Won’t You?

We hold this truth to be self-evident:

Having George W. Bush as President has been and will continue to be a disaster.

We will not let our partisanship towards any particular candidate for President cause us to lose sight of this basic truth. As such, we pledge ourselves not to become enablers of any campaign designed to divide us in our struggle to remove Bush from power. We pledge that no more will we be:

Tools of those who would disrupt the Anybody-But-Bush movement.

Partisans who would rather bring down the other guy’s candidate than find reason to elevate our own.

Dupes who will automatically assume that anything negative about the other guy’s candidate is more likely to be true than the negative things said about our guy.

Fools who lose sight of the ultimate goal: the defeat of George W. Bush on November 2nd, 2004.

We will uphold this pledge to the best of our ability.

We will encourage others to do the same.

This we do solemnly swear.

The racial achievement gap in education is the major civil rights issue of our time. “…The glaring racial gap… between whites and Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other… is an American tragedy and a national emergency for which there are no good excuses. It is the main source of ongoing racial inequality, and racial inequality is America’s great unfinished business, the wound that remains unhealed. Our failure to provide first-class education for black and Hispanic students is both an educational catastrophe and the central civil rights issue of our time.. . .True, the black high-school graduation rate has more than doubled since 1960, and blacks today attend college at a higher rate than whites did just two decades ago. But the good news ends there. Equal years warming a seat in school do not mean equal skills and knowledge, and the hard fact is that non-Asian minorities are leaving high school without the training that will enable them to do well in a society whose doors are finally wide open. This is not a story about lower IQs. It is a story of kids who have the ability to learn, but who have been tragically — and needlessly — left behind.” —Abigail Thernstrom (a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) and Stephan Thernstrom (professor of history at Harvard University), coauthors of the recently published No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Boston Globe

Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small This is the name of a new book, by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff (who were interviewed this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition), respectively professors of law and business at Yale. It is also, apparently, the name of a movement of sorts. They are ‘open sourcing’ their notion and inviting contributors to share design and innovation concepts in the public domain. See the website.

Think twice before calling Iraq “Another Vietnam” : “It’s commonplace in the US media and in some policy circles to hear the conflict in Iraq described as ‘Another Vietnam.’ As an academic who has done extensive research on Vietnam, including its wars, I recoil from the phrase. Popular as a polemical device, it flunks as an analytical tool. Comparison of different cases is sometimes helpful; glossing over complex differences with a label never is.” — William S. Turley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the author of The Second Indochina War, writing in —Yale Global. However, this is one of those issues that may be too important to be left to the academics, it strikes me. His level of detailed analysis ends up finding that the details are significant and the generalities are, well, just generalities, with the word used as an epithet. It is a no-brainer to expect that academic analysis will reveal a myriad of differences between Iraqi and Vietnamese history and context. But the similarities — oops, the generalities — are instructive, illuminating the uncanny American capacity for arrogant unilateral imperialist bullying in the guise of omnipotent do-goodism. How about some detailed academic analysis of why this is such a perennial defining characteristic of American foreign policy across decades and party lines?

Sidney Blumenthal: “How can Bush feign shock at the carnage in Baghdad when he signed off on reports that predicted it?” —Salon

Fred Kaplan: Err War: “Back in Soviet times, there was a Russian army general who liked to bellow, ‘Analysis is for lieutenants and women.’ This brute-force approach to military matters didn’t serve the Soviet Union well in the long run. Unfortunately, the same attitude seems to be creeping into the U.S. Army today.” —Slate

“It’s the case that doesn’t exist. Even though two different federal courts have conducted hearings and issued rulings, there has been no public record of any action. No documents are available. No files. No lawyer is allowed to speak about it. Period.

Yet this seemingly phantom case does exist – and is now headed to the US Supreme Court in what could produce a significant test of a question as old as the Star Chamber, abolished in 17th-century England: How far should a policy of total secrecy extend into a system of justice?…

The case is significant because it could force a close examination of secret tactics that are apparently becoming increasingly common under Attorney General Ashcroft. In September 2001, he ordered that all deportation hearings with links to the Sept. 11 investigation be conducted secretly. In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged that at least nine criminal cases related to the Sept. 11 investigation were being cloaked in total secrecy.” —Christian Science Monitor

U.S. Soldiers Seal Saddam’s Home Village:

“Soldiers stretched concertina wire around the perimeter of the village and established checkpoints. Residents over the age of 18 will be required to have registration cards to move in and out of the village, U.S. officers said.

The New York Times reported Friday that senior U.S. officials believe the former Iraqi leader, who is believed to have been on the run since U.S. forces took over Baghdad in April, is playing a major role in coordinating and directing attacks against American troops.”

The irony of ‘becoming what we detest’ is, I’m sure, lost on no one. It is easy to say this is no way to ‘liberate’ anyone, but the rejoinder from the powers-that-be is also an easy one, about security and protecting ourselves so we can get the job done, etc. etc. But there is a deeper irrationality here. Look at the two paragraphs I excerpted from the Guardian news story; these two facts get juxtaposed in all reportage on this action, with no greater connection than their proximity. Here it is again, further down in the story:

Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, said he did not know whether Saddam was directing parts of the insurgency, but the village is the family home of many former Baathist regime members. “There are ties leading to this village, to the funding and planning of attacks against U.S. soldiers,” Russell said.

I have looked in vain for any evidence of what those ties might be.

“Three websites that spotlighted a Massachusetts spammer’s bizarre quest for time-travel technology have been hit with an avalanche of what appear to be retaliatory messages. …While spammers commonly forge bogus ‘from’ lines in their ads to avoid detection, the choice of the victim sites appears to be malicious. All three recently published hyperlinks to an August report by Wired News that revealed Robert ‘Robby’ Todino of Woburn as the source of millions of bulk e-mails since 2001 seeking far-fetched devices such as a dimensional warp generator.

