Craig is back (and he still has that picture of Warren Zevon up next to his own at the top of the page!).

Kristof suggests four things we should be doing about this:

• secure fissionable nuclear materials around the world
• a serious commitment to nonproliferation. With regard to North Korea and Iran, where the danger is greatest and where it mihgt be too late, extreme concessions are necessary to bribe them into giving up their nuclear aspirations
• vigorous and targeted ‘homeland security’ measures to prevent the smuggling of nuclear weapons or their components into the US
• “Finally, Mr. Bush needs to display moral clarity about nuclear weapons, making them a focus of international opprobrium. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush is pursuing a new generation of nuclear bunker-buster bombs. That approach helps make nukes thinkable, and even a coveted status symbol, and makes us more vulnerable.”

Kerry’s comment that he would wage a “more sensitive” war on terrorism came in for ridicule from Bush’s attack dogs, especially Cheney and his wife. Yet Kerry was prepared with chapter and verse of Bush’s own references to the need for sensitivity in prosecuting the war. (Washington Post) Two of Bush’s comments struck me. First, there is this, from 2001:

“Precisely because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence. Our goal is to patiently build the momentum of freedom, not create resentment for America itself.”

Can Bush really think this is what he has been doing since??

And this comment is getting alot of press, as it should:

“Now, in terms of the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice obviously is — we need to be very sensitive on that.”

Don’t tell me I’m taking it out of context; there is no context that could make this comment sound coherent! Behind such disordered syntax is surely a mind that cannot get from point A to point B in a orderly and logical manner. Here we are in another Bush campaign, and I am starting to get worked up again about the fact that the American public don’t see, or are not alarmed by, Bush’s cognitive limitations. I thought I resolved that for myself during the 2000 campaign — Bush’s muddled thinking and inarticulateness appealed to American voters’ anti-intellectualism and intimidation by the complexities of most issues.

In an interesting piece in last month’s Atlantic, James Fallows analyzed the speaking styles of Bush and Kerry to give us a sense of what to expect in the Presidential debates. Fallows watched tapes of old campaign debates for each. Surprisingly, he felt the contrasts between Bush’s early presentation and his recent performances as Presidential candidate and since prove that Bush has deliberately remade himself into an “Aw, shucks”, befuddled, plainspeaking man in order to appeal more broadly, and that there is artifice and cunning in this strategy that the Kerry team had better be alert to. While it would explain alot, I just can’t see anyone crafting a sentence like the above by artifice.

Bush probably remade himself as a Texas rancher because — no offense meant to Texas — it was far easier for a dimwit who had never read a book in his life and spent his time at Harvard Business School smirking and blowing bubbles in the last row of the lecture hall not to feel outclassed on a Crawford ranch or among good ol’ boy oilmen than it was among his original Ivy League circles in New England. It seems more likely to me that the cunning was on the part of his handlers, not him, in elevating a stuporous man, who would not impede their own agenda, to the Presidency. One overriding example — the evidence is abundantly clear that the PNAC neo-conservatives had Iraq on their minds for a long time, as the lynchpin in their grandiose geopolitical agenda, and were easily able to hijack the post-9/11 War on Terror to their aims. For Bush’s part, the irresistable draw of Iraq served other purposes, largely unconscious, by the force of which he could be enlisted into the neo-con agenda. As well as the pitifully simplistic credo of enhancing democracy and freedom, there have been persistent suggestions that toppling Saddam Hussein largely addressed Bush’s Oedipal needs relating to his lifelong sense of inadequacy vis a vis his father. When unrecognized by an unsophisticated intellect (well known for his dismissal of “psychobabble” whenever asked to scrutinize his own motives), such unconscious dramas are often the major influences at work in someone’s behavior. As an aside, the other issue in which Dubya’s unconscious Oedipal urges to best his father will be put to use by his advisors to further their own aims is, of course, winning a second term, which Bush the Father could not do. As this seems less and less attainable, we will see — perhaps we already are, in the accumulating evidence that Bush is ‘losing it’ in public — the sort of pitiful psychodramatic desperation that is evident when the unconscious stakes are so high.

The contrast between his seeming mastery of the limited scope of Texas gubernatorial issues and his befuddlement at the range of Presidential issues is a matter of the Peter Principle, of his having been promoted far beyond his level of cognitive incompetency. (Fallows does suggest ways in which his dogged reduction of any campaign question in Texas to one of three canned responses could work there, while not on the Presidential stage.) Of course, one also needs to take into account the cognitive damage done by a lifetime of partying with cocaine and alcohol by a rich spoiled kid who never grew up.

When I have asked more discerning observers, some with much closer familiarity with Bush, whether they think he is intellectually dull, I have gotten two kinds of responses. Some people are evasive, feeling it is a matter of protocol not to disparage the Leader of the Free World in this manner. (This constraint has dominated journalistic considerations of Bush.) Others demur, pointing to evidence of what a cunning politician he is, as if this refutes my concerns. But being a politician is usually a matter of reductionistic simplification of complexities and manipulation of your interlocutors, rather than one of grasp of issues and sophisticated exchanges in conversations.

In anticipating the debates, my prediction is that you will see alot more of this incontrovertible incoherence, which is something altogether different from plainspeaking. Whether it will be recognized for the alarming evidence of an utter inability to function in a Presidential role is another matter. Wake up, America, you have to be able to think to run the country!

[Now, I know I seem to be at my best when I’m finding fault with others. I usually come off more like a shark excited by blood in the water than a bloodhound methodically tracking a scent, I suppose. Hey, sounds like a politician; except I’m working on it…]

If you had any doubts about whether these guys are in touch with mainstream American culture, look at this stunning list of the performers they are booking for NYC.

Kevin Drum comments: “Are there any depths to which these guys won’t sink? What’s next? Alleged al-Qaeda infiltration of labor unions? Email from Osama to the NAACP?” (The Washington Monthly)

Don’t expect the sort of leniency Lindh seeks from the Bush Justice Dept. before the election.

Reason interviews Barlow, former Wyoming rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder. Barlow talks about his upcoming stint as the star of a reality TV show, his new recommendations for ‘bohemian libertarians’, digital freedom, and his recent apprehension at San Francisco Airport as a threat to national security.

The review of this fanciful book edited by “Dr. Jeff VanderMeer & Dr. Mark Roberts”, with a remarkable density of luminaries contributing, hooked me, as a physician who has written and lectured myself on unusual and controversial syndromes.

