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noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:30:00 +0000

Win Ben Stein's Wedgie

The ongoing battle between the dark forces of science and the light brigade of religious devotion is not going to end with Ben Stein's new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, about suppression of criticism of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, focusing on some high-profile repressive tactics in academic circumstances.

There is surely something to be said for the balancing of competing intellectual viewpoints, especially when these viewpoints occur in the classroom, but this keeps getting mucked up by competing motives. We ought to abhor the teaching of evolutionary theory without affording students the opportunity to challenge the theory's methodologies, but getting students to understand the science is itself a pedagogical challenge. When we speak about enabling students (whether middle school, high school, or college) to challenge the methodology of this peculiar scientific theory, what we end up asking for is the students' broader awareness of what it requires and what it denies. One, it requires methodological naturalism, limiting the scope of scientific inquiry to testability within the parameters of observable causes and effects; two, it denies that the religious hypothesis is part of the scientific enterprise. Now two follows logically from one, but neither (nor together) implies metaphysical naturalism, which is the philosophical view that the observable world is all that is the case. If metaphysical naturalism is true, then God is a big deception and along with that the deception of religious belief. But metaphysical naturalism (a doctrine) is not a consequence of methodological naturalism (a technique). Teaching the difference between the two, which seems subtle, is the task of the philosopher, and philosophy is, alas, usually not part of any science curriculum. It's also not served up well in the so-called Wedge Strategy [PDF] first proposed in 1999 by the Discovery Institute.

Stein's movie Expelled moves along the surface in the same smooth way that opponents of Intelligent Design seek to have this debate squelched. So we have an interchange such as this, with Stein appearing in this April 21, 2008, interview with TBN's Paul Crouch, Jr.:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr Myers [University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed.... And that was horrifying beyond words, and that's where science—in my opinion, this is just an opinion—that's where science leads you.

Crouch: That's right.

Stein: ... Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place; science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

But juxtapose this with the following news article about an Afghanistan schoolteacher killed by the Taliban in 2006:

The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.

The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disemboweled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.

Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.

So long as the battle is kept between Big Science and Big Religion, the dialogue will never advance much beyond the kind of noisy prattle one finds in the alcoholic air of the cocktail party.

I think I know where Mr Stein wants to go with all of this, and I'm sympathetic with his conclusions. He wants to combat the pernicious influence of metaphysical naturalism in our school system. Metaphysical naturalism, interlocked with neo-Darwinian explanatory mechanisms, effectively entails that you and I are far more like other species of animal than we are unlike them. What values we ought to embrace, and accordingly what moral, social, and political viewpoints we ought to find compelling and actionable, are those that are given to us by reason alone, if we cannot manage to derive these from our observational sciences.

Some have claimed to find actionable policies in the observational sciences, and among these were the social Darwinists and other proponents of Progress (and similar views purporting to show how to get there from here). But the historical lesson is that we do not end Nazism and similar social progressive plans with a blunt instrument, such as a good clubbing from the stick of Big Religion. We counter it with that special change of heart that comes with real faith. Paul said [Rom 12:2] "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." What precedes this charge is a special horticultural lesson leading to our requirement that we offer our bodies to God as "living sacrifices," as our "spiritual act of worship." It is important to know that this does not follow at all from any observational science, nor from reasoning alone.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:45:00 +0000

Save America, Buy a New Car!

Here's another one for conspiracy theorists. It's bad enough that the ethanol that's finding its way into the gas pumps in the US is actually made from food, but now we find out that it's not really good for your car—that is, if the car is six years or older.¹ The solution: buy a new car. That should get the economy revved up again.

1. Okay, so there's another side to this story, brought to you by the good folks at the National Corn Growers Association.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:30:00 +0000

Hello, Noumena

I just finished grading final exams for a section of Introduction to Philosophy. One of the questions I asked was:

According to Kant, what is the difference between the noumenal world and the phenomenal world?

One student surprised me with this piece of amusement:

"Noumenal world is a world that we live in. Phenomenal world is a world where extraordinary things occur."

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:15:00 +0000

The Future Is Made for Borrowing

Administration brings back one-year Treasury security
AP/San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP)—The Bush administration, moving to cope with soaring budget deficits, says it is bringing back the one-year Treasury bill that it stopped issuing seven years ago when the budget was in surplus.

The administration said Wednesday it would begin selling the one-year bill, also referred to as a 52-week bill, at an initial auction in June. New one-year securities will be auctioned every four weeks.

