lamo, who recently sounded the alarm.

The hacks are made possible by Web-enabled databases. Because database-management tools use canned templates to present data on the Web, typing specific phrases into Internet search tools often leads a user directly to those templated pages. Wired

Martin Amis: “The first war of the Age of Proliferation will not be an oil-grab so much as an expression of pure power.” Guardian/UK

An action alert from the International Rivers Network: “The Icelandic government plans to construct a large hydropower project in Iceland’s Eastern Highlands, one of Europe’s largest remaining wilderness areas, in order to supply power to a US aluminum smelter owned by Alcoa. The “Kahranjukar Project” involves building miles of roads, boring a series of tunnels, diverting dozens of rivers to create 3 reservoirs and erect nine dams, including one that is 630 feet — Europe’s highest.” CorpWatch.org

“Iraq said on Sunday chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix might visit Baghdad on March 17, a deadline proposed by the United States and Britain for Iraq to disarm or face military action.” MSNBC

Powell Says U.S. in Striking Distance of Iraq Vote. ABC.

“A devastating new weapon will be part of the US’s massive assault on Iraq. …(I)ts use is likely to destroy civilian lives in their thousands.” Opendemocracy Read this thoughtfully and figure out what you think about explosives that have a blast as devastating as a tactical nuclear weapon although without the firestorm or the radiation. Some claim they are ‘humane’; for example, there would be no barriers to the invading army sweeping in with medics to attend to the casualties immediately, unlike in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then, of course, there’s the argument that they will spare lives overall if they are effective armour-killers and bring the war to a more rapid close (as they said about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan as well). Of course, you would have to buy several premises to accept the use of these things — that the war is legitimate in the first place; and that we might otherwise have to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Rind, Tromovitch and Bauserman: A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse… (abstract):

“Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE. Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported.”

This 1998 study in Psychological Monitor was so scientifically-correct-politically-incorrect that it unleashed a firestorm, which can be followed online for your edification. A Congressional resolution condemned the research and was decried by eminent social psychologist Carol Tavris here (“Congress and clinicians may feel a spasm of righteousness by condemning scientific findings they dislike, but their actions will do little or nothing to reduce the actual abuse of children”) and here (‘Perhaps the researchers’ most inflammatory finding, however, was that not all experiences of child-adult sexual contact have equally emotional consequences nor can they be lumped together as “abuse.” Being molested at the age of 5 is not comparable to choosing to have sex at 15. Indeed, the researchers found that two-thirds of males who, as children or teenagers, had had sexual experiences with adults did not react negatively.’) The latter is a point I have made repeatedly about the zeal with which inexperienced overzealous clinicians label anything untoward in their patients’ early experiences — real or suggested — as abuse and avow it qualifies the patient for the wastebasket diagnosis of PTSD and explains most of their adult psychological distress, with disastrous clinical consequences for treatment. Tavris: “The article by Rind and his colleagues, however, has upset two powerful constituencies: religious fundamentalists and other conservatives who think this research endorses pedophilia and homosexuality, and psychotherapists who believe that all sexual experiences in childhood inevitably cause lifelong psychological harm.” [Are you getting bored with this repeated tirade from me? I make it over and over again; it is one of my pet peeves in behavioral science… — FmH]

More recently, in Mind Games: Psychological Warfare Between Therapists and Scientists, Tavris has continued to evoke controversy by expanding on her observations of a rift between scientists and clinicians within psychology . She makes a related point, again one with which I resonate — that the unregulated nature of calling oneself a “psychotherapist” and the public’s confusion between that term and the term “psychologist” wreaks havoc:

For the public, however, the word “psychologist” has only one meaning: psychotherapist. It is true that clinical psychologists practice therapy, but many psychologists are not clinicians, and most therapists are not clinical psychologists. The word “psychotherapist” is completely unregulated. It includes people who have advanced training in psychology, along with those who get a “certification” in some therapeutic specialty; clinical social workers; marriage, family, and child counselors; psychoanalysts and psychiatrists; and countless others who have no training in anything. Starting tomorrow, I could package and market my own highly effective approach, Chocolate Immersion Therapy, and offer a weekend workshop to train neophytes ($395, chocolate included). I could carry out any kind of unvalidated, cockamamie therapy I wanted, and I would not be guilty of a single crime. Unless I described myself as a psychologist. Chronicle of Higher Education

Part of the problem is that society increasingly turns for advice to “mental health professionals” without understanding that they have come by their pronouncements by the same fallible mix of selective experience, prejudice, doctrinaire adherence to a particular theoretical school or treatment philosophy, and confirmation bias (selectively noticing and valuing evidence in accord with one’s assumptions and discounting or ignoring that in conflict) that operates in other fields. Tavris lists a number of important “widely accepted claims promulgated by therapists are based on subjective clinical opinions and have been resoundingly disproved by empirical research conducted by psychological scientists”:

• Low self-esteem causes aggressiveness, drug use, prejudice, and low achievement.

• Abused children almost inevitably become abusive parents, causing a “cycle of abuse.”

• Therapy is beneficial for most survivors of disasters, especially if intervention is rapid.

• Memory works like a tape recorder, clicking on at the moment of birth; memories can be accurately retrieved through hypnosis, dream analysis, or other therapeutic methods.

• Traumatic experiences, particularly of a sexual nature, are typically “repressed” from memory, or split off from consciousness through “dissociation.”

• The way that parents treat a child in the first five years (three years) (one year) (five minutes) of life is crucial to the child’s later intellectual and emotional success.
  

The increasing split between systematically thinking intellectually rigorous psychological science and pseudoscientific psychotherapeutic hysteria played out in epidemic form in the ’80’s with the “repressed memory”, “multiple personality disorder”, and “rampant sexual abuse of children in daycare centers” furors, all of which have turned out to be spurious. I would also add the “Satanic ritual abuse” folly to that list; maybe Tavris considers that too ridiculous to dignify with discussion.

All three epidemics were fomented and perpetuated by the mistaken beliefs of psychotherapists: that “children never lie about sexual abuse”; that childhood trauma causes the personality to “split” into several or even thousands of identities; that if you don’t remember being sexually abused in childhood, that’s evidence that you were; that it is possible to be raped by your father every day for 16 years and to “repress” the memory until it is “uncovered” in therapy; that hypnosis, dream analysis, and free association of fantasies are reliable methods of “uncovering” accurate memories. (On the contrary, such techniques have been shown to increase confabulation, imagination, and memory errors, while inflating the belief that the retrieved memories are accurate.) The epidemics began to subside as a result of the painstaking research of psychological scientists.