Boing boing linked to this orthopedic warning about the effects of backpacks on back health. For those of us getting school supplies ready for our children’s September return to the classroom, it is a timely advisory that deserves to be distributed widely. Although adult backs are either stronger or already ruined, it is probably not bad advice for us grown-ups either; I routinely haul around too much stuff, mostly reading material I don’t want to be stranded without. Commonsense advice often ignored: if one has a smaller pack, one’s ability to load it up is helpfully constrained. (I learned that a long time ago with respect to my mountaineering backpacks, but it has not translated effectively to my daily urban carry.)

I am glad boing boing‘s piece addended the reader’s comment on the competing hazards of shoulder bags, which may do a different sort of damage to the back by imbalancing the bearer laterally. I first got to thinking about this imbalance issue after Carlos Castaneda described a lecture his brujo don Juan supposedly gave him in A Yaqui Way of Knowledge several decades ago. This, however, emphasized the spiritual hazards of such an ‘uncentered’ way of moving through life (also criticizing Western ‘imbalanced’ sports such as tennis in the process, if I recall).

Someone’s been having a bunch of Photoshop fun.

I heard Keyes interviewed on an NPR talk show this afternoon. He had the temerity to call Barack Obama’s stand on abortion “the slaveowners’ position” and to accuse Obama of lying about favoring civil unions over gay marriage. Keyes, one of the most polemical politicians I have ever heard speak, boasted that while others’ political positions are made via assertion, his are made via argument, and then went on to make unargued assertions on every point in his conservative platform. It may have been the fault of the cowed interviewer (who could not stand up to the withering blasts of pompous articulacy from his guest) that he did not justify, explain or argue anything, but I think Keyes is so caught up in the idea of his own brilliance that he is incapable of seeing his absurdity. Let us hope the Illinois voters can tell the difference. (The first poll after he got into the race showed him trailing Obama 67-28%).

Oh, yes, Keyes was asked to justify his carpetbagging entry into the Illinois race from Maryland in light of his oft-quoted condemnation of Hilary Clinton’s run for a Senate seat in New York. In what had to be the most entertaining moment of this galling interview, he actually invoked states’ rights and the protection of sovereignty in explaining the difference — Illinois wanted him, whereas Clinton was not New York’s choice. Uhhh, Alan, it looks like it is going to be precisely the other way around…

“The full text online of a short story by Will Self from his new collection Dr Mukti And Other Tales of Woe“. (willself.org.uk)

Leading US daily admits underplaying stories critical of White House push for Iraq war (Yahoo! News)

An interesting critique of Alan Ball and Six Feet Under from critic Dale Peck who, among other things, finds it too painful to watch the characters’ stupid choices:

“The most common criticism of the show is that such high jinks are a little too reminiscent of soap-opera plotting. The critics are right, of course, but before one acknowledges that, one should also acknowledge the fact that the characters on Six Feet Under are what pollsters call “self-selecting”; in this case, a peer group of incredibly destructive people who create most of the drama in their lives. Mr. Ball’s characters choose among potential acquaintances and mates the same way doomed heroines choose between the ax and the flashlight in horror movies: They pick up the flashlight every time, so they can shine it in the face of death as it swoops down on them. This is an expression of the form, but it’s also an expression of Thanatos, by which I mean that, yes, it’s big and Greek and a little silly, but you don’t get to have one without the other. In fact, the heroine doesn’t really choose the flashlight over the ax—vision over protection, knowledge over life. Rather, death chooses her, as it eventually chooses all of us. This is the core of Six Feet Under, clumsily driven home by the high-concept funeral-home setup, yet delicately, empathically reinforced by the continued suffering of its characters. If the show is often mawkish—especially in the more outré kill scenes, which seem culled from horror movies—it also often achieves a Weltschmerz you won’t find anywhere else on TV. By which I mean that I got mad at American Beauty because it is, ultimately, a stupid story; but I get mad at the characters on Six Feet Under because they make stupid choices. And even though I know it’ll never happen, I still hope they make the right choice at some point.” (New York Observer)

But his real pain is reserved for the depiction of homosexuality and the controversial third episode of this season in which David is the victim of a heinous crime. Peck both finds the violence gratuitous and opines that Six Feet Under consistently treats gay desire as acting-out and something to be punished for. All I can say, as a viewer who finds the character development on this show to be some of the most sophisticated ever on television, is that this is an incredible demonstration of Peck’s selective attention in order to spin a yarn.

“A Lebanon County man admitted that he drank a 6-pack a day. A Pa. law required PennDot to be alerted.” (Philadelphia Inquirer )This article is doing the weblog rounds as a heinous example of Big Brother coming to the doctor’s office. I beg to differ, and I am surprised that people so uncritically have that take on the issue.

Driving under the influence is a heinous offense placing the innocent public at large at enormous risk, as any number of tragic incidents should remind us. Anyone who tells you that someone who drinks 6-10 beers a day can be trusted when they assure you that they can safely avoid driving under the influence is whistling in the dark. “I’m just a regular Joe six-pack,” the article quotes this hapless Joe as saying, and then goes on to opine that a man so large can be trusted to keep his blood alcohol level within legal limits by pacing his drinking. (The rule of thumb we are taught in our medical training is that an accurate estimate of a patient’s drinking is around twice what they admit to.) This is nothing so much as colluding in the minimization and denial that accompanies heavy drinking, a world in which, if you listen to the drinkers, no one is an alcoholic or in any way impaired by their drinking.

The problem in this case is that doctors and other professionals allow a naive notion of confidentiality to reign unchallenged in the eyes of the lay public. Preserving confidentiality always take a back seat to averting an imminent harm, but doctors entering into a treatment relationship with a new patient rarely go into the nuances of the limits and exceptions to doctor-patient privilege as they should. The problem, of course, is the fear that an accurate description of the situations in which a doctor will violate her patient’s confidence will have a chilling effect on patient honesty. So what is most common, instead, is a blanket assurance that anything said in the office will remain confidential. <

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While the article takes pains to inform us that only six states have laws requiring doctors to report unfit drivers to the motor vehicle authorities, the ethical and public health burden lies no less heavily on the physicians in the other forty-four states, IMHO. To complain that including alcohol abuse as a reportable offense without adequately defining what constitutes abuse is unfair ignores the fact that this achieves precisely what it should — to allow a doctor to exercise her professional judgment on whether an impairment ensues from her patient’s pattern of use. This, I think, is far preferable to codifying inflexible criteria in nonnegotiable laws. It is pitiful to hear the psychiatrist and medical ethicist quoted in the article complain that the judgment of the individual physician opens the way to arbitrariness and relativity. It is a sorry reflection on the state of modern medicine that the call for standards is really the stalking horse for a phobic avoidance of relying on one’s own professional judgment. In this vein, those whose license is revoked can, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, get their license back on a doctor’s say-so that they are safe to drive. The sobering (forgive me) effect of a wrongful death lawsuit if a physician restores a license to someone who later commits vehicular homicide while drunk will surely be a more effective hedge against the physician taking her obligation frivolously than many other incentives!

