America Jones

United States of Homeland Security

2012-01-03T09:33:00.004-06:00

President Obama has signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The signing comes after weeks of equivocation and obfuscation, and a widespread reporting blackout in the major media.

At issue are sections 1031 and 1032, which, in somewhat ambiguous language, seem to provide for the indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, by the military if the government so chooses, if those citizens are classified as terrorists or as terrorist sympathizers.

When it came out of the Senate, the law (then S.1867) was accompanied by Feinstein amendment #1456, which states that the law shall not be "construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States."

This amendment, however, was a political maneuver to pacify opponents, while proponents believed they already had the ability in question with respect to the detention of US citizens classified as terrorists (which enabled the detention without trial of the US citizen Jose Padilla in 2002, after being classified as an "enemy combatant").

In signing the bill into law, President Obama issued a signing statement clarifying that this current Administration "will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." This, of course, says nothing about future Administrations, which can reverse signing statements and executive orders at will.

Moreover, the sections in question are blatantly unconstitutional.

Article I Section 9 of the US Constitution says, "privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

The Constitution doesn't specify that habeas corpus applies only to citizens of the US, and British legal custom (the American revolutionists were ethnically British) reinforces the claim that this is an "inalienable right."

The Magna Carta says, "No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land." It says, "Freeman" not "subject."

By strengthening the ability of the government to choose by ad hoc action which system of justice applies to which detainees (i.e., the new military established by President George W. Bush under the Military Commissions Act of 2006; or civilian courts), this bill flies in the face of the principle of rule of law, and therefore exemplifies arbitrary government.

In 1944, free market theorist Friedrich Hayek wrote:

"while every law restricts individual freedom to some extent by altering the means which people may use in the pursuit of their aims, under the Rule of Law the government is prevented from stultifying individual efforts by ad hoc action... If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal -- but its actions are certainly not subject to the Rule of Law. By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable....The Rule of Law thus implies limits to the scope of legislation: it restricts it to the kind of general rules known as formal law and excludes legislation either directly aimed at particular people or at enabling anybody to use the coercive power of the state for the purpose of such discrimination. It means, not that everything is regulated by law, but, on the contrary, that the coercive power of the state can be used only in cases defined in advance by the law and in such a way that it can be foreseen how it will be used."

Language like that contained in this law has no place in American jurisprudence, and President Obama, as a "constitutional scholar" ought to know better.

I guess it takes a constitutional scholar to most effectively dismantle the constitution.

The government's next step is likely to start using this law very selectively and carefully establishing precedent. Then, gradually, the scope of the law will be extended, using legal theories like those advanced by John Yoo under Bush II, or though a classified legal interpretation such as that described by Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden.

But Obama is the lesser of two evils, right?

Irrational Contagion

2011-12-27T15:07:00.006-06:00

Informed, rational debate is a cornerstone of American ideology. The American constitutional republic is a clear implementation of European Enlightenment Rationalist ideals.

Conservatives want government to keep its hands off their Medicare. They're going to get what they asked for and they're not going to like it.

Conservatives claim government can't run anything efficiently, but that government-run healthcare will put private insurers out of business. The healthcare industry seems to be doing just fine despite Medicare and Medicaid; the health care industry is making out like a bandit.

Conservatives criticize Muslims for wanting theocracy, and advocate returning the US to its "Christian roots."

Conservatives think we need to cut back the public sector -- except the military, which at 5% of GDP, is a pretty sizable chunk of the public sector (1/3 of federal spending).

Conservatives claim to oppose subsidies on principle, but promote school vouchers, expect free roads, advocate increased spending on "national security," and hold that corporate welfare is beneficial to ordinary citizens. "National security" is the oldest subsidy program in the United States: 80% of the federal budget under George Washington's administration went to Indian eradication. America was built on subsidies and genocide, not entrepreneurial initiative: railroad subsidies and land grants fueled the Westward expansion, which was more about the advance of technologies like the telegraph than it was about the rugged individualist squaring off against the wilderness. In this sense, conservatives do hold traditional values.

Conservatives believe in traditional values, and uphold entrepreneurs has the epitome of these values, despite the fact that entrepreneurs get ahead by innovating -- that is, overturning tradition. It was the new, urban, bourgeoisie that displaced the feudal system in the Middle Ages, and it was the bourgeoisie that overthrew the monarchy in the 18th Century. Capitalism is the enemy of tradition.

Conservatives want competition, which is unpredictable if it is fair; and they also want stability in the markets to guarantee a return on their investments. They blame regulation for causing "uncertainty," despite the fact that accepting risk is a central feature of entrepreneurialism, which they hold to be quintessentially American.

Conservatives oppose stem cell research because it destroys embryos, but have no problem with fertility clinics, which also destroy embryos.

Conservatives oppose biological Darwinism, but embrace social Darwinism.

Conservatives claim to be religious, but have no compassion for the poor or the sick. They believe we're all sinners, and that we need laws like the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule to guide our behavior; but somehow, we're more trustworthy where large sums of money are involved, and industry suffers from too much regulation.

Conservatives want government to stay out of business, but expect their elected officials to create private sector jobs.

Conservatives oppose "activist judges," but uphold an individual right to bear arms, which is the result of "activist judges." Conservatives often ignore the first clause in the Second Amendment, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State," which, as a preamble, serves the purpose of a legal "whereas" clause. If there is an individual right to bear arms, it is the result of "activist judges." They support the NRA as though it were a civil rights organization, when in fact, it is an industry trade group.

Conservatives disdain the mainstream media, but cultishly adhere to the Fox News worldview -- the most watched cable news channel -- part of a multi-billion dollar media empire, including the Wall Street Journal.

Conservatives want lower taxes so they can "starve the beast," but disparage anybody who is too poor to pay federal income tax.

Conservatives claim to love the Constitution, but despise the federal government.

Conservatives claim to love liberty and marriage, but want to dismantle the Bill of Rights for the sake of national security, and refuse to let gay couples marry.

Conservatives point to dysfunctional government as evidence that government itself is a threat, but would never point to the contemporary rise in divorce rates as evidence that the institution of marriage is a problem that should be abolished.

Anything follows from a contradiction. Even though conservatives believe that their positions represent established, well-reasoned principles, they are conditioned by the media to exhibit knee-jerk reactions in response to stock key phrases. With respect to the vehemence with which conservatives advocate their positions, it is worth noting that hardly anybody ever actually sees the people they elect; voters give authority to "personalities" constructed through the media. The media then uses the authority of these constructed personalities to further shape the behaviors and attitudes of voters.

Dialog

2011-05-02T10:01:00.003-05:00

A: We killed Osama bin Laden.

B: Who?

A: Osama bin Laden.

B: ?

A: The Al Qaeda guy? 911?

B: I stopped keeping track of the bastards after we bagged Saddam Hussein.

A Lot of Change, Not Much Difference

2010-11-10T13:19:00.009-06:00

The broadcast media's portrait of the 2006 elections as a referendum on the Iraq War has turned out to be not only meaningless, but also an utterly disposable bit of wall-to-wall fanfare and tongue-wagging. There's no reason to suppose that the media's portrait of these 2010 elections as a referendum on the Democrats or the Obama Administration's economic policies will prove to be any more meaningful.

Like the Progressive Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008, last week, many citizens were coerced into voting against their own interests, but won't be told about it, and don't have the tools to figure it out. Tea Party supporters who voted for Republican candidates would have their cake and eat it too: they make a lot of noise, but don't have the courage to vote for a real third party. They might present a good argument for the efficacy of an instant runoff voting system, but in the mean time, will likely serve as live bait for Neocon operatives.

When I tune in the Jesus channel on my TV set, the evangelicals claim ownership of the Tea Party movement (the Jesus channel truly is the lunatic fringe: a few years ago Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez -- other than radical Muslim clerics, what type of religious leader calls for the assassination of a foreign head of state?). When I turn in to Fox News radio, they claim ownership of the Tea Party too. Despite the pride the movement takes in claiming to be leaderless, I think NPR is probably right to align them with the Republican Party -- given that the Tea Party has exclusively elected Republicans (maybe that's just a statement about correlation rather than causation, but let's leave SCIENCE OUT of things, OK?).

When backers of Tea Party candidates express fears about the GOP co-opting the movement, those fears are really about the big-government, big-deficit, war-mongering, anti-civil-liberties Neocon GOP contingent that has for the past few decades dominated the GOP. They won't admit it, because criticizing anything about the Republican Party might embolden some Democrat somewhere, but the Tea Party is not just pissed off at Big Government -- a lot of them are also pissed off that they were duped for two terms of George W. Bush. I expect the revisionists will soon take care of that -- otherwise the Tea Party may realize that the Neocons pose a greater threat to their movement than the Democrats do. In 2008 Ron Paul was excluded from presidential debates by both Fox News and the GOP -- that Fox and the Republicans now seem to embrace the movement Ron Paul kicked off should be cause for concern.

Even though George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Alberto Gonzales left office when Barack Obama moved into the White House, President Obama's Administration is very much a continuation of the Bush era's Neocon agenda. The Democrats won't talk about it, because then some Republican somewhere might accuse them of harping on the past rather than moving forward and taking action. It would be nice if they'd talk about it, because it could as easily be the result of corruption, psychopathy, or simply not being left many options by the previous Administration (which itself may have been corrupt, psychopathic, or inept).

Democrats are not by definition "liberal." Barack Obama is no "liberal" -- and in many ways the Republican party is far more radical than anything found in the Democratic party. Barack Obama is definitely not Malcolm X. He's not Al Sharpton either. I don't care how heart-wrenching it was for the Independent Voters on TV in 2008, wringing their hands over whether or not to vote for a black man. Obama acts more like a Neocon than a liberal, and the media is still dominated by liars. The health care reforms he proposed were perfectly compatible with classical 20th Century free market thinking, and what Congress eventually passed was quite favorable to Big Business.

In the 1940's, the influential free market thinker Friedrich Hayek wrote: "there can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody… Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for the common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance -- where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks -- the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong."

The basic logic behind state-run healthcare in a free market economy is this (according to the Grand-Daddy of the Chicago School of Economics that was so influential during Bush II's Administration): industrialization has destroyed the intergenerational knowledge necessary for an individual to successfully live life as a farmer; most workers therefore have no choice but to work in the industrial system; because workers must work for the industrial state, the industrial state has an obligation to provide workers with social insurance systems that ensure that workers can work. Hayek was by no means a socialist: he strongly believed that free markets were among the most profound inventions ever devised for the promotion of individual liberty. In his support of individual liberty, he was equally suspicious of coercive pressures originating from states as from corporations.

Some years before George Orwell, Hayek wrote: "Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed." Although Hayek was a proponent of free markets, he called his platform "liberalism." So did his predecessors for the prior 200 years. In 2010 AD, Hayek's views are more commonly called "conservatism."

Despite what might be called two years of "liberal" or Democrat rule, the Department of Homeland Security has continued a Neocon agenda of chipping away at civil liberties, most recently increasing the scrutiny given to routine financial transactions, and habituating citizens to livestock-like inspections prior to boarding airplanes. The Neocon wars continue: our unnecessary war in Iraq, in Afghanistan with new fervor, on Drugs here and with NORTHCOM through Plan Mexico, on Secular Humanism, and on Terror. Almost everything about the War on Terror is preposterous: more Americans DIE EVERY MONTH in auto accidents than died from highjacked planes on September 11, but we subsidize roads like mad, and bail out auto manufacturers, and hand out cash for clunkers to insure that America keeps on rolling. As of 2010 AD, the federal gas tax was last raised by a nickel in 1993, and currently stands at 18¢ per gallon. For the Federal Interstate System to be fiscally solvent, the Federal Gas Tax needs to be over 56¢ per gallon. Without hyperbole: roads are heavily subsidized. That's FACT.

President Obama has followed through with his promise to expand America's military conflicts into Pakistan, and is following former Republican Presidential nominee John McCain's position that stricter sanctions should be imposed against Iran. The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility remains in operation, the CIA is targeting US citizens for extrajudicial execution, the telecommunications industry's retroactive immunity for surveilling US citizens remains unchallenged, Predator drones conduct illegal targeted assassinations abroad, the militarization of the Mexican border continues, and the militarization of the Canadian border is underway unabated. Globalists took the lead in engineering and managing the "bailout" of the financial industry through a series of coordinated government actions here and throughout Europe. Nebulous threats to "security" are guiding the coordination and militarization of police tactics among the various nations through intelligence sharing agreements, contractor outsourcing, and with support from secondary markets that supply contractors. Instead of soldiers in Iraq, we have private contractors importing logistical support from third-world nations. As US troops withdraw from Iraq, the number of mercenaries is expected to double. War is a business proposition, not the solemn duty the TV says it is. That's why the US Constitution authorizes a Navy to protect trade routes but prohibits standing armies (which tend to bankrupt nation-states).

Whether through bribery, indoctrination, or blackmail, media complicity with Neocon objectives continues as well: reporters like Judith Miller and Juan Williams are part of a growing pattern of politicized public figures rewarded with lush Fox News contracts after suicide-bombing their former careers and scuttling clear of the fallout. If history is any guide, the CIA is lurking in the shadows somewhere, dedicated to promoting violence and strife on the airwaves and in the desert while marketing a veneer of professional foreign conduct. In secret they're committed to human sacrifice.

Citizens who thought the Iraq invasion smelled fishy from the start -- and who spoke up at the time -- have had many of their fears borne out. Fears of a protracted or perpetual conflict, of the erosion of civil liberties, of budgetary nightmares (Bill Clinton ELIMINATED deficit spending) -- these citizens have been ignored far longer than even the most vocal Tea Party voters, despite being correct in many of their politicized beliefs. Can you imagine a time in the future when the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act is no longer needed, when The Emergency is passed, when Senators feel FREE to vote AGAINST increasing security at airports? We hear about the sacrifices of soldiers much more than we hear about how the Iraq invasion was based on a convenient lie. We crack jokes about the size of SUV's as though the Energy Crisis of the 1970's never happened -- or nearly put the US auto industry out of business with compact Japanese cars. THERE IS NO "liberal" media -- even PBS parrots the Neocon line, they're just not militant or angry like Fox.

Anti-globalism protesters who have been demonstrating at G8 summits for over a decade have seen many of their fears come to fruition, but when global bank bailouts transfer huge sums of money from average citizens to the wealthiest, The News features Officials and Pundits who talk about uncomfortable economic necessities; the police state is overlooked, the security contractors are only mentioned in the most carefully delineated contexts, and the use of global communications intercepts for state-sponsored industrial espionage is nearly inconceivable.

Climate change activists in Copenhagen were kept away from the international leadership conference by military barricades. The activists were upset about decades of government inaction in response to our rapidly deteriorating and increasingly polluted ecosystem. When, at the end of the highly publicized conference, governments failed to act, the news media did not then report that the protesters were correct in their positions and accusations -- that governments not only had failed to act, but had furthermore failed to consider a large number of reasonable solutions presented to them free of cost by reputable citizens and researchers over the course of several decades -- rather, the news just "changed the subject." If The Activists can't be portrayed as anarchist rioters, they're either represented in the mainstream media as inarticulate hippies or else they are utterly ignored.

While the so-called "liberal media" dotes over the Tea Party, and takes care to contrast their interests with those of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, Libertarians, Evangelicals, Reaganites, Moderates, Centrists, and the "far right," the Democrats remain roughly synonymous with "liberals" and "the left" even when they support the Neocon status quo. The "liberal media" devotes more time to discussing "conservative" views than "liberal" views, and discusses "conservative" views with far more nuance and subtlety.

If you are a member of the Tea Party, and have read this far, I'd like to share with YOU a few things about my experience voting for third-party candidate Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections. In the year 2000, Nader wasn't trying to win the Presidency, but was trying to earn 5% of the popular vote in order to qualify FUTURE Green Party electoral campaigns for federal matching funds. In those less polarized times, this was a reasonable strategy: just a few years earlier, Ross Perot earned nearly 20% of the popular vote.

In 2002, I got off a city bus one day and encountered a group of protestors upset about rumors of war in Iraq. I verbally sympathized with one of them, who was also hustling for some Democrat candidate. He tried to give me some literature about his candidate, and I told him I wasn't interested, and that I voted for Nader in 2000. He then got angry and told me that I was the reason George W. Bush was in office.

The rhetoric among "liberals" in early November 2000 AD incited a lot of Nader supporters to vote for Al Gore instead, and after early November, indicted Nader supporters for spoiling the election for Al Gore. Nobody on the TV or the radio appealed to Reason. Nobody said this rhetoric was foolish, since the Supreme Court settled the election anyway. Nobody said it was foolish to call Nader a spoiler because Nader didn't earn any votes in the electoral college. This guy I encountered at the bus stop, who was blaming me for ruining American Democracy, was infected by a type of delusion common among Broadcast news consumers on "the left" as well as "the right."

If you suppose that the GOP wants to co-opt the Tea Party, beware: the media, the Evangelical Church, and the PR industry want to do the same. There is no "liberal media" to speak of -- just opportunists in control of huge corporations looking to write the history that will benefit them in the future. If you suppose that it's natural and healthy for different media outlets to push "competing narratives" of historical events, your conception of history as the product of conflict is probably Marxist (even if you think you're a "conservative"). If you've noticed that most broadcast media outlets pick the same "top stories" every day -- day after day, week after week -- you might suspect that competition doesn't really play the role in our society that major media outlets say it does.

On the Macroeconomic Subtext of Healthcare Reform

2009-10-19T15:31:00.003-05:00

In the current healthcare reform debate, one statistic frequently cited by politicians and pundits indicates that Americans spend between 15% and 17% of their income on healthcare.

While the citation of this figure might be understood as an expression of empathy on the part of politicians and pundits toward the plight of ordinary citizens who must incur increasing healthcare costs as a prerequisite for maintaining employment (and thereby contributing to economic growth through consumer spending), the macroeconomic context in which healthcare reform is frequently debated suggests a different sort of interest.