Tavris finds the roots of the increasing divergence in the training of psychotherapists outside academic institutions. I have long made the point that the public is not aware that their mental health is at the mercy of market forces unwilling to pay for necessarily more expensive practitioners who come from adequate training backgrounds. She largely ignores these market forces as the context for the crisis — although commenting that there are “too many economic and institutional supports for (the schism)” — but otherwise nicely defines it. She is not naive about the promise of science with a capital ‘S’ but clearly articulates its value in psychology:

It is not that I believe that science gives us ultimate truths about human behavior, while clinical insight is always foolish and wrong. Rather, I worry that when psychotherapists fail to keep up with basic research on matters on which they are advising their clients; when they fail to learn which methods are most appropriate for which disorders, and which might be harmful; when they fail to understand their own biases of perception and do not learn how to correct them; when they fail to test their own ideas empirically before running off to promote new therapies or wild claims — then their clients and the larger public pay the price of their ignorance.

That last phrase deserves to be underscored — ” their clients and the larger public pay the price of their ignorance.” Moreover, the pity is that they never realize it.

She goes on:

The scientific method is designed to help investigators overcome the most entrenched human cognitive habit: the confirmation bias, the tendency to notice and remember evidence that confirms our beliefs or decisions, and to ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that is discrepant. That’s why we are all inclined to stick to a hypothesis we believe in. Science is one way of forcing us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to modify our views. Most scientists regard a central, if not defining, characteristic of the scientific method to be what Karl Popper called “the principle of falsifiability”: For a theory to be scientific, it must be falsifiable — you can’t show me just those observations that confirm it, but also those that might show it to be wrong, false. If you can twist any result of your research into a confirmation of your hypothesis, you aren’t thinking scientifically. For that reason, many of Freud’s notions were unfalsifiable. If analysts saw evidence of “castration anxiety” in their male patients, that confirmed Freud’s theory of its universality; if analysts didn’t see it, Freud wrote, they lacked observational skills and were just too blind or stubborn to see it. With that way of thinking, there is no way to disconfirm the belief in castration anxiety.

Yet many psychotherapists perpetuate ideas based only on confirming cases — the people they see in therapy — and do not consider the disconfirming cases. The popular belief in “the cycle of abuse” rests on cases of abusive parents who turn up in jail or therapy and who report that they were themselves victims of abuse as children.

Essentially, many inadequately-trained therapists may lack a necessary skepticism the scientific method teaches and which is imbued only by rigorous training to overcome quite ingrained and natural biases of thought.

The clinicians’ defense is that the way they benefit clients is by helping them make sense of their life experience. In a sort of nihilistic way, the “narrative truth” in which they enlist their patients is different, sophisticated clinicians know, than “historical truth”, but it works. Therapists are not detectives bound to a legalistic standard of evidence-based proof, they argue. But, in a narrow sense the real world does intrude, and the “truth” of what has been discovered in psychotherapy does come into play in legal proceedings. In a broader sense, Tavris wants us to understand that this is not just some irrelevant internal dispute between factions of an academic discipline.

“Much has been written about America’s scientific illiteracy, but social-scientific illiteracy is just as widespread and in some ways even more pernicious. People can deny evolution or fail to learn basic physics, but such ignorance rarely affects their personal lives. The scientific illiteracy of psychotherapists has torn up families, sent innocent defendants to prison, cost people their jobs and custody of their children, and promoted worthless, even harmful, therapies. A public unable to critically assess psychotherapists’ claims and methods for scientific credibility will be vulnerable to whatever hysterical epidemic comes along next. And in our psychologically oriented culture, there will be many nexts. Some will be benign; some will merely cost money; and some will cost lives.”

By the way, the president of the American Psychological Association, aghast at Tavris’ upbraiding of the profession, has circulated a sputtering, ineffective letter of response which I cannot find online but will point to when I can. He attempts a refutation by claiming that many psychologists are both scientists and clinicians, and that academic psychologists as well as psychotherapists consult on media and public policy issues. He pedantically lectures Tavris on supposed logical fallacies in her argument but, IMHO, ends up hoist by his own petard.

Blix and El-Baradei: Key points of the weapons inspectors’ reports to the UN security council. Guardian/UK

Paul Krugman asks, ‘Why does our president condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials? Has ‘oderint dum metuant’ really become our motto?” So reads the resignation letter of John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat who recently left the Foreign Service in protest against Bush administration policy.

“Oderint dum metuant” translates, roughly, as “Let them hate as long as they fear.” It was a favorite saying of the Roman emperor Caligula, and may seem over the top as a description of current U.S. policy. But this week’s crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations – a crisis that has been almost ignored north of the border – suggests that it is a perfect description of President George W. Bush’s attitude toward the world.’ NY Times op-ed [via IHT]

“Retired nurse Frances Polack has taken an extraordinary measure to ensure doctors do not try to prolong her life against her wishes.” BBC [thanks, Pam!] I work for a hospital whose corporate owners are so risk-averse that, in order never to be exposed to any liability for failing to resuscitate someone who might have been revived, they have made it a matter of policy that their staffs not honor any DNR wishes of patients they admit. The problem is that I work for a hospital whose corporate owners are so intent on filling their beds that their admissions offices do not remember to review that policy with potential patients and families before accepting them for admission. File this away for future reference: never send your loved one to a Universal Health Services, Inc. hospital, at least if they do not wish to be resuscitated…

Larry King asks about oil and gets a George Bush geography lesson Royal Canadian Air Farce [Real Video high-bandwidth; other options here]

The brain is constantly compromising as it pieces together information, often ignoring or downplaying small visual changes in the world that do not fit with its expectations. This process – far from being flawed – shows that the brain functions optimally, say University of Toronto researchers. EurekAlert! Think you see things as they are? Get over it. You’re making it up, essentially, although there’s a germ of truth there…

Psychology professor maps choice-making in the brain

The next time you are frustrated by someone who says, “I’m of two minds about this,” at least you will know why. The latest research conducted by Kip Smith, an assistant professor of psychology at Kansas State University, may be able to explain why people often can’t make up their minds. Smith’s current study focuses on which parts of the brain are used in the decision-making process.

“We’re of at least two minds,” Smith said. “This research shows the brain is not a single entity. There is not a single executive decision-making mechanism there.” EurekAlert!

Origins of Psychopathology — Review: The Phylogenetic and Cultural Basis of Mental Illness by Horacio Fábrega, Jr.:

The common conception of mental illness or psychopathology is that it’s a breakdown or malfunction of the human mind; a very personal problem that some individual must struggle to overcome. While Horacio Fábrega admits this is true on one level, he argues that on another level psychopathology can be seen as a product of evolutionary changes both within the human organism and within the human environment. More surprising to me than this is his claim that psychopathology is not only an end product of the evolutionary process but that psychopathology has actually had (and is still having) an effect on the course of human evolution. Metapsychology Online Book Reviews

Despite its mixed reputation, anger can play a constructive role at home, at work and in the national consciousness, psychologists are finding. APA Monitor

It often gets a bad rap because of its association with violence, but the two are often dissociated. Not only is there anger without violence [I might be considered a prime example; a very angry person, in my own estimation and that of those around me; but nonviolent. — FmH], but much violence occurs without appreciable anger. The values of constructive anger range from facilitating political change to the physiological benefits of diffusing pent-up frustrations in, for example, cardiac patients; suggesting that not being angry enough could be more of a problem.