The other apparent failing of the physician in this case was in doing the mandatory reporting and springing the license revocation on the patient as a surprise. When I am faced with a competing harm-avoidance need that supersedes the confidentiality right of a patient of mine, the first thing to do is to talk about it with my patient, not the last! This goes a long way toward avoiding the potential sense of betrayal, enhancing the patient’s insight about the risk they are presenting and may well have been denying. Equally important, one encourages the patient to take preventive action themselves — installing a breathalyzer ignition interlock or cutting down significantly on one’s alcohol are both discussed in this article — and maintain their control and dignity, rather than making it a matter of law enforcement at all.

The situation in which violating a patient’s confidence comes up most often for me is not reporting a patient as a potentially unsafe driver but the so-called Tarasoff duty — to warn a prospective victim or take other appropriate harm-avoidance measures if I have learned in confidence that a patient of mine intends to do harm to a specific other individual. But in discussing my considering doing so, the patient will often choose to preempt my plan and take measures themselves to diffuse the risk, certainly a far more therapeutic outcome.

The article’s conclusion is further confused, suggesting that the incident led the man to cut down on his alcohol abuse “not just to get (his) license back” but for his health. While this may have been a by-product of the situation described, I hope the reporter who wrote this story is not suggesting that the benefits to the man’s health justified the means. The end that justifies the means here is the enhancement of public health and safety, not that of the individual.

What may hang in the balance is literally nothing less than whether talk therapy survives as an accepted treatment for emotional distress. Increasingly, the insurance companies that pay for treatments demand “evidence-based” proof of their efficacy, and research into the effectiveness of psychotherapy over the past decade has led to the ascendency of cookbook approaches which are easily standardized and controlled. The increasing penetration of this instruction-manual approach, even into some topnotch clinical psychology training programs, has stimulated outrage.

“Some therapists say that the healing they offer in their offices every day is too complex to be captured in standard studies, and that having to justify it to a third party is a breach of patient privacy. They argue that to insist on proof that a therapy works denies many people adequate treatment, or the forms of treatment that they most need.”

The empiricists insist that the move to evidence-based treatment has augmented the credibility of the field. Indeed, to the extent that it serves as a basis to differentiate reputable treatment from fringe therapies promising miraculous and instant results, it is tempting to agree. But the more crucial threat of evidence-based treatment is that it will take the art, the inspiration and inventiveness, the empathy and sensitivity out of treatment techniques that depend on them. The more crucial differentiation it achieves, at least in the eyes of the third-party payors, is from the open-ended exploratory treatment such as psychoanalysis, already a dying art because the only clientele who can afford it are the worried affluent self-paying. While various psychotherapeutic approaches — from the interminable self-indulgent open-ended to the structured problem-centered evidence-based to the brief and ultrabrief focused interventions to the unsuitability for any psychotherapy at all — ought to be stratified by the nature of the patient’s clinical presentation, severity and desire to change, insted they are coming to be stratified entirely by ability to pay and extent of insurance coverage.

Some therapists worry about the threat of lawsuits if they depart from “accepted” techniques. How about the threat of lawsuits if they refrain from using their inventiveness and creativity and tailoring the treatment to the unique requirements of each therapy client? There are precedents for a malpractice judgment when a therapist does not utilize a technique which is the standard of care for a given mental health problem. Studies cited in the article are only a small sampling of what used to be the consensus (in a generation of psychotherapy outcome studies designed by thoughtful ingenious competent researchers rather than beancounters) that it is the therapist’s competence, rather than anything about the specific technique she uses, that most closely correlates with therapeutic success. Instead, the new paradigm threatens to impose techniques, in the interest of being able to measure and replicate success, which mitigate against success. But at least the insurers will be able to economize on mental health treatment.

And, turning from psychotherapy to the care of the severely, chronically, mentally ill, here is an example of society’s treatment of them. (New York Times ) Believe me, obtaining redress as some of the clients mentioned in this story do is by far the exception.

The wonderful but, of course, quite fanciful Capitol Hill Blue is reporting that Bush is taking ‘powerful anti-depressant drugs’ to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia.’ The source of the report is not made clear beyond citing unnamed ‘White House sources’, but the ‘powerful’ drugs have reportedly been prescribed by Presidential physician Col. Richard Tubbs MD after the July 8th debacle, which I mentioned here, in which Bush stormed off stage after reporters questioned him about his relationship with the indicted Kenneth Lay. Added details of that incident are offered:

“Keep those motherfuckers away from me,” he screamed at an aide backstage. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

This piece suggests that the unidentified drugs “can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.”

The article draws heavily on the armchair diagnosis of Bush offered by psychiatrist Justin Frank in his recent book, Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, which I have criticized and others have more thoroughly savaged. Frank’s book and the comments of several prominent psychiatrists who share his concerns about the President’s mental stability are the closest the article comes to citing an authoritative source. But, notice, those sources have nothing to say about the drug prescriptions. All that Frank is ‘confirming’, in the words of the article, are ‘increasing concerns’ about Bush’s ‘mood swings’ and outbursts.

I will reiterate that, while I feel diagnosis of a public figure without having a treatment relationship with that individual is irresponsible and unethical, I feel that expressing concern from a professional vantage point, from which certain signs of instability may be clearly recognizable, is abidingly in the public interest. What this calls for is transparency about the mental health of a leader such as the President, much as his physical health is a matter of public record. Of course, we are vanishingly far from that transparency, and left to vain speculation.

