The Distant Ocean

Spy Squirrels, part 3

Iran is still hard at work planting stories to try to convince us that the infamous "spy squirrels" were a genuine possibility, and not just the Internet joke of the week:

Weaponized or not, moths are hardly the only cyborg insects that may fly, creep, or crawl into the military's future arsenal.  Scientists from Arizona State University and elsewhere, working under a grant from the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, "are rearing beetle species at various oxygen levels to attempt to produce beetles with greater-than-normal size and payload capacity." Earlier this year, some of the same scientists published an article on their DARPA-funded research titled "A Cyborg Beetle: Insect Flight Control Through an Implantable, Tetherless Microsystem." They explained that, by implanting "multiple inserted neural and muscular stimulators, a visual stimulator, a polyimide assembly and a microcontroller" in a 2 centimeter long, 1-2 gram green June beetle, they were "capable of modulating [the insect's] flight starts, stops, throttle/lift, and turning." They could, that is, drive an actual beetle. However, unlike the June bug you might find on a porch screen or in a garden, these sported on-board electronics powered by cochlear implant batteries.

Lots of detail this time around, Iran, but we're still not buying it.

(Parts 1 and 2.)

(Via)

An actual "news" story from C "N" N

I'm not making this up:

Ad casts McCain as strong, patriotic leader

(CNN) -- Sen. John McCain launched his first general election ad Friday, portraying the presumptive Republican presidential nominee as an experienced, strong and patriotic leader.

"John McCain. The American president American's have been waiting for," the ad's narrator says.

Now, without reading this article, you might not have known that the ad was titled "624787".  But after reading it, you'll definitely know that the ad is titled "624787".  You're wondering why, aren't you?  Here you go:

The ad includes old footage of McCain in a hospital bed when he was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In the footage, asked his rank and serial number, McCain responds, "lieutenant commander in the Navy" and "624787."

The campaign titled the ad "624787," following McCain's war-time serial number.

Got that?

And there's much, much more.  If you want to know everything there is to know about this ad, by all means, go read this article.  That way, you won't even have to watch the ad.

Letter from Venezuela

A must-read, not just for anyone who's been brainwashed by the US media's depiction of Venezuela but for those of us who've made a conscious effort to resist it as well.

I'm always dismayed that no matter how hard I work to keep the propaganda out of my brain, on topic after topic, pockets of it still fester beneath the surface.  It shows that disinformation really does work; despite your best efforts, if you spend every day in the rain, you're going to get wet.

The bright side of Bush

Joshua Frank discusses some reasons for the left to be happy in the wake of the Bush years, including these:

No other president in modern history has done more to expose the dark side of US imperialism than Bush. The international community is not behind the Iraq war and doesn't trust our half-baked intelligence toward Iran, making it even more difficult for us to get away with bombing the country in the future. ...

Old alliances are becoming obsolete. NATO has weakened and the US go-it-alone strategy has damaged [sic?] the trend of US isolation in foreign hostilities. The US is unequivocally deemed a global menace.

I've written about this same upside of Bush (and the corresponding danger of a Democrat like Kerry or Bill Clinton who's able to enact the same policies with enough diplomacy and tact to defuse opposition).  Here's another example, from recent news:

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy [of the Bush administration] has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month. ...

Muñoz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

This is all to the good.  There's been a continuity in US foreign policy for decades, going right through the Clinton years, and that's not going to change no matter which of the current crop of major candidates ascends to the throne.  But thanks to the Bush administration's arrogance and heavy-handedness, the resistance to those policies by countries all around the world is at an all-time high—and that's most definitely something to be happy about.

I typed it myself

It's natural to look only at the suffering and deaths of Iraqis and see how they've paid for the US attack on their country, but we shouldn't forget the terrible price paid by the people who took us to war.  Here's Lawrence Wilkerson (from the Frontline documentary "The Dark Side"), reminding us:

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I remember these scenes where [Colin Powell] would come through my door and say, "Well, George just called and he took another pillar out. Another substantial aspect of my presentation is gone." He took it like a soldier, but it was a blow. It was a blow to me. I mean, I wrote out my resignation. I put it in my center drawer, typed it myself. I wouldn't even make my staff assistant type it.

Bravery in the face of tragedy like this should touch even the withered heart of the most unrepentant anti-American.  There were limits to Wilkerson's ability to endure this searing pain, though:

And once a week or so, I would take it out and look at it and fold it back up carefully and put it back in my center drawer, never having the intestinal fortitude to submit it.