Anger also plays a powerful and arguably positive role in the workplace and in politics, finds Larissa Tiedens, PhD, of Stanford University. These are arenas, she notes, where anger is often used for status, power, control and strategic purposes rather than for emotional expression.

In these, settings, individuals primed for anger may make more optimistic appraisals and feel an enhanced sense of control. Does this suggest that anger is merely the opiate of the disempowered masses, in a way, and that the sense of control is illusory? Both in a psycholigical and a sociopolitical sense, anger is often posited as the inverse of depression, ‘depression turned outward’. (Depression is also referred to as ‘anger turned inward’.) There is also considerable evidence, especially from the evolutionary psychology sphere, some of which I’ve discussed here in the past, that depression may be, in a sense, a more realistic viewpoint in some situations; that it has been evolutionarily preserved because it is adaptive. One of the leading contender theories suggests that, in making us less less confident and less energetic, it prevents futile actions. So, am I being more than a little bit scurrilous when I suggest that, perhaps, the best position of all is to be angry but passive?

…(S)uch studies have implications for the current “war on terrorism.” They suggest that President Bush’s angry, tough-guy stance may affect public reaction by reducing uncertainty and increasing a sense of control…

However, if the enemy continues to prove elusive, the tactic may prove maladaptive… “At the same time anger effectively provides a sense of certainty and prepares people for action, …it also simplifies their judgment processes and leaves them prone to bias.”

[A .PDF]:

Contemporary suicide terrorists from the Middle East are publicly deemed crazed

cowards bent on senseless destruction who thrive in poverty and ignorance.

Recent research indicates they have no appreciable psychopathology and are as

educated and economically well-off as surrounding populations. A first line of

defense is to get the communities from which suicide attackers stem to stop the

attacks by learning how to minimize the receptivity of mostly ordinary people

to recruiting organizations. — Scott Atran, Science Mar 7 2003: 1534-1539

Interrogating our obsession with risk:

“Why are we so obsessed with risk? From global warming to mobile phones, from crime to child safety, from the business world to the military, precaution and pre-emption have become the buzzwords of our time. We sometimes seem to be organising society around the grandmotherly maxim of ‘better safe than sorry’. What are the consequences of this overbearing concern with risks?

On Friday 9 May 2003, a London conference entitled ‘Panic Attack:

Interrogating Our Obsession with Risk’, produced by the online publication

spiked (www.spiked-online.com) in association with the online publication

Techcentralstation Europe and the Royal Institution of Great Britain, will

bring together an international audience to assess the spread of risk

aversion into ever-more spheres of life. With discussions on everything from children and obesity to the risks of war to business after Enron, the conference will interrogate our obsession with risk – and put the case for a more rational approach to scientific and political issues, and matters of everyday life.”

On the fundamentalism of fatalism and the myth of moderate Islam: Many pundits, both inside and outside the community of immigrant American Islam, have rested their hopes upon us muted ones. They expect us to free global Islam from the Tazirs and Bin Ladens of the religion. Somehow we cows, chewing on the cud of our paranoia-stricken life, have been labeled ‘moderate’ as if we offer a counterweight to the extremists. We don’t. Killing the Buddha [via walker]

Crude arguments: “The ‘war for oil’ line is a simpleton’s theory of international relations.” — Brendan O’Neill, sp!ked

And:

War by the back door: “There is an ‘undeclared war’ in Iraq — between Western elites vying for influence.” — Brendan O’Neill, sp!ked

It explains why we’re going to war, and why we’ll keep going to war: Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an operating theory of the world—and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there’s a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, [Thomas P. M. Barnett, U.S. Naval War College], a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now he gives it to you.

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Globalization’s “ozone hole” may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we schedule the U.S. military’s next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.Esquire [via walker]

Internet search giant Google confirmed this week that it closed several security holes that could have allowed hackers to substitute their own musings for any of the over one-million electronic diaries maintained through the popular “Blogger” online publishing tool. The Register Pity; what the hackers had to say might’ve been more interesting than many of the million. Including at FmH?

Via the poised urgency of Jeff Gates’ Life Outtacontext:

Kevin Sites, a CNN reporter in Kuwait, has been sharing personal reflections on the soon-to-be war front with readers of bOingbOing via email. Here’s an excerpt from his latest (read his entire post here):

For most of the journalists here in Kuwait, this is the fear and this is the joke; that for all our technology—our videophones and portable dishes, our Thurayas, and Iridiums and Neras, our digital cameras and laptop editing systems—-we could end up covering this war with wind up film cameras.

It’s on the grapevine that the U.S. Air Force has developed an electro magnetic pulse weapon at Kirtland Air Force that could be used in war against Iraq. The concept is devastating simple; flying over the target area, the military emits a microwave swath, which basically fries the electronics of any appliance or device in its path.

Like a giant switch, when the EMP weapon is flicked on, the lights go out. People, however, are supposedly spared—unless they happened to be wearing a pacemaker or are hooked up to other life sustaining machinery. The EMP weapon does not apparently differentiate between cell phones and hospital respirators.

Be sure to scroll down below this item at Gates’ site for something that has struck me too — the devolution of media depictions of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

“Following a recent FCC decision that could limit competition among broadband providers, publicly owned high-speed access networks may prove a more popular alternative to private ISPs.” Wired News

A Religious Initiative: “Tell President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that Saddam Hussein can be disarmed without war. Speak out now!” Sojourners

by Janna Malamud Smith: a review of a book by a colleague of mine: Sharing the Burdens of Motherhood:

“Children’s security — and women’s equality — will be assured, (Janna Smith argues), only when mothers dare demand that nurturing labors be more fairly supported by society as a whole. What has long held mothers back, Smith worries, is all the protective worry. It will never go away, she says again and again, and no one should hope — or fear — that it will. But for that very reason, it should not be exploited the way it has been. Smith’s mission is to show how that ”visceral, powerful” sense of alarm has been ”continually manipulated, overtly and subtly,” wittingly and unwittingly, by ”experts and authorities of many timbres” — all in the name of helping mothers stay calm. The effect has been to keep them hovering (”metaphorically and often literally”) by the cradle, shouldering more than their share of accountability for children’s fates, when what parents and kids alike really need are more family-friendly policies and public attitudes. By exposing the uses and abuses of maternal anxiety, Smith hopes to help inspire a social movement to rock the boat.” NY Times

Gaspar Noé’s cinematic rape: “The 12 scenes of Irreversible — each shot in a single, semi-improvised take — constitute something of a tour de force. But so would being dragged through the streets by a wire noose. There is something to be said for violence that isn’t stylized and made to seem “fun” — that actually makes you feel like Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) with your eyes pried open and no cathartic release. It could be argued that this is the only moral way to present violence, so that it hurts.