The government is looking for various ways to borrow the billions of dollars in extra cash it will need to cover a budget deficit that is expected to jump to an all-time high this year, surpassing the old mark of $413 billion set in 2004.

A big part of the increased borrowing reflects the need to pay for economic-stimulus rebates to 130 million households. The government began disbursing the payments on Monday in an effort to give the economy a jump start.

[ READ MORE » ]

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:05:00 +0000

In the Shade of Alberto Gonzales, or the Bushel Is Rotten

I received this today in a communication from Congressman Robert Wexler. It's well worth the read, even if Robert Mueller's half-answers are really not-answers:

(TRANSCRIPT:)

Robert Wexler: Thank you, Mr Chairman. Mr Director, in January of 2006, the New York Times reported that the NSA wireless wiretapping program had produced thousands of leads each month that the FBI had to track down, but that no Al-Qaeda networks were discovered. During a July 17, 2007 briefing, FBI deputy director John Pistole indicated that the FBI was not aware of any Al-Qaeda sleeper cells operating in the United States. In August of 2007 Congress passed the Protect America Act, giving the intelligence community greater access to electronic communications coming into and out of the United States. I have two questions in this regard.

RW: Has the FBI found any sleeper cells yet? One...

RW: Two. Has the NSA's wireless wiretapping programs either before the Protect America Act or after led to the prosecution and conviction of any terrorists in the United States?

Robert Mueller: Well, as to your first question as to whether we have found affiliates or, as you would call them, cells of Al-Qaeda in the United States, yes we have. Again, I cannot get into it in public session, but I would say yes we have. With regard to the relationship of a particular case or individual to the terrorist surveillance program, again that is something that would have to be covered in a closed session.

RW: All right, Mr Director. An LA Times article from October, 2007 quotes one senior federal enforcement official as saying quote "the CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved" end quote. The article goes on to say that some FBI officials went to you and that you quote "pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the investigations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy" end quote.

RW: My question, Mr Director, I congratulate you for pulling the FBI agents back, but why did you not take more substantial steps to stop the interrogation techniques that your own FBI agents were telling you were illegal? Why did you not initiate criminal investigations when your agents told you the CIA and the Department of Defense were engaging in illegal interrogation techniques, and rather than simply pulling your agents out, shouldn't you have directed them to prevent any illegal interrogations from taking place?

RM: I can go so far sir as to tell you that a protocol in the FBI is not to use coercion in any of our interrogations or our questioning and we have abided by our protocol.

RW: I appreciate that. What is the protocol say when the FBI knows that the CIA is engaging or the Department of Defense is engaging in an illegal technique? What does the protocol say in that circumstance?

RM: We would bring it up to appropriate authorities and determine whether the techniques were legal or illegal.

RW: Did you bring it up to appropriate authorities?

RM: All I can tell you is that we followed our own protocols.

RW: So you can't tell us whether you brought it; when your own FBI agents came to you and said the CIA is doing something illegal which caused you to say don't you get involved; you can't tell us whether you then went to whatever authority?

RM: I'll tell you we followed our own protocols.

RW: And what was the result?

RM: We followed our own protocols. We followed our protocols. We did not use coercion. We did not participate in any instance where coercion was used to my knowledge.

RW: Did the CIA use techniques that were illegal?

RM: I can't comment on what has been done by another agency and under what authorities the other agency may have taken actions.

RW: Why can't you comment on the actions of another agency?

RM: I leave that up to the other agency to answer questions with regard to the actions taken by that agency and the legal authorities that may apply to them.

RW: Are you the chief legal law enforcement agency in the United States?

RM: I am the Director of the FBI.

RW: And you do not have authority with respect to any other governmental agency in the United States? Is that what you're saying?

RM: My authority is given to me to investigate. Yes we do.

RW: Did somebody take away that authority with respect to the CIA?

RM: Nobody has taken away the authority. I can tell you what our protocol was, and how we followed that protocol.

RW: Did anybody take away the authority with respect to the Department of Defense?

RM: I'm not certain what you mean.

RW: Your authority to investigate an illegal torture technique.

RM: There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice. Any interpretations of the laws given to us by the Department of Justice....
(talking over each other)

RW: But apparently your own agents made a determination that the actions by the CIA and the Department of Defense were illegal, so much so that you authorized, ordered, your agents not to participate. But that's it.

RM: I've told you what our protocol was, and I've indicated that we've adhered to our protocol throughout.