I can say as a psychopharmacologist that, if these reports are true rather than scurrilous propaganda, the article is painting certain unwarranted and irresponsible implications. First of all, if it is really an anti-depressant that is being prescribed, these medications do not impair one’s mental faculties or ability to respond in a crisis except in very limited respects:

• Some are sedating and sleep-inducing; while the anti-depressant benefit exerts itself round the clock, the sedation only occurs for a limited time after a dose is taken. The sleep improvement and overall benefit from an effective anti-depressant actually usually enhances daytime cognitive efficiency.
• Some SSRI antidepressants have been described as causing a tongue-tied feeling or word-finding difficulties. How one would know in George Bush’s case is a real question…
• Certain anti-depressants, by figuratively giving the user a thicker skin and stopping things from getting to them quite so much, can reduce motivation in someone who is largely driven by perfomance anxiety. Do we really think it is plausible that Bush is worried by not doing a good job?

No medical professional would describe one anti-depressant as more ‘powerful’ than another; it is simply not an adjective that is usually applied to this class of medications. All are equally ‘powerful’ when used correctly. None are second-rate in comparison to othes that are first-rate. And while one should properly refrain from using other medications with addiction and abuse potential (such as anti-anxiety medications) in those with a history of alcohol abuse and other substance abuse problems such as Bush’s, this is not a concern with anti-depressants.

If the term ‘paranoia’ is being used in an accurate clinical sense, this is not something that would be benefited by an anti-depressant either. Perhaps the President is being given an anti-psychotic (instead or in addition?), which would be the proper medication to target a psychotic symptom such as frank paranoia and which would more warrant the concerns about impairing mental capacities and responsiveness. Or perhaps he is receiving a benzodiazepine (Valium-like) anti-anxiety medication, although these would tend to disinhibit rather than contain his outbursts? Or a mood stabilizer, which might benefit emotional reactivity, impulsivity, irritability and outbursts, but might also dull mental acuity at least at the outset.

In any case, my suspicion all along has been that Bush is a figurehead, a creature of his handlers. This rumor, if true, may be just the latest technique of a vast repertoire being used to manage a puppet who was never qualified to rule and has never been leading in reality. If so, we need not worry about any further impairments in his mental acuity or capacity to handle crises. They will continue to be handled by the people behind the scenes just as well as they have been since his Cabal seized power three years ago.

The Revival of Disgust and Shame in the Law: While the effort is made to make the law impartial and unprejudicial, that does not mean that some emotions — e.g. compassion — do not have a role in legal affairs. Emotion is not inherently opposed to reason insofar as it is in the service of evaluation. But the role of some emotions — notably disgust and shame — in the law is more controversial, while enjoying a remarkable revival in our society.

Penalties based on shaming encourage stigmatization of offenders by encouraging us to view them as “disgraced or disgraceful.” This is in contrast to other democratic trends which discourage stigmatization and guard against shame, typified by the treatment of people with disabilities. Should the law protect people from insults to their dignity or shame them? Do criminals forfeit their right to these human dignities?

Disgust serves as the primary or sole reason to make some acts illegal; many standards for obscenity, for example, depend on the disgust of the average viewer, and similar principles underlie laws against homosexual relations between consenting adults. Disgust of the judge or jury also acts as an aggravating factor, and the disgust of the perpetrator as a mitigating factor, in considering penalties for acts already illegal on other grounds.

The theoretical grounds for these expanded roles for disgust and shame are scant. Shame-based penalties are frequently defended as expressions of shared values. This leaves much room to target people who make the dominant majority uncomfortable. Making acts illegal simply because of the disgust of the majority is justified, mostly but not exclusively by social cosnservatives, as defending society’s integrity against threat. [This explains — but does not justify, of course — the otherwise puzzling assertions of opponents of gay marriage that they are defending the institution against destruction.]

Disgust, although a primitive and evolutionarily conserved emotion which defended our forebears against noxious environmental threats, is nevertheless greatly shaped by social training and cognitive set. Nussbaum states that the essence of disgust is “shrinking from animality and mortality”. It is distinct from the merely dangerous — dangerous things can be tolerated and not abhorred if one stays clear of the danger, and disgusting things remain disgusting even when their danger is removed (Most people would not eat a sterilized cockroach; would you?). If what we are disgusted by serves to define our humanity as distinct from the animal, it has been used historically to define certain groups — Jews, women, foes during wartime — as subhuman.

Nussbaum sees this at work in what she calls “the central focus of disgust in today’s United States”, male loathing of the male homosexual.

So does this give us a legitimate basis to shape laws? Given that disgust is distinct from danger and indignation, should laws really be based on “the symbolic relationship an object bears to our anxieties” rather than protection against substantive harms? or, worse yet, on a confused indiscriminate mixture of these distinct types of aversion?

Shaming, the desire to stigmatize others, arises from our own insecurities, and human insecurity is inevitable, since we are at the mercy of a world which is uncontrollable and contingent.

Feared or threatening dissident groups are often conceived of as “deviant” and seen as destabilizing core moral values, even when the dissidents do not represent a realistic threat. [Again, the debate over gay marriage is readily seen through this lens.] A society based on nonstigmatizing equality is one in which grandiose fictions of perfection and control are given up.

Yet, Nussbaum concludes, even if unattainable it can be held up as a Platonic ideal, and it is worthwhile to “make sure that our laws are the laws of that community and no other.” — Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics in the philosophy department, law school, and divinity school at the University of Chicago (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

“Martin Mubanga, from Neasden, is using a mixture of slang and patois in his letters home to describe the conditions in Camp Delta.” The US is shot in the foot not only by its cultural and linguistic ignorance about the Middle East but of the “unique mixture of London street slang, Cockney, Jamaican patois and rap lyrics” used by a British Guantanamo detainee. (Independent.UK)

Thirty years since Nixon slinked off in ignomy. (Salon)

“Tips from Bobby Fischer” (Slate)

“RealPoetik is the little magazine of the vernacular, quotidian, witty and postmodern. Think of it as an attempt to invent an english lit (small e) for the last decade of the Twentieth Century. And the beginning of the Twenty First… [See archives from 1996-2003 by navigating to the site.] Send us your tired, your piss poor, your cynical, demoralizing, boring, quotidian postmodernist rants. Go ahead. Make our day.

To subscribe to the email version of RealPoetik send email to majordomo@ scn.org, no Subject:, and a single line of text which reads: subscribe RealPoetik Your Name (please note spelling of rpoetik).”

“MoveOn PAC asked their members who voted for Bush in 2000 to talk about why they are voting for Kerry in 2004. Academy award-winning documentary film director Errol Morris interviewed these former Bush voters on camera, and cut seventeen ads that tell their stories. These stories of disaffection are powerful statements about the failed Bush presidency.” You are invited to view and rate the ads for MoveOn; the highest-rated ads will be aired during the Republican convention.