But there is nothing moral about Irreversible — only sneeringly superior and nihilistic, like Johnny Rotten at his most fatuous. [more] — David Edelstein, Slate

Can we sleep less? “Every year, we need the same amount of sleep, and every year we get less. Since the invention of artificial illumination, sleep has been a bear market.” — David Plotz, Slate

Are conservationists the new conservatives? An interview with Betsy Hartmann. New Scientist

So much for the Bush’s facade of gentility. ‘Syndicated columnist Helen Thomas, who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, was relegated to the third row in last night’s East Room event and— if the memory of press corps veterans is accurate — received her first presidential snub.

One reporter who has covered the past six presidents said: “I don’t remember a press conference in which [Mrs. Thomas] didn’t get a question.” ‘ Washington Times

Microsoft promises end to ‘DLL hell’:

“Windows Server 2003 will bring an end to one of the biggest headaches for Windows users and administrators, according to Microsoft. The problem, which relates to Dynamic Link Libraries–software modules that can be shared by several different applications–has become an increasing headache over the years.

Problems typically occur when an application is installed that uses an updated version of a Dynamic Link Library–or DLL–that is already used by another application. If the original application cannot work with the updated DLL, then the user gets an error message; Windows and Windows applications have no notion of DLL version numbers, and so the problem can be difficult to track down.” ZDNet

the only Democratic candidate who could beat Bush today. As Chuck Taggart comments, “Only twenty more months…”

How Esso (Exxon) leads George Bush by the nose

The Attorney General wants the power to strip you of your citizenship. — Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

Also:

Bush is Out of Control. Bush is out of control. Come and get me. truthout Read William Rivers Pitt’s missive. Then, if you can find it in your heart, publish the statement “Bush is out of control” somewhere, in solidarity. They’re watching. They’ll notice. But can they come for all of us?

Bush’s War on Women: From the FDA’s prayer-against-PMS to the battle over Title IX, the Bush administration’s policies and postures seem designed to erode women’s rights. Village Voice

An early test version of the next major release of Microsoft Windows has been leaked onto the Net, offering a glimpse of the company’s plans for the new software. ZDNet

A boycott of Delta Airlines is being mounted in response to the airline’s decision to test a controversial program that requires airline passengers to undergo background checks. Wired

It’s folk wisdom that the Academy favors films about mental illness and disability, yet few legends are so statistically well-founded. — Andrea Clark, AlterNet

The widening rift within the Security Council and NATO is not about Iraq

but the U.S. plan for global dominance. AlterNet

Another Poster for Peace: download any poster for free by clicking on the image.

by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest: a collection of industrial-strength, real-world, tested solutions to practical problems. This concise book offers a variety of interesting ways for power users to mine the enormous amount of information that Google has access to, and helps you have fun while doing it. You’ll learn clever and powerful methods for using the advanced search interface and the new Google API, including how to build and modify scripts that can become custom business applications based on Google. Google Hacks contains 100 tips, tricks and scripts that you can use to become instantly more effective in your research. Each hack can be read in just a few minutes, but can save hours of searching for the right answers. O’Reilly

In this reprise of an April, 2000 post from FmH I just stumbled upon while looking back for something else, a prescient Mikhail Gorbachev Warns The US Of Its Dangerous “Superiority Complex” ‘and said that, if the 21st century became known as the second “American Century”, the rest of the world would have suffered. Speaking in New York, the former Soviet President criticised Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, for saying that there were exceptional circumstances in which the US had the right to use military force unilaterally, even if other countries objected.’ Times of London [via Common Dreams]

‘It will be soon, it will be swift and it will be short’.

War will commence against Iraq in 10 days, reports The Sun.

Citing a top United States intelligence source, the newspaper said a crucial United Nations Security Council vote authorizing military force is expected a week from Wednesday, and U.S. airstrikes will be launched hours later.

“The moment we know we have the nine votes needed, we will go for it. The military won’t hang around after that,” The Sun quotes the source as saying. WorldNetDaily

But what do you make of this, from the same source? Jews Saved Saddam From Abortion:

An Iraqi Jewish family took in Saddam Hussein’s mother in 1937 and talked her out of an abortion, according to Israel’s leading expert on Iraq and the large traditional Jewish community that once prospered there.

“The story is true,” says Amatzia Baram. “I’ve pretty much confirmed all of the details, but the family doesn’t like to talk about it. There was this fear that people would blame the Jews for Saddam. WorldNetDaily

When Suffering Becomes an Abstraction:

Jeff Gates, at Life Outtacontext, meditates on the faith-based moral instigations that flow from Joe Klein’s troubling observation that

George W. Bush lives at the intersection of faith and
inexperience. This is not a reassuring address, especially
in a time of trouble.

To paraphrase the sense Gates makes of Klein, Bush is a concrete thinker whose faith, perhaps truly humble when faced with suffering and distress firsthand, becomes messianic and dogmatic “when suffering becomes an abstraction —a budget item or deposing a despot— Bush loses his sensitivity.” With such rigidity, Bush has no uncertainty about his assumed righteousness and is unswayed by dissent.

For reasons that don’t seem necessary, however, to the flow of his essay, Gates chooses to lump Andrew Sullivan in with Bush’s genre of moral certainty. Sullivan, though — yes — equally morally blind, seems not really to be of a piece with Dubya. I’m reminded of what I wrote below, on a seemingly different topic — that there are multiple species of self-deception, some more insidious, and some more conscious, than others. Since his emergence as the Republican candidate, I have felt that Bush’s intellectual limitations — the same ones Gates broods over in this essay — make him a puppet of handlers who are more adept, more manipulative, and have a variety of other agendas. It has always seemed laughable that pundits discuss the messages in Bush’s speeches as if they were his own ideas rather than those of a committee of speechwriters vetted by the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Similarly, all the motives ascribed to the administration for the war —

• that it is for moral rectitude,
• for self-defense,
• to punish and chasten terrorists,
• to vanquish the infidels,
• to strike a blow against the Axis,
• for the greater glory of God,
• for American hegemony,
• to solve the Middle East problem,
• to end dependence on foreign oil,
• to line the pockets of the administration’s ruling class cronies,
• to prevent US humiliation,
• to liberate an oppressed people,
• to end history,
• as a proving ground for bigger and better things to come,
• to win reelection 
• for Daddy; or to prove that you’re as good or better than him,
• because you can

— are operative… somewhere inside the Beltway among those impelling us toward Baghdad. One aspect, Jeff, of the cognitively rigid Bush’s blinding by his certainties may be that all these motives run rampant with no policy helmsman arbitrating and cohering them. That may be why this war, and the world of hurt into which it will plunge us, the rest of the world, and our children, is inexorable.

Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington’s hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance. Mother Jones. No news, by now.

Weblogger Jeremy Zawodny’s much-blinked list seems to be putting the fear of God into many other webloggers in a frenzied rush to comply with what for some puzzling reason is being seen as the Received Wisdom. (It’s actually amazing he didn’t phrase these ten items as “thou shalt” ‘s and “shalt not” ‘s!) Zawodny is profoundly (I use the term advisedly) thrilled at his influence, declaring, “Blogs rock!” Unfortunately, he forgets the eleventh habit of annoying bloggers — pontificating on how it should be done, although his #3 is a complaint about bloggers who “spend more time blogging about blogging than anything else.”

(Not to mention his commission of the admittedly more minor twelfth annoying habit — overuse of “blog” and “blogger”. Lawdy, I’m surprised he doesn’t indulge in the even more annoying “blogosphere.” [Shoot me and put me out of my misery if I ever use that word without quotation marks around it, please. — FmH]

My overall reaction to his list is that he doesn’t seem to understand (especially in his #2 and #8, which he concedes are alike but, he asserts enigmatically and without further elaboration for readers as dense as myself, “not quite the same”) the self-referential, organic nature of hyperlinked reality if he thinks there’s an absolute difference between “original content” and “aggregating links to other blogs”, or between “acting” and “reacting”… and that he is the arbiter of such difference. Wake up, Jeremy, it’s a postmodern world. Authenticity and derivativeness are not, in a simple sense, dichotomous anymore, if they ever were. He also does not appear to appreciate that weblogging arose from the practice of cataloguing the author’s interesting websurfing discoveries (often with little or no commentary), which in a semiotic sense (upon which I will enigmatically not elaborate much) does build a sort of original content from the aggregation and juxtaposition. Hint: start with Claude Levi-Strauss’ use of the term ‘bricolage’. Indeed, it is a postmodern tenet that the “originality” will lie not in the writer so much as in the reader’s synthesis of meaning for herself from the work. Making it all too explicit is another annoying habit of webloggers. I hope the people who read FmH (all three of them) do it because they know I esteem their astuteness more than they should mine. Now, if they found me a highly annoying blogger…

“At last we know why girls fall for older men…” Observer/UK

Brain protein influences response to extreme stress:

A hungry soldier is left sitting alone for four hours. Hostile figures interrogate him for the next 50 minutes. The soldier is not hurt physically, but he doesn’t know when or how the ordeal will end.

Later, he’s permitted to sleep — for 19 minutes total during the course of three days.

In this mock captivity exercise that’s part of survival training, American soldiers respond in sharply different ways.

One man feels constantly that he’s watching himself from outside his body. Colors fade. His tormenters look motionless. Another man, just as sleepy and hungry, also loses focus at times, but mostly stays alert and calm.

Why the difference? Sac Bee

Why is there a philosophical problem about self-deception?

Self-deception is a common human enterprise. Our capacity for it seems no more exotic a part of our nature than our capacity to spell. We attribute the state freely to others (“you’re kidding yourself”), and come to realise we were in the state ourselves (“I was kidding myself when I said that”). However, when we step back from those confident judgements and try making sense of self-deception, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to do so. The Philosophers’ Magazine

Considerations of self-deception go right to the heart of what exactly is the self that is being deceived, and the nature of consciousness. As a psychiatrist, I’m equally, if not more, preoccupied with self-deception than the philosophers who are just coming to the conclusion that it drives one more nail into the coffin of the notion of the unitary self. Enlisting a patient in the study of his or her self-deception is the daily bread and butter of thoughtful psychotherapists. For example, the proposal in this essay that, perhaps, self-deception is “not one singular psychobehavioural phenomenon, reducing to issues of belief and knowledge” seems a truism to psychotherapists who generate taxonomies of self-deception with their clientele. “Self-deception is perhaps quite eclectic, and is not always easily distinguishable from germane phenomena such as compartmentalisation, repressed conflicts, submerged aggressions, false consciousness, and wishful thinking.” Indeed.

Related: A highly inflated version of reality: …(N)ew research suggests that people lie chronically for a wide variety of reasons, some serious, others relatively benign. In a recent article reviewing 100 years of literature on the subject, as well as several cases in the news, doctors at Yale University find that some chronic liars are capable, successful, even disciplined people who embellish their life stories needlessly. They don’t suffer from an established mental illness, as many habitual fabricators do. They’re just, well, liars. LA Times

Mickey Kaus wonders: [scroll down]: Why did we find out about the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed almost immediately after the event? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep the arrest secret while the U.S. and its allies rolled up those al Qaeda operatives whose whereabouts could be traced through Mohammeds’ cell phone and computer, etc.? Why send out a worldwide alert, through CNN, to his co-conspirators, telling them it was time to scatter? Did the need for good publicity trump sound anti-terror techniques?… Slate

One way to make sense of this is suggested by Robert Fisk. Was Mohammed really arrested at all. Where’s the proof? Common Dreams [thanks, Miguel] The US has a knack for crowing about victories in the War-on-Terror® at the most politically convenient times. (As Fisk puts it, “In the theatre of the absurd into which America’s hunt for al Qa’ida so often descends, the ‘arrest’ — the quotation markes are all too necessary — of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is nearer the Gilbert and Sullivan end of the repertory.”) If the significance of this announcement lies in its propaganda value rather than any operational benefits, nothing would be served by not splashing it all over the front pages as soon as it “happened.”

[scroll down]: Mickey Kaus edges toward the antiwar stance he calls the proceduralist position, after reading Michael Kinsley’s latest column (“…only if it’s multilateral…”), although he mischaracterizes France as the sole international obstacle to the Security Council’s blessings. “(I)f the war’s a good thing to do, they argue, are you really going to let France stop it?” Yes, he says, and agrees with Kinsley’s observation that “the general regime of international law depends on a willingness to sacrifice short-term goals that may even be admirable for the long-term goal of establishing some civilized norms of global behavior.” Kaus neatly dismisses the self-defense arguments of the dysadministration: “If self-defense justifies an attack on any nation that might pose a grave threat a few years down the road, the result could be just as destabilizing as if there were no general rule against trans-border attacks.”