I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter, who observed in 1977 that the US had no obligation to give reconstruction aid to Vietnam because "the destruction was mutual."

Chris Hedges on the debacle of 2004

Chris Hedges, echoing points I've written about (on here and elsewhere):

The decision by anti-war activists to accept a moratorium on demonstrations in 2004 in order to support John Kerry ended our chance to build a widespread, grass-roots movement against the war. Kerry, in return for this support, ridiculed and humiliated those of us who opposed the war. He called for more troops in Iraq. He mouthed thought-terminating patriotic slogans to out-Bush Bush. He promised victory in Iraq. He assured voters that he, unlike George W. Bush, would never have pulled out of Fallujah. Anti-war voters stood passively behind him as they were humiliated and abused. And the anti-war movement has never recovered. The groundswell of popular revulsion that led hundreds of thousands to take to the streets before 2006 collapsed. The five-year anniversary of the war was marked with tepid protests that were sparsely attended. Why not? If the anti-war movement gutlessly backs pro-war candidates, what credibility does it have?

"Sparsely attended" is an understatement, at least for the San Francisco protest.  I arrived a little late to the pre-march gathering, expecting to find Civic Center plaza packed, and instead saw a few hundred people half-filling the area in front of the stage.  The march was a little bigger than the rally since some groups had staged themselves at the edges of the plaza, but the contrast to the pre-2004 election protests couldn't have been more stark.  And all I could think was: Iraqis are dying by the hundreds of thousands, and this is the best we can do for them?

There's more to say on this, but I'll save it for another posting.

Nancy Pelosi speaks a critical truth

Here's my very own Representative, Nancy Pelosi,  speaking a critical truth:

Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, said, "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Israel’s oppression in the West Bank and Gaza, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."

Or she would have been, if she hadn't actually been talking about China and Tibet.

Excellent Nader interview on energy and the environment

A remarkably substantive and almost entirely spoiler-blather-free interview of Ralph Nader by Grist, here.  I always marvel that the guy can deliver extemporaneous answers like this:

Q. Do you see renewable energy costing consumers more than conventional electricity?

A. If you include the costly military and environmental externalities of fossil fuels and nuclear, solar has been cost-competitive for years. If you exclude the externalities of finite fuels, wind power is already competitive, passive solar architecture is competitive. Meanwhile, the price of photovoltaics and other forms of solar-generated electricity are coming down very fast every year, and are on an upward curve of innovation -- with new technology, refined ways of producing the film, etc. They will be uniformly competitive within the next 10 years.

Remember that consumers are paying [for today's energy system] in many other indirect ways: strip mines, acid runoff into lakes and streams, pollution in their lungs, medical costs. Sixty-five thousand people a year die from air pollution, half of them from coal-burning utility plants. Those are just a few of the external costs operating here.

I get a good laugh when people try to dress up their Nader hatred by dismissing him as "just a consumer advocate" or some such similar nonsense, since it shows they don't have a clue about the breadth of subjects he's addressed and the depth of understanding he displays when he does.  Here's another example, from an article of his from last week ("The Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering That Candidates and Congress Ignore"):

Hamas, which was created with the support of Israel and the U.S. government years ago to counter the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), has repeatedly offered cease-fire proposals. The Israeli prime minister rejected them, notwithstanding “a growing number of politicians and security offices who are calling for Israel to accept a cease-fire,” according to Middle East specialist, professor Steve Niva.

If you've been reading here for a while you probably know that this is one of my favorite factoids, but I never would have guessed that Nader was aware of it; more fool me for underestimating him.

Final tidbit: astonishingly, Nader is polling at 5-6%, according to Zogby.  Based on the media coverage and the howls from outraged liberals I'd have pegged it at, oh, say, .0000056%.  Not that polls mean anything, especially at a time like this, but I thought it was surprising enough to pass along.

God is the name that mankind gives its ignorance

I was reminded of another reason to like Arthur C. Clarke in this article:

“Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral” were the instructions left by Arthur C. Clarke, who died on Wednesday at the age of 90.

Like Clarke, I not only disagree with but resent the attempt to insinuate a religious subtext into all things.  But unfortunately, and predictably, that's just what the author of this piece sets out to do to Clarke himself:

But his fervor is still jarring because ... Mr. Clarke’s writings were the most biblical, the most prepared to amplify reason with mystical conviction, the most religious in the largest sense of religion: speculating about beginnings and endings, and how we get from one to the other.