RW: My time is up. Thank you very much, Mr Director.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Amnesty International: Waterboarding

Amnesty unveils shock 'waterboarding' film
The Independent
Tuesday, 22 April 2008

An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing "waterboarding" to be practised against terror suspects, just as a graphic advertisement showing the brutal reality of the technique is unveiled to British cinema-goers.

Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US servicemen and women to resist interrogation by putting them through "waterboarding" exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice by all US personnel.

He said: "They seem to think it is worth throwing the honour of 220 years of American decency in war out of the window. Waterboarding is out-and-out torture, and I'm deeply ashamed President Bush has authorised its use and dragged the US's reputation into the mud."

Mr Bush faced criticism recently when he vetoed a Bill that would have outlawed such methods of "enhanced interrogation"—the White House refuses to describe it as torture.

Mr Nance said: "You have a purpose-built table with straps in a pattern so that people can be strapped and unstrapped quickly. The head is strapped down in such a way so they cannot resist the water. The head is elevated so the water goes down the oesophagus."

[ READ MORE » ]

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:30:00 +0000

Onward to Truth and Reconciliation

I finally got around to watching the whole debate between David Brownlow of Believers Against the War and Western Seminary professor James DeYoung on "The Iraq War: Where Should Christians Stand?" at Oregon's Scappoose Public Library. The debate, available on video, is nearly two hours long, but well worth the time, even if it is a year old.

Brownlow has some important things to say about the future War Crimes Tribunal, and it's worth waiting to hear his great line: "A police action against the perpetrators is generally how to solve a crime. You don't carpet-bomb a nation to hit a few of the bad guys." But in total, Brownlow is the consistent Christian in the debate. He doesn't get to discredit DeYoung's stale "just war" theory, but he does successfully discredit the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as "just" in theory and Christian in practice.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:50:00 +0000

Who's in Charge, and Who Can Tell Us?

Am I the only one completely burned out listening to the bickering of the Democratic candidates, or the excited monocular study of John McCain? I suppose I must be. I can't even watch network news without getting hit in face with this. The news media, including many leading blogs, just won't shut up about these three, often with as much energy as the latest drunken, pants-dropping sighting of Britney/Paris/Lindsay.

I suppose Americans will have to wait for the Democratic Party's Superdelegates to pick their candidate for them,¹ but I would think that an enlightened media should be at least curious as to the continuing Republican candidacy of Ron Paul, and maybe the latest public interest in Ralph Nader's third-party campaign. Apparently the GOP is already engaging in tactics to ensure McCain's win.²

1. "Undecided superdelegates don't feel bound by primaries," AP/New York Times, April 20, 2008.
2. "Ron Paul supporters kicked out of GOP meeting," St Petersburg Times, April 18, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:45:00 +0000

Dollars and Commas

"If I listen to your lies would you say / I'm a man without conviction / I'm a man who doesn't know / How to sell a contradiction / You come and go / You come and go" - Culture Club (Karma Chameleon)

It was about two years ago when President Bush said casually that "when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma."¹ Well, experts who once sided with the Bushevik's $3-trillion folly, or perhaps sulked in the shadows, are now coming forth, and what they say ain't pretty. "Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle," is the opening line in a major new report by the National Defense University.² Add to this the many voices charging that the whole supplementary war funding process is effectively weakening "Congress's ability to provide the type of oversight absolutely necessary for fostering DOD accountability."³

Alas, none of this is preventing the opening of the new $474 million US embassy in Baghdad: built on 104 acres, the 27-building compound has "619 apartments for staffers as well as restaurants, indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool."⁴

But let's not forget the forthcoming War Crimes Tribunal:

1. "The Situation Room: Interview With President Bush," CNN, September 20, 2006; watch the video segment.
2. "Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'," McClatchy Newspapers, April 17. 2008. Written by Joseph Collins, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations in the Pentagon until 2004, "Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath," is available as a PDF document at the National Defense University's National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Department of Defense research center.
3. "Iraq War Senate Appropriations Hearing: Nussle's Nonsense Distorts the Record," Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, April 17, 2008. See these reports: Problems with Using the Supplemental Budget Process to Fund Ongoing Military Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Congressional Research Service, Congressional Budget Office, and Government Accountability Office.
4. "Opening soon in Baghdad: Largest U.S. embassy in the world with restaurants, 619 apartments," World Tribune, April 18, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:30:00 +0000

Homage to the Bride of Peace

The story of Italian artist Giuseppina Pasqualino, also known as Pippa Bacca, is not likely to get much news coverage in the US, but the story, which is very sad, is making headlines in Europe.