He then goes on to share my consternation at a point made in antiwar polemics:

“The seemingly sophisticated focus, among antiwar types, on the difficulty of administering postwar Iraq actually undermines the anti-war case… because it suggests that without those difficulties a war outside the U.N. would be justifiable. In fact, those difficulties are largely irrelevant to the initial question of procedural legitimacy.”

It not only demeans the antiwar position to lump arguments of convenience and expense together with questions of inherent legitimacy and legality of the war; it also doesn’t keep company well with any of the other antiwar arguments with which it travels:

• the destabilizing precedent of preemptive strikes;
  
• the dismantling of the alliance of ‘civilized’ nations by US unilateralism;
  
• the humanitarian catastrophe awaiting Iraqi civilians;
  
• the abandonment of the principle that war is a last resort only with the failure of diplomatic engagement;
  
• the precipitation of anti-American terrorist blowback this will cause.
  

None of this, of course, is to mention at all the more absolutist antiwar position which rejects any complicity with the morally bankrupt killing machine perpetuating violent non-solutions. But Kaus is welcome nonetheless in the antiwar camp, even if he shows what a strange bedfellow he is in this contorted ‘P.S.’:

“Democracy, which we hope to bring to the Middle East, is basically a bunch of formal procedural rules too, no? We don’t ignore them when we don’t like the outcome. [Insert cheap shot about Bush actually losing the election?–ed. No! He won by the rules, with the Supreme Court playing the role of France.]” Slate

(Confidential to Mickey Kaus: As far as “not rushing” into your decision goes — if not now, when? You’re long past the point where taking the time to make up your mind is a virtue.)

Related: Time for a new antiwar message: ‘The peace movement’s call to “Let the Inspections Work” is becoming about

as effective as duct tape against biological weapons.’ — Karin Rosman, AlterNet

Hoax Photo Gallery

And, somewhat related: a neat idea! a weblog consisting of examples of fallacious reasoning from the world at large. I wonder if the author knows about General Semantics?

about context: “a new planetary culture emerges in the context of the digital information and connections. one culture that overcomes the old cultural dimensions clashes (science-art, universal-national, public-private, work-leissure, entertainment-education…).

context project is devoted to a net driven research and development on this new cultural context. the project’s initiatives aims to appropriate and disseminate the emerging culture as a new ‘art de vivre’…”

Visually appealing and (this is always my highest compliment on the net, it seems) thoughtful.

The Laws of War, US-Style:

After decades of massive defence spending, the US is today assured of victory in any war it chooses to fight. High-tech weaponry has reduced the dangers to US personnel, making it easier to sell war to domestic constituencies. As a result, some US politicians have begun to think of war, not as the high-risk recourse of last resort, but as an attractive foreign policy option in times of domestic scandal or economic decline. This change in thinking has already led to a more cavalier approach to the jus ad bellum, as exemplified by the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence. It is beginning to have a similar effect with regard to the jus in bello. When war is seen as an ordinary tool of foreign policy – ‘politics by other means’ – political and financial considerations impinge on the balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns. Soldiers are buried alive because the folks back home don’t like body bags.

In Washington, it has become accepted wisdom that future opponents are themselves unlikely to abide by international humanitarian law. During the Gulf War, captured American pilots were brutalised in several ways – some, for example, were gang-raped. The September 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers were ‘crimes against humanity’ – in technical terms, they were acts of violence committed as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population. If your enemy is going to cheat, why bother playing by the rules? — Michael Byers (who teaches international law at Duke), London Review of Books

My purpose here will be to consider the current criticisms of the Bush Administration articulated within mainstream opinion, and the responses of the Administration to them: in effect, the structure of intellectual justification on each side of the argument, what divides them and what they have common. I will end with a few remarks on how this debate looks from a perspective with a different set of premises. — UCLA historian Perry Anderson, London Review of Books

Escalating the war against the war: “The Pentagon is busy trying to persuade Iraqis not to cooperate with their

own government. It’s time American citizens did the same.”

What will today’s conscientious objectors and military deserters look like? Well, all week in Italy, activists have been blocking dozens of trains carrying U.S. weapons and personnel on their way to a military base near Pisa, while Italian dockworkers are refusing to load arms shipments. Last weekend, two U.S. military bases were blockaded in Germany, as was the U.S. consulate in Montreal, and the air base at RAF Fairford in Gloucester, England. This coming Saturday, thousands of Irish activists are expected to show up at Shannon airport, which, despite Irish claims of neutrality, is being used by the U.S. military to refuel its planes en route to Iraq.

In Chicago last week, more than 100 high-school students demonstrated outside the headquarters of Leo Burnett, the advertising firm that designed the U.S. military’s hip, youth-targeted Army of One campaign. The students claim that in underfunded Latino and African-American high schools, the army recruiters far outnumber the college scouts.

The most ambitious plan has come from San Francisco, where a coalition of antiwar groups is calling for an emergency non-violent “counterstrike” the day after the war starts: “Don’t go to work or school. Call in sick, walk out: We will impose real economic, social and political costs and stop business as usual until the war stops.”

— Naomi Klein, AlterNet

the CIA’s self-image descends to the surrealistic cartoonish. [via Dave Farber]

Spam Haiku: “I was looking at my SPAM mailbox the other day. As I was reading the countless subject lines, I started hearing Haiku in my head (this could be a sign that I’m losing it). I thought it would be neat to put together a script that would write Haiku out of my SPAM subject lines. What you see below are the results of this experiment.

I generate a new SpamKu every 15 minutes. That is what you see below. If you would like to see them, I keep an archive of old SpamKu.” Letters From Exile

Fast Cash Advance

A Better Option Than Bankruptcy

Cash In A Flash 8

“a place for the veneration of images of our Dear Leader.” [thanks, Adam]

[scroll down]: Wolfowitz v. Perle? After an Iraq war, if Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz moves to try to force Israel to curtail its settlements in the occupied territories — as he’s suggested he’ll do — how long do you think it will take his fellow neocon Bush adviser Richard Perle to turn on him? Not very long, I’d guess. .. Slate

Should genetic factors be cited as mitigating factors in criminal proceedings just as social factors already are?

In 1995, lawyers in America acting on behalf of the convicted murderer Stephen Mobley attempted to have his death sentence reduced to life imprisonment by claiming that there was a pattern of aggression (and, bizarrely, business success) in Mobley’s ancestry which suggested a relevant genetic aetiology underlying his criminal behaviour.

Even by the standards of the TV series Ally McBeal such an approach may strike one as desperate (the jury were clearly unimpressed; they rejected Mobley’s case and he remains on death row to this day) but the publication in September of a report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that in the future such an approach may become far more widespread. The Philosophers’ Magazine

Children who bite their fingernails may be damaging their IQ, a study suggests.