The US economy, and the behavior of politicians, pundits, bureaucrats, and business leaders who seek to promote US economic interests frequently conceive of their task in terms of profit growth.

In late 1980, the DOW stood around 1,000. In late 2009, the DOW stands around 10,000. This is an increase by a factor of 10. Over the same period, the US population grew from around 200,000,000 to 300,000,000: an increase by a factor of 1.5. These intensive economic growth patterns (which must outstrip population growth) are understood to be the cornerstone of US economic success -- mainly, that those who have access to surplus income for investment get richer, while everybody else is served an increasingly smaller slice of the pie. Although typical wages have increased steadily over the past few decades, the growth of CEO salaries have increased far more dramatically, from about 40 times typical worker pay in 1980 to well over 400 times typical worker pay in 2000. This type of economic growth disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Americans at the expense of ordinary citizens.

As healthcare costs increase faster than GDP, numerous industries suffer as a result. If citizens spend their shrinking slice of the pie on inflated healthcare costs rather than on televisions, cars, and dining out, the economy suffers. So do investments in education, infrastructure, and the like. Moreover, unexpected healthcare costs are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the US, which further detracts from the potential contributions of consumer spending to overall economic growth. A driving interest in controlling the increasing cost of healthcare is to keep consumers and corporations spending. If consumers don't spend and corporations don't invest, the economy doesn't grow. If employers are responsible for increasing healthcare premiums, fewer funds are available for the types of corporate investment that promote economic growth. Even personal savings are here out of the question, as personal savings don't contribute to economic growth either (unless those savings are held for the purpose of putting a child through college -- since a college degree, on average, increases lifetime worker income by $1.3 million).

So one major factor in the current political calculation is the desire on the part of politicians to free up more funds specifically for industries that contribute more directly to economic growth -- and thereby to promote the continued enrichment of the wealthiest Americans.

Another major factor in the current political calculation has to do with the impact of illness on the productivity of workers. At present, the annual cost of chronic illness in terms of lost productivity in the US is estimated at aver $1 trillion. In a very direct way, if workers take fewer sick days, employers benefit because worker productivity increases. Worker productivity has nearly doubled since 1980. Thus, increased access to healthcare contributes to economic growth because access to regular health services makes for more productive workers. Increased worker productivity is an important factor contributing to US economic growth -- a situation wherein for the same pay, a given worker renders an increased benefit to his or her employer.

The so-called "public option" is therefore an important means of addressing both these key factors -- by decreasing healthcare costs and increasing access to healthcare -- both of which serve to promote economic growth. Those who oppose the "public option" reveal not only the short-sightedness of their vision, but reveal a profound disingenuousness in their rhetoric: that is, the same people who argue that government can't run anything efficiently are the same people arguing that a public health insurance plan will put private insurers out of business. While this opposition is typically framed in terms of an ideological opposition to government interference with competitive market forces, it is important to note that industrial-scale corporations routinely do everything in their power to eliminate competition at every opportunity: by under-pricing competitors at a loss, purchasing competitors outright, or manipulating legislation to produce favorable results. There are few industrial-scale corporations that would not prefer monopoly status to the status of one competitor among many. The central point here is that the systems of vertical integration so characteristic of industrial-scale commerce (and monopoly) are precisely those systems which are promoted by politicians who advocate the de-regulation of industry. It seems reasonable to suppose in this case that, while opposition to the "public option" is framed as ideological, it is more likely the product of back-door negotiations between certain politicians and the healthcare industry itself.

In many respects, then, an important subtext to the ongoing healthcare debate relates more to factors promoting specific macroeconomic benefits than to moral imperatives relating to the personal benefit of individual citizens. That individuals benefit from affordable healthcare is almost a politically expedient side-effect to the greater benefit rendered to the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations. And yet, it is individual citizens who are in the end asked to pay for this healthcare reform -- who are asked, in essence, to subsidize the economic growth of which they receive a steadily decreasing share. President Obama has pledged that he will not sign into law any healthcare legislation that increases the national debt. While this may seem like a noble goal, it is, in a sense, just another way in which citizens are treated as a means to the end that the profitability of corporations continues to grow.

Privatization is an important tactic used by the wealthiest Americans to entwine their interests with those of government -- that is, to bring their personal interests more closely into alignment with those of government. In an economy whose growth relies on easy access to credit -- essentially, debt as currency -- why shouldn't government incur some cost to see its interests so well served? The government has, after all, demonstrated its willingness to incur large amounts of debt to rescue bankers and pursue protracted war efforts. That the government is so reluctant to incur additional costs for the benefit of the healthcare interests of the citizenry is an indication that the benefit of the citizenry is not a primary motivation behind the current healthcare reform debate.

What positive conclusion can be drawn from all of this? Primarily, it is that the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations should bear the greatest part of the cost of healthcare reform precisely because the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations derive the greatest economic benefit from healthcare reform -- even if they are paying for the healthcare of citizens who are not their employees. Of course, this conclusion is profoundly out of step with the contemporary political climate in the United States, which in recent years has been driven by an unprecedented inclination towards the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses (most dramatically evidenced in the recent financial crisis). Thus, presented with the possibility of immediate relief from the pressures of disproportionately increasing costs and proportionally decreasing incomes, many Americans will gladly accept whatever healthcare reform is enacted -- even if the final legislation is perceived as far from perfect; and though the effect of whatever healthcare reform legislation ends up being enacted will be to further the exploitation of workers for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans, this exploitation can be easily framed as a significant and long-overdue social benefit. Those who remain dissatisfied after the issue is settled will likely be dismissed as extremists, radicals, and malcontents; and since much of what causes their dissatisfaction will remain in the realm of political subtext -- not widely discussed in the mass media -- they will have little in the public discourse by which to justify their claims.

Sympathy for the Details of Wall Street's Bailout

2008-09-30T09:47:00.004-05:00

These are difficult times and many of our leaders have a difficult job ahead of them.

While Congress is busy summoning the proper demons required to purchase the souls of the 13 Republican holdouts in the House, please don't mock United States of Homeland Security Chairman Henry Paulson. Political theatre, like black magic, is difficult work.

In these difficult times, it is your duty as a consumer to represent your leaders to the best of your ability.

As you await the consummation of the appropriate Satanic Congressional rituals, please help save the economy by flying to Las Vegas and gambling away your life savings so that your remaining wealth can trickle up to Wall Street.

Should you have neither life savings nor the time to fly to Las Vegas, expect that any contributions you would have made to Democracy will be extorted from your children by the full force of the US legal machinery.

Thank you for your continued patience during this difficult time of engineered wealth redistribution.

Debating Popular Intelligent Design

2008-03-28T11:18:00.007-05:00

A recent article on Wired sparked a debate in the online comments section about the relative merits of evolution and popular intelligent design; it is with some dismay that I've seen this and similar debates enacted in a variety of forums.

I think part of the problem with the evolution vs. intelligent design debate is a conflation of ontologies that is ultimately the failure of the American education system. Even calling intelligent design a theory is problemmatic: this is the element of satire behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The propositions of popular intelligent design are, in the vocabulary of the sciences, best described as hypotheses (although in ordinary speech, "theory" and "hypothesis" are often used interchangeably). Just as we use different vocabularies to describe sports, medicine, and law, science and religion also use different vocabularies. There is certainly some overlap: just as law has things to say about the practice of medicine, religion has things to say about the practice of science. Where things get problematic is when different vocabularies make use of what seem like similar phrases, but which are, nevertheless, understood quite differently in different disciplines (a "low score" is good in golf, but bad in basketball). These vocabularies need not be inherently contradictory, but frequently, inferences made about one vocabulary using the terms of another lead to statements that are by and large nonsensical.

There is an important difference in the sciences between descriptive accounts and explanatory models, which is often neglected in this debate. Questions about why God made evolution and why evolution made humans address very different problems. In the popular debate, those on the side of scientism don't often see that their views are biased by cultural perceptions of "the onward march of progress." In the scientific understanding, humans are not objectively the "most advanced" or "most evolved" species on the planet; in quantitative terms, ants have been far more successful than humans in propagating their genes, and have been continuing to evolve over a longer stretch of time than humans. The bias of progress also appears in discussions of technology: today's most "advanced" digital cameras are just starting to catch up to the amount of detail found in a typical photograph from 100 years ago. Needless to say, ants don't engage in such nuanced social behaviors as art; but by the same token, art is different from science: in general, we don't talk about the Mona Lisa in terms of the chemical composition of the pigments, but rather, we usually discuss it in terms of how the colors make us feel and what the forms make us think about as individuals.

Many reasonable people, from the time of our earliest cultural memories, have held that there is something mystical to be found in art. Many reasonable people have held that there is something mystical to be found in geometry. Given that the mathematics of geometry have figured prominently in art and religion for centuries, it seems reasonable to suppose that religion and science aren't the mutually-exclusive disciplines we often consider them to be today.

Much of science works with the language of mathematics; mathematics provides a "lingua franca" whereby different scientific disciplines can compare their propositions and results. To many people, this language is quite foreign or esoteric; therefore, in order for science to be relevant to daily life, many of science's mathematical assertions must be expressed in ordinary terms. When the consequences of mathematical statements are translated into plain language vocabularies, some consequences have to do with how we describe the world, and others have to do with how we explain the inherently meaningful things we experience on a daily basis; unfortunately, there's no rigorous curriculuum to sort out when scientific propositions are meant to be understood as descriptive and when they are meant to be understood as explanatory.

I think that part of the frustration many creationists may feel in expressing their experience of the world to scientific audiences is that even the dichotomy of description and explanation is a function of a scientific vocabulary, and those motivated by an ideological scientism are enculturated to dismiss other vocabularies categorically, without looking for patterns in the assertions typically formulated in those other vocabularies.

From an anthropological/linguistic perspective, we have these different vocabularies because they usefully identify distinct phenomena. Why do we think things are meaningful? Religion provides one set of answers which in many cases -- such as Buddhist psychology -- are rational and in many respects empirical.

It is often useful to discuss things in terms of dichotomies such as good and bad, or true and false; at the same time, we often experience things in shades of grey. When we do things, it is usually because of psychological states that fall into one of two categories: reasoning and emoting. But we can have three possible categories for describing the motives behind an observed action: rational, irrational, or arational (just as we have theists, atheists, and agnostics).

Just because we don't see the reason behind an action doesn't mean it's contrary to reason; one can arrive at the right answer to a math problem even if one's arithmetic is wrong. But we also believe people act from the heart: through ideology, through conviction, through intuition, or through a love of life. In this realm, reason doesn't always apply to motivation (although the results of such actions can often be described as grounded in morals, ethics, and what is generally considered acceptable social behavior).

When we negate the linguistic validity of an ontology, perhaps we too often ignore that diverse vocabularies come into use for a reason, and that embodiments of that reason often result in some emotional satisfaction, which is a form of validity.

Perhaps creationists should stop trying to describe God in scientific terms, and accept that science is a demonstrably insightful description of God's acts of creation. There are so many problems with trying to describe God in scientific terms. Algorithmic information theory provides a fairly precise definition of "complexity" -- the subject of the Wired article under discussion -- that is intuitively satisfying, intellectually rigorous, and useful in the applied sciences. This and closely related understandings of complexity will become more important for anybody who uses modern computers or anything made with modern computers, and who also wants to see any sense of the world. This is so for numerous reasons: as the science of thermodynamics and the science of information systems move closer together linguistically, mathematically, and theoretically, we will see ever more profoundly in our daily lives the applied effects of emergent phenomena such as self-organizing systems, dissipative systems, stochastics, and heuristics, all of which will leave traces of their activities in our experiences and our discourse; and these traces will often be felt in constructed social phenomena such as art, politics, media, and the like, which rely in many ways on scientific research (the use of digital media in the arts, the demographic or economic consequences of legislation, or the psychology of marketing and advertising in the mass media).

To be blunt: would a creationist argue that computers don't at all exist today? Many would consider doing so irrational, except perhaps in the limited context of a philosophy grounded in something like Spinoza (his is the only Jewish excommunication of which I am aware) or Leibniz or Berkeley. At the same time, a creationist and a scientist might agree that computers don't do what we think they do; such claims may furthermore be grounded in theories of mass communication, ethics, morality, or intuition.

There is scientific evidence (from cybernetics, for example: if you had to consciously spell out and deliberately move each individual muscle in your mouth to produce utterances, you'd hardly get a word out) as well as religious evidence (Taoism is a successful religion with a rich history that has very much influenced the idiom of Zen Buddhism) that intuition is often well-grounded, and to deny its validity would present a serious problem to any rational discourse that asserts that past events have occurred or that the perception of free will exists (divine foreknowledge -- omniscience -- is perfectly compatible with free will: just because you know something knocked off a table will hit the floor doesn't mean that knowledge is what brings the event about).

There is a wonderful blog called Acts of Being which discusses contemporary science from the perspective of St. Thomas Aquinas's religious philosophy, in ways that are quite sensitive and insightful. Those who have "taken sides" in the debate and are interested in getting at the essence of what "the other side" has to say might benefit from thinking about the discussion there.

My own opinion is that ultimately this isn't really a problem of science or religion, but a problem with the vocabularies that we as a culture have available for distinguishing and reconciling what different types of claims are meant to say about the world. Needless to say, things only get more confusing when politicians get into the "business" of redefining ordinary terms in radical ways for motivations that often seem less than savory ("the lesser of two evils is still evil"), and often more like marketing, spin, or a corporatist form of damage control ("we don't want this lunatic to hurt the Party's image, but we like how this other lunatic unites the Party base").

In a more tangental connection, I'm reminded of Paul Valery's assertion that philosophy should be properly considered a branch of literature. I think there's a certain poetic truth to this idea, which is relevant to the discussion: in the beginning was the Word. I imagine part of Valery's reasoning for making this assertion has to do with his discussion elsewhere to the effect that science and philosophy pursue qualitatively different sorts of Truth; this is why Copernicus is today studied as history while Plato is still studied as philosophy.

Where the debate touches on public education in America, the arguments of opposing camps are often motivated by what is perceived as the threat of false indoctrination; yet we live in a society founded upon the exercise of civil liberties and free will. Art and philosophy offer valuable ways to carry out this debate in constructive ways that don't reduce to one side spewing nonsense at the other; unfortunately, art and philosophy are often treated by our culture as overly academic or as elitist pastimes, and often given short shrift in schools. Art can be devotional or experimental, but needn't be either by necessity.

My gut feeling on the matter is that the debate has more to do with expressing a cultural dissatisfaction at people being treated like specialized cogs in the social machine, but that those who have organized into opposing camps are blinded by their own language, and thus unable to see that they share the emotional thrust of their dissatisfaction with those that they oppose.

OK kids, here's your homework: look up any unfamiliar terms in two sources, re-read this text, and write a four-paragraph critique. In the first paragraph, identify which assertions you will address in your critique. In the second paragraph, summarize those assertions and address why you chose them for your critique. In the third paragraph, offer your critique; provide counter-examples. In the fourth paragraph, examine the consequences of your critique in relation to one of your personal interests or acquired skills: what is the Tao of your hobby or passion? Ask at least one other person if he or she sees any problems with your analysis, however minor. Try to avoid preconceptions about what the process will teach you.

OK teachers: don't forget to write your representatives. Just a reminder: you have State and local representatives too. I haven't had much luck with them myself, but maybe yours will be different. The volume of constituent feedback derived from statistics about consumer behavior too often outweighs the expression of individual voices, even in chorus. They've emptied the pews with promises of an American idolatry.

OK media: stop feeding us garbage.

Reacting to an Epidemic Violence

2008-02-17T17:57:00.020-06:00

The reporting around the horrific events at Northwestern Illinois University has, as in past school shootings, focused on the grief of families, biographical details about the suicide shooter, and the tangental issues of gun control, emergency safety procedures, and how society should perceive those with mental illness. It is certainly reasonable enough that reporting should cover these topics, but there are other issues just as much in the public interest.

Many of the shootings that become national events are not presented in a national context, despite commanding national attention. With over 20,000 gun homicides annually in the United States, there are certainly scores of similarly grieving families who do not get a national audience for their suffering, nor a national discussion of the conditions surrounding their personal tragedies.

How does the media choose which events to make into a national spectacle? The answer is not clear, but I think it's reasonable to suppose the decision-making bears a strong relation to what news management thinks consumers and advertisers want to hear about, and what sorts of lessons journalists and officials want to teach.

The narrative is that our society is changing in disturbing and dramatic ways, and that these events are evidence that, among other things, radical security measures are in order.

In this most recent instance, we are told the shooter recently discontinued his psychiatric medication. It is unlikely that discussion of this fact will touch upon why we decide certain thoughts and behaviors indicate a mental illness, or why we should not be at liberty to determine our own brain chemistries (even though corporations can patent our genes). It is unlikely to be seen as relevant that the American Psychiatric Association began publishing The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the same year that Donald Ewen Cameron -- known for his CIA-sponsored drug experiments on unsuspecting patients -- became president of that trusted organization. Our brains can be studied scientifically, after all, and psychiatry is an objective profession: there are guidelines as such, and reams of carefully-collected data.

Perhaps these events are more likely to grab our attention when a shooter ends a rampage with a suicide. There are a number of reasons this should be especially startling to Americans: the perpetrator escapes judicial retribution; the shooter doesn't care about heroism -- however deluded such a conception of heroism might be -- and doesn't appear to be motivated by anything resembling a clear ideology (except perhaps the most brooding, escapist sort of nihilism -- although this shooter seems to have been dedicated to working for public welfare programs). Many people passionately believe suicide is a sin. And there's a frightening -- if not subconsciously-perceived -- similarity to the suicide attacks that we hear about in Iraq.

What could promote those feelings of helplessness here in America which one might otherwise presume to find among suicide bombers over there in Iraq, where citizens have been brutalized for decades by dictatorship, sanctions, war, and occupation? We live in a first-world nation, not a war zone.