This couldn't possibly be further from the truth.  I've always said that God is the name that mankind gives its ignorance.  The desire for a religious answer to every unresolved question is just the opposite of "speculating about beginnings and endings"; rather, it's a manifestation of the desperate need for resolution, an impatience for mystery, an inability to accept that there are limits to what we know.  It's an attempt to give the same rote answer to every question worth asking.  Despite popular belief to the contrary, it's the atheist who is the most comfortable with the central mysteries of existence, since it's the atheist who doesn't feel the need to fill those voids with the sterile certainties of ancient mythologies.

It's true that Clarke often dealt with beginnings and endings in his writings, but he did so in a way that was the antithesis of a religious approach.  He actually spent time thinking about what our place in the universe might be in the far future, and imagining what wonders we might eventually find (or that might eventually find us).  But it was always firmly within the context of science and the natural world—an attempt to approach the unknown on its own terms, and to embrace and appreciate awe without invoking any supernatural source.  If his best fiction brought out the most fundamental questions of existence, it's a testament to the power of an imagination unconstrained by religious orthodoxy.  I'm happy to see he remained true to that right up to the end.

A difference between me and the editorial staff of the New York Times

If you've been reading here for any length of time you've probably found yourself wondering: why should I even bother with this, when I can get the exact same viewpoint from the editorial page of the New York Times?  Is there any meaningful difference between the two, or does he just crib his stuff directly from them?  If I wanted to see mindless mimicry I'd have bought a macaw!  A macaw!  I'd have bought a MACAW!

Well, I can prove that you're wrong.  My response to Barack Obama's response to Jeremiah Wright's response to American hegemony was:

This could easily be Obama's entry in "Profiles in Cowardice."

But the Times' response was:

Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage

So see?  There's at least one difference.

I'm glad we've got that settled.  Now I can go back to extolling the myriad virtues of free trade, mulling how we can persuade the Iraqis to take responsibility for ensuring their own freedoms, and advising the government to craft a taxpayer-financed bailout of Wall Street financial firms.

I want to believe!

Here's one of the biggest dangers of Obama, in a nutshell:

[Judy Shelton, 58, an activist from Berkeley, California] is now supporting Barack Obama but has gotten there through a “lefty migration” from Dennis J. Kucinich to Edwards and now to the Illinois senator.

“He is not far enough over there for me,” Shelton said of Obama. She suspects he is “more left than he is posing himself to be, but I don’t want that to get out.”

Saying "activist from Berkeley, California" is like saying "ninja from Japan" or "automobile designer from Germany", and Shelton's Kucinich preference is further testament to her bona fides, yet she's busily ignoring the evidence of Obama's actual platform and statements and working to convince herself that he's secretly in agreement with her own positions.  This is only human nature; we're wired to rationalize the failings of my team, no matter who my team may be or the reasons that they're my team at this moment.  And that's one of the main dangers of progressives aligning themselves with the Democrats when the Democrats are doing little or nothing to deserve it.

A personal anecdote along those lines: I have a friend who'd also traveled to the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement in 2002 and who was in the streets of San Francisco with me trying to shut down the city in March 2003 (as the US assaulted Iraq).  But in 2004 she got anybody-but-Bush fever in a bad way, and started working actively to get Kerry elected.  I could understand that from a tactical point of view, but I was dumbfounded when I received a mass email from her with the message "Kerry HEARS us!" (caps and exclamation point in the original).  Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course, but she was adamant that she didn't want to discuss it.  She'd chosen her team, so it was necessary to start believing in it and stop listening to anything that might undercut the faith necessary to continue down that path.

Robert Borosage did have this to say at this same event (the Take Back America conference):

... [S]peaker after speaker also reminded those gathered for the three-day conference of a lesson learned from the 2006 election.  The sharpest criticism was directed at the Democratic-controlled Congress for failing to follow the left-leaning agenda Democratic liberals believe helped remove Republicans from control of Capitol Hill.

“We have to be willing to challenge legislators, no matter what party they are from and no matter who holds the majority,” Borosage said.

They must move forward “as an independent progressive movement, not as an arm of the Democratic Party,” he said, demanding that the next president do what is promised during the campaign.

Encouraging rhetoric, but consider that it's accompanied by Borosage's claim that "it doesn’t matter who wins the Democratic nomination," because liberals have succeeded so thoroughly in guiding the party's ideological direction that either Clinton or Obama will satisfy their agenda—or in other words, he's practicing the same self-deception as Shelton and my friend.  Still, it's a baby step in the right direction.

The world just got a little smaller

Arthur C. Clarke has died.  He was my favorite author when I was a kid; I spent hours upon hours reading his books.  I was always impressed not just by his imagination, but by the basic decency he seemed to embody.