With traveling companion Silvia Moro, the two, dressed in bridal costumes, embarked on a project (Brides on Tour) to demonstrate the power and reality of peace, starting in Milan, Italy, and culminating in Jerusalem:

Our dream is to hitch-hike across the war-torn areas of the Balkans and the Mediterranean—dressed as brides. That's the only dress we'll carry along—with all stains accumulated during the journey. We'll visit artists and craftsmen along the way and stop at museums, foundations, cultural centres and youth clubs for the daily pacifist ritual/performance of personal hygiene and then interaction with the place, people, and their crafts.

The goal is to explore and collect photographic and video evidences on the common Mediterranean culture. The expected route is through North-Eastern Italy, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria. At the end of the journey the dresses shall be exposed together with other evidences of the journey.¹

Pippa Bacca never got the chance to finish the project. The two started on March 8 and together hitchhiked through eight of the fourteen planned stations before she and Moro separated in Istanbul, expecting to reunite in Beirut. Bacca was missing since March 31 after she hitched a ride with the driver of a black van. On Friday, her naked body was found in bushes in a wooded area near Gebze in northwest Turkey. She had been raped and strangled to death.²

As a bride, she and the project are pregnant with allusion. Metaphors beg to be spoken. I resist the temptation to do so, because that would make her an icon and surely rob her of her uniqueness as a human being, a woman, and an artist for peace.

1. See the itinerary and photos at their website Brides on Tour.
2. "'World peace' hitcher is murdered," BBC News, April 12, 2008; "Italian peace-bride murder shock," ANSA.it, April 13, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Bush: We Torture. So?

And we wonder why the Pope won't attend the White House dinner in his honor next week.

On Wednesday ABC News reported that top administration officials, including Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice, all signed off on "enhanced interrogation techniques" in 2002; in a follow-up report yesterday, the AP reported that they "took care to insulate President Bush" from the decisions made by this National Security Council's Principals Committee.¹ Today the decider-in-chief himself said:

"Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people," Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

According to the news sources, the discussions were so detailed that "some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed—down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."²

Here is what Colin Powell had to say about the meetings:

Powell said that he didn't have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees."

Powell said, "I'm not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal."

These are the words of a man practicing memory loss prior to his standing before the War Crimes Tribunal.

1. "Cheney, Others OK'd Harsh Interrogations," AP/NPR News, April 11, 2008. See "Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'," ABC News, April 9, 2008.
2. "Bush Aware of Advisers' Interrogation Talks," ABC News, April 11, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:35:00 +0000

Apples Don't Torture

If you follow the Bush administration's torture trail, as Philippe Sands does in his new book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), you won't be looking at breadcrumbs. It's human blood—yes, innocent human blood—spilled at the command of a high-profile coterie of villains and criminals, while others get the blame. His book won't be out until May 13, but Sands has a startling preview in this month's Vanity Fair. Those who've had a chance to read the book are already talking about war crimes charges. Here's Andrew Sullivan telling Chris Matthews something he doesn't know:

"The latest revelations on the torture front show—the memo from John Yoo—as well as revelations in Philippe Sands' new book, mean that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be at some point indicted for war crimes. They deserve to be."

Crooks and Liars has the short video evidence. Admittedly Sullivan's list is too short, since it ought also to include George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith, and Alberto Gonzales, but I would certainly invite Sullivan to testify at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:15:00 +0000

Beyond Iraq, or Not

I suppose it's a good sign that 89 percent of Americans now see the war in Iraq as a drain on the US economy, but we'll just as likely leave Iraq as we entered it—for all the wrong reasons. In a show of opposition to the US occupation of Iraq, Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called for a million-man march in Najaf on April 9, the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. That also happens to be the day after Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker are set to tell Congress that it's all good in Iraq. So let's get ready to spend another $102 billion in Iraq. Oh, wait, that's a drain on the economy. Are we chasing our tails here or something?

We should be furious that we allowed another Martin Luther King Jr anniversary to go by without honoring the radical Christian message of his opposition to war. Instead he has become a champion of nonviolent protest for social change. We miss a crucial part of the complex man. Suppose, instead of Vietnam, he speaks to us today of Iraq:¹

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Iraq. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Iraq. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."

And so, merely by replacing "Vietnam" with "Iraq" and "China" with "Iran" we can see that so little has changed:

"If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Iraq. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad Iran into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Iraq immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Iraq, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Iraqi people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways."

It must change. Amen, my brother.