It has previously been known that the male:female birth ratio increases under favorable conditions, where a population is well-nourished and without adversity, while the balance tips toward females under harsher conditions. This will be to the advantage of the survival of the population as a whole, maximizing procreative chances under stressful conditions. Having less boys than girls when one does not rate one’s chances of a long life would seem to be the psychological equivalent, or parallel, to this.

Evolutionary biologists call this the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. It suggests that when a mother feels under pressure, from anything ranging from poor health and living conditions to scarce food, it makes biological sense for her to give birth to a girl rather than a boy.

“Having females is a safe investment, in that their reproductive success is consistent,” Dr Johns said. “Boys are more risky. They are more likely to die young, and if they don’t, they have to compete for females. They could potentially provide you with lots of grandchildren, but unless you can invest in them, you run the risk of having a ‘dud’ that doesn’t produce any at all.”

But if you want to conceive a girl, should you go around meditating on a short lifespan? While there have been some studies showing that the X-chromosome-containing sperm which will give rise to a female when they fertilize an ovum are hardier than y-containing sperm, it is not as if your outlook influences which type of sperm has the swimming advantage or anything like that. It is more likely that stress levels act through producing subtle shifts in the hormonal context of the conception and gestation.

On the other hand, in the current study, it may not be that believing you will live longer produces more male offspring at all. Couldn’t it just as well be that having given birth to a boy somehow influences you in the direction of a longer estimated lifespan? In a male-centric society, moght not one unconsciously assess one’s chances of being well taken care of in old age as better if one has a son?

“What can studies of pornography, prostitutes, and seedy truck stops contribute to society?” (Discover)

In other schizophrenia-related obituaries, I was saddened to learn that the Schizophrenia Bulletin is phasing itself out. This quarterly journal published by the NIMH since 1969 (ironically, Dr. Holzman was on its advisory board) is unique in combining state-of-the-art review articles on aspects of schizophrenia research and treatment with, in every issue, cover art by a patient with the illness and a first-person account by a person with schizophrenia of the challenges of living with or overcoming aspects of the illness.

The statement from the director of the NIMH explaining the decision to phase out the Bulletin explains that “in this rapidly changing scientific environment it is time to develop communication mechanisms that are equally rapid.” I find this puzzling insofar as the Bulletin is not a vehicle for the latest peer-reviewed and time-sensitive research findings but rather more comprehensive theme-based reviews. Furthermore, it is a conceit to believe one needs to get even the latest research findings as quickly as possible, as opposed to labsorbing them as thoroughly as possible. I do not think it is merely reactionary nostalgia for the way I learned to approach the practice of medicine to lament the obsolescence of the medical journal as a vehicle for medical communication, which is what the authors of this move seems to suggest. When a journal arrives at my doorstep monthly or quarterly, it is a concrete invitation to sit down and get up to date in a way that might not happen with disembodied articles floating out there in the ether. Furthermore, when I read the articles of interest in a journal, I cannot avoid stumbling upon others I would not have suspected would be of interest. This too does not happen as readdily when I read an electronic article. Sad state of affairs…

But then again, readers of FmH will recognize that I have long ranted about the scientific illiteracy of many of my colleagues, so perhaps the medical journal has been obsolete for some time already. Granted, even as a resident I already had a reputation, for which I was both admired and assailed, for keeping up with the literature. I have always distributed articles of significance to my colleagues and students, covertly expecting them to read as well. But most doctors consider themselves “too busy” to keep up with the journals unless they are academics. Unfortunately, that leaves them practicing (in a field where the half-life of knowledge is around — what? — ten years or less) as they did the last time they were up-to-date, which was when they were in their residencies; or updating their knowledge base only by word-of-mouth or with the information provided by the pharmaceutical representatives who visit them. At least in my state, the requirement that a doctor have gotten a certain number of continuing medical education credits in order to renew her/his license is enforced only by the honor system; if you answer “yes” on the renewal application, they believe you. (And if you believe that most doctors who attend medical conferences are there to listen to the lectures, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.)

And let’s not confine this lament merely to the challenge of “keeping up.” How about “getting started”? In my own specialty of psychatry, what proportion of graduating psychiatric residents these days have ever even read any Freud, do you suppose? My guess — less than 10%. (You might argue the irrelevancy of Freudian thinking to modern psychiatric approaches, and I would essentially agree with you; but might not one wish to know one’s lineage, explore the seminal roots of the mysterious field one is in, and reach such a conclusion oneself, perhaps?)

“Here’s how the $144.4 billion for Iraq could have been spent to safeguard Americans.” (New York Timesop-ed)

“A former official in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and a former British diplomat argue that neo-conservatism is a manifestation of a deeper syndrome that has structural roots in United States history and politics.” (openDemocracy) The core thesis implies that, merely because the Bush administration neo-cons have foundered so badly in orchestrating the invasion of Iraq, we should not assume that their values are finished as a driving force in American foreign policy; indeed, they represent a deep, enduring and recurrent tendency in the American political process. Despite the fact that our Vietnam policy was formulated by the ‘liberal’ Democratic ‘best and brightest’, the authors identify a triad of common features — “the combination of a crusading idealism, an assertion of the universal applicability of American values, and the willingness (indeed eagerness) to use force to back them” — which have in each instance overwhelmed calm and balanced decision-making and allowed special interests to shape the projection of American force without counterbalance. We should take it as a warning sign of recurrent danger of this sort “whenever unchecked special interests within an administration can act on their belief in American exceptionalism, demonise an opponent, and present his position in monolithic terms as a target for destruction”. While the authors’ observation that this pattern transcends partisan ideological differences is a useful one, so is their comment that Republican administrations are more vulnerable to this process because the ‘cosmopolitan globalists’ of the party have given way to ‘America-first populists’ and because of the growing influence of ‘conservative and fundamentalist talk-radio culture.’ I would add that the public’s growing reliance as their primary or sole source of news on broadcast media that inherently do not ask difficult questions of our political leaders makes such hijacking of American policy by jingoist adventurism far easier.