First Asimov and now Clarke...that just leaves Bradbury.  Hang on, Ray!

Wright's absurd claims just keep on coming

The press has found yet more baseless, well-nigh insane utterances from Jeremiah Wright, like this eye-roller:

"The winds of Katrina blew the cover off America. The hurricane exposed the hypocrisy," Rev. Wright said, "protecting white folks' property took priority over saving black folks' lives." He continued, "This storm called Katrina says far more about a racist government than it does about the wrath of God."

(He does redeem himself a bit by referring to Bush's Secretary of State as "Condoskeeza Rice", though.)

Now it just so happens that I have exclusive access to secret tapes of Reverend Wright.  While I can't provide the full quotes and context until I get my payout from the Wall Street Journal, I can at least sketch out a few of the other ludicrous beliefs this man harbors:

• Water is wet
• Fire burns  
• The Earth is a planet
• 2+2=4

It seems clear that the only way to protect our children from all of these dangerously wrongheaded notions is to keep them out of church.

Hateful, vengeful Tibetan losers upset order in Chinese province

I don't claim to have a firm grasp of the situation in Tibet, but I can't help but feel that this (from the Sunday Times of London) might be just a tad slanted:

...Tibet explodes in hatred

VENGEFUL rioters returned to the streets of the old Tibetan quarter of Lhasa yesterday, ...

The whole Tibetan quarter of the hallowed mountain capital appeared stunned after what had been an orgy of wrecking and looting.

The violence was undoubtedly racial. Its prime targets were the Chinese merchants who have flocked to Tibet by road and on a prestigious new train across the roof of the world.

The mobs were the losers of Lhasa – the poor who seethe with resentment, outwitted commercially by Chinese traders, out-gunned by the Chinese army and, many fear, ultimately to be outnumbered by Chinese migrants.

So the "losers of Lhasa" just hate the Chinese for their business acumen, superior military, and increasing numbers; apparently it has little (if anything) to do with living under China's thumb for decades.

It may help to run that last paragraph through the Analogizer™:

The mobs were the losers of Palestine—the poor who seethe with resentment, outwitted commercially by Israeli businessmen, out-gunned by the Israeli army, and, many fear, ultimately to be outnumbered by Israeli settlers.

It's a dark day indeed when the bias against you in a story is actually stronger than the typical bias against the Palestinians.

"This purity is a lie"

New Model Army, led by brilliant Quaker lyricist Justin Sullivan, will be touring the US from March 18th into April (full list of dates here).  If you've never heard them and wonder if they're worth your time, consider whether you'd want to support a band that has this to say:

Tell all the people who believe what they read in the press
Tell all the folk who stare from behind suburban walls
The enemy is not some nation far across the sea
The enemy is with us every single breathing day ...

Or this, from the same song (one of two NMA songs I listened to throughout the day on 9/11):

Fight all the ones who divide us rich against poor
Fight all the ones who divide us white against black
Fight all the ones who want their missiles in our earth
Fight all the powers who would lead us into war ...

I only wish you could hear the song that drives these lyrics.  I can't find that one, but here's one of my favorites that they'll almost certainly play:

Musically they're in a category (or several categories) of their own, and they're also one of the most powerful live acts I've seen.  So if you like anything you've seen here, do yourself a favor and catch one of the shows (and if you're at the San Francisco show, keep an eye out for the opinionated jackass who writes most of the stuff on this site—if he can manage to drag his bloated ego through the club doors, that is).

(Previous NMA/Justin Sullivan pimping here.)

Grandstand by me

In case you haven't seen it yet, here's Barack Obama's craven  denunciation of the eminently sensible things his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has said:

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies.  ...

Let me repeat what I've said earlier.  All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country. ...

...while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

This could easily be Obama's entry in "Profiles in Cowardice."  I especially like the "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country" bit—as direct an endorsement of American exceptionalism as we could ask for.  And the way he finishes up this shameful, backstabbing performance with a self-serving appeal to hand him the power he so deeply craves.

I've heard Obama say exactly one thing that I find genuinely encouraging: that he'll meet with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Castro, and other leaders of US-designated enemy states.  I find this encouraging solely because, assuming he were to follow through on it, there would be at least an outside chance that he'd learn something important about the real world from them (the same things he's apparently failed to learn from his pastor, however).  Outside of that one bright spot, though, I've seen no evidence that he's anything other than a standard-issue Democrat.