To me, it is frighteningly indicative of what despairs such a shooter might have felt when I consider what it might mean to starving or homeless families that 50% of the world's military spending is by America's 5% of the world's population; or what it means to disenfranchised voters or children missing a parent that the United States has as many people behind bars as China and Russia combined. How many people are trapped in indentured servitude to pay off student loans, credit debt, or bad mortgages? How many people lost their retirement when they were laid off, when the dot-com bubble burst, when Enron imploded, when the housing market crumbled? How many people work two jobs but still can't make ends meet? What would the inflation rate be if food and fuel costs were factored in?

Why should anybody be made to feel like a piece of meat manipulated by some bean-counter somewhere with a spreadsheet?

Where I live, televisions have recently been installed on the city busses. There are three televisions on each bus; typical programming on these televisions includes yesterday's weather, news and entertainment headlines, 3-minute cooking shows, inane word puzzles, and an occasionally-crippled route map. And advertisements: frequently for no-name companies asking you to text them arbitrary strings of numbers from your cellphone.

These televisions also speak and play music over the bus's intercom, making it difficult to read a book. The exterior of the busses are sometimes painted over with advertisements, so it's difficult to even look out the windows. You can talk on a cellphone if you talk loud enough so nobody else can think.

On its website, the company responsible for the televisions boasts to prospective advertisers:

"Transit TV's unique medium and compelling programming offer a truly captive audeince [sic.] -- no channel changing, no DVR's -- maximum impact for your message."

A truly captive audience: yes, we are treated as captives even on our way home from work. This is how we are regarded by those who fight for our eyeballs, our pocketbooks, our hearts and our minds.

Although we are raised to believe we live in a republic governed by law-abiding and democratically-elected representatives, we often find ourselves voiceless, powerless, repressed or ignored. Our minds have been occupied and our bodies entrapped: we must try not to be personally offended by affronts to our dignity perpetrated by systemic blindnesses, even as we are systematically alienated -- by identity politics, psychoanalysis, bureaucracies, and institutions -- from the effects of our own lives and from the most profound questions of self-determination from the time we become old enough to think a bit for ourselves.

Politicians rarely speak about citizens any longer -- we are more important as consumers: corporatist serfs rather than citizen electors. We are only seen insofar as we are seen as consumers: predictable statistical constructs defined by feudal corporations. The role of our legislature has been relegated to managing our demographics for the corporate policy-makers, in strict accordance with the tyranny of statisticians and bureaucrats trained in the blind rituals of quantitative reasoning. Our strings are tugged by nationalist rhetoric in the interest of multinational corporations who owe no national allegiances whatsoever.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher in large part responsible for our modern conception of a constitutional republic, suggested that "the impulsion of mere appetite is slavery."

Psychological captivity would seem to be a complex pathology. We see the symptoms more clearly than the cause: the language of disease is familiar, the image plain. We can readily find ways to identify with those who are victimized by straightforward afflictions.

It is easier to identify with young university students filled with potential than it is to identify with the Afghan children about whom General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked: "It is unfortunate that the cluster bombs -- the unexploded ones -- are the same color as the food packets. Unfortunately, they get used to running to yellow."

Even as we offer our sympathies to the victims of this awful crime, and the families of the victims, we should keep in mind that our public discourse about these events will leave important questions unasked -- or decided by numbers long after this story has left the headlines, or incoherent amidst a multitude of obscure details.

The causes for such events are complex, and the despair that makes such actions seem reasonable is not limited to sensational expressions of destructive discontent. We are not made aware of these events for objective or disinterested reasons, nor because it is in each of our best interest to have accounts of such events periodically thrust before us.

Somehow the failure to understand these things is our own failure -- for these events were not random, but rather, performed in a deliberate fashion. Yet the meaning escapes us, and we find only the fierce competition among those who would tell us what this all means. And should this have truly been a random occurrence, for all our analysis it may not in the end be possible for us to know any more sense in these horrors than any among those who witnessed them first-hand.

As we offer up our sympathies to those who have suffered here, we should remember that the shooter too was human and deserving of our sympathies, as this would seem to have been an individual tormented in some way -- whose last thoughts were some terminal nightmare, and whose parting deeds defy all logic. And yet, we can't rightly say what this man will find in the next world.

And though he may not see judicial retribution, we must also remember that justice is not the same as retribution, but rather, that harmony which makes retribution unnecessary.

The rapid police response at Northwestern Illinois University should demonstrate this is not at its core an enforcement issue, but some social problem that is not being adequately addressed in our public discourse. Perhaps the social problem is not that too many people can buy guns, but that too many people want to buy guns. Perhaps the fault here is not with numbers or procedures, but with where we look for faults in the first place.

Television, Contradiction, and Social Manipulation

2007-10-26T12:16:00.002-05:00

Often, when I enter a bar or a club to which I haven't previously been, I count the number of television screens. I frequently find the high tally somewhat disconcerting. I've entertained a number of possible explanations for the ubiquity of television screens in social gathering places, which range widely in character.

Some time ago I settled on a somewhat concrete biological explanation. In 1927, Ivan Pavlov described what he called the "orienting response," which is basically a physiological reaction to novel stimuli. This reaction is why, if there is a television in the periphery of one's vision, it will draw one's attention, even if one is otherwise engaged in an interesting conversation. Television, because of the types of motion it depicts, and the frequency of edits it employs, activates this "orienting response" continuously.

As described in the February 23, 2002 issue of Scientific American:

"Typical orienting reactions include dilation of the blood vessels to the brain, slowing of the heart, and constriction of blood vessels to major muscle groups. Alpha waves are blocked for a few seconds before returning to their baseline level, which is determined by the general level of mental arousal. The brain focuses its attention on gathering more information while the rest of the body quiets."

What this means is that when one sits in front of a television, one's body becomes relaxed. One's mind creates a positive association between the presence of a television screen and physical relaxation. When one stops watching television, one's mind, furthermore, creates a negative association between the absence of a television screen and the return of one's body return to its previous state of physical arousal.

Armed with this piece of information, I concluded that the ubiquity of television screens in bars subconsciously contributes to the sense of relaxation felt by patrons.

I recently read about a UCLA study which used fMRI scanners to observe the brain activity of television viewers. The subjects in the study were observed while they watched the advertisements run during the Super Bowl. What the researchers found was that many of these ads produced reactions of fear and anxiety. Researcher Said Iacoboni noted that "the amygdala, which is a kind of a threat-detector region of the brain, was much more active compared to other brain regions."

So if the formal properties of television have the effect of keeping audiences physiologically relaxed enough to stay put, the content of broadcast television can be used to simultaneously elicit an opposite emotional reaction.

This insight prompted in me a further re-examination of the more subtle effects of broadcast television. Beyond the contradictory effects that exist between the television and the individual viewer, there exists within broadcast television a mountain of contradictions. This can be seen especially clearly if one considers broadcast television both as a continuous stream of video content and as a series of discrete programs.

When one watches television, one is subjected to numerous advertisements juxtaposed one against the other. These advertisements often try to coerce audiences into doing very different things: spend your money here, no, don't spend your money there; like this person, no, don't like this person; support this cause, no, don't support this cause; do this, no, don't do this. Each advertisement might promote a worldview oppoite to the previous advertisement, or might promote a worldview contrary to the worldview of the scheduled program during which the advertisement is run.

There may be a tendency among individual audience members to "tune out" these contradictions, to dismiss them simply as motivated by the business interests of others; but the fact remains that many people still watch, and what they watch still has an effect.

Numerous studies have been conducted to examine whether television desensitizes individuals to violence; I have seen no study which examines whether television desensitizes individuals to being given contradictory statements, or which examines whether television desensitizes individuals to the distortions of reality that characterize much of advertising and marketing. The fact that researchers are using brain scans to evaluate audience reponses suggests these effects might be quite calculated.

If such a desensitizing effect in fact exists, and people are every day trained to ignore or dismiss lies and contradictions, how might this affect a population's ability to make sound judgments and informed decisions? If television manipulates viewers emotionally while disengaging reason and discernment, might this in part be used to account for the paranoia surrounding the threat of terrorism, which comes at the expense of the threat posed to individuals by drunk drivers and gun violence?

I can recall watching, some time prior to the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq, a Public Service Announcement which ran during a Sunday morning political talkshow. The PSA was part of the War on Drugs, depicting a teenage girl purchasing a bag of marijuana. The PSA traced her purchase back to some brutal Mexican druglord, with narration that ran: "Here's Jane, here's Jane's bag of marijuana, here's Jane's drug dealer, here's the supplier for Jane's drug dealer, here's the smuggler who supplies the supplier, and here's the druglord who murdered an innocent family to supply the smuggler." Beyond the fact that most of the marijuana consumed in the United States is produced domestically, I couldn't help but think - as somebody who has never owned a car - about the format of the PSA transposed onto the structure of the oil industry: "Here's Jack, here's Jack's sport utility vehicle, here's the lower-middle-class owner of the gas station Jack frequents, here's the wealthy oil industry executive with his mansion and his summer home and his private jet, here's the Washington lobbyist who makes it all possible, and here's the brutal dictator on the other side of the globe who profits most."

Of course, we've now deposed Saddam Hussein and imposed our Republic's brutal colonialism in order to liberate his former subjects. So where's the contradiction?

Domestic Surveillance in America

2007-08-29T21:12:00.000-05:00

There seems to be a lot of indifference in the United States regarding domestic surveillance. Perhaps this indifference is a result of a citizenry distracted by the war in Iraq, or because most people feel that they pose no real threat to the government (and therefore do not fear what government employees may seek to learn about the private lives of US citizens). Many people simply may not see how domestic surveillance affects them. Many people may simply desire anything that resembles protection from the nebulous threat of terrorism.

Wired News has published a description of the FBI's domestic surveillance capabilities, to which I posted the following comment (and immediately subsequent to which, the entire commenting feature for the article disappeared). I think these are concerns that every American citizen should consider with respect to the surveillance capabilities of the US government:

Maybe you do nothing wrong and have nothing to fear because you don't mind it when social engineers manage us like cattle.

Maybe you do nothing wrong and don't care if other people see all the personal details you reveal about yourself through your search history. Visit www.aolstalker.com and see if you still feel that way.

Maybe you do nothing wrong and don't mind if a fascist government seeks to suppress or intimidate innovative thinkers who challenge the philosophical premises of successful business models with which government interests are entangled, and you are content to spend your days in a cube and your nights bowing down to the American Idol.

Maybe you don't mind if a foreign government hacks into our surveillance network and uses it against us, at your expense.

Maybe you don't mind being drafted into the War on Terror so long as you don't have to know about it.

Maybe the possibility of all those private contractors with access to your sensitive information doesn't bother you.

Maybe you care more about convenience than justice or liberty.

Maybe you're a terrorist.

Maybe it doesn't matter whether or not all your communications are surveilled because the potential for abuse is enough to make you self-censor any criticisms you may have of a government obsessed with stifling dissent.

Maybe you vote and are willing to boycott the two party system by voting for yourself, because that way you can both register your discontent and help verify the statistical accuracy of our voting system by demanding to see your vote in print after the elections.

Maybe you think our next President will spend every waking hour reversing Executive Orders, Presidential Directives, and un-litigating the last six years.

Maybe you wish the Revolution had never happened, and want to reinstate the Crown.

Agitprop Ticonderoga Quantization Table Manipulation

2007-08-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

tertium quid mnemosyne janus

Gitmo '07 for Fun and Profit

2007-08-07T21:45:00.000-05:00

In response to Great Britain's formal request that the United States release five British residents from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, US officials have reiterated that the United States does not want to be the world's jailor.

This is an odd position to take, if one is representing the United States in an official capacity at a time when the United States is seeing dramatic growth in prison populations.

One out of every four people in prison is in the United States. That's no minor accomplishment for a Nation that represents a mere 5% of the World's population.

The USA is #1 in incarcerations, beating out Russia and China. Even if China is under-reporting, the United States is still running in good company.

Whatever cause or purported intent one invokes to account for this phenomenon, the effect disproportionately impacts Black Americans in a variety of ways. For example, 13% of adult Black men cannot vote because of their conviction history.

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility puts a friendly Hollywood face on America's attitude towards imprisonment, but the conditions described as existing there should not seem especially shocking to American sensibilities. Prisons are an awful -- and central -- part of the American Way of Life. For some people, keeping other humans imprisoned is the way to The American Dream.

Americans tolerate a lot of things: not too many inconveniences, but a great many injustices. That prisons represent a struggle against a criminal class is clear. That prisons represent a cultural problem far more significant than street crime is not nearly as often made clear in the popular media.

Prisoners are made by laws. Laws are expressions of cultural values. There have been many generations brought up with the indoctrination of human captivity: what cultural values do Americans hold so as to make so many disrupted lives seem worthwhile, and even lucrative?

Letter to a Representative from a Disaffected Patriot

2007-07-04T11:09:00.000-05:00

Dear Sen. X,

With all respect, I appreciate your sincere desire to serve the Nation and our fine State of residence, but I have serious doubts as to whether this can at all be accomplished through political affiliation with the Two-Party System as presently constituted.

When I wrote to you expressing my dismay at the Vice President's arguments concerning the legal classification of his Office (relative to the system articulated by the US Constitution), my concern was not for the timely reconciliation of rhetorical positions among various interested parties.

Perhaps, when I wrote you, my concerns were expressed in a simplistic manner. The content of my correspondence contained only a citation from a White House press conference (referencing the Vice President's recent claims about the legal status of his Office) and the statement "THIS IS FLAT OUT UNACCEPTABLE." The correspondence was not particularly intended to elicit a direct response, but rather to serve as a means by which I, an engaged citizen, might communicate my perceptions to one of my elected representatives in the Federal Government.

You wrote back, "our democracy is not perfect." My concern, Sir, is not whether our Democracy is perfectly implemented, but rather, whether it presently can be said to exist at all.

You wrote, "our government does successfully balance the many interests and concerns of our diverse nation in a manner that is representative and fair," but I see violence in the streets comparable to a theatre of war, increasing numbers of high school graduates sold into indentured servitude to procure funding for college, orchestrated disinformation campaigns by the Federal Government designed to keep the citizenry ignorant or perplexed, more incarcerations than any other country, state socialism for corporations and the fascist sheepherding of individuals. I hear politicians twisting language to serve their ends. I see high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House.

You wrote, "the process works because there are public servants...dedicated to the ideas of democracy." This assumes the existence of an effective means by which Democratic ideals might be implemented; I see diminishing evidence to support the validity of this assumption.

An Administration installed on contentious grounds, which of late appears to have abandoned even the facade of legitimacy, does little to mitigate my concerns. Under such circumstances, neither does a reply from an elected representative to the effect that I ought not worry because this will work itself out do much to instill confidence that our Democracy is functioning as intended.

I regret to inform you that you will not receive my votes in the future. This is due in no small part to your affiliation with the Two-Party System, as I see increasing evidence of late that this System is not operating in the service of individual US citizens. I will use all peaceful and civilized means at my disposal to persuade others of my position.

Sincerely,

XXX

Practical Electromagnetic Mood Management

2007-06-25T15:36:00.000-05:00

How might covert interests acting as a parasite within an authoritarian regime -- with access to trillions of military research dollars annually -- construct a centrally-directed, practical, electromagnetic mood manipulation apparatus that can be implemented by distributed means?

I'm going to sketch something out for you step-by-step:

Spend some time at www.aolstalker.com, and think about whether it's not a little bit like reading somebody else's mind. Then think about what commercial advertisers and the National Security Agency are doing with your searches, and think about the possibility of electromagnetic Google Advertising for the psyche.

What sorts of electromagnetic fields might be useful in this context?

To start thinking about this, we have to first understand something called "stochastic interference." In this context, its relevance is related to the idea that discrete randomness can create the appearance of global statistical continuity.

Here's a useful analogy:

1. We know that some types of electromagnetic radiation cause cancer

2. We know that the radiation from powerlines probably doesn't cause cancer

However, we also know that:

3. The radiation from powerlines (in the countryside and in your walls) is pervasive

4. The radiation from powerlines is not EXACTLY 60hz

Point 4. is important. If we view the 60hz Alternating Current on the power lines as a signal, we must recognize that there will be some noise on the line. Because the electrons "traveling" down the power lines interact with the material of the powerlines, the powerlines will resonate at different frequencies. The 60hz AC signal will bleed into other frequencies.

So we can accept points 1. and 2. above, but we should also ask: can we get cancer from the radiation emitted by power lines PLUS all the other sources of electromagnetic radiation in our environment? Can the radiation from powerlines interact with LOCAL radiation sources to produce cancer-causing radiation?

Scientists who study "stochastic interference" study these sorts of problems.

So what sorts of electromagnetic fields might be useful for practical electromagnetic mood management?

It turns out that there are all sorts of devices in your environment that can produce very specific types of electromagnetic radiation, which can be made to stochastically interact with a global signal.

Tempest for Eliza, a piece of open source Linux software, will allow you to use a conventional CRT monitor to broadcast an AM radio signal. You can broadcast MP3's to your radio from your computer monitor!

Now think about how close people sit to computer monitors all day, and examine some of the patents recently issued to Hendricus Loos.

Now imagine the capbilities of the previous two links delivered to you in secret (either as a virus like the FBI's Carnivore system, or else built into your commercial software at the request of a central government).

What would the goal of such a system be?

Well, think about clocks. We often think about clocks as tools used to measure out the day. But from the perspective of systems theory, clocks are also a way to synchronize the behavior of large numbers of humans, who are not otherwise in direct contact with oneanother. Clocks are pretty amazing, really.

We all know we've found all sorts of great uses for clocks. They're especially good for industrialists.

Systems theory tells us that many diverse types of organized systems can be found to exhibit the same mathematical behaviors. The math for thermodynamics, optics, entropy, and image compression is all related.

I wonder what other sorts of uses the NSA has for this patent on synchronization methodology.