1. Rev King's 4 April 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence is still powerful, but also, alas, apparently timeless, as we watch another country suffer under American militarism. See how easily the speech can be made to fit our situation in Iraq today.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:45:00 +0000

Shoe Size H-1B

A friend sent me this hilarious short video in which a crowd of white-collar professionals wait to be hired by a Latino boss. So the shoe is on the other foot—and just in time, too. As reported today by the New York Times, beginning tomorrow and closing on April 7, the US government will accept employer petitions for the 65,000 H-1B visas available for temporary work for foreign workers in the US.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Busheviks Gone Wild

It's Spring Break season and President Bush is just frolicking about as he follows the violence in Basra and parts of Baghdad. He would splash beer on himself if he could convince Laura to unlock the White House cooler.

Why, just today he said that it was "a defining moment in the history of Iraq." Or maybe he was thinking about the US airstrikes and the "collateral damage." In any case, it was all good and a must-do affair. He said:

"Any government that presumes to represent the majority of people must confront criminal elements or people who think they can live outside the law."

Was he talking about al-Maliki's government in Iraq, or about the US Congress? I can't wait for that War Crimes Tribunal. If I were a drinking man, I would be splashing beer all over myself too.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:35:00 +0000

4,000

Another detestable benchmark, as the US military death toll reaches 4,000.

And as a country, Iraq no longer exists.

Long live the surge.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:05:00 +0000

March Madness

Everyone, please, get out of the street. If there's anything worth fighting, it's the urge to start marching up and down in opposition to the war—any war, really. Not only does it not work, but it serves only as an effective distraction from real tactics we have to embrace in order to change the hearts and minds of Americans, away from violence as a first solution, toward a myriad of other strategies for resolving conflicts.

When we talk about peace and war (as opposed to war and peace), we tend, I think, to cast these large, opposing categories into false abstractions: war as conflicts among nations, peace as the cessation of these conflicts. Such is the depiction of the tension between the two in any street march by members of any generation in American history. Marching are those typically rallying for peace; opposing them, usually quite angrily, are those who typically want the opposite. (I know we've also had the occasional marches in support of war, but that isn't our norm.) We can pick any generation in American history because there isn't an American generation that has not lived through at least one national/international war/conflict.

Violence in America, as with the American penchant for perpetrating violence in neighboring countries, is a social problem. As a social problem, it is a problem of education. If we are going to make any headway toward alternatives to violence (as opposed to the false hope called "solutions to violence"), we first have to recognize that there really are alternatives to violence, that there are alternative ways of resolving conflicts that do not require physical contact, let alone a violent end. This means acknowledging that plans to militarize our high schools will succeed in embracing violence as a favored strategy without at the same time edifying nonviolent alternatives to the very conflicts that have attracted the military solutions. If we teach only one way, surely we will get very good at doing it one way. Our soldiers may be more lethal, and more so at a younger age, but not at all possessed of a greater wisdom. If we want to have our students learn to think for themselves, we ought also to give them the thoughts that have worked in resolving conflicts without violence, without war, without torture, without failing to see our enemies as humans from another of life's many perspectives.

Forget the silly battles over teaching evolution in public schools. I don't mean that the controversy over the teaching of evolution is silly in itself, but it is silly in relation to our finding strategies for promoting nonviolent conflict-resolution and for the worthy preservation of human life that would result if we put our energies into ensuring that our students are taught thoughtful cultural studies, history, and studying conflicts that have been concluded as a consequence of diplomacy, discussion, debate, and reasonable argumentation.

Flipping through the TV last week, I happened to start with a dreadful contemporary motion picture that featured an argument which ended in the usual bloody fist-fight, and then I moved to a PBS channel that was playing a 1940-ish black-and-white movie in which the main characters had a dispute that ended with the actual use of words (actually, some really sprightly dialogue). I realized that it was a long time since I'd watched a movie with good conflict-dialogue, in which the characters go back and forth verbally and yet end up resolving their issues without recourse to punching each other out (or shooting each other, or blowing up cars). I know Hollywood has a long history of offering fisticuffs movies (featuring gangsters, cowboys, soldiers, Robocops, etc.), but I suspect there was a preponderance of good conflict dialog in earlier films, and it is less so today. I look forward to the day when we can revive the verbal dispute, if only so we can remember that disputes don't have to end with the disputants rolling around on the ground.