THE BACKGROUND: Here are some of the things Wright had to say that so angered Obama:

"We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he began. "Racism is alive and well. Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run." ...

"America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. ... We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional killers ... We bombed Cambodia, Iraq and Nicaragua, killing women and children while trying to get public opinion turned against Castro and Ghadhafi ... We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison and supported apartheid the whole 27 years he was there. We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

His voice rising, Mr. Wright said, "We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.... We care nothing about human life if the end justifies the means...."

Concluding, Mr. Wright said: "... We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty. ..."

Now, I'd vote for this guy for president in a heartbeat.  But his erstwhile parishioner, Barack "How does this further my ambitions?" Obama, can and should go suck a rock.

I disqualify myself from working on Hillary Clinton's campaign

Geraldine Ferraro is only half right; Barack Obama is having the success he's having not because he's black, but because he's not particularly black.  Does anyone really believe that Obama would be the Democratic frontrunner if he looked like this?

Not in this country.  Obama is just black enough to make middle-class white Democratic voters feel a little edgy for supporting someone of color, but reassuringly white enough (in both his appearance and mannerisms) not to scare them off.  And his milquetoast message of non-threatening uplift is the perfect way to offset the racial scare factor that might otherwise apply.  Supporting Obama in 2008 is just like listening to Thriller in 1982, after Michael Jackson ditched the afro and got a nose job.

In any case, while Ferraro's judgment is clearly questionable based on the candidate she's supporting, the brouhaha over her statement is ridiculous.  Of course race is playing a role in Obama's candidacy.  It's perfectly reasonable to argue about just what that role is, but to pillory someone for asserting that Obama's race is an element of his success is just as silly as attacking someone for saying that Hillary Clinton's gender is a factor in her candidacy.  I'll be just as happy as anyone else if the United States ever truly becomes race- and gender-blind (in addition to other desirable blindnesses) in its politics, but that day is still a very long way off.

(For the record: I'd vote for Cornel West in a heartbeat.)

(For the record: I still own a copy of Thriller.)

Language and the Occupation

An excellent examination of the use of language in the Israeli press, from a former Israeli journalist.  This is familiar ground for anyone who spends time on this issue, but the author has amassed a sizable collection of examples, e.g.:

Another interesting distinction between us and them came up when Hamas demanded the release of 450 of its prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Israel announced that it would release prisoners but not those with blood on their hands. It is always the Palestinians – never the Israelis – who have blood on their hands. This is not to say that Jews cannot kill Arabs but they will not have blood on their hands, and if they are arrested they will be released after a few years, not to mention those with blood on their hands who’ve gone on to become prime minister. And we are not only more innocent when we kill but also more susceptible when we are hurt. A regular description of a Qassam missile that hits Sderot will generally look like this: ‘A Qassam fell next to a residential house, three Israelis had slight injuries, and ten others suffered from shock.’ One should not make light of these injuries: a missile hitting a house in the middle of the night could indeed cause great shock. However, one should also remember that shock is for Jews only. Palestinians are apparently a very tough people.

The same day I saw this I also happened across an article I'd sent to a friend in 2002 titled "Israeli Repression and the Language of Liars", which covers similar ground. Also worth a read.

Breaking news: Catholic Church follows teachings of Christ!

I can only hope this trend will continue:

Also receiving fresh attention by the Vatican was social injustice, along the lines of the age-old maxim: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer." ...

"If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that's especially social, rather than individual," said Girotti, whose office deals with matters of conscience and grants absolution. ...

"The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice," Girotti said in the interview published Sunday.

Why, yes, they are, and yes, it is.

Uri Avnery making sense, as usual

You'd think Uri Avnery would get tired of saying the same things over and over again, but thankfully he doesn't:

The real effect of [Israel's Gaza] operation is not expressed in material and quantitative facts: so-and-so many dead, so-and-so many injured, so-and-so much destroyed. It is expressed in psychological results that cannot be measured, and therefore are inaccessible to the minds of generals: how much hatred has been added to the seething pool, how many new potential suicide bombers were produced, how many people vowed revenge and became ticking bombs - like the Jerusalem youngster, who woke up one bright morning this week, got himself a weapon, went to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, the mother of all settlements, and killed as many as he could.

Now the political and military leadership of Israel sits down to discuss what to do, how to "respond". No new idea has come up or will come up, because not one of these politicians and generals is able to bring up a new idea. They can only go back to the hundred things they have already done, and that have failed a hundred times.

Of the same things he keeps saying over and over again, this is a particularly good example.  Read the rest here.