How might electromagnetic radiation be put into the environment in sufficient quantities and with sufficient control to affect a mass manipulation of mood?

It turns out that there are all sorts of suitable facilities under the control of central governments. Consider the US Government using HAARP and ELF transmitters such as that at Clam Lake to broadcast a range of acceptable mood alterations. Devices in your local environment with processing capabilities, such as your cellphone or your computer, may then generate radiation that cancels out or enhances certain resonances in the ambient environment. The appropriate signal for a local device to generate can be selected algorithmically according to your Internet browsing behavior.

Regarding the Implications of MySpace Link Filtering

2007-06-25T10:46:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the days of the "Googlebomb" are drawing to a close.

MySpace has begun to re-code outbound links from user pages in an effort to mask the URL to which these links refer.

Outbound links from MySpace pages are being redirected through www.msplinks.com in a move that is perhaps related to MySpace's recent advertising agreement with Google, and directed towards ensuring that MySpace spam doesn't interfere with Google's PageRank algorithm.

People who have grown up with Google might not recognize what a dramatic improvement it represented, compared to earlier Internet search engines. Previous to Google, many search engines essentially ordered results according to the frequency with which a user's search phrase appeared on indexed pages. Yahoo, the pre-Google Internet search authority, wasn't strictly a search engine, but took a "brute force" approach to presenting the Internet in an ordered manner (focusing its efforts on creating a human-edited directory, rather than on developing sophisticated algorithms for sorting indexed pages).

Before long, spammers learned to exploit the page-sorting algorithms commonly used by search engines by filling pages with invisible text that wasn't really relevant to a user's query.

In response, various improvements were made to popular methods of relevance ranking. But the big breakthrough in Internet search technology responsible for Google's success was really a psychological insight.

The basic psychological assumption that underlies Google's PageRank algorithm is that humans defer to authority; the more humans defer to a particular source, the more authoritative that source is considered to be. Thus, the page that comes up first in a Google search is the page that has the most pages linking to it under a given search phrase. Each time a page links to another, that link is considered a vote in favor of viewing the link's destination as authoritative.

Thus, the ability of MySpace spammers to produce large numbers of links that are indexed by Google represents a threat to Google's (economically successful) definition of authority.

The point of indexing and algorithmically analyzing web pages for the purposes of an Internet search is to uncover patterns in the collected data. Search engines seek to identify the same types of patterns that human cognition would identify. In a very direct sense, Google's algorithm can be viewed as a statistical description of certain aspects of human behavior. And what is dangerous about the MySpace link redirection scheme is that it seeks to "edit" the observable results of human behavior in order to make the collected data fit the mathematical descriptions upon which Google's business model is based.

Whether this is evidence of a central authority administered by distributed means or is evidence of an "invisible hand" may become clear insofar as whether or how such link redirection schemes proliferate.

The benefits of such a scheme to a central authority should be evident to anybody sufficiently acquainted with distributed systems, cognitive science, systems theory, or the current political situation in the United States. If the emergent features of Google's algorithms can be considered as presenting authoritative accounts of opinion (as in the case of the "failure" Googlebomb) as well as authoritative accounts of fact, then the manipulation of the algorithm may be able to effect the manipulation of opinion (and thereby, the perception of fact).

If MySpace spam is a problem for Google, wouldn't it be easier for Google to exclude MySpace profiles, and index only official MySpace content? Is Google's advertising agreement with MySpace a buyout, rich-guys-scratching-eachother's-backs-and-the-public-good-be-damned, or subsidized (directly or indirectly) by interests in the US central government?

The significance of MySpace link redirection may be more subtle, however. This may be evidence of "flocking behavior" among powerful corporations, whose behavior is entangled with and constrained by political interests. The financial interests of various types of organizations may be converging on certain types of social interaction.

It is also important to consider whether such a link redirection scheme can be used as a form of censorship.

However one wishes to account for the appearance of this practice in our present online environment, it will be vitally important for the preservation of personal liberty that those private individuals whose trade subsists in free expression - everybody from the scientist to the artist - be allowed to carry out his or her work in the absence of censorship. Developments in online communications are having a profound impact on culture and social organization. Censorship has a ripple effect in these types of social systems.

In any event, it will be important to watch whether or how such link redirection schemes proliferate.

The Sphinx at the War Office: Meditations on Harmony and Discord

2007-06-23T00:51:00.000-05:00

ad oculos: intonuere poli, et crebris micat ignibus aether. nihil obstat.

The Weaponization of the Magnetosphere

2007-06-19T19:56:00.000-05:00

I recently came across some lumbering bit of bureaucratese called "Radiation Belt Remediation."

Previously, I had only heard the word "remediation" used in the sense "to repair," as in "environmental remediation," and so my first thought was some concern that, like our air, fields, and waters, we screwed everything up real good in our magnetosphere too.

There seems to be an aspect of doublespeak in this term, however. An article called The Atmospheric Implications of Radiation Belt Remediation implies that “Radiation Belt Remediation (RBR)” describes "studies...being undertaken to bring about practical human control of the radiation belts."

The charged particles in our upper atmosphere have been the object of scientific and military research for many years. Projects from Starfish Prime to HAARP have sought to understand and manipulate various properties of the Earth's electromagnetic fields.

But it would appear that RBR is not so much a "program" as a "doctrine" or a "goal." Institutional goals and doctrines have a strange life of their own: a new President every 4-8 years has little effect on most of the day-to-day functioning of the government; a lot of bureaucrats spend their whole lives behind the same desk.

Because it is not a program, but rather a more general sort of institutional goal, it is an organizing principle for many programs. There are all sorts of studies underway at various facilities around the world probing various aspects of the earth's electromagnetic fields.

I suspect that facilities like HAARP and the Clam Lake ELF transmitter work in concert, using constructive and destructive interference to generate local effects from global signals. That is, I suspect these facilities function together as a system - like a radio telescope array - about which different researchers make different types of observations.

I imagine some scientists use this system to influence the magnetosphere, to observe and model how the magnetosphere responds. They probably use all sorts of advanced computing technologies in the process. There are probably lots and lots of military dollars involved in many different places, with dual-use projects left and right.

The military is clearly interested in the ability to manipulate the earth's electromagnetic fields. What, specifically, might the military's interest be?

It turns out there are all sorts of military applications for the earth's electromagnetic fields.

The most straightforward application is communications: a part of the atmosphere can be used as a temporary antenna in much the same way as the ionization trail of a meteorite can be used as a temporary antenna. The advantage of such a technology has to do with security: if an adversary doesn't know where a signal is going to come from, it is more difficult to detect and decode that signal.

Some applications have to do with defense ("defense" in a literal sense, not in the American sense in which "defense" is a euphemism for "war"). If you can focus a large amount of energy at one place in the atmosphere, you can use this energy to heat a column of air. Such a mechanism may be sufficient to disrupt the course of a ballistic missile.

Some applications have to do with offense. A powerful, focused, electromagnetic pulse can disrupt communications or disable a power grid. Some applications may be oriented towards the weaponization of space.

Beyond the twisted irony in the doublespeak of the word "remediation" in this case, I find it extremely troubling the extent to which persons in my government are willing to turn EVERYTHING AROUND ME into a weapon.

Does anybody know who these people are and why they should be trusted? Do they really know what their experiments are doing to our planet?

In Praise of Hippasus, His Turn in the Endless Golden Braid

2007-06-17T11:20:00.000-05:00

From the Proceedings of the Invisible Order of the Pythagorean Hydra 314.

Why the President is a Puppet

2007-06-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

To understand why the President is a puppet, it is important to think of the President as primarily a communications hub. The volume of sensitive information passing across the President's desk makes the President a valuable intelligence-gathering target.

This is why the President is always surrounded by so many people: it is important to pass information directly from person to person because, for many communications, the use of communications technology is a counter-intelligence liability.

The President probably doesn't carry a cellphone all that often. Since the FBI can access your cellphone's GPS chip, or can remotely activate the microphone, so can some disgruntled Nokia or AT&T employee. The President needs to have many person-to-person communications for security reasons.

The content of the communications with which the President is entrusted contain implicit or explicit instructions regarding how the President ought to behave. Either a piece of information is not to be divulged, or it may only be divulged under certain circumstances. Every communication the President receives says either "do this" or "don't do this," and the President is entrusted with skillfully discerning and faithfully following these instructions.

In many instances, specific phraseology is important. Between the nuances of jargon, inner-circle meetings, and the spin-doctor's propaganda marketing prescription, one word or a few letters can make a world of difference to different people. "At the end of the day," "make no mistake," "going forward," "support the troops," "family values" -- people pledge allegiance to these terms. The President needs to identify which phrases serve as proper nouns, which as verbs, which as convenience, which as ornament; and the President needs to know how to act accordingly.

In many instances, the President may not know what a specific phrase means to a specific group of people, although the phrase may fit quite comfortably inside a sentence of otherwise ordinary speech. The President just follows orders. It was no excuse at Nuremberg, but it's how our present government operates. This is why third-party candidates have difficulty breaking into Washington politics: third-party candidates are outsiders who don't know what phrases motivate various interests, or which phrases tell various interests "I understand what you really want, and I'll help you get it." The consolidation and perpetuation of this pass-phrase system is why the central government seeks to expand its influence into local realms.

Most of the Administration doesn't turn over every four years. The phraseology and popular parlance of various departments have a life of their own, to which any new President must adapt. The concept of "Homeland Security" was already in use among various military circles in the 1990's. This is a concept which has lived in the Administration for years. Sami G. Hajjar discusses "homeland defense" in the 1998 report, "Security Implications of the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East." The Department of Defense Advanced Concepts Technology Demonstration program proposed the Homeland Security Command and Control several months prior to September 11, 2001. Although I can't recall ever thinking of my country as my "Homeland" until after 911, it would seem a good number of military professionals have been working out this doctrine for some time. The Department of Homeland Security is not something the President thought up in a pinch, it is something the President assembled for entrenched political interests. The President may not be fully aware of the scope of the communications he issues, but one thing is clear: whenever the President talks about "homeland security," there are groups of people all over the place who behave according to decades of doctrinal development.

And so the puppet is also a puppeteer, albeit one with a limited understanding of the drama that is unfolding. And so this is why a Washington outsider would serve the American people better than a career politician from the ranks of the political aristocracy: an effective outsider would need to ask all sorts of people what they mean when they speak, whereas a Crown Prince who has lived his life immersed in the secret incantations need not understand them to see how they are used.

Preemption and the New Kind of War

2007-06-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

I was reading a little bit about the US Cold War nuclear planning in the 1960's, and came across these two facts, which really struck me:

1) A PREEMPTIVE nuclear war would attack 1000 targets with 3000 warheads;

and

2) A RETALIATORY nuclear strike would attack 700 targets with 1700 warheads.

These two facts struck me because the attitude that informed this war planning seemed counter-intuitive at first. If somebody hits you, and you're going to hit back, don't you want to hit them with everything you've got?

Part of the difference in the scale of attack is certainly due to war planners anticipating some portion of our capabilities being disabled in the case of a retaliatory strike. But the numbers are incredible: in a full scale preemptive strike, 3 nuclear warheads were to be delivered to each target. That's a lot of redundant destruction. Which got me thinking about the character of preemptive strikes in general.

If you're going to hit somebody first, and you don't know whether they've got a black belt in karate, or a knife, or if somebody's got their back, you drop them quick, and make sure they don't get up. Go for the knees, the throat, the eyes, the groin.

A preemptive strike means targets are hit that don't really need to be hit, because a preemptive strike has a lot of strategic redundancy.

Which got me thinking about the attitude of "our leaders," who launched a preemptive war in Iraq, as part of a larger campaign in our New Kind of War. "Our leaders," who rose to prominence during the Cold War, who built their house of cards during the Cold War, find great value in preemption. Whatever THEY're trying to get at now, it's worth an awful lot to them (look out Iran).

Right now, we're reorganizing our Federal Bureaucracies left and right for the War on Terror, spending blood and dollars hand over fist in our Central Front in the War on Terror, using National Security Letters to draft private citizens into the War on Terror. Imagine what the War on Terror costs in terms of administrative overhead alone. Screw bullets, there are bureaucrats to pay. We're going to be paying this off forever...

OUR POLITICIANS ARE UP TO SOMETHING AND WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT.

The War on Terror is a preemptive war. The United States has not seen terror anything like what Northern Ireland or Israel have seen. More people dead in Iraq than on 911. More people dead in car accidents every year than on 911. More people shot to death in the ghetto every year than on 911.

We don't re-organize our society because of car accidents, we build more roads and make it cheaper to drive than to use mass transit.

We don't re-organize our society because of inner city violence, we copyright rap music and sell it to white teenagers who play violent video games and manufacture more guns and sell Army surplus AK47's and crack to gangsters and keep the white kids hooked on speed for their attention defect disorder. We make thieves because the wealthy have more money than they know how to possibly spend. We make weapons for peace, use copyright to sell people their culture, we tell people our culture is a culture of peace and we put them in debt and put them to work and brainwash them into USA #1 because YOUR reality is entertainment for some monarch or oligarch.

OUR POLITICIANS ARE UP TO SOMETHING AND WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHAT.

If the War on Terror is a preemptive war, and the War in Iraq is at all part of the War on Terror, it may not really matter what happens in Iraq.

There's a war on for your mind. Propaganda is marketing. If they don't hook you in with Iraq, they've got something else in the pipe, be sure of it.

2008 Elections - USA #1

2007-06-04T13:30:00.001-05:00

The best thing that might come to the United States from the War in Iraq is not oil, but an opportunity to examine the collective hallucination of USA #1 that makes our people so easily manipulated.

Think for just a minute: we denied blacks and women suffrage for most of our history, and now everything is run by corporations. The dollar has subverted the vote. When have we ever been THE GREAT DEMOCRACY? To what do we lay claim with our attitude of moral superiority? We were just as willing to destroy the planet as the Soviets, for the sake of a claim to victory in the Cold War.

We are started quite young. Once the hallucination of USA #1 takes hold, various "leaders" can lay claim to accounts of how and why USA #1 came to be, and what we can do to ensure that USA #1 continues.

Of course, everybody wants USA #1 to continue. USA #1 feels good for Americans. USA #1 is good for China. But it's a lie, and one that Democrats are just as willing as Republicans to exploit.

What is a vote for Barack Obama? We feel good to have overcome slavery. What an odd thing to feel so good about. As though it were ever sensible to keep humans in such brutal bondage. It is like we are children making our first marks in ink on paper, at once celebrating the completion of our latest and greatest novel. Preposterous.

What is a vote for Hillary Clinton? We prefer that the Revolution had never taken place? Give us back a Monarchy? Sure the Democrats can be tough on Terror. When Bill Clinton signed CALEA, he did just as much to get the permanent war started as George Bush did by signing PATRIOT.

What is a vote for a Republican? They align themselves with the 1/4 of Americans who "don't believe" in evolution, have never heard of global warming, don't know whether New York is east or west of the Mississippi, and can't name more than two or three other nations currently in possession of nuCLEAR weapons. Republicans are scoundrels, all of them, to exploit such people on such a scale.

Two-party rule is broken, and we should not continue to legitimize it.

In such a political climate, the only way to be sure you're not voting for a Fascist is to vote for yourself. Unless, of course, you ARE a Fascist, in which case you should write in "America Jones" wherever you vote next.

Surveillance Society for Fun and Profit

2007-06-04T11:33:00.000-05:00

I'm looking at this satellite image from Google of the US Embassy in Baghdad, and it occurs to me this world must be totally mad. 8-year-olds have access to technologies that, 50 years ago, only the CIA had.

I call up D to express my utter amazement at the state of affairs here in this Earth-World, and he replies quite casually that it's because the people in charge fear no man or woman.

What will you, human, be able to do in 50 years with your computer? This is a good question to ask when you wish to consider what your government can do with their computers today.

Consider street-level surveillance. The new Google Street View is provoking all sorts of reactions, ranging from fascination with the new feature's novelty to outrage at the new feature's intrusiveness. The ability of governments to surveil citizens at the street-level far surpasses what is offered by Google Street View.

Imagine typing any person's name into a database, and automatically being able to watch him or her everywhere he or she goes. All those private surveillance cameras everywhere - in ATMs, in stores, in bars and resturaunts - are not so private. All electronic devices give off electromagnetic radiation that can be detected and decoded. All those private surveillance cameras are really un-secure wireless cameras. It is possibe to geolocate an individual camera based on slight differences in the time at which its signal is detected at different locations. This geolocation information can be correlated with the GPS data transmitted by your cellphone tracking device.

Whether a scheme like this is currently in use or not, it is not far-fetched. Authoritarian regimes have an interest in making the populace at all times aware of the possibility of surveillance. If nothing else, this makes the populace more likely to self-censor.

Of course, many people are not too worried about the threat of constant surveillance. Many people break no laws. This is fine.

But if we are, in fact, watched so closely, it is because we are managed like cattle.

The War in Iraq is a Decoy

2007-05-30T15:43:00.000-05:00

We are told that the War on Terror is a New Kind of War, and that the War in Iraq is the central front in this War.

Why is it, then, that our government and our media go to such great lengths to paint us a picture of a conventional war, when we are in reality engaged with an unconventional enemy?

The War in Iraq has nothing to do with the War on Terror, except insofar as it serves to distract the public from the erosion of civil liberties in the United States, and from the careful establishment of legal precedents by a rogue Administration bent on paving the way for Fascist rule.

One advantage of this approach is the fragmentation of opposition. We have been told there would be more fierce opposition to the War on Iraq were there a draft; we are not often told that the War on Terror does, in fact, have a draft.

One reason we have not heard more about the War on Terror's draft is that those who are drafted are not allowed to discuss it. This means that the 150,000 or so persons who have received national security letters since the start of the Iraq War, and who have been compelled to become agents of the national intelligence infrastructure, are silent warriors in this New Kind of War, with no citizens to rally around them.