The spam that generated all the recent trouble appears to be connected to Todino. The messages, which bore subject lines such as ‘Stop Spam in Its Tracks’ or ‘Say Goodbye to Junk Email,’ advertised a website, Quickeasysolution.com, as the source of an antispam software program.

According to domain-registration records (registration required), John Miller of 4 Oak Street in Woburn, Massachusetts, registered Quickeasysolution.com on Oct. 12. Messages left on the voicemail of the mobile-phone number listed in the record were not returned.

Domain registrations for several sites previously operated by Todino listed the same fictitious street address.” —Wired News

Customer-Service Cluelessness: “Until a few years ago, my wife was a plastic surgeon. She quit for a lot of reasons, but one was the frustration of getting reimbursement from the HMOs.

(…)

And on it would go, until her career felt as though it were half surgery, and half paperwork.

From my outsider’s perspective, it looked like she had stumbled onto a new American business model: passive-aggressive robbery.

Unfortunately, now, in the age of high-tech services, it looks as though the practice has spread to other industries.” —David Pogue, New York Times [via walker]

“The new director’s cut of ‘Alien’ reminds us the film is a powerful purveyor of existential dread, not just haunted-house thrills.

Unlike its increasingly baroque series of sequels, Ridley Scott’s original 1979 Alien is a film about human loneliness amid the emptiness and amorality of creation. It’s a cynical ’70s-leftist vision of the future in which none of the problems plaguing 20th century Earth — class divisions, capitalist exploitation, the subjugation of humanity to technology — have been improved in the slightest by mankind’s forays into outer space. Although it has often been described as being a haunted-house movie set in space, Alien also has a profoundly existentialist undertow that makes it feel like a film noir — the other genre to feature a slithery, sexualized monster as its classic villain.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“Just in time for Halloween, a vampire-killing kit complete with a wooden stake and 10 silver bullets sold for $12,000 US at auction Thursday.

The kit, a walnut box that also contained a crucifix, a pistol, a rosary and vessels for garlic powder and various serums, was bought by an anonymous phone bidder.

According to Sotheby’s, some experts believe that such kits were commonly available to travellers in Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, while others think the kits were made in the early 20th century, possibly to cash in on interest in vampires sparked by the 1897 publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” —CNEWS Weird News

Images of Space Get Second Look: “Much like paintings of America’s Wild West commissioned by government surveyors became icons that redefined American culture in the 19th century, photographs of alien landscapes taken by the Voyager spacecraft have shaken our sense of self today.

The photographs of that second awakening, and other images from robotic space probes, were the subject of a panel discussion at the American Museum of Natural History titled ‘Far Out: Space Probes as Landscape Photographers.'” —Wired News

“It is becoming fashionable to question Darwinism, but few people understand either the arguments for evolution or the arguments against it. Mary Wakefield explains the thinking on both sides.” —Spectator

Do post-9/11 realities signal the death of Po-Mo? “No matter which side one takes in these post 9/11 conflicts — which could make the culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s look like child’s play — the rantings of late 20th-century postmodern relativists seem as quaint and distant today as the prattlings of Victorian sentimentalists.

The absence of a seductive replacement for postmodernism has left public intellectuals — can we use that word in a daily newspaper these days without smirking? — with a renewed respect and affection for the paramount movement of the 20th century: modernism.” —Statesman

“Race has become such a rare topic in Hollywood movies that The Human Stain – which deals with the even more rare subject of racial passing – seems to be the work of trailblazing radicals. Director Robert Benton, best known for Kramer vs. Kramer, has filmed an adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2000 novel to make a thoughtful, bold exploration of American values. It’s also one of the bravest – and strangest – Hollywood movies in recent years.” — Armond White, —Africana.com [via AlterNet]

Doctors turn on each other: “The long-running controversy over the MMR vaccination turned unexpectedly into an extraordinary public battle of words yesterday between two doctors responsible for the research paper which began the scare five years ago.

Andrew Wakefield and Simon Murch, both gastroenterologists at the Royal Free medical school in London, have taken very different paths since their paper was published in the Lancet in February 1998.

Dr Wakefield continued public backing for his hypothesis that the MMR triple jab could be responsible for rising rates of autism among children has made him a hero to many parents seeking a reason for their children’s distressing condition, but rendered him virtually a pariah to most of the medical establishment.

In contrast, Dr Murch and his team have kept a low profile.

All that changed yesterday, however, when Dr Murch published a strongly worded letter in the Lancet stating that there was no evidence of a link and warning of the likelihood of a measles epidemic because of the low rate of vaccination, which is down to 61% in some parts of London.” —Guardian.UK

Microsoft and Google: “Wall Street is not the only one wooing Google. Microsoft is as well.

Google, the highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it was still engaged in meetings of another kind: exploring a partnership or even a merger with Microsoft.” —New York Times. Just what I need; for Blogger to be owned by M$.

“Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have had polio at all, but a paralyzing disease called Guillain-Barre syndrome, Texas researchers say.

‘We feel from the clinical evidence, which is all that exists, that it’s more likely that he had Guillain-Barre syndrome,’ said Dr. Armond S. Goldman, emeritus professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

But Dr. Goldman added that polio could not be ruled out. ‘We felt it was unlikely, but we weren’t there,’ he said. He admitted that a different diagnosis ‘would not have changed a thing’ since there was no treatment at the time for Guillain-Barre.” —New York Times

“Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American-led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.” —New York Times

Bush has not attended the funeral of a single U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. And veterans are starting to notice. —AlterNet