The articulation of this ‘exceptionalist’ ethos, however, should not merely be applied to drawing parallels between Vietnam and Iraq. The proper scale on which to see it operating, I think, is more that of both the Cold War and the War on Terror as a whole, of which Vietnam and Iraq are local manifestations. (While many criticize the invasion of Iraq as a diversion from our proper business of the post-9/11 WoT®, from this perspective the administration’s assertion that it is part and parcel of the larger struggle is truer than they know; it is not Iraq which is ill-advised and poorly formulated, but the WoT® as a whole, since it is driven by the same misguided adventurism.) Those of us who live long enough will likely see the growing competition with China become the overarchng context and preoccupation of US foreign policy, which will manifest the same crusading idealism, projection of force and demonization we have applied to the ‘Communist’ and the ‘Islamic fundamentalist’ demons.(Of course, the authors are unwilling to apply this analysis to the central struggle of the 20th century against Nazi fascism and its allies. As the undisputed modern incarnations of pure evil, it would be difficult to suggest that a similar neo-conservative agenda and its concomitant distortion of the perception of the ‘Kraut’ and ‘Nip’ enemy might have been in play. But might it?)

Sasha Abramsky, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, agrees that European loathing for the US is only on the surface about Iraq:

And there’s this:

Ron Reagan may have tried to remain nonpartisan when he spoke at the Democratic Convention (a debatable assertion) but when “…the son of the fortieth president of the United States takes a hard look at the son of the forty-first, (he) does not like what he sees…” (Esquire via Common Dreams)

Ice Cream Sale Goes Sour, Ends in Gunshots

Medical Manufacturer Thinks Breast Implants Ready for Prime Time Advertising

Spanish Thieves Seek to Make Killing with Plundered Haul of Peppers…Literally

The study established no added risk from a flu infection in the second half of pregnancy.

A number of researchers are busy looking at links between viral infection in utero and the development of schizophrenia. For some reason, despite schizophrenia being a fairly common disorder, said to consistently affect approximately 1% of populations across the globe, it has been rarer candidates than the ubiquitous influenze virus that researchers have investigated.

Controversy continues about whether schizophrenia is an inherited or acquired brain disorder, probably because it is both. I think the hypothesis that best fits the observed data is that schizophrenic disease consists of

• a nonfamilial variety in which patients show little or no response to medications, demonstrate fixed deficits and cognitive dysfunction, show suggestions of a seasonal pattern to their birthdates, and show structural brain changes on scanning — this is probably due to a perinatal insult which has disrupted crucial organizing processes of neural tissue in certain brain regions, of which a viral infection is one possible cause
• and a familial variety without changes in brain imaging or neurocognitive functions, and with better medication response.This is the one that involves a “chemical imbalance” in the functioning of various synaptic and neurotransmitter systems, which is exactly the level upon which ‘antipsychotic’ medications act.

As long as two utterly separate diseases are lumped together, significant differences will get washed out of most research studies trying to compare ‘schizophrenics’ with any non-‘schizophrenic’ population.

This bifurcated concept of schizophrenia is of course not original to me, but rather has been put forth by illustrious psychiatric thinkers. Nevertheless, it is astounding to me how thoroughly it is ignored. The bulk of my colleagues persist in speaking of schizophrenic ‘subtypes’ within a unitary disease even though there is little besides historical tradition supporting such a notion.

And while we’re at it, bulk of year’s virus infections pinned to one man. (CNET News)

I suspect this is the last time I am going to post anything about these absurd terror alerts, although I am sure this is not the last time Ridge will dance this jig between now and the election inauguration day. Like others before it, the timing of this alert is too opportune a diversion from the Democratic limelight to be a coincidence. ‘The lady doth protest too much’ with insistent assertions of how credible the threat assessment is. And, as I commented at the time of Ridge’s last contortion about the ‘credible’ al Qaeda threat to ‘disrupt the democratic process’ sometime between then and the election, there is no purpose for these dramatic announcements except to keep the terror issue on everyone’s mind. Since this pitiful president has nothing with which to lay claim to the American voters but his self-professed toughness-on-terrorism (literally the only area in which the pollsters indicate he commands higher ratings than Kerry), and since he and his handlers are sufficiently contemptuous of the American electorate as to be utterly unconcerned about the level of angst they sow in their quest to steal the White House again, expect this pitiful charade to continue fulltilt. It’s all about commodity brand recognition, and once enough has been invested in a branding and marketing strategy, it doesn’t change. I am getting quite a kick out of listening to the ‘person-on-the-street’ interviews with New Yorkers reacting to the ‘threat’. While the BBC commentator to whom I listened characterized their replies as ‘stoical’, what I heard was plain unmitigated perspicacious cynicism.

Addendum: Of course I wrote the above before the news broke that the administration neglected to tell us that it was more than four years ago that al Qaeda cased these buildings. Q.E.D.

Pundits are saying that this is another intelligence failure in the mold of those to which the 9/11 commission report pointed. Let’s be clear that neither in the current instance or in the lead-up to the war was it so much a question of faulty threat assessment by our intelligence analysts as of the disingenuous use of threat data for political purposes by the Bush Cabal. It was clear from its inception that the 9/11 commission would be a whitewash because it examined the generation of threat assessment without a mandate to explore executive branch misuse of the data. The whitewash continues.

In a reverent nod to Emma Goldman, former Republican John Perry Barlow issues a call to discombobulate the RNC in New York with a smart mob of business-suited post-yippies who stage dance attacks among the staid Republicans and then melt back into the crowd. Positively revolting.

“Either he’s crazy, or we’re selfish.” A reader told me that The New Yorker last week profiled Zell Kravinsky, the Pennsylvania professor of Renaissance literature, real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist embroiled in controversy for donating a kidney to a total stranger… and considering donating his other one as well. I cannot find the New Yorker piece online, but this San Francisco Chronicle article from November is the best of the portraits I found online by googling Kravinsky’s name.

Kravinsky has aroused reactions running the gamut from near-beatification to revulsion. When he proposed to donate a kidney to a stranger, with the sole stipulation being that it be to someone poor and black (“No one should have two houses when people were homeless and no one should have two kidneys while others struggled to live without one”), the transplant surgeon had him examined by a psychiatrist “to ensure that he really wanted to do this”, having never encountered a living donor willing to give an organ to an unrelated individual. Kravinsky literally sneaked out of his house to go to the hospital for the procedure, and at the time of the article he and his wife, (also a psychiatrist) who was reportedly angered that his action would prevent one of his children from receiving his kidney if needed (which Kravinsky considers an implausible scenario and an outlandish objection), were estranged. No less a celebrity than Pat Boone, who makes a cause celebre of organ donation, is publicly exhorting Kravisky’s wife to reconcile with this ‘hero’. Others too consider him to be “turning his back on his …young family to fill a personal need” and one columnist called him a “selfish SOB”. Kravinsky appears to answer such objections with homilies (“They say charity begins in the home. I don’t know why it ends at home.”) and a humility that does appear abit labored. Reading about him, one finds oneself less desirous of being in his presence than, say, Albert Schweitzer, who when I was young was the archetypical object of endless consideration of whether someone could be truly altruistic without deriving an egoistic satisfaction from it (or, if it is unavoidable, whether such pride would be in the sinful category).