Who are these people? What are their duties? To whom do their duties pertain?

We cannot know the answers to these questions. How then can we know that the Constitution is being upheld? How can we be informed voters, or claim to participate in a Democracy with our votes?

Failure in Iraq?

2007-03-16T05:04:00.000-05:00

Our multi-headed National Strategy for Victory in Iraq is organized around "Eight Pillars." These "Eight Pillars" represent distinct strategic objectives, each with a "corresponding interagency working group."

Considering that Islam is defined in large part by a doctrine called "The Five Pillars," I fear it may be difficult to underestimate the negative impact of this verbiage in our battle to win the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim world. Islam, according to Huston Smith, "joins faith to politics, religion to society, inseparably."

Are "The Eight Pillars" of our National Strategy some bit of cultural insensitivity, or worse yet, a sick joke by the planners of this occupation? It would seem, if nothing else, the use of such religiously-loaded language is profoundly unhelpful in the context of a religio-political people under military occupation, as the Qur'an states: "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

Imagine how you would feel if a foreign occupation of our country was guided by "The Thirteen Commandments."

Paul Wolfowitz has asserted that our mission in Iraq is "not a crusade," although we can perhaps forgive those in the Middle East who may believe otherwise: our President has himself used that very term, and the Administration consistently frames the violence as religiously-motivated, even as we push our "Eight Pillars" on these people. Our strategy to "isolate enemy elements from those who can be won over to the political process by countering false propaganda" would seem to amount to imposing a heretical doctrine on a subjugated people, while marketing this heresy as salvation.

Although we undoubtedly possess the raw military strength to "bomb Iraq back into the stone age," such a move would be politically suicidal for much of Washington. As General David Patraeus put it, "there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq." At present, we would seem also to lack a viable diplomatic or political approach.

Among the top goals of the National Strategy is the reform of Iraq's economy, "which in the past has been shaped by war, dictatorship, and sanctions." The United States of America is in no small part responsible for the war, dictatorship, and sanctions that shaped Iraq's economy in the past, and we have done almost nothing to bring about meaningful reform. We have only brought more war, caused more damage to Iraq's infrastructure, and propped up a puppet government in a fortress far removed from Iraq's citizenry.

While the politicians in Washington warn us against the risk of failure in Iraq, it is important to recognize that our present conflict is itself an acknowledgment of our previous Iraq policy's failure. This acknowledgment compounds the failure of our previous policy by failing to rectify our previous mistakes.

We need to dramatically alter our direction if we are to stop compounding our own mistakes. Our current policy is simply to add fuel to the fire and stir the pot.

A Poem for Lulabell, Sweet Petunia

2007-03-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

green to the cripple’s wilderness,
a newcomer sees ash as soil...

where abominations of
animate stone lie senseless
before the sea, far beyond the
deep worn grooves tread into
the earth by the sleepwalkers
muttering in their sleep, as if
to their sleeping brethren,
following one another endlessly
past the same dark horizon...

were the moon to rise, they
would follow its light away
from the sun, if only to prove
what others before them
have proved perfectly well.

just one could stop and hold
up an eternity, cause endless
marchers to climb up out of
their trenches, bring them

to stand at the threshold of the
mechanical hall of mirrors, to
listen casually as the crack
of doom shocks the airwaves.

when the wise man blames
the fool, and the fool does
blame the wise man, leaving
each to babble oath below
the burning rivers,

as many living souls as leaves
on trees shall yield their hold
on boughs and through the
early frost of autumn fall,

blind prey unto the blue-eyed
terror between the framers
of meanings, formless
yet everywhere, animate
amidst the static emblems
of a virus creed...

until some of the morning, when
broken records of phantom
histories might yield a strange
light falling, symmetries of the devil
and the emergent efficiencies
of flame...

weaving silence and discourse
while white snow flies in midsummer,
and the moon ablaze in the water
at noon sows discord from the
only sounds after prayer.

for only sound remains, a melody
amidst the machine and my
heartbeat, a shock of thunder
to disturb the haunted church
music infused with a pious fury

at the inarticulate dementia
that is salvation for the blind,

who demand that time shall
yield to the sufficient and convenient
brutalities of our profane sciences
of need...

leaving a trail of puberties and
constellations across surrendered
visions of extroverted rodents,

all their conscientious fascinations
and inhuman suppositions, weather
forecasts, divinations, and salient
tenderness abandoned for an
abyss that dissipates gradually...

enduring in silence or ignorance
the midnight bloom of the saintly
mathematician’s treatise on the soul,

a concrete echo set free from
the ghostly image of the builder,
slain by the architect’s hand.

once more these vacant dreams
abide beside the grotesque adornments
of perverse determinations, delights in
slights and envies, indulgent to no end...

such that only those overcome by the
opaque terrors of conviction remain,
befriended to the tangled mountains,
like sculptures, when toppled by the wind.

What Are We Really Doing in Iraq?

2007-03-11T15:09:00.000-05:00

The Admministration has given the Citizenry of the United States of America varied and malleable rationale for our invasion and occupation of Iraq, ranging from false pretenses to revisionist propaganda.

While the Executive refuses to relinquish its ideological crusade, and the Legislature squabbles over the political ramifications of sparing thousands upon thousands of soldiers and civilians unnecessary suffering, We Citizens, strong-armed into funding this war, are deprived by Our Federal Government of all but the most basic figures regarding the true human and economic costs of this man-made disaster.

The Administration and its Neocon allies have played the Press like a fiddle, and the Press has obediently followed along.

Who really benefits from this war? Is it really right to view the Iraq conflict as "a war" in the singular sense of the word?

Are We an occupying force confronting a nationalist insurgency?

Are We fighting terrorists in the Global War on Terror?

Are We fighting a proxy war in an ideological standoff with Iraq's neighbors?

Are We peacekeepers working to quell sectarian violence?

Are We a police force suppressing opportunist criminals?

Are We liberators there to cast off Sunni fascists?

Are We a scapegoat for Shi'ite bitterness after the 1991 uprising?

Are We in the middle of a pan-national conflagration of Anti-American Arabs upset about the situation in Palestine?

What We are doing in Iraq?

When Our Government fails to give Us clear answers, We often turn to the free Press. Yet We must be wary that, if the fallout from the recent Walter Reed scandal is to serve as an indication of a free Press's power, it must also serve to warn Us of the power of a manipulated Press.

As so many of Us watch in horror and dismay while the Administration discusses open war with Iran, We, as Citizens, must take it upon ourselves to write Our Press, Our Senators, and Our Congressional Representatives; it is not enough to vote periodically. We must clearly express Our feelings about the current state of affairs, demand forthright governance, and prompt action. And as We find Ourselves in the midst of a psychological war waged against Us by the Administration, We must seek out alternative sources of information with which to arm Ourselves against that most potent weapon, ignorance.

On the Importance of Media Literacy

2007-03-07T21:33:00.000-06:00

We teach our children to spell, we teach them to take tests, we teach them about the imperceptible atoms and molecules that make up the material of our world, and yet we teach them next to nothing about the media that saturates their daily lives.

Who has Tom Cruise married most recently? How many children does Britney Spears have? Why do we know these things and how does this knowledge affect us?

What does it mean to see, every evening, all the conflicting interests of television programs and commercial advertisements juxtaposed one against the other for hours on end?

I firmly believe that, even as we teach our children the language of daily discourse, it is equally important to teach them the language of motion pictures.

Much of our cultural discourse is carried out in this second language, and given the number of television outlets in our country -- in homes, in bars, in storefronts, on busses, and now on telephones and computer screens -- literacy in this second language is more important than ever to appreciate the responsibilities of citizenship and informed consumer behavior.

The basic language of the motion picture dates to Soviet times: the montage theory of Sergei Eisenstein is the foundation of almost every edited motion picture sequence. His theory was built upon the work of Lev Kuleshov, who was in turn deeply influenced by Ivan Pavlov's view of Behaviorist psychology.

These names are a part of history, but they also live with us every day. These names are as important to understanding our culture as the names of Plato, Aristotle, Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These names have shaped our civilization in dramatic ways.

We now live in an age when multinational corporations, who pledge no national allegiances whatsoever, depend on Eisenstein, Kuleshov, and Pavlov for their revenue as much as they depend on Henry Sheffer and Alan Turing for the ability to manufacture consumer electronics. As citizens and consumers, we must ensure that all of our children share an equal entitlement to the heritage of these names, that these names do not remain the sole purview of the profiteers behind the curtain of our collective televised understanding.

As much as we depend on John Locke for our concept of liberty, and as much as we depend on Mahatma Gandhi to inspire us to struggle for peace, we depend on our educational institutions to provide our children with the means to succeed in this world. While we concern ourselves that no child be left behind in our schools, we must concern ourselves with a literacy of media, lest we leave behind a whole generation. As it stands, there are few teachers who understand the language of the media, and this is to the great detriment of our nation.

Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

2007-03-02T14:08:00.000-06:00

Advancements in battlefield medical care have reduced the number of deaths suffered by wounded U.S. soldiers relative to previous military conflicts. As a result, large numbers of soldiers are returning home with debilitating medical conditions.

Official U.S. Government figures list the number of severe battlefield injuries at 10,535 soldiers. This number, however, does not reflect the full extent of severe injuries suffered by soldiers. Some 18,704 soldiers suffering from infectious disease have thus far required evacuation by air transport. This is in keeping with figures from past wars, which often see greater numbers of soldiers succumb to disease than combat injuries.

Furthermore, these figures do not reflect the casualties suffered by the 100,000 civilian contractors currently serving in Iraq. Some 800 contractors have been killed in Iraq and 3,300 wounded. It is probably safe to assume that a large number of contractors have also suffered from infectious disease.

We are often asked to support our troops in Iraq, an assertion that plays off the good nature of citizens, who don't want to see fellow citizens hurt or killed. This assertion, which really equates to a plea to support our continued military presence, is dishonest: the same politicians who ask us to support our troops have themselves failed to do so in their vainglorious pursuit of a war predicated on a lie. This war demands an enormous investment in future medical care, and if we are to consider our troops to be fellow citizens and human beings, we must carefully consider what it means to support them.

It has become quite clear to me that the best way to support our troops is to ensure they have access to adequate medical care, and for our politicians seek a diplomatic victory in this conflict.

Rationale for the Iraq War

2007-02-23T10:56:00.000-06:00

One reason President Bush gave as justification for an invasion of Iraq was the imminent threat that Saddam Hussein would give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.

Our inability to locate these weapons is often attributed to a failure of intelligence. However, the threat of Saddam Hussein giving WMDs to terrorists represents a deliberate effort to mislead the American public.

The most obvious problem with the Administration's rationale is that Al Qaeda viewed Saddam Hussein as an enemy. Saddam Hussein was the head of a secular regime, which did not require women to wear a burka and which allowed women to go to college.

Furthermore, Saddam Hussein was a dictator, and a dictatorship is about control. Why would a dictator in possession of a WMD yield control of such a device by giving it to an enemy?

Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before we invaded, and we are now deploying the same types of weapons on the battlefield which we, as grounds for our invasion, accused Iraq of attempting to acquire. This is untenable. Our colonial occupying force is actively breeding the very sentiment we ostensibly sought to confront.

While we worry about the rise of Fascism abroad, we omit the threat of Fascism in our Homeland (Fatherland, Motherland). We must be vigilant against Fascism both here and abroad.

Taxation Without Representation

2007-02-21T08:51:00.000-06:00

The reason the National Security Agency wants to read your email is because they are trying to use algorithms to detect terrorist activity. This invasion of privacy is based on the assumption that terrorists use the Internet in ways that are statistically distinct from the ways ordinary Americans use the Internet. In order to statistically detect online terrorist activity, the governmet needs a large sample of "normal" Internet use.

Although this may seem reasonable when we are confronted with an indistinct enemy, fighting on ill-defined battlefields, this really amounts to an unconstitutional indirect tax. Just as the Federal government incorporated FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security to hide the cost of creating the largest bureaucracy in the history of civilization, the government's use of private citizens' Internet service for surveillance purposes is used to hide the true cost of the War on Terror.

When the government compels private corporations to comply with national security directives, without compensating these corporations for the cost of implementing such directives, the cost is passed on to consumers.

Because the Administrative branch of government refuses to inform Congress as to the nature of these programs, these programs amount to taxation without representation.

Beyond violating the 4th Amendment right to protection against unwarranted search and seizure, this practice also violates the 5th Amendment, by effectively situating military operatives within private homes, taking private property for public use, and opening up the potential to compel private citizens to, in effect, unwittingly testify against themselves. Not only do these practices appropriate private citizens into the Federal intelligence infrastructure without compensation, but citizens are furthermore charged for this.

Our current Administration has a constitutional duty to either halt these programs, or to fully inform Congress as to their nature. In lieu of such disclosures, we as citizens have a duty to remove these criminals from office.

Art is Not the Tablescraps of Commerce.

2007-02-19T11:04:00.000-06:00

Julio García Espinosa has argued against the refined “reactionary” arts, and for a revolutionary art which is “no longer interested in quality or technique.” By this he does not mean to assert that aesthetics should not be a concern for those devoted to artistic exploration, but rather, that an aesthetics of “art for art’s sake” is insufficient when confronted with an aesthetics of hunger.

Espinosa recognizes that art possesses “its own cognitive power,” while asserting that this power resides not in elite academies, but in art’s potential to express the diversity of culture as a whole. He rejects claims that art must be seen as either “committed” or otherwise, purposeful or self-serving, and suggests that art might be liberated from these arguments if it is viewed as an activity fundamental to daily life.

Only if art is regarded as a life activity, produced by all for the appreciation of all, can it be a pure and uncommitted activity, while at the same time serving to further revolution.

Only if every man and woman has incentive to become a man or woman “of culture” can the artist be freed of struggling at the margins of society, and thereby allow art to diffuse from the domain of the elite to the domain of the many. Because revolution is an ongoing process – one which is never complete – revolutionary art ought to address itself to this incompletion. An art wholly entrenched in timeless institutions cannot change as culture changes. Only a popular art can do this: an art which fails to engage the popular idiom will fail to reveal the processes by which a society expresses and transforms itself. At the same time, it should be noted that a revolutionary art demands an awareness of the materialist histories against which the reactionary arts define themselves.

A revolutionary art is an assertion of Life. Art is a basic human activity, like eating, sleeping, or making tools. Only when it is controlled by elites does it only yield its pleasures by engaging “the functionality (without a specific goal) of our intelligence and our own sensitivity.” Such a condition undermines the role of art as a basic human activity. The elites who control distribution thereby dictate the terms of production, and transform art into employment. When art is regarded by industrialist societies as employment, it becomes subject to Fordist pressures to specialize; a specialized art as employment demands the full devotion of an artist, too often to the exclusion of other human endeavor.

The dissolution of contemporary controls over the means of artistic production and distribution demands not just a democratization of these means, but also a decentralization of them. Art must be free to express what it finds wherever it finds it, and must not be relegated to illustrating statements that “can also be expressed through philosophy, sociology, [or] psychology.”

To the industrialist, an artist engaged in developing a style is engaged in a process of branding his or her self. The industrial artist cultivates an image, and uses this image to engage the markets of spectacle.

To give one’s image to commerce is to surrender control of how one’s image is used. This is the basis of the commercial arts. To use images for commerce is often to analyze, reduce, and reproduce them, appropriating conventions from the fine arts.

The commercial potential of art relies upon the conventions of the fine arts, which supply the commercial arts with the material history by which artistic expression is rendered identifiable as a sequestered facet of our culture. The commercial arts exploit copyright to manipulate the conventions of the fine arts (which are produced by consumers of commercial art). Current definitions of copyright are political tools to secure the profitability of commercial art (do you assume a political message whenever you see an advertisement?).

Industrialists have this interest in reinforcing the illusion that art is an elite practice: scarcity creates value.

Diversity in American Politics

2007-02-16T16:06:00.000-06:00

I feel like race is something that everybody in America has to live with, but which many people feel as though, in order to discuss it with anybody but close friends, they must go out on a limb. There are a few things that can be said about race with reasonable certainty: race is first and foremost a cultural and linguistic construct because genetic variation is continuous among the human population. Genetically, skin color is about as meaningful as hair color.

Then there is the sand of time, the ocean of language, the tree of life, and the dollar. Sometimes there is harmony, too often discord, always this beat of a collective march towards something greater. Blind marchers and marchers who see, sleepwalking or awake but dreaming, never too long complacent with complacency; in America, by and large, people get along so long as they are left alone.

American culture has this paradox: we say the Civil War is over and that we live amongst ourselves in peace; yet judging by the number of gun deaths here, a foreigner may be hard-pressed to say there is not a war underway.

Is politics really war without bloodshed, or are there bodies in the streets? Why are these deaths not shown on the news like the faces of soldiers brought home from Iraq in flag-draped coffins?

I would argue that cultural diversity contributes to much of the beauty in American society. I would also argue that it continues to contribute to much sadness. I will not argue for a beauty of sadness, but I will speak to the transformative power of sadness, and for the nobility of a just struggle.

The democratic struggle begins and ends with a voice; the interim need not see bloodshed, but too often does. What is the struggle of democracy, if not to end political bloodshed?

Too many of our political struggles end in complacency: polarization in American politics is a rhetorical illusion, which suggests that, for example, Democrats and Republicans exist at opposite ends of a continuum. Yet these two parties encapsulate the diversity of neither American culture nor American politics. There should be not one black party, but multiple; not one conservative voice, but many; and many revolutionary voices to define the centrism of their parties.

The United States of America is a republican democracy, with constituencies that believe in fiscal conservatism, liberalism, communism, and anarchism. Those constituencies interested in the pure pursuit of power leverage their influence to engineer self-reinforcing social systems, such that most citizens can only participate in politics if they vote to reinforce the illusion of polarity.