I know I've told this story before, but it's a good one and I like to share. When I was a drinking man in New Orleans, I was at dinner with friends one evening and a doctor friend of mine and I were drinking Scotch and a couple of his friends came over and sat down with us to drink. They were retired Hollywood actors, now living in the same upscale subdivision we lived in. One of the men introduced himself as a "why-you" character in Westerns. I asked him what a "why-you" guy was and he explained that his character was the one standing at the bar in a saloon and as soon as he was insulted, he would snarl "Why, you!" as he drew his six-gun. His character was usually shot dead, but it was a living.

As Christians, the end of violence should be our first choice if we're going to pick our controversies, as our first choice for contentious disputation. This is something that will take us from the medieval mind-set, such as we find in the Cheney-Bush administration, toward real civilization, realizing at least the kind of love for our neighbors required by our Lord Jesus. We can watch the Middle East joust with rocket launchers, but we're watching a pageant that isn't going to end, or it will end badly. Revenge and counter-revenge don't work. Humans should learn from the mistakes of other humans (and even from the mistakes animals make); doing what we know doesn't work has a name—we call it stupidity. Maybe it's true that you can't fix stupid, but you can at least prevent it.

Perhaps we should be ashamed to be learning this from the martial arts, but British fighter and teacher Geoff Thompson promotes just that very thing. In his book, The Art of Fighting Without Fighting (Summersdale, 2000), Thompson tells the story of a famous Japanese Aikido martial artist who spent his entire life studying his art but never had the chance to test it in a real fight:

The more he trained, the more his obsession for validation grew until one day, travelling home from work on a local commuter train, a potential situation did present itself—an overtly drunk and aggressive man boarded his train and almost immediately started verbally abusing the other passengers. "This is it," the Aikido man thought to himself, "this is my chance to test my art." He sat waiting for the abusive passenger to reach him. It was inevitable that he would: he was making his way down the carriage abusing everyone in his path. The drunk got closer and closer to the Aikido man, and the closer he got the louder and more aggressive he became. Most of the other passengers recoiled in fear of being attacked by the drunk. However, the Aikido man couldn't wait for his turn, so that he could prove to himself and everyone else, the effectiveness of his art. The drunk got closer and louder. The Aikido man made ready for the seemingly inevitable assault—he readied himself for a bloody encounter.

As the drunk was almost upon him he prepared to demonstrate his art in the ultimate arena, but before he could rise from his seat the passenger in front of him stood up and engaged the drunk jovially. "Hey man, what's up with you? I bet you've been drinking in the bar all day, haven't you? You look like a man with problems. Here, come and sit down with me, there?s no need to be abusive. No one on this train wants to fight with you." The Aikido man watched in awe as the passenger skilfully talked the drunken man down from his rage. Within minutes the drunk was pouring his heart out to the passenger about how his life had taken a downward turn and how he had fallen on hard times. It wasn't long before the drunk had tears streaming down his face. The Aikido man, somewhat ashamed thought to himself "That's Aikido!". He realised in that instant that the passenger with a comforting arm around the sobbing drunk was demonstrating Aikido, and all martial art, in it highest form.

Thompson has a short video of his innovation called The Fence, a pre-fight technique allowing the person to control the distance between himself and a potential adversary. This is a very different sort of pre-emptive strike.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:30:00 +0000

Bottled Water Wars

The Mayor of Seattle has signed an executive order banning the city's purchase of bottled water, just as San Francisco did last year. TreeHugger has the story and some relevant links.

As for me, I think I've got the bottled water problem licked, so to speak, at least for a while. I've been using New Wave Enviro's Better Water Filter with Corn-Based Bottle. The bottle is made from a corn-based polymer, so it won't leach phthalates, and the filter allows 90 refills of municipal tap water as it removes chlorine and 60 other contaminants. I have to say the bottle takes some getting used to (you have to suck and squeeze the water through the filter), but even plain tap water tastes good with this system. When you're done, the bottle is biodegradable and compostable. I get mine at Your Guide to Green.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:15:00 +0000

The Lie, and How We Know It

It may well be true that Eliot Spitzer was brought down by the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, but it was the lie that ended his governorship of New York. It was also the lie that ended careers for Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Lewis Libby, and Richard Nixon. Some go to jail (Leona Helmsley, Marion Jones, Martha Stewart), but the list of cheaters is really long. And we can expect this list to get longer, even if the people there don't go on to achieve any kind of fame.

This past week, as I handed back mid-term exams, one of my students, who received an 88 on her exam, engaged me in this conversation:

Well, it's not too bad, I suppose, considering I didn't cheat.