Kravisky says that, in deference to his family’s objections, he will probably not donate his remaining kidney, having once expressed a hope (again with that somewhat forced modesty) that his death would allow someone who might make an even greater contribution to live. He is looking into donating other organs while he continues to live, which left me with a Buddhist-flavored image of the piece-by-piece dismantling of the self and shedding of the extraneous, melded with the Christian ascetic conceit of the mortification of the flesh. According to the journalist, he seeks to give more and more as a means to a “perfectly moral life” in which he ‘loves everyone’ and is ‘totally good’ and ‘totally self-sacrificing’, which I hope is a caricature of something the writer does not really understand. I look forward to reading the New Yorker piece, which will hopefully have greater psychological depth. (I found myself wihsing I had been the psychiatrist asked to examine him to render an opinion as to his competency to consent to the kidney donation, and grateful I was not the psychiatrist called upon around his hypothetical consent for the second procedure…) Lord help Kravinsky if it is not a caricature; he has much work to do to find an avenue to true humility if so, but the practices of abnegation he is pursuing may be well-suited to getting him there. I wish him well… [thanks, adam]

I’m back. We made a hasty escape from Boston to avoid the DNC craziness. Some backcountry canoeing in northern Maine was just the ticket. Sorry not to have kept up with posting from our campsites!

I’m back. We made a hasty escape from Boston to avoid the DNC craziness. Some backcountry canoeing in northern Maine was just the ticket. Sorry not to have kept up with posting from our campsites!

I just switched my commenting system from Enetation to Haloscan. Enetation has become pretty unreliable and recently a glitch has prevented me from logging in as administrator to edit or delete users’ comments. (Fortunately, I haven’t been hit by a comment spam attack — grateful that FmH isn’t popular enough to attract that kind of attention — so deletions are rare and mostly used to eliminate duplicates, which has been another problem with Enetation.) Haloscan has been around for awhile now, is stable and quick, and offers trackback as well as commenting.

The Enetation comments you have so graciously entered are for the moment inaccessible, but my discovery of a way to export them all from Enetation was the final goad I needed to switch systems. So I have them archived, and it will probably turn out to be possible to import them into the Haloscan system. I’ll figure that out when I have a little more time.

If, for some reason, Haloscan does not end up being satisfactory, I still have the option of going back to Enetation or forward to a different commenting system. Why not try out the Haloscan system by leaving me comments here about how you find the Haloscan system to be working?

Even if you are a P2P music trader, this is one for which you ought to pay the purchase price, IMHO.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, outspoken former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter’s provocative thesis is that the Iraqi resistance is a well-orchestrated affair run by Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants, the culmination of a decade of meticulous planning by Saddam.

“The traditional Baathist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the Shiite majority – which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 – but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.

The most visible symbol of Saddam’s decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words “God Is Great” to the Iraqi flag.

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, went largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the attention of the Bush administration. And the recent “transfer of sovereignty” to Allawi’s government reflects this lack of understanding.”

Saddam’s security service melted into the population when the US invaded, waiting to reemerge. And the recent attacks on US forces in Fallujah and Ramadi “were carried out by well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn from the ranks of Saddam’s Republican Guard.”

“The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam’s former security services.

Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or how long they stay there, Allawi’s government is doomed to fail. The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will become in the eyes of the Iraqi people – all of which creates yet more opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit.” [via dangerousmeta]

While some of what he says is not surprising — e.g. that lack of constituency the Allawi government has with the Iraqi people — I must say that Ritter’s thesis explains some facts of the resistance, such as the seeming inexhaustability and coordination of the attacks and the utter evaporation of the Republican Guard when the US invaded. It seems quite plausible to me that the crafty Saddam anticipated the rise of fundamentalism and attempted to co-opt it with the modifications to Baathist pan-Arabism Ritter describes in order to maintain his stranglehold. But whether he succeeded is another matter. It seems that al Sadr’s forces, for example, are hardly in league with the reemerging Baathists, and probably neither are the foreign Islamist ‘mujahideen’ coming into Iraq to fight the American devils. While elements of the uprising may be skillfully coordinated, there is certainly a nationalist aspect, a populist uprising against an occupying force already reacting to the illegitimacy of the Allawi government.

Does anyone read the “Now playing in iTunes” window to the left? Is it of any interest? I know that it probably slows down the page loads somewhat (although by the time it is rendering, the content here in the main column is already up). Now that I know I can do it, the questions is, should I?

And here are links to the weblogs:

• MyDD.com
• OxBlog
• Opinions You Should Have
• Pacific Views
• Political Wire
• MathewGross.com
• Centerfield
• People of Faith for Kerry
• Greater Democracy
• American Amnesia
• WestportNow.com
• Pandagon.net
• Burnt Orange Report
• LarsonReport.com
• Dinner for America
• TalkLeft
• The Command Post
• Afro-Netizen
• Campaign Web Review
• PressThink
• NotGeniuses.com
• BlogforAmerica.com
• Reinvented
• LiberalOasis.com
• Weinberger at Boston.com
• Hit & Run
• Librarian.net

Related? Kerry’s Wife Tells Reporter to ‘Shove It’:

McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, all spunkily confident of Kerry’s victory and exultant at the impending rehabilitation of the term ‘liberalism’, gather in Boston on the eve of the convention, even though the DNC is keeping these painful living reminders of its prior trouncings out of the spotlight. (Salon)

I love the lead paragraphs of New York Times Magazine articles.

In a briefing whose candor defies precedent and which was surely prompted by the 9/11 report, the CIA describes its penetration of al Qaeda, which it turns out is not very impressive. (Washington Post)

Jesse Friedman, convicted (and now paroled after serving thirteen years) subject of Capturing the Friedmans, and his older brother have made their own film bearing on the events of the earlier documentary. (New York)

Note the boy’s clenched fists. What do you think he is going to want to do to US occupying forces when he gets older?

