Society

International Pol. — 1 Comment
10
Aug 05

Nuanced first hand perspective

On Iraq, from one Major’s point of view:

Back to my non-insurgency theory: There is not a web of like-minded (much less amenable) patriots gaining succor and inspiration from the populace. There are a thousand disparate cabals and petit punks and opportunists, each with competing motivations and interests. A water truck leaving a coalition base may be fired upon by a host of various suspects. The “usual suspects” rounded up may include:

1) a 17-year-old who was paid $50,

2) a competitor of the truck’s owner who covets his contract,

3) a local tribesman who resents the presence of another affiliate,

4) a garden-variety criminal out to steal the truck, or embezzle the business,

5) a former Ba’athist apparatchik fearing the end of his gravy train,

6) a Jihadist from Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt hoping to please God, or

7) an Iraqi, proud and nationalistic, believing the US is on a craven crusade to plunder his country’s oil and rich culture.

The permutations are endless and motivations intertwined. In this petri dish of conspiracy, those who are convinced that the Israeli Intelligence services, the Church of England, and Hollywood joined forces to mastermind the WTC attacks don’t even evoke a smirk. Credulity knows no filter. Lyndon LaRouche would be quite at home here.

Religion/philosophy — 4 Comments
28
Jul 05

What is your purpose?

Looking around, people seem no more complicated than wind-up toys. Take one human being molded by experiences during childhood (when everything has significance beyond appropriate measure), fill them full of fundamental assumptions and beliefs, then set them loose on the world. They will act with nearly complete predictability. And why? Because we do not know ourselves. We do not understand or comprehend that we distort what we perceive as reality. We have so little control over the most basic ways we view the world. One person sees a landscape of relationships, a reality circumscribed by familiar faces. Another person sees a world filled with pain and deprivation, where people exist to inflict pain or have pain inflicted upon them. A third person perceives other people with indifference and exists in harmony with the natural world. The same goes for what people expect out of life. Many people have low expectations for themselves and for life, and many times this seems caused by an unrealistic understanding of life. I try to take the world as it is, and find my value in it. It requires an attitude of openness and compromise because if you set out to impose your view on the world you will find nothing but disappointment.

International Pol. — Comments Off on Iraq is not about oil as a commodity
13
Jul 05

Iraq is not about oil as a commodity

Iraq is about oil as an instrument of strategic control. The rhetoric leading up to the invasion of Iraq is the public justification for our presence in Iraq. In other words, whenever anyone asks why we’re there we trot out the story of the great dictator Saddam Hussein and how we liberated a nation from the grip of a brutal tyrant. This conceals the main benefit of our presence in the mideast, the control of oil supplies. We now have nominal control over the first and second largest proven reserves of petroleum in the world. There was a fantastic article in the Washington Post today: Big Shift in China’s Oil Policy:

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Religion/philosophy — Comments Off on Mike Tyson
26
Jun 05

Mike Tyson

New Yorker: TYSON’S CORNER:

In the sweaty aftermath, Tyson was gracious to his opponent and stayed around to browse his own psyche one last time. “I’m a peasant,” he said. “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.”

Liberties — 1 Comment
23
Jun 05

A new interpretation of pr0n regulations

Via metafilter, the Department of Justice is changing how it enforces laws governing adult material on the web. From Wired, “Under penalty of federal prison terms, new interpretations of existing regulations would require sites that feature photographs or videos of sexual activity to keep records confirming that performers are of legal age.” I guess this means that anyone who has a website featuring adult material must keep complete records of any person depicted. I’m curious how this will effect the adult industry as adult media is treated essentially as a commodity.

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Politics — 1 Comment
23
Jun 05

Scalia on YOUR side

In reading about the Supreme Court decision to support local powers of eminent domain I found myself in the somewhat unusual position of agreeing with the more conservative members of the court like Scalia. Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes (via robotwisdom):

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History — Comments Off on The ‘Great War’
23
Jun 05

The ‘Great War’

What do we really ever know about history? What do we know about what’s happening today? How should we act when we have no way of knowing the ripples each action causes?

Winston Churchill, 1936:

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Society — Comments Off on Unwitting eugenics
07
Jun 05

Unwitting eugenics

Via Kottke: The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted past:

Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is unclear—and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher’s, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average. Dr Cochran and his colleagues predict they will be so by about five IQ points. If that turns out to be the case, it will strengthen the idea that, albeit unwillingly, Ashkenazi Jews have been part of an accidental experiment in eugenics. It has brought them some advantages. But, like the deliberate eugenics experiments of the 20th century, it has also exacted a terrible price.

Politics — Comments Off on Felt’s motive: Money
01
Jun 05

Felt’s motive: Money

We now know why W. Mark Felt, the “American hero”, and his family came forward with their secret: money and book deals. To safeguard their scheme, they had to scoop their own co-conspirators: Woodward and Bernstein. This is outlined in the Washington Post: Deep Background:

The problem for Vanity Fair, Friend said, was that O’Connor wanted the magazine to pay Felt and Felt’s family for the story — a condition the magazine would not agree to.

O’Connor — who had become acquainted with the Felt family through Felt’s grandson, a Stanford classmate of O’Connor’s daughter — decided instead to publish Felt’s account as a book. But after a year of trying to find a publisher, Friend said, O’Connor was back at Vanity Fair’s doorstep.

Politics — Comments Off on Questions you may only hear here: On “Deep Throat”
31
May 05

Questions you may only hear here: On “Deep Throat”

Although I’m far from being a close observer of politics I was surprised as anyone at Mark Felt’s admission that he is the mysterious Watergate source known as “Deep Throat”. I thought about this a lot, as I’m sure many people around the country are now doing. When I heard the family’s reasons for coming forward now it sounded calculated. I wince whenever I hear anyone talking about themselves or a family member as a “hero”. After all, if you’ve kept the secret for 33 years why not just keep it until you die? It seems strange unless you desire some sort of fame or celebrity while you still draw breath.

The revelations are not that surprising given Mark Felt’s position within the FBI at the time. As a deputy director, he would have been privy to the findings of the original Watergate investigation. Still, the entire affair begs a number of questions:

  1. Given that the now public Mark Felt is Jewish, does this effect in any way the widely held negative perception of Nixon as a paranoid anti-Semite? Clearly, his suspicions about Felt we now know to be justified.
  2. What was Felt’s motivation for the original leak? Moral repugnance? Patriotic duty? Personal gain? We know that Felt was passed over by Nixon for the directorship of the FBI. Nixon’s removal or defeat as president could have changed his own fortunes. As for moral or patriotic sentiment, Mark Felt was convicted in 1980 of authorizing FBI agents to secretly break into the homes of Weather Underground members without a search warrant. Searches both he and Nixon regarded as legal. Nixon even appeared at his trial as a defense witness. In light of this, Felt should not be regarded as a champion of civil liberties or democracy.

A lot of people have had to lie to conceal the truth of “Deep Throat” and things are never as they seem. We will probably never know everything as it happened then for what it really was, but there is one thing I do know. Few villains and heroes of history are quite as villainous or as heroic as they appear.

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