This is because lead can gather under their nails simply by playing in dusty conditions, both indoors and outdoors. BBC

Ariel Sharon yesterday virtually ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state under his hawkish new government just a day after President Bush pledged to broker a peace deal once he has dealt with Iraq.

Hours before his cabinet was sworn in, the prime minister revealed to the knesset that he has backed away from his commitment to the Palestinian state envisioned by Washington’s “road map” for a settlement, as part of the deal to put together his government. Guardian/UK

“These 130-decibel sirens, which, beginning Friday, will scream all day and night in the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, will serve as a helpful reminder to citizens to stay on the lookout for suspicious activity and be ready for emergency action,” [Secretary of Homeland Security Tom] Ridge said. “Please note, though, that this is merely a precautionary measure, so go about your lives as normal.” The Onion

Flatly contradicting his engineers, NASA head Sean O’Keefe said yesterday that he does not accept their premise that nothing could have been done to repair the heat tiles and save the crew of the space shuttle Columbia before it dived into its fiery re-entry from orbit.

Mr. O’Keefe’s comments came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a video showing the last images of the crew, shot as their ship slashed through the upper atmosphere’s super-heated gas, which pulsed like red flashes outside Columbia’s windows.

The footage of the routine flight operations takes on an aura of poignancy because the crew, unlike those who view the tape now, was unaware that within minutes their orbiter would disintegrate more than 60 kilometres above the ground. Toronto Globe and Mail

Related: NASA’s Worst Fears Realized:

Newly disclosed e-mail inside NASA showed senior engineers worried a day before the Columbia disaster that the shuttle’s left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, a scenario remarkably similar to the one investigators believe actually occurred.

The dozens of pages of e-mail describe a broader, internal debate than previously acknowledged about the seriousness of potential damage to Columbia from a liftoff collision with foam debris from its central fuel tank. Engineers never sent their warnings to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s brass. Wired News

Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.

…Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity.

“If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease,” says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. “The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what’s the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, ‘Well, poverty, things like that.’ It probably isn’t. So I’d like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent.”

Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. “People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.” New Scientist

Some of the most secret and scariest work under way in the Pentagon these days is the planning for a possible military strike against nuclear sites in North Korea….Ironically, the gravity of the situation isn’t yet fully understood in either South Korea or Japan, partly because they do not think this administration would be crazy enough to consider a military strike against North Korea. They’re wrong. — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times

The “raptors clustered around …Cheney and …Rumsfeld and in the National Security Council” have apparently recently found Bush’s ear, just as their relentless and criminal hawking for war on Iraq eventually wore down saner positions within the administration. Bush, it seems, remains a malleable puppet in the hands of his father’s cronies. Now the administration has dropped the bilateral reference and is willing to talk to North Korea only in a multilateral framework that doesn’t exist. The old approach had a snowball’s chance in purgatory; now it’s less than that. One observer noted, “We haven’t exhausted diplomacy. We haven’t begun diplomacy…” Kristof thinks there’s nothing wrong with planning, but in an administration that’s diplomatically handicapped, going to war if diplomacy fails means going to war.

So, Kristof concludes, we’re likely headed for a surgical strike against North Korean nuclear capabilities — even without the consent of the South Koreans — banking on Kim Jong Il’s fear of US retaliation if he responds. If we’re on the wrong side of that gamble, we may be in for another Korean war. The North has 13,000 artillery pieces and could fire some 400,000 shells in the first hour of an attack, many with sarin and anthrax, on the 21 million people in the “kill box” — as some in the U.S. military describe the Seoul metropolitan area. The Pentagon has calculated that another Korean war could kill a million people. What’s the answer? Three things this dysadministration is incapable of — thinking before it acts, skillful negotiation, and thinking before it acts..

Is it cos I is British? Ali G has arrived on American TV screens and influential reviewers are not amused. Hardly surprising, says Mark Lawson – comedy rarely crosses the Atlantic ‘humour gulf’ successfully. Guardian/UK Uhhh, I’m sorry, it’s not because it’s British humor. For some inexplicable reason, I caught the HBO debut of this tripe, and I’m someone who thrives on British humor. But I’ll never watch it again. The essayist misses the point (is it cos he am British?) even though he grasps the central conceit of the show, in which an offensive, puerile and — let’s not shy away from it — stupid interviewer insinuates himself into various situations.

Entirely character-driven, the basic joke in the show – the unwillingness of officialdom to question the racial and intellectual credentials of their questioner – becomes even more pointed in a nation where the right to racial self-definition is widely accepted and terrible consequences can follow from questioning someone’s professional competence.

Even if Edwin Meese or Newt Gingrich or any of the others had felt that there was something a little odd about their interlocutor, they would have been well aware of the potential newspaper headlines or even lawsuits which might result from throwing him out. For this reason, the American editions of Da Ali G Show may be its creator’s most powerful commentary on a culture which is terrified of giving offence to anyone at all.

So American viewers are either going to be the ones who get the joke and find it too painful to be entertaining or funny, or they’re going to be the ones who are too myopic to get it at all. Sort of like the division right down the middle of the American public over George Bush’s credentials. Nobody on either side of the 49%/51% cultural divide finds him funny either.

The world’s first attempted Aids vaccine proved a failure yesterday when, after four years’ work, the Californian biotech company VaxGen announced that trial results showed that it did not protect those at risk of HIV infection.

VaxGen did its best to put an optimistic spin on the collapse of its hopes of selling the vaccine to the US and Europe by offering the surprising finding that its AidsVax had appeared to protect African Americans and, to a lesser extent, people from some other ethnic groups.

But the 78% efficacy in black volunteers, although statistically significant, proved to be based on just 13 cases of HIV infection.

The statistical problem in proving significant effectiveness against a low-incidence condition are far greater, and require much larger numbers of subjects, than against higher-frequency conditions. It is very likely that the finding that the vaccine worked in minority populations was a statistical fluke, although the company appears to be whoring with it.

Seth Berkley, president of the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), said: “It is difficult to draw conclusions about what this means.”

John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Cornell University in New York, said: “The common sense is that this is a very small group of patients and I think they are data dredging.”

VaxGen said it intended to seek a licence to market the vaccine to those groups – African Americans and other (North American) ethnic minorities, excluding Hispanics – in whom efficacy had been shown.

“This is the first time we have specific numbers to suggest that a vaccine has prevented HIV infection in humans,” said Phillip Berman, its senior vice president for research and development and inventor of the vaccine. Guardian/UK

Tom Lehrer is still feisty and funny, but the king of sophisticated satire tells Tony Davis there’s no place for his style of humour now: the world just wouldn’t get it.