You wouldn't cheat, would you? I asked.

Sometimes I don't study like I should, she answered.

But that doesn't make it okay to cheat, does it?

I guess not. But I often don't have the time to study. Why, you never cheated in college?

No, I didn't. I never cheated in college.

I'll try to study harder next time, she said.

As we enter the sixth year of the Cheney-Bush administration's $3 trillion folly in Iraq, we find that with so many other things to occupy the American public's attention, they don't have a clue as to what's happening to our troops in the Middle East. And if they keep this up, we will find ourselves with a rewritten history of the war, as British teachers discovered recently, although it gets harder to find out what is true or not. Even the events themselves seem to stymie us. Witness, for example, this weird observation from an expert:

"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on US strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.

And yet it could be so easy just to speak the truth. Mark Twain said, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." Now that the Busheviks have created their own alternative universe—a bizzaro world in which the war in Iraq, itself a model of success, really has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinking US economy—it will take at least a generation to untangle the mess of lies that cloud the minds of distracted Americans. That is, if the US isn't already sold off by then.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:25:00 +0000

Before the Sky Is Falling

Before the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, March 12, Ron Paul issued two vital warnings:

(1) Congress must stop treating Iraq War expenditures as "off-budget emergency" costs (fact: military expenditures are "earmarks");

(2) Congress must resume its constitutional authority to protect and preserve the Republic, at the same time rejecting "the notion that we need to run an empire."

Failure to heed those warnings, he said, will result in a worldwide economic crisis. At least, that's my take on this refreshing delivery.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:30:00 +0000

No FISA for You!

On Tuesday, the Republican National Convention announced that it's named the telecommunications company Qwest the "Official Communications Provider" for its 2008 convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul in September.

You may recall that in 2001, six months before the attacks of 9/11, Qwest refused a National Security Agency (NSA) request to participate in a warrantless surveillance program to data mine the phone records of American citizens. Quest was the only company to refuse. Last month, the Senate passed its own version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) renewal bill, permitting more warrantless government eavesdropping on Americans and granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies (specifically AT&T, which helped write FISA, and Verizon) which handed consumer data over to the government without court order. The House version, thankfully, is currently going nowhere, as representatives continue to discuss the immunity provisions desired by the Cheney-Bush White House.

So why would the GOP want Quest to handle telecommunication services for it national convention? I think they don't want anyone to have unfettered access to their phone calls and networks, much like the rest of us.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:45:00 +0000

Alternatives to the Complex

In an interview with Karl Rove on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Chris Wallace asks Rove to respond to the Barack Obama's charge that the money we are currently spending in Iraq is "money that we could be spending here in the United States, rebuilding our infrastructure, building schools, sending kids to university." Rove's answer is revealing. He says:¹

ROVE: Well, Obama—it's a good argument for Obama, but I'm wondering where it goes, because it really is a very neo-isolationist argument. It basically says, you know, "We should not be involved in the world because of the consequences to the budget here at home."

Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened. Look at the cost to the American economy after a terrorist attack on the homeland. We lost a million jobs in 90 days after 9/11.

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don't you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?

So you know, it's a cute thing in a primary. I'm not certain over an 8-month general election that you can make the argument that we ought to take a look at every foreign policy commitment in the United States and measure it on the basis of the number of dollars that we've got there.

I happened to be in Los Angeles on Monday, and somebody had heard Obama say this to me, and they were Democrat, and at dinner they said, "I'm worried about that, because does that mean he's going to be looking at our support, for example, for the state of Israel and looking at it in terms of what could we be doing at home with those dollars?"

And it was a nice line, but I'm not certain how durable a line it necessarily is.

To become neo-isolationist or not is plainly a false dichotomy. In a world of black and white, it would make sense to talk about the either/or of America's involvement in the world, but our world isn't colored in this way and such talk ignores the many reasons why we would want to be involved in the world: providing economic relief, extending fair trade opportunities, making friends with our neighbors, laying the moral groundwork so that American Christians may offer the Gospel as a real alternative to the cycle of violence and terror.... The list is long, but surely not as long as the list the Busheviks are currently checking off, as this administration extends its militant hegemony in support of powerful corporate interests, promotes lying as a government policy, spies on its citizens using illegal methods, encourages torture and extraordinary rendition and unlimited detention, eliminates opportunities for fair trade, makes enemies of our neighbors, and effectively destroys the moral groundwork upon which good Americans have relied in presenting their face to the world.