Actually I do not find it odd at all. Art expresses the zeitgeist, and the level of anger and contempt for our current President is unprecedented.

“Republicans are trying to blame 9/11 on Clinton, but the official report shows that he responded to al-Qaida threats far more effectively than Bush.” — Joe Conason

And: Byrd vs. Bush: “Sen. Robert Byrd blasts fellow senators for believing ‘the garbage that was being spewed out by the administration’ on Iraq, and thanks the airline passengers who ‘died to save this Capitol, my life and my staff” “. (Salon)

Risperdal had originally been marketed as an “atypical” antipsychotic, a term used to denote a new generation of antipsychotic medications without the severe side effects of the classical antipsychotic medicines like Haldol and Thorazine. But psychiatrists have been aware since we started using the drug that Risperdal’s freedom from those side effects only occurs at low doses which may be insufficient to control the symptoms for which it is prescribed. At effective doses, it behaves much like Haldol, including causing Haldol-like side effects. Psychiatrists have been lulled by the “atypical” label into preferentially prescribing this medication to the point where it has become the largest-selling antipsychotic medication. Furthermore, “atypicals” as a class have other metabolic and cardiovascular side effects that the classical antipsychotics did not. Partly because of the claims of safety, atypical antipsychotics have been used not only for the severe psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia and psychotic mania for which antipsychotic drugs were intended but also for a far broader variety of more benign indications than those for which psychiatrists would have dared prescribe the older medications. So the pool of patients potentially exposed to the complications of their use is vastly expanded. Finally, they have been indiscriminately used in children as well as adults, despite the lack of specific studies in the very different nervous systems of that age group demonstrating safety or effectiveness.

New Bush strategy: stand-up comedy on the campaign trail?? (Yahoo! News )

From Underreported I learned about Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, now seeking asylum in Toronto after deserting his Iraq-bound unit. He had reportedly applied for conscientious objector status but was told by officials they had ‘lost’ his application. [It is a good thing we did not put them in charge of Dubya’s military service records, or they might have been ‘lost’ as well. Oops; they were.] As you might surmise, Underreported is focusing on the scant notice taken of this “watershed event in forming a parallel to the Vietnam War” in the press (Hinzman has been in Canada at least since March). I am not sure I can go along with the speculation that the New York Times and the Washington Post are purposely not covering this phenomenon so as not to encourage a flood of desertions to Canada; it seems more like one of the myriad ways in which they have just dropped the ball in covering the post-9/11 climate altogether and give short shrift to all things ‘unpatriotic.’

I don’t precisely recall the tenor of press coverage of war resisters early in the Vietnam War (before the phenomenon was of a magnitude when it could no longer be ignored) either. As a conscientious objector applicant involved with organizing efforts to resist the draft, I was among those who found it important to spread awareness of the possibilities (avoiding the draft by going to Canada; desertion; c.o. status; or ‘just saying no’ and going to prison on grounds of conscience) to those facing induction who might, despite nascent objections to the immorality of the war, not know what options they had or how much support might be out there for them (“Women say yes to men who say no.”). In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, I posted some material here about options for resistance that I hoped might find its way to enlistees. There was some back and forth with other webloggers, particularly Rebecca Blood, about whether you could actually call it conscientious objection in a volunteer army. Whatever the semantics, Hinzman is right; we again face an immoral and illegal war in which the US is committing war crimes on a scale that I am certain remains untold. My hopes of spreading awareness of resistance options to those enlisted or considering enlistment are undiminished. Bravo to Hinzman; spread the word.

In fact, we don’t know that Hinzman is the only soldier to opt out to Canada, but he is the first to ‘come out’ about his principled opposition to the war. (It doesn’t exactly fit with administration spin-mongering to publicize desertions and other acts of war resistance. That is probably why they describe Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun as being in an ‘extended repatriation process’ or some other similar jargon rather than what may really be going on, that he is in custody and being investigated for possibly deserting and staging his own Iraqi captivity.) Here is Hinzman’s website; among other things, he needs financial support to pursue legal maneuvers toward securing refugee status in Canada. (I wonder if Canada is going to need encouragement to take a stand similar to that it took during Vietnam, that it would not extradite draft resisters back to the US.) Perhaps more than finances, however, he needs a movement, and a community of expatriate resisters similar to that which arose in major Canadian cities during the ’60’s.^* In fact, perhaps some of those who went to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam are still there?

Will the US military prevent the GIs serving in Iraq from reading about enlistees who have fled the war, as they prevented soldiers access to the details of the Abu Ghraib atrocities (e.g. issuing an order forbidding them from reading Gen. Taguba’s report on the Internet)?

^*Is anyone familiar with any historical or sociological studies of the Vietnam-era Canadian draft resisters? any compelling novels about them? There is Tim O’Brien’s Going Aftter Cacciato and the short story “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried; others?

No postponement, just bedlam at the polls and a low turnout on the West Coast is Bush’s plan for ‘victory’. This Online Journal piece by the wonderful Wayne Madsen suggests a provocative scenario. I have previously written about my puzzlement over why Ridge would publicize that the government is making election postponement plans even if they are. Many have noted the implausibility of a postponement even in the midst of a national emergency. So okay, the point of such a dramatic announcement at this time wasn’t that the Republicans really plan to pull off a postponement, I concluded, but merely to sow terror. This article suggests that they are setting the stage for a particular strategy. The Republicans will wait for the polls to close in the East to see how they did in the contested states in the early time zones. If they need to, he suggests, a properly-timed announcement of an imminent threat of an attack in California would allow them to win the state even without closing down the polls there, because the pandemonium it would precipitate would disproportionately disrupt working-class voters’ ability to get to the polls at the end of their work day. Low voter turnout is Republican turnout. If they needed to, they could do the same to Washington State as well. Can’t happen here, you say? The illegal disenfranchisement of thousands of predominantly African American voters in Florida won Bush the White House in 2000, so why not? Madsen doesn’t want to be in the position of saying ‘I told you so’; he suggests steps that democratic-minded (with a small ‘d’) people can take now to stop a plan of this sort. There’s no harm in being prepared. Since it is unlikely that too many California or Washington legislative or gubernatorial staff read Online Journal, readers there ought to bring this to their attention….

“I’m sure you will think me hyperbolic, shrill, and hysterical when I suggest that that we should be preparing ourselves to communicate in a political environment where a fellow who writes a blog post like this one might find himself indefinitely interred without access to counsel or due process.”