‘I’m not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn’t figure out what sort of song I would write. That’s the problem: I don’t want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.” Sydney Morning Herald

Security Council diplomats say countries that are undecided whether to wage war on Iraq — six crucial elected council members — are preparing for a withering show of pressure from the world’s sole superpower.

“There’s an old saying that in good times, your friends find out who you are; in bad times, you find out who your friends are,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said last week. Mexico is one of the key undecided votes.

Countries have learned to fear Washington’s wrath over key U.N. votes. USA Today

Related: Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war:

Secret document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key Security Council members. Guardian/UK

Ariel Sharon yesterday virtually ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state under his hawkish new government just a day after President Bush pledged to broker a peace deal once he has dealt with Iraq.

Hours before his cabinet was sworn in, the prime minister revealed to the knesset that he has backed away from his commitment to the Palestinian state envisioned by Washington’s “road map” for a settlement, as part of the deal to put together his government. Guardian/UK

State sells penknives confiscated at airports at online auction SF Chronicle

The Homeland Security Threat Monitor program for Windows places an icon in the system tray to show the current terrorism threat level and polling the White House web server periodically to be sure there hasn’t been an increase. If there is, the icon flashes to alert you. Be the first on your block to roll out the duct tape! A similar Mac utility is here.

Scare Bear Index

from my neighborhood. MetroWest Daily

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was arrested Saturday in Pakistan, a senior official told The Associated Press.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Mohammed was one of three men arrested in a 3 a.m. raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad.

A U.S. official said both U.S. and Pakistani agents were involved in the operation.

Mohammed, 37, is one of the FBI’s most-wanted terror suspects, and the U.S. government had offered up to $25 million for information leading to his capture.

U.S. officials have described him as a key al-Qaida lieutenant and the organizer of the terror mission… Nando Times

Pakistan might consider itself under some burden to deliver for the US just now considering that it is a (a) despotically-run (b) hotbed of Islamic foment (c) full of weapons of mass destruction (d) harboring al Qaeda terrorists in droves, and (e) at a strategic geopolitical crossroad, if that sounds familiar. But, on the other hand, they don’t have extensive oil resources, so they’re probably safe. Don’t expect too much followup news about where U.S. authorities have Mohammed in custody, by the way. They’ve whisked him out of Pakistan to an undisclosed location outside the U.S., likely a ship in international wates or a secret military base, where there can be no scrutiny over their ‘interrogation’ techniques. No interference from those pesky ACLU types will stop us from putting him in a world of hurt in payback for what he has allegedly done.

Turkey’s parliament dealt a stunning blow to U.S. war planning Saturday by failing to approve a bill allowing in American combat troops to open a northern front against Iraq.

The decision was likely to seriously strain ties with Washington and marked a setback to U.S. efforts to show Saddam Hussein that he is surrounded and his neighbors support a U.S.-led coalition.

(…) Turkish lawmakers had faced overwhelming public opposition to basing U.S. troops on Turkish soil. Yet Washington had been so sure of winning approval from close ally and NATO member Turkey, that ships carrying U.S. tanks are waiting off Turkey’s coast for deployment and the U.S. military has thousands of tons of military equipment ready to unload at the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun. Nando Times

What, do you suppose, will the vindictive and small-minded dysadministration honchos do to Turkey if this narcissistic blow stands? Add it to the Axis-of-Evil®?

The United Arab Emirates on Saturday called for Saddam Hussein to step down to spare the region war, the first Arab country to do so publicly. Nando Times

What ever happened to the predictions, to which I blinked months ago, that major Middle East players like the Saudis would surely engineer Saddam’s resigning or being deposed to prevent the U.S. intervention?

about the case for war with Iraq; and 26 ways to use the 13 myths. RightWATCH. RightWATCH “organizes responses to antidemocratic distortions of truth” using a unique online collaborative model for researching and editing pamphlets and factsheets. You can distribute their product or use it as a template to generate your own documents countering pernicious political myths.

And:

As a supplement to the facts presented in “13 Myths,” we suggest the following guides to detecting deceptive reasoning:

• Introduction to Propaganda Analysis by Chip Berlet (2-pages)
• Guide to logical fallacies, at Nizkor.org (extensive)
• Guide to logical fallacies, by Stephen Downes complete but succinct)
  

On this day in 1862, Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in Their Alabaster

Chambers” was published. This was the second of only a handful of

poems to appear in Dickinson’s lifetime, all of them anonymously

and, most think, without her knowledge. Six weeks later she sent

her famous letter to the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “Are

you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”

Safe in their alabaster chambers,

Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,

Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,

Rafter of satin, and roof of stone. . . .

Today in Literature

Two from wood s lot that bear repointing to:

Blueprint for a Prison Planet:

The purpose of this piece is to introduce the reader to the possibility that much of what we typically believe about our world, notably its history and its political structure, may be some distance from the truth. In writing it is not my intention to reveal some vast, secret government or destiny, but simply to allow interested readers to indulge themselves in the exercise of re-evaluating just what is going on around us. Whether or not anyone chooses to believe the scenario portrayed is entirely up to him or her. I make no categorical statements about “how the world is” because our interpretation of our world and the events of our lives is ultimately an entirely subjective experience.

In presenting this alternative interpretation of our world, I have simply gone straight into the “conspiracy theory” version of history with scant regard for quite viable alternative explanations for much of what has happened in recent years. Put simply, I have for the purpose of this exercise quite deliberately selected the most negative explanation or outcome for any series of events portrayed. If the reader finds following this piece stressful, then I advise him or her to always keep in mind that there are many other ways of looking at our world and, even if the “worst-case scenario” were true, then simply recognizing the problem would quickly bring about its reversal. — Nick Sandberg

How Apocalyptic and Millennialist Themes Influence Right Wing Scapegoating and Conspiracism. — Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (originally in the Fall 1998 issue of The Public Eye magazine)

“an independent, nonprofit research center that studies antidemocratic, authoritarian, and other oppressive movements, institutions, and trends. PRA is based on progressive values, and is committed to advancing an open, democratic, and pluralistic society. PRA provides accurate, reliable research and analysis to activists, journalists, educators, policy makers, and the public at large.”

Paul McGeough, Herald Correspondent in Baghdad:

United Nations agencies in Iraq have embarked on a desperate drive to “beef up” hundreds of thousands of malnourished toddlers, hoping to enable them to survive a war.

An aid official yesterday said: “The worst-case scenario is that we have only 10 days to finish what is an enormous task.”

The mercy dash, before what many UN staff believe will be their imminent evacuation from the country, follows the leaking of UN assessments that warn of a “humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale and magnitude”.

The “strictly confidential” UN documents, posted on the website of the Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq, warn that 30 per cent of Iraqi children under age five would be at risk of death from malnutrition because of likely war damage to the country’s electricity grid and transport systems. Sydney Morning Herald