Of course war is a good thing for an industry which makes the means for war. I'm sure someone was in the slingshot business two thousand years ago; now it's assault rifles (M16A2 rifle, M-4 carbine, AK-47 and variants), automatic weapons (M-249 SAW), machine guns (M-240, MP-5), grenades (M67 fragmentation grenade), missiles (FIM-9 Stinger, TOW missile, guided, cruise, ballistic), mortars (M-252, M-224), anti-tank weapons (M136 AT4, SMAW, Dragon, anti-tank mines), anti-personnel mines, drones, and all the other explosives (large, small, nuclear, non-nuclear) that can be shot and dropped from aircraft or launched from ships. To this list we could add bullets, bulldozers, humvees, and all the other equipment not made in the USA. I don't pretend that such a list is at all exhaustive, but it's large enough to fathom the extent of this industry, and the corporations that supply it.²

A "neo-isolationism" isn't the answer here, but we can get to the answer through an inward-looking reflection on what we as a nation see ourselves becoming in a global economy and how we can do more good than the evil we are perpetuating now. As for Rove's $200-a-barrel oil fright tactic, that's just silly. One wants to use the president's own words in this context.³ It's silly because we should be looking way past the oil industry for our country's tottering energy foundations. Even Saudi Arabia is planning for it, as they move their resources into solar energy.⁴

1. "Transcript: Karl Rove on 'FOX News Sunday'," Fox News, Sunday, March 02, 2008. Watch the video segment here.
2. See a partial list of companies at Army Technology. Relevant here is a 2003 CNN Money article on the new military industrial complex by Ian Mount, Matthew Maier, and David Freedman; "Military-Industrial Complex Revisited," in Harvard Political Review Online, May 27, 2007. See especially the piece on the military-industrial complex at Sourcewatch.org. And this doesn't even include the Pentagon's new ray gun.
3. "Fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." See "Remarks by the President on Teaching American History and Civic Education," White House News Release, September 17, 2002.
4. "Oil giant Saudi to become solar power centre: minister," AFP, March 1, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:45:00 +0000

Bush Presidential Library Designs

More than 100 designs were submitted to the Chronicle of Higher Education after its call for readers' own architectural visions for the George W Bush Library at Southern Methodist University, in its Back-of-the-Envelope Design Contest. Some are serious architectural renderings; others are, well, more suggestive of the designers' attitudes toward the president.

Watch the video of notable submissions and then go ahead and vote for your favorite design.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:15:00 +0000

The $3 Trillion Folly

In his appearance today before the House Financial Services Committee, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the "economic situation has become distinctly less favorable" and he's planning to go right back to the office and start printing more money.¹ As for Mr Bush, who regularly keeps out of touch with reality, this isn't such a big deal. In fact, it's all good: Those dollars will just flow straight to the defense industry in Iraq.² Congress has agreed (or rather deigned) to spend the next few days bickering among themselves over this very issue.³

So now we're borrowing $343 million per day so that we can turn around and spend $338 million per day in Iraq. While economist Paul Krugman points at popping housing bubbles, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz instead points straight to Iraq, where "spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit."⁴ According to a new book by Stiglitz, the cost of the Iraq War is going to be a bank-depleting $3 trillion dollars. Never mind that the great sell-off of America is already under way.⁵ One gets the impression the terrorists have won.

1. "Bernanke: Fed ready to act to boost economy," AP/MSNBC, February 27, 2008.
2. "Bush Dismisses Iraq Recession: The War Has 'Nothing To Do With The Economy'," Think Progress, February 18, 2008.
3. "Senate Republicans agree to Iraq debate," CNN, February 26, 2008.
4. "Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US'," The Australian, February 28, 2008.
5. "Miami condos are 'for sale' for foreign buyers," Reuters, February 20, 2008.

noreply@blogger.com (Merle) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:35:00 +0000

No Nadir for Nader in 2008

Tim Russert kept trying to cast Ralph Nader as a spoiler in his new 2008 presidential bid, announced this morning on NBC's Meet the Press, but Nader wasn't falling for it and continued to press the issue, one of several—let Americans take back ownership of the nation's election process.

Nader is still an amazing figure and a brilliant thinker/speaker.¹ There shouldn't be any question as to his "electability." His interactive website, votenader.org, is back up and running.

1. But apparently not dazzling enough to stop "Meet the Press" from immediately going back to the same old blather: silly bickering between Obama and Clinton, McCain's love for lobbyists, etc., as if nothing has changed, as if nothing ever will change on America's corporate-owned media.