Our government collects so much information about us, and makes so many decisions based on derivative information, that the Democrat/Republican/Yes/No vote we are offered (depending on the most popular spin) is drowned out by all the other votes we make with our consumer habits. It seems to me that if we had a greater number of viable parties in our politics, we could express more articulately what we would like to see in our government. Politics could become a forum for popular discourse, rather than an elitist form of oppression.

But democracy starts and ends with the people, and a diverse body politic is not something a government can give a people, like a government might give people safe food, national security, or roads.

This election season, Americans have a number of viable candidates seeking the Presidency. If John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee stopped competing for candidacy under the same two parties, and sought instead to represent other parties in our upcoming Presidential election, Americans could use their votes to help create viable third parties. A third party candidate only needs to earn 5% of the vote in a Presidential election to qualify for federal matching funds the following season. Viable third parties could create a situation where, if a candidate wins the Presidency with one third of the popular vote, the President will have no choice but to cooperate with other constituencies in order to get anything done. If we continue under our current two-party system, we have rule not by the majority, but by the handful of Representatives willing to vote across party lines.

Perhaps a vote should be viewed as an investment in democracy rather than as a payday wad to blow uptown. A vote for a third party candidate is an investment in American cultural and political diversity. If you don't vote at all, the government won't hear what you have to say.

Who is Being Brainwashed?

2007-02-06T10:03:00.000-06:00

Regarding recent articles on government "mind control" in The Washington Post and on Wired:

An important area of operation for contemporary intelligence gathering agencies is data aggregation: collecting information from multiple sources and creating meaningful connections between these disparate sources of information. Increasingly, this is being carried out by government agencies with the cooperation or coercion of private infrastructure. The intrusion of military intelligence operations into the private sector is especially troubling because it represents the ability, facilitated by the Web, to not only appropriate private citizens and organizations into a federal intelligence infrastructure, but also to manipulate these individuals and organizations for obscure motives (given our present state of government secrecy).

Consider the potential of combining the functionality of MySpace with that of Google, if the actions of users are mapped to a set of IP addresses or a MAC address:

The value of MySpace for intelligence purposes extends beyond the content of individual postings or personal data stored in a user’s profile. Every time a MySpace user does or does not click on a MySpace porn bot's solicitation, the result of that user’s decision is recorded. The way in which users respond to eachother’s social cues, the way blog posts are categorized, and the frequency or methodology with which one seeks to extend one’s social cluster are not only recorded, but furthermore represent a psychological model of that individual user.

Google also keeps track of user behavior. This data, which is recorded for advertising purposes, can be used to reveal word-by-word accounts of how users view language, associate specific terms, and, in a sense, what users are thinking about.

If intelligence agencies have access to user logs for both MySpace and Google, they have, on the one hand, a psychological model to describe an individual, and on the other hand, a semantic database to explain that individual's decision-making. This information could be combined to not only predict how individuals will respond to various stimuli, but to provide stimuli whereby certain behaviors are likely to be provoked. Such a semantic-behavior model could be tested by inserting specific search results into a list returned by Google and recording if and how a user responds.

Other, more direct methods of manipulating individuals have been investigated. Several recent patents issued to Hendricus Loos discuss a variety of ways in which, for example, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by cathode ray tube monitors can be used to manipulate an individual’s central nervous system.

Beyond the potential for illegal government experimentation or sadistic behavior on the part of rogue contractors, the proliferation of these technologies and the diffusion of these abilities into private hands will present to law enforcement a new and serious challenge. Frightened governments, faced with a problem which they have no idea how to detect or mitigate, may be part of the reason why people complaining of “mind control” are actively marginalized.

It would seem that governments concerned with serving the interests of their citizens would want to halt such research, assess the state of things, and begin to make disclosures. How can citizens ensure that their interests are being served if they cannot discuss the actions of their own government?

The Game Show and the Collective Good

2007-02-04T14:34:00.000-06:00

The television game show provides an interesting perspective into the American psyche. In considering why viewers tune in -- what the attraction is -- two possibilities make themselves pronounced: either the psychological desire for the game show originates in witnessing conflict (expressed as competition), or it is a matter of vicarious enjoyment projected into the individual winning money.

If the answer is the former, then in a sense it matters little to the viewer what prize is being fought over. For example: in Spain there is an annual horse race, which has been run every year by the same families for generations upon generations. The families compete, but the goal is not to win the race by coming in first: rather, the goal is not to come in second. The goal is predicated on the assumption that if one places twenty-third, one was never in the running; but if one comes in second, one’s defeat becomes a crushing blow. So some families -- different families every year -- engage in all manner of schemes to see that one family or another is certain to come in exactly second. Furthermore, I imagine, they all wind up drunk together in the end, affably, if not beautifully engrossed in some harlequin melodrama. Yet my point was simpler than all this: the desire game shows satisfy, under this first interpretation, is the desire to witness conflict, no matter what the object.

The other interpretation posits that we like to watch contestants win money because it provides a way for viewers to imagine themselves winning money. This is reasonable enough, but the question ought then to be asked: if given a choice, would viewers strongly prefer to watch contestants winning money, or might they prefer to watch contestants compete on behalf of positive social initiatives?

As viewers aren’t really given a choice in the matter, we are left with a non-empirical discussion of cultural influences. But the question is worth asking because the asking illustrates that, in a culture which professes the value of choice, there are some very basic choices we just aren’t given. There exists the potential for television viewers, with their collective marketing pull, to actually help heal the world simply by imagining themselves doing so. Does this sound absurdly utopian? If so, why?

Why is the object of the game show always personal enrichment? Why can’t people in our culture receive vicarious pleasure from watching a contestant accomplish good deeds? Why don’t contestants play for rebuilding efforts in Lebanon, a library in Ghana, a college scholarship fund for high school seniors in Detroit, or startup capital for a micro-lending bank in South America? Are game show producers afraid of offending the political sensibilities of their audience by supporting international humanitarian efforts, more than by the ethics of the companies that sponsor their broadcasts? The studio audience could vote on a number of local, national, or international charities and nongovernmental organizations to mitigate any perceptions of bias on the part of producers...

Or we could all stop waiting for governments and private corporations to solve our global problems for us -- the organizations upon which we depend seem too often too busy with political infighting to adapt to constituencies in a timely manner. There have got to be enough individuals -- winning more money every week on game shows than the people who made their clothes will see in a decade or more -- who have gained enough material profit from their five minutes of fame that some modest organizational efforts on their part (or by advertisers on their behalf) could yield some real collective good.

Or maybe the problem isn’t any lack of a cultural desire to see good done, but that we Americans are kept so much in want of... everything.

In the President’s proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning in October 2007, funding for domestic programs (which include veteran care) is set to increase less than the rate of inflation, while funding for the Pentagon (excluding ongoing war costs) is increased more than three times the rate of inflation.

Although the White House has in the past boasted that its budgets offer “successful pro-growth policies,” there is ample evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, two facts remain unaddressed: first, our economy cannot grow forever because we live on a planet with limited resources; and second, neither typical Americans nor the domestic programs upon which we rely are seeing any of this growth. Economic growth is not inherently beneficial and these policies cannot be accurately characterized as successful.

At least we have enough advertising to constantly remind us how much we want, and to inform us of all the choices we have...

Texture and Object: on Grounding Channel-Surfing as a Visual Motif

2007-02-03T19:37:00.000-06:00

1.

The aesthetics of Modernism can generally be characterized by a formal preoccupation with novelty, polyphony, fragmentation, and the breakdown of Rationalist moral order. No doubt the advent of popular sound and image recordings, widespread division of labor, and capitalist largesse were contributing factors to this re-evaluation of form in Western art; these influences were culturally pervasive. But industrialization also ushered in a broader cultural re-orientation associated with consumer behavior. Individuals, to procure their daily necessities, turned their attention to the acquisition of products garnered by market labor, rather than the acquisition of commodities garnered by agrarian or clerical labor.

Industrialization has changed the way our culture assigns value both to employment and to the compensation for one’s employment: we now seek to procure, primarily, products with our employment, whereas prior to industrialization, we would seek commodities primarily.

Commodities are more or less un-differentiable between producers: two individual wheat farmers each supply the same commodity. Suppliers of commodities compete by finding ways to increase output while decreasing cost, and attract customers by out-pricing competitors. Products, however, are differentiated from one another by a type of culturally-assumed object status: through a combination of packaging, advertising, and novel design features in the product itself, producers employ a variety of cultural signifiers to construct a symbolic identity for their product. Producers of products compete not on the basis of cost economics, but on the clarity with which the product's symbolism is articulated. The symbolic nature of the product is what differentiates Heinz tomato ketchup from Hunt's. It is moreover irrelevant that the symbolic qualities of a product may bear little direct relationship to the material qualities of a product, as the product is not strictly a material object.

Within industrialized nations, the impact of this reorientation pervades daily life: among other effects (such as the commodification of time and the acceleration of urbanization), it alters the assumptions underlying the behavior of individuals seeking to acquire their basic necessities. Contrary to the benefit-maximizing behavior economists prescribe for rational agents, consumers in industrialized societies consistently purchase products with the most appealing packaging or advertising, rather than those which provide the most product for the least amount of currency; given these circumstances, one must either acknowledge that industrialization causes humans to behave less rationally, or one must accept that in some manner the product has a different type of value than the commodity.

2.

A profusion of products in simultaneous collision on store shelves provided the cultural context necessary for the eventual popular appreciation of collage; more significantly, perhaps, the object status of the product also provided the context necessary for grounding the appreciation of Modernist art in terms of the art object.

3.

In Classical traditions the closest analog of the art object is found within various craft movements; this comparison, however, can serve only as analogy. Classical traditions distinguish art-objects from craft-objects by appeal to the utility value (or intended utility value) of a given object, while the cultural reorientation associated with Modernism by and large dispenses with this distinction: hence the appropriation of ceremonial African masks by cubism, the appearance of industrial design programs in art academies, and the placement of consumer products in museum halls by the likes of Marcel Duchamp.

To describe this cultural reorientation in dialectic terms, the Classical mode of artistic expression can be characterized by an evaluation of texture, while the Modern is characterized by an evaluation of object status. Classical aesthetics therefore rely upon the vindication of tradition (the cultural and artistic texture within which an individual artwork is situated), while Modernist aesthetics rely upon the vindication of the critical statement (the critical framework an artist employs to justify a particular approach to the art object).

4.

The dialectic is especially evident in urban architecture: Classical architecture is concerned with the creation of continuous spaces and the integration of buildings into these spaces, whereas Modern architecture is concerned with the creation of buildings as self-referential symbolic objects.

5.

Architectural spaces are a function of the visual harmony or local continuity of facades, the relative positioning of buildings, and the socio-economic functions of adjacent spaces. The texture of architectural spaces furthermore relies upon clear distinctions between what is public and what is private, consistent visual cues to distinguish the various cultural and economic uses of individual buildings, and the role of monumental structures within these spaces. Spaces are imbued with meaning in virtue of their integration with adjacent spaces, the cultural history of those spaces, and how they function in concert with the surrounding environment to promote or discourage different types of socio-economic activity.

Even such monolithic structures as cathedrals, in the Classical tradition, are integrated into the texture of surrounding spaces: the Piazza san Marco in Venice incorporates the san Marco Basilica into a public market plaza, symbolic of the church as a place of gathering, and of the importance of spirituality in daily life. The church and the plaza generate traffic for one another, while differences in architectural detail demarcate the distinct purpose of each of the plaza's components.

The integration of the San Marco Basilica with the Piazza can be seen in contrast to the Milwaukee Art Museum's recent extension, designed by Santiago Calatrava. The Milwaukee Art Museum extension is separated from the city by an urban park, a bluff, a bridge, and a four-lane separated highway; is more of a sculpture than a building with a facade; and stands in opposition to large amounts of open space all around it (the lake, the park, a parkinglot). The Museum stands as a singular object, visually distinct from nearby structures; the building's sculptural qualities signify the Museum's role as a purveyor of aesthetic experience; and the international renown associated with the name of the building's designer advertises the cultural importance of art.

6.

While the Classical tradition generally expresses a worldview concerned with man's position in a greater order (be that order divine, rational, moral, or iconographic), the Modern tradition represents a worldview wherein nature is objectified, and then made subject to culture and technology. In the Modern tradition, man may have escaped the arbitrary constraints of an incomprehensible and unassailable cosmos, but is instead condemned to contend with the arbitrariness of other men. Thus Modern urban architecture seeks to do violence to the city, which is the natural environment of Modern man: to create buildings which, viewed as the products of individual architects, each represents a unique vision of comfort and safety amidst the symbolic wilderness of sensory chaos and moral decay often attributed to the city.

7.

The object is a socio-cultural construction defined in opposition to other objects, while texture relies on the iterative amalgamation of historical continuities. The manipulation of texture then involves the creation of a void amidst a plenum (the harvesting of fields in agrarian economies), while the manipulation of the object involves creating tangible solids amidst a void (the construction of factories on farmland claimed by industry).

Competition among products and the opposition of one object to another finds expression in the conquest and subjugation of texture. Much as the Victorian fixation with automatic writing sought to liberate the mystical truths of the unconscious from the conventions of Rationalist tradition, and the Dada sought to destroy art in favor of a utopian purity of artistic expression, the building as object in Modern architecture seeks to destroy historically-motivated modulations of clearly demarcated public and private spaces. Modern architecture would fragment the city into an agglomeration of equally disparate building-objects, each of which interacts little with the historical and geographic topography of the surrounding urban landscape: extreme examples of this disposition are Disneyland and Las Vegas.

8.

With the advent of the motion picture came the conquest of the whole of art history: dance, music, theatre, painting, literature, architecture and photography were all made raw material for this new medium. Film co-opted and encapsulated the formal and critical conventions of all these art forms, wrought from this quintessence a new sort of art object, was considered by the Soviet propagandists as a substitute literacy, and was soon granted its own a priori qualities (such as montage) ready for exploitation.

Furthermore, film provided an idealized mode of expression for the Modernist preoccupation with novelty, polyphony, and fragmentation. The first quarter century of film history can be characterized as a period guided by the pursuit of novelty -- in terms of formal experimentation, theoretical exploration, or technological innovation. Sound films such as Howard Hawk's Scarface reproduced a variety of spoken mannerisms with a verisimilitude unrivaled even by Mark Twain's most faithful renderings of dialect; Man Ray's Emak Bakia, meanwhile, approaches the image with a kaleidoscopic array of stylistic devices reminiscent of James Joyce's "little telephone book" (which has been described by critics as "a novel to end all novels"). Early animators like Ladislaw Starewicz exploited the fragmentation of time by which film renders the illusion of continuous movement, while Maya Deren combined the frame with the illusion of continuous time to fragment space.

9.

Film has been readily granted the status of art object as much for the cultural context in which it was developed as for the manual manipulability of the material itself; the ethereality of video-based motion pictures, however, framed a new critical debate.

Critics seized upon the featureless strip of magnetically-coated plastic as evidence that video is different in kind from film; critics such as Nicky Hamlyn saw digital video in particular as posing a challenge to High Modernism's critical notion of medium specificity, since the exact same video image can be stored or retrieved using a wide variety of physical means. Critics became unnerved at being unable to localize the video object, in light of the video image consisting of immaterial "ones and zeroes" (or, in computer science terminology, ordered collections of abstract truth values). Hamlyn voiced alarm that the same "ones and zeroes" used to record a video image can be output as sound through a speaker, or on paper as text. Bill Viola asserted that the video image is not really an image at all because it is built up by phosphor dots illuminated -- very rapidly -- one row at a time.

10.

Efforts among critics to distinguish video from film often focus on undermining the object status of video imagery. Artists addressing the critical response to video have generally sought either to contextualize video within the realm of conceptual art (where the video image becomes an instance of some critical thesis, a token object of some aesthetic type), or else to construct a physical context for video imagery with installation (wherein the video image is visually parsed as an object in space). These artistic approaches do not, however, directly address the problem video poses for the notion of medium specificity.

One solution is to deny the validity of medium specificity as a critical concept, which might make a fine home for video, but would complicate historical analysis of the relationship between art and technology. If medium-specificity is a valid concept (which seems to be the case, historically speaking), and Modernism is as much a set of stylistic concerns as it is a historical epoch (as much contemporary architecture would seem to imply), then a medium-specific analysis ought to be relevant wherever the stylistic concerns of Modernism are found.

11.

Throughout the Renaissance, as the widespread adoption of oil painting on canvas dramatically diminished the popularity of the fresco, the new possibilities of the new medium reshaped the appearance of art. From today's perspective, the distinction between fresco and oil may seem to be less than fundamental to a critical evaluation of Renaissance painting (which is more often described in terms of the introduction of perspective rendering, or the influence of Giotto). Since critical discussion of video, however, often pays disproportionate attention to whatever minute or tautological details can be used to distinguish video from film, it is worth noting that fresco and oil treat paintings as art objects just as film and video treat the framed image as an art object; the cinematic experience is designed to visually isolate the projected image, to thereby provide the image a spatial, object gestalt.

12.

An alternate approach would be to treat television as a commodity, to take an inventory of the formal features of television, and to create a product using this formal vocabulary. A result of this approach is channel-surfing as a visual motif: the incorporation of a variety of stylistic devices, picture qualities, production standards, and thematic concerns, presented in a rapidly changing format, with repetitive structural elements.

The visual and thematic field created by channel-surfing is morally and ethically ambiguous in virtue of the panorama of interests and intents presented by the producers of different programs, advertisements, public service announcements, public proclamations, and political campaigns; but from this ethically-ambiguous perspective, television comments upon itself, the world, and its relation to the world, as it simultaneously influences how individuals perceive television and the world, feeding back into itself... like a baroque minimalism... or a mannerist modernism...

* illustrations from Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter.

An Open Letter to Lulabell Petunia, by America Jones

2007-01-31T10:59:00.000-06:00

sometimes too much
hurt for sleep, toss
cigarettes at dawn into
the troubled darkness...

a flower a stone
inkblots on paper
and silence like an
ocean

the fly will live for two days
bouncing against the window
trying to escape

(i feel flat like the discredited
mythic earth)

then go crazy
from banging
against the glass,

(i feel too flat)

one of my earliest memories
is of a recurring nightmare

(so to think of all that’s been
destroyed forever)

lost the ability to dream
(too often listening to the
latest imperial decree,
as blanket night falls
out the windows
or in the day,

a homesick nothingness out there
somewhere, which, as though hope
and struggle were a vacuum,
takes hold and tries to fill the
quiet dark beside
blue glow

drains away muffled under
whispers, a lone pilgrim wading
across the violent desperate
wilderness for news of fighting
at the front, where children die
and the mountains ablaze drown
the moon and steal the darkness.

our lady
of a thousand bleeding eyes,
with pangs of hunger that flow from
your heart as streams flow from
mountains to the lowland lakes:

i beg you bear solicitude to the
countless inherent confusions
relinquished at the gates of your
cathedral for beggars, who, thirsting
and weary from desert travels,
lick from the thorns and thistles of
the heartless wilderness lead and
mercury morning dew...

been getting on the wrong busses lately,
distracted.
twisted on the floor
a wrenching free of my selfhood,
into this struggle to spread goodness
resonating throughout the cosmos
by sheer force of will...

madness.
the doctor listens patiently
how i think if we decide
to violate the sovereignty of north korea,
perhaps before dropping bombs across
the countryside we ought first to spend
a few years and a few hundred billion
dollars dropping, every day,
rose petals and lego building blocks,
recordings of bach, miles davis, and kurt
schwitters, mash reruns and anti-war art films,
paint supplies, canvases and computers
and diesel generators, instructions for
producing bio-diesel fuel
and books of shakespeare, leroi jones,
and walt whitman’s 1855 leaves of grass,
and stuffed animals, and blankets and clothes
and grain and livestock and medicine
and soap and water filters and radios
and solar panels and wind turbines,
and then see whether the people will
continue to abide patiently in their
subjugation, or seek the liberty to
attain our company in peace and
mutual respect...

are we really a warlike breed, with wargod
wrath and warbroken spirits
and fierce to first taste blood
so long ago... why the whale went from land
back into the ocean, to maintain a breed
purged of potential cannibalism...

one human abstinence massages affably,
a ritual honor,
a bear quarrels coming under lingo,
a cappuccino is spilled, a mockingbird’s
ceremonial consecration.

beware the rocks ahead,
ye without faith but in the
sword and war-chariot!

they break open wide and fanned
to the wind,
deflated in some fatalistic
psychopathic daisy
quarreling down to the splintered
shards of corrupting implements.
keep an eye on more societies, and by
the clumsy
face in the rainy world!

omit the absurd cannibalism!
blood! blood! beware the rocks!

so many options in fierce clarifications,
a papal serenade upon patriarchal elephants,
to demonstrate by force that verse is no secret
miracle, but bloodshed...

why are psychological games
sins?
because
games evaluate.

a wide audience's jolly nuns often point out
the comfort a wide audience provides for the dainty,
the mathematical, and the deep. this is fine for them.

if one yearns to long for the support of the divine,
one must escape as from a slaughter, break out
of each youth, increasing the number of fenestrations,
campaign around psychological games! one must
subjugate languidly the feelings of biochemistries,
the principles of golden chauvinisms!

a minister of uptown beings
was buying bugs for hopeful queens
these dreamy tiny harvard queens
were pricing dreams for random beings...

with automations,
ordained sensually
only the quite clinical
people around the bath
know how to rationalize
bewilderment

but their angelic yarn is
variable, a spinster’s swan
in the chastity, or an arrogant
cautionary or malignant respect
which far surpasses women of
fatalistic atheists, foulmouthed
parenthoods and competitions,
useful obligations, or willing
daytimes, fallacies, or captors,
or even absolute, bizarre orgies...

they
give something
madonna.

the firm cosmic parenthoods
complain
seething crafty obsolete apartments...

a fisherman of uptown deans
was fixing drugs for silent fiends
these hopeful random harvard fiends
were pricing sex for new york queens

flavorless capricious charismatic onslaughts
will be
celestial formless...

loving man of hopeless scenes
was catching drugs for friendly deans
these new york hopeful hopeless deans
were pricing fun for harvard deans

a strange chorus follows...

what else, then, to assert
a lack of confusion but
profusion of utter bewilderment,
in all truth,
when words
must fail,
but poetry live...

The Modern Contemplative in Wartime

2007-01-25T11:22:00.000-06:00

It is difficult to live the life of a contemplative in an age so fraught with strife, iniquity, and callousness. History, replete though it may be with violent conflict, has until recent decades never presented so many individuals with the threats we face today. Climate change, global war, and the spread of preventable disease, despite our collective ability to end such horrors, are epidemic. It is hard to make sense of a world where so many individuals struggle under these and other pervasive oppressions, with meaningless employment or debt, while the unimaginably wealthy, who profit from these struggles of others, cloister themselves away from the misery they’ve wrought.

When by the hands of ruthless oligarchs, lobbyists, and corrupt legislators, employment is systematically converted into a form of global oppression, there are relatively few problems that can be directly confronted by individuals, who are enslaved by market forces and daily distracted by unnecessary struggles. One turns perhaps to anger, violence, indulgence, or subservience as means towards the cessation of one’s struggles, if only for temporary release from bewilderments that render one deaf or mute before the presence of seemingly insurmountable corruptions, which threaten by their weight and inertia to drag down or hold back even the most simple of aspirations.

The contemplative of the Globalizing era, who seeks to struggle against war without engaging in violence, to procure sustenance without engaging in exploitation or oppression, who must look inwards while the sounds of the city beg endless distractions, must contend with an array of strange influences which the archetypal contemplatives of ages past were able to avoid; our present state of media saturation ensures that even if one does not watch commercial television, one is still made aware every time Tom Cruise has a baby.

Lovers of nature and seekers of simplicity are today most often without recourse to agrarian self-sufficiency or freedom from an increasingly invasive media landscape. Although by enculturation we lack personal knowledge of the ways of the seasons, of the soil, and of the stars, we move mountains, carve valleys and craters, redirect rivers, and create lakes. We shape the earth with machinery and color the heavens with the din of sodium vapor electrified, and claim dominion over the air itself with bands of electromagnetic radiation that turn the ionosphere into a deadly weapon. And what outrage will halt these machinations?

Anger, violence, indulgence... a fearful subservience before these unnatural powers, which can take from men and women their livelihoods or their lives with the stroke of a pen or the push of a button...

For all our modern refinement, we mask the visage of war in grotesque displays of nationalism and sacrifice, and deny our “savage” forbearers the nobility of their insights into the horrors of violence. The Vikings who fought their battles hallucinating on mushrooms, or the Aztec priests who, in ecstatic trances, tore out the living hearts of youths knew that to obscure the nature of violence was a grievous error that their civilization could not endure.

The symbolic lessons of our Western culture are so often buried under the clinical verbiage of disease and disorder that we no longer see why we inscribe our skin with tattoos, pierce our flesh, or why at birth we mutilate the genitals of our boys (to remind us all how powerless we shall be at the time of our death). Our clinical rituals are designed to hide from us any inkling we shall one day perish, while at the same time, on the other side of the globe, we cause scores of senseless deaths and permit the brutalization of the innocent for the sake of some man’s profit.

We have stockpiles enough of weapons to defeat any adversary by way of wiping clean the planet of our race, yet we continue to invest more resources in our military than our education, our art, and our starving citizens combined. Although our military expenditures are equal to those of the next nine most industrialized nations together, we encounter great difficulties gaining ground against insurgents in an impoverished plot of land in the middle of the desert: what can this mean but that war is some madman’s game, who defines victory how he sees fit? How can this be more sensible than peace?

Ouroboros Meditation

2007-01-24T20:51:00.001-06:00

America Jones was born the day the burning building, the burning bush. Was first the crow to cross the birth, broke the window flat on floor, maggots turned from splintered break. Was thus she raised the son with pious fury. Utterly alone. America a war red white and blue stripe and star, alone an island ocean. Alone her savage want of suckle at her breast. With want to taste her honey. Beyond the water ocean darkness demons fell to madness in the winter silence nordic forests all was still. Was then with song the seed was laid and grow. Them seed as water taint the sky, falling ash. Her sing the hymn of forests. Have winter here is darkness.

Soft! What possible music, my dear sweet lady, could scarce then deign to consecrate the carnal rectangle of your nubile eyelash, to whisper amber sweetness, in gardens of flowerly bliss...

there are trapezoids such, octagons, and newsprint... when the device is activated with radio waves, it emits a quick burst of identifying data. this is how we keep track of you. very soon, somebody will turn you in.

you can drown in emanations, saintly prefix exclusion, the arabesque radiocafe...

analytical devices analog maneuver, i do not travel by auto. always then happens always most often, eternity never repeats. yet still this strange, uncomfortable titular consolation, that perhaps it is not God who judges, but rather it is God who is judged. This is a sickness to heal the heart like starvation, a cathedral then, home to beggars pimps and priests all the blessed poor in spirit, a sickness of the heart the automobile daily rapes her ovaries to suckle the genitals of banking institutions, and lives taken in occupation...

A betrothal in chains to this tender war machine, a life to struggle with wakefulness or sleep, fear or love of marriage for a martyr’s death... i do not think it well to hope for recovery from this sickness, as lust is but a cruelty of imagination, such is the danger in truth (the open grave of faith), a stale dew upon the corpses of whole civilizations gone mad...

What whispers tell of what remains, what should yield the hunger of these savage thoughts, this animal need... i do not think it well to hope for recovery from this illness... nor needn’t watch the moon as swallowed by the pregnant ouroboros vagrant escapades, nor the tangled bowels of the living machinery torn from the bleeding wall...

And broken glass, so beautifully abused... nor need to hear these screams through night, sickly hallucinations above the rooftops, and radiate disease in luminous night... for buildings to dream the cathode rays fluorescent, beneath the unanimous horizon...

Oligopoly IS Free Market Economies

2007-01-23T13:52:00.000-06:00

As American schoolchildren, we are taught that in traditional free-market Capitalism, producers compete for consumers by making a better product at a lower cost. We are taught about the dangers of monopoly power, the pitfalls of Communism, and something or other about the success or failure of laissez-faire economics. We are taught that free-market Capitalism works the way it does because when a consumer is presented with a choice, he or she will behave according to a certain conception of rationality: consumers will purchase the most product available at the lowest price available.

But how do producers compete when costs are as low as possible? Or when prices are as low as the competition will allow? This latter question may seem strange: why extend to one’s competitor the power to price one’s own product? Because our globalizing, vertically-integrated economy is founded upon such a pricing scheme, which is the consequence of a market structure known as oligopoly.

Oligopoly means that a very few firms have extensive influence over groups of markets, a situation that results from decades of wide-spread acquisitions and mergers. Such an environment changes the nature of economic competition: two parent firms that that have competing subsidiaries in one market may require different subsidiaries to cooperate in another market. As John Malone put it in the Financial Times: “Nobody can really afford to get mad with their competitors” (May 28, 1996).

Consider Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola. There are few differences between these two products: they are delivered in much the same way (bottles and cans), they contain many of the same ingredients (high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, water), and the difference in cost is negligible. Yet we say they are competitors. In what sense, then, do they compete, if not for access to consumers’ wallets?

In markets dominated by oligopolies, producers appeal not to consumers’ wallets, but rather to their hearts and minds; brand name identity is a vital part of this condition.

The brand is largely a symbolic entity, composed often of a material product, stylized packaging, and a marketing strategy that emphasizes novel features (frequently described as “revolutionary,” “advanced,” or “innovative,” although just as frequently such features represent relatively minor or obvious improvements over existing products).

Coca-Cola competes by creating marketing strategies that attempt to make its consumers feel better than consumers of competing brands. Often these marketing strategies rely on one subsidiary endorsing another to lend some aspect of one brand’s symbolic qualities to another.

When pictures of the Little Mermaid show up on soft drink cans, is this Disney endorsing Coca-Cola or is this Coca-Cola endorsing Disney? Really, it is neither and both; the question is like asking whether the hand endorses the mouth by eating.

Producers under oligopoly use marketing to compete for access to markets, and consumers are left to compete with eachother. Because vertically-integrated companies are able to control all aspects of a product, from design to production to distribution, oligopolies are able to leverage this ability to influence the behavior of consumers (by manipulating supply and demand). Because the economic value of a product is to a large extent determined by the perception of scarcity on the part of consumers, an oligopoly is able to charge whatever it wants for certain products by limiting the availability of that product. We see this every couple of years now when Sony releases a new version of the PlayStation: a limited supply coupled with successful marketing forces consumers to compete, while Sony, the producer, rakes in the profits.

The real danger of a globalizing oligopoly is that it makes brand identification akin to a form of nationalism, while the entities to which consumers pledge allegiance have no national allegiances themselves. Globalization, for all the well-deserved criticism maintained by the activist left, may be a natural and inevitable consequence of human evolution. At the same time, this neither means that the United States ought to be the monopolist of globalization, nor that the United States ought to sit by passively while multinational corporations subvert national boundaries and exploit poverty for the purposes of cheap labor. At the end of the day, the exploitation of the global labor force really benefits only a very few individuals, and consumers are left to finance their own subjugation.

fragment of fragments of a heuristic anaphora

2007-01-20T17:22:00.000-06:00

of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences.
Compare epistrophe (def. 1), symploce.
(s. Of frangere to break) + -mentum -ment] Synonyms 1 3. See part. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) Based on the Random House

A Living Doctrine

2007-01-16T21:33:00.000-06:00

When one is consumed with War one can see no hope for Peace, but only that immediate victory with which one secures a stronger position for the next conflict. War is a virus, a sickness, an ideology which upholds the Natural death of the Body beyond the mystical transfiguration of the Soul, while espousing the sanctity of Violence. War is costly, in that it extracts from Life all those things for which a Man or Woman struggles until Death makes its frightful presence known.

Peace also comes at a price, albeit a small one compared to the Myriad costs of War. Peace does not mean giving up one's pride: there ought to be pride in saying, "I made this Peace." Peace does not mean giving up one's Life: Peace is antithetical to this. Peace is not compromise, cowardice, or perfection. Peace is, most simply, the renunciation of Violence.

Peace means struggle: against the influence of Fascism, terror, brutality, corruption. There are many things worthy of great struggles, and it is true that sometimes struggle means combat. But combat is not Violence. The martial arts are quite beautiful and football is entertaining. War is Violence, killing is Violence, torture is Violence, and bigotry is Violence.

There is no Violence in a State of Nature: Freedom is perpetual combat. But Liberty demands Peace because it represents a commitment to Life.

If the value of Liberty is determined by Absolute means, it is important to recognize that a superlative Liberty is paradoxical, with flaws and incompletenesses that entail their own - often, contradictory - ethical imperatives.

The alternative is to view Liberty as a Living Doctrine engaged in a Struggle to perpetuate Life, Beauty, and Goodness. If we accept that Liberty is alive, and so imbued with Intelligence and Grace that we, as Citizens, deem it fit to be led by such a principle, then we are bound to provide what this Life requires for its sustenance: we must struggle for all that Peace represents.

How can We find Peace while in fear of the State? Where is Peace when we have weapons of mass destruction at our disposal, starvation in our streets and elsewhere, oppression, desolation, and apathy, when we daily throw away the daily Labor of untold numbers of Men and Women simply because it is convenient? What does it mean when we have whole industries devoted to managing our waste - not to extract useful materials from it, but to take it by truck, rail, and boat to the nearest place out of sight?

It is our responsibility as Citizens in a participatory Democracy to not just observe our National Rights, but to own and assert them.

On the Symbolism of Dr. King's National Memorial

2007-01-15T22:34:00.000-06:00

When one considers Dr. King, I think it is important to separate the Man from the Icon. Although the Man may be considered flawed in some way, his spiritual struggle was always to increase the total Good in the Nation and in the World. Men are never perfect: our Literary Christ also cried, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” For Dr. King, the Man aside, the tribute paid his Name by the National Memorial is a truly poetic way to incorporate his Icon into the fabric of our Nation’s heritage.

The Memorial site, situated on a “line of leadership” connecting the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, is landscaped to include cherry trees that blossom at the time of Dr. King’s death, and a stone walkway along the water’s edge.

The intent of the landscaping is to emphasize Water, Stone, and the Tree as key symbolic features of the site.

Water is used to symbolize Justice. Justice, like Water, will dissolve all obstacles, by Force or by Patience.

Stone is used to symbolize the Democratic Struggle. The relationship of Dr. King’s National Monument to the Monuments of other leaders urges us to remember that other Men have struggled to erect these Monuments. Deliberately unfinished channels of Water flowing into the Stone walkway remind us that the Struggle is as unending as the Tide.

The Tree is used to symbolize Hope. Although Nature is a product of cycles, and the Mother of cruel Winter, Life must by Nature pursue the Beautiful and the Good.

Venerated messages from Antiquity resonate with the symbolism of Dr. King's Monument, from Plato who taught that Life is worth little if not for Poetry, to the Icons of our Democracy.

This symbolism is universal: Nature sees that mountains always rise, and Natures sees that any mountain can be washed away... but we, as Men under Nature, need Peace to preserve these Monuments for other Men.

Genetic Modeling of Homosexuality

2007-01-15T18:05:00.000-06:00

An Ars Technica article on the genetic modeling of homosexuality discussing a study published by the Royal Society asks the question, "If there was a gene that controlled homosexuality - and hence limited reproduction - how could it be favored to exist?"

The question assumes that gay men could not reproduce with gay women if necessary, or if cultural rituals existed to support such behavior.

If a genetic trait for homosexuality is not expressed in every generation then it may still be propagated. Homosexuality, if genetic, may be the product of several genes that also serve other useful purposes. Genetic features responsible for homosexuality may be part of the inter-genomic DNA, which is not subject to the same evolutionary pressures as protein-encoding genes.

Furthermore, not all genes exist to increase an organism's ability to physically couple with a mate. If we didn't have homosexuals, a lot of straight people who work for television shows like "Will and Grace" might not have a job, and thereby procure the goods and services upon which they rely.

fragmentary aggregations

2007-01-14T10:14:00.000-06:00

IF

you can accept the premises that

1. your communications are being monitored
2. there are computerized as well as human monitors
3. somebody somewhere is paying attention

AND

1. you dislike domestic eavesdropping
2. you're not sure your legislature can do much about it
3. you don't think you are powerless

THEN

1. talk to those who pay attention
2. deny monitors the value of your metadata - this is secret, indirect taxation
3. do not fear the consequences if you are not a terrorist

use google to tell the national security agency what you think.

get pro-active and email your concerns to media outlets.

leave cryptic phone messages every chance you get.

in this age patriots refuse to serve. just as wars cannot be fought without soldiers, the private/military surveillance apparatus cannot function without ideological devotees.

loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

be critical of rhetoric exploiting religious sentiment in extremist politics.

the christian conception of god is inherently self-contradictory (mystical in character).

from:

1. god is omniscient
2. god is omnipotent
3. god is morally perfect (incapable of evil)

it follows that:

1. if god is omniscient and omnipotent, god knows what evil is and is able to do evil
2. premises 1 (omniscience) and 2 (omnipotent) contradict premise 3 (moral perfection)
3. anything follows from a contradiction
4. "god is on our side" can be used to justify anything, moral or immoral

be pro-active, engage with a positive aesthetic of cryptocyberanarchism, make poetry out of terror, use as many of the following words in context as possible:

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Meade SEAL Team 6 Honduras PLO NSA terrorist Ft. Meade strategic supercomputer $400 million in gold bullion quiche Honduras BATF colonel Treasury domestic disruption SEAL Team 6 class struggle smuggle M55 M51 Physical Security Division Room 2A0120, OPS 2A building 688-6911(b), 963-3371(s). Security Awareness Division (M56) Field Security Division (M52) Al Amn al-Askari Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti Federalnaia sluzhba besopasnosti GCHQ MI5

Hollywood Politics

2007-01-14T09:43:00.000-06:00

Right-wing Republicans are Satan-worshipping militant homosexual pedophile war-profiteers and have no legitimate claim to a platform of moral superiority. Neocons are Fascists.

fragment of a heuristic...

2007-01-13T22:29:00.000-06:00

Kafka Saddam Hussein

2007-01-13T20:43:00.000-06:00

"Trial resumes with Saddam's empty chair..."
- Monday, January 8, 2007.

Energy Independence and Energy Leadership

2007-01-13T16:14:00.000-06:00

Whether cars are fueled by ethanol or gasoline, the traditional internal combustion engine, at best, is only about 30% efficient. This means that 70% of the energy we put into our cars is thrown away.

New hydrogen reformer technology is able to convert gasoline into hydrogen fuel for automobiles. This conversion equipment can be installed on-site at existing gas stations, using our current energy distribution infrastructure to provide refueling points for "early-adopter" consumers of hydrogen fuel cell automobiles.

Because hydrogen fuel cell automobile engines can achieve about 80% efficiency, as a long-term energy strategy this represents an achievable solution to our National problem with foreign energy dependency. Reformer technology is not, however, an instant solution.

These high efficiency ratings will depend on continued research into effective ways to manufacture and store hydrogen, including such technologies as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, wind turbines, supercapacitors, and possibly even metamaterials. Incorporating hydrogen into the electrical infrastructure could give consumers real choices regarding where they purchase their energy.

Furthermore, the jury is still out as to whether the use of ethanol puts more pollution into the environment than burning a similar quantity of gasoline, since, typically, most of the energy used to produce ethanol comes from coal-burning powerplants.

It took 20 years from the time reports of global warming first appeared in the popular press until the time when the general press decided to agree that global warming is a real problem. Neither America nor the Earth can wait that long before we thoughtfully examine our energy habits.

Diplomacy for the War at Home

2007-01-12T15:16:00.000-06:00

If we are to fight a War at Home - waged by the NSA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the DIA - against terrorist threats to our Homeland, are we to do so in such a manner as to deliberately rule out any possible diplomatic solution?

If we are to trust our Government's assertion that a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would increase the risk of terror attacks on our Homeland, and if it is the goal of our Government to remove our troops expediently and expidiciously, then it follows that a non-military approach to solving our National Quagmire is essential. Distasteful though it may seem, the search for a diplomatic victory may require the formal recognition of Al Qaeda, and a diplomatic relationship with this formal body.

I think it can be taken as obvious by now that Al Qaeda is not some loose band of thugs and theives hiding out in mountain caves, but is a group of individuals who are organized and resourceful, who confess a group identity, and who associate with various similar groups of individuals.

In terms of the phenomenology of the movement, it may be worthwhile to consider nationalism as a mechanism to account for Al Qaeda. If it seems odd to think of Al Qaeda in nationalistic terms - we are, after all, told Al Qaeda is a "network" - it is worth noting that we speak of "the Palestinians" as we speak of nationalities. We hear the President speak of "Palestine," although no such State has yet been established.

Any number of causes can be used to account for the motivations of individual members of Al Qaeda. Some individuals, certainly, are motivated by ideology; some, certainly, are so lost as human beings they hate our Country enough to die just to prove it. Others, likely, are motivated by what they've seen America do in Iraq, Panama, Angola, or the disputed Israeli territories - these latter persons motivated by desperation and the fear they will be assimilated next.

Were America to publicly recognize Al Qaeda as we recognize Nations, and open formal diplomatic negotiations, we could meaningfully ask the question, "How can we help make the Middle East more stable, prosperous, and egalitarian?" The asking of the question in such a context - backed by the demonstrable Will and ability to help carry out positive initiatives - means violence would no longer be a necessary first and last resort.

We must eliminate the need for terror as a political approach by separating terror as a tactic from the ideologies terrorists represent. In the absence of desperation, a radical approach is not necessary. Diplomacy as an outstretched hand gives reason to doubt the need for desperate measures.

Our Government must acknowledge the problematic nature of its present Middle East policy in order to demonstrate our leadership is not so rigid as to be unmoved even in the face of its own citizenry. We must demonstrate that our military presence in the Middle East does not represent a Colonial occupying force. We must demonstrate that our relationship with regional leaders is sufficiently developed as to facilitate regional cooperation.

Because cultural familiarity will be vital to successful diplomacy, we must build enduring ties with regional institutions, such as universities, art and natural history museums, humanitarian and civil liberties organizations, and entreprenurial or trade associations. We must help motivate Europe and China to engage in similar iniatives. We should help facilitate trade between the Middle East, South America, and Africa, possibly by subsidizing transportation or by providing training in management strategies. Al Qaeda must be granted the status of Nation; identified as such, these people will most likely seek to establish a State, and the interest of this people will require legitimate advocacy.

We must bring a truly global body of allies (and the whole array of their interlocked interests) to the negotiation table to produce a consensus regarding the appropriate steps for US troop withdrawal from the Middle East. As the United States Government contemplates new fronts in the War on Terror - from the Middle East to Asia to Africa - truly global negotiations with a formal body representing Al Qaeda are becoming increasingly necessary if we are to avert a global economic and humanitarian disaster.

Ethics and Legislation of Stem Cell Research

2007-01-11T15:57:00.000-06:00

Indiana Representative Mike Pence, contesting new House Legislation to authorize Federal funding for stem cell research, remarked, "Proponents of this legislation don't just want to be able to do embryonic stem-cell research...they want me to pay for it and, like 43 percent of Americans who believe that life begins at conception, I've got a problem with that."

Rep. Pence's remarks, which echo a Bush Administration statement on the matter, reveal a dangerous double-standard and a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for our Federal government to collect and spend tax money. Considering that some 70 percent of Americans are obligated to fund a war in Iraq with which they disagree, I imagine there are relatively few Americans who would find no objection whatsoever to the use of their tax dollars.

Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist No. 31, asserts that, "A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of the objects committed to its care, and to the complete execution of the trusts for which it is responsible, free from every other control but a regard to the public good and to the sense of the people."

Stem cell research represents an opportunity to provide effective cures and treatments for life-threatening diseases, to preserve liberty in various forms for those who suffer ailments that impinge upon the exercise of liberty (such as through the impairment of mobility, dexterity, or cognitive function), and to secure the pursuit of happiness on the part of those citizens constrained by such diseases as the Federal government is in a position to help cure.

Beyond the hypocrisy implied by pro-life Representatives who apportion funds to war over schools, art, and life-saving medical research, there is the blatant and concerted effort to obscure the fact that existing and accepted medical procedures (such as in vitro fertilization) create and discard precisely those types of cells required for stem cell research.

The position of Rep. Pence - that human life begins at conception - if not political (insofar as current purveyors of medical treatments have an economic interest in selling perpetual remediation, rather than a singular cure) is bound to be religious or arbitrary. By arbitrary I do not mean ridiculous or unfounded, but subject to the same qualifications as any definite demarcation between entities whose boundaries are porous or gradated. The Representative's criterion does not appear to be founded in the standards of our courts, which hold permissible those procedures that, given pressing medical concerns, affect the viability of an embryo only until that time when the embryo might support its own life independent of the mother and the womb. It is worth noting that this court standard is upheld by the thinkers of Greek Antiquity.

There remains the matter of personal conviction, which may be religious in character, or related to a secular ethic. Religious traditions, which in our Nation ought to be restricted in the degree to which they influence or direct political processes, are by no means unanimous as to whether human life begins at conception or at some later time. Within the Judeo-Christian Tradition, one finds in the Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 69b, the assertion that "the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day." Exodus 21:22, in discerning punishments for causing a miscarriage or the death of a pregnant woman, seems to assign to the fetus a value that is somewhat less than that of a fully-developed human.

Should the personal convictions the Representative and his like-minded companions be a matter of secular ethics, he and his companions have some explaining to do. How is it that one man with a few allies should withhold the Constitutional entitlements of so many?

Privacy, Surveillance, and Consumerism

2007-01-09T01:51:00.000-06:00

The degree to which surveillance legislation and Internet advertising practices reach into the personal lives of Internet users is illustrated by www.aolstalker.com. These methods of producing, gathering, and disseminating information have rapidly become both pervasive and expensive. This cost is being subsidized by taxpayers and consumers, and the practices responsible for this cost are being propagated by legislators and advertisers at a time when our society lacks equally pervasive cultural idioms with which to meaningfully evaluate the philosophical, anthropological, and practical implications of these practices.

AOLstalker is a database of search queries conducted by AOL users. The information is organized according to which individual AOL users conducted various searches, and was collected between March 1, 2006 and May 31, 2006. Although the database was assembled for advertising purposes, AOLstalker appears to be an entertainment-oriented application of the data, and users of the site are encouraged to judge AOL users based on the humorousness of personal information revealed by the collected search queries.

The research that produced the database was conducted by AOL and Google, and released publicly. Derivative research has been conducted by authors Pass, Chowdhury and Torgeson, published as "A Picture of Search" for The First International Conference on Scalable Information Systems.

I happened upon AOLstalker after receiving a strange error message on MySpace. The error message included the domain name collect.myspace.com, which I did not recognize, and for which I subsequently performed a Google search. I received a result titled "Stalking users who searched for collect myspace com" at 2006-05-29 21:43:43, referencing the page:

www.aolstalker.com/search.php?q=collect.myspace.com

This got me thinking about users who search for their own names, for various facts about their city or neighborhood, their family or friends, their financial institutions... all the personally-identifiable data revealed by user searches. Beyond the voyeuristic appeal of the intimate psychological portraits AOLstalker offers users, the AOLstalker database also represents a serious privacy and security issue. Were malicious coders able to exploit existing social networking systems like MySpace through phishing schemes or system hacks, a similar "live" database could prove just as lucrative to cybercriminals and authoritarians as it has proven to advertisers.

It is my hypothesis that there, in fact, exists somewhere a "live" version of the aolstalker database, which is tied to a bit of malicious code (or possibly even plain text that has been properly formatted) in MySpace. This code, I suspect, is propagated by third parties who trick MySpace users into posting the malicious code online.

Finally, I suspect, that some targets of the "live" MySpace version of AOLstalker have been victimized by users who treated the "live" database as a form of interactive entertainment, possibly accounting for some recent Internet postings about "gang stalking."

If aolstalker is driven by information that was "publicly" available, I think Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment provides a relatively straightforward illustration of why one should feel disconcerted by intelligence applications of similar technology such as the Intellipedia.

If our Democracy is to survive and thrive in peace, we must have ways to engage in meaningful discourse about the surveillance society in all its forms.

Science and the Afterlife

2007-01-08T00:19:00.000-06:00

Regarding Deborah Blum's New York Times article "Ghosts in the Machine," on the electromagnetic induction of perceived paranormal phenomena.

Science and the afterlife have a long and intertwined history: Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison were both interested in communications with the dead, and the RCA Victrola logo, according to Friedrich Kittler, is a depiction of a dog listening to its dead master's voice. The Spirtualist Movement in the early 20th Century America concerned itself with the photography of spirits, relying on the popular view of photography-as-truth associated with the new medium of photography as a means to justify such "radical" ideologies as women's sufferage.

Worth noting also, I think, are the military applications of the Nature study mentioned. Although the US government has recently made public its research into relatively straightforward electromagnetic weapons such as the "Active Denial System," the use of low frequency electromagnetic radiation as a weapon tageting the central nervous system has an extensive pedigree among American and Soviet military researchers. Capt. Paul Tyler's 1986 report, "The Electromagnetic Spectrum in Low-Intensity Conflict" (published in "Low-Intensity Conflict and Modern Technology," edited by Lt. Col. David Dean for the Air University Press, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research & Education, pp. 249-260) discusses some of these applications.

Moreover, remote implementations of a technique known as "transcranial magnetic stimulation" are bound to find similar applicability, if Hendricus Loos's recent patent filings are any indication of the direction this research has taken since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This technology can be deployed broadly using various stochastic processes, by combining, for example, the effects of the HAARP radio array with the ELF transmitters.

Beyond the ability to influence the moods of large numbers of people, these technologies, combined with the electromagnetic blanket coverage of cellphone towers can be used to pinpoint individuals through the use of passive radar systems, yielding fairly specific sorts of effects.

The Police State wants you one way or another... to be a good consumer... keep the rich getting richer... or... ZAP!

ZAP ZAP ZAP!

Free Will

2007-01-03T23:04:00.000-06:00

Minor remarks concerning Dennis Overbye's excellent New York Times Article, "Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don't"

Regarding Dr. Levin's characterization of Godel's work on incompleteness, I find her use of the term "complex" problemmatic. A key point of the related Church-Turing Thesis is that a great many systems (both natural and formal) are equally complex - and that it really is not asking so much of these systems that they should behave in such a way. As is made especially clear by Zenon Pylyshyn in "Computation and Cognition," the import of Dr. Levin's statement to the subject of free will lies in the implications of how intelligence is defined, rather than complexity or representation. In a very real sense, the behavior of asteroids orbiting a star are every bit as complex as the behavior of a human brain (or mind, depending on how one chooses to discuss such things). The real questions here are "what is intelligence?" and "is intelligence a necessary or sufficient condition for free will?" Have you ever watched a time-lapse motion-picture of a vine crawling up a pole? Do the reachings of its tendrils and the twistings of its stem not look eerily intelligent?

As strange as it may seem, the most intuitive escape from this crisis of intuition comes from that most counter-intuitive branch of physics, quantum mechanics. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the "spooky" phenomena of quantum entanglement, which so vexed Albert Einstein, say, literally and demonstrably, that the future is not determined. There are limits not only for knowledge, but also for causality and locality (Einstein may have been right to say that God does not play dice, but he was surely mistaken about what it means for God to do so). Mr. Overbye is quite right to say, "the more reasonably you try to act, the more unpredictable you are."

laying the foundations of the police state

2007-01-02T20:27:00.000-06:00

Since 2004, the Bush Administration has aggressively pursued a program of federalizing law enforcement through the creation of "Intelligence Fusion Centers."

These centers are designed to serve as communications hubs, connecting local, state, and federal law enforecement agencies. By incorporating local agencies into the federal infrastructure, these centers expand the purview of federal intelligence gathering and enforcement.

The extent to which Intelligence Fusion Centers seek to expand federal law enforcement powers is perhaps best found in wording from the Fusion Center Guidelines, a document which exhorts state and local officials that "it is the responsibility of leadership to implement and adhere to the Fusion Center Guidelines."

On page 3 of the Guidelines Executive Summary, the document states that "nontraditional collectors of intelligence, such as public safety entities and private sector organizations, possess important information (e.g., risk assessments and suspicious activity reports) that can be 'fused' with law enforcement data to provide meaningful information and intelligence about threats and criminal activity."

The reference to "nontraditional collectors of intelligence" has a disconcerting resonance with the stated goal of Operation TIPS. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System ("TIPS") was an ill-fated Bush Administration effort to use postal workers and cable-TV technicians as informants, which ended when Rep. Dick Armey included specific legislation in the House's Homeland Security Bill to prohibit the program.

The single-mindedness with which the Bush Administration seeks to expand its executive power poses a clear and present danger to American democracy. Secret surveillance laws, secret detentions, secret national security subpoenas, and secret police all deprive Americans of the assurance that executive power is not exercized arbitrarily.

No use watching your back... you better pray the new gestapo doesn't dislike your politics.

paranoid cops and the law above the law (worried yet?)

2006-12-07T15:36:00.000-06:00

milwaukee police officers have been disabling the gps units in their squad cars.

trying to hide from the panopticon?

there have been a number of recent cases where police agencies have located individuals using the gps transponders in the target's mobile phone. now government agencies have begun to activate cellphone microphones by remote for surveillance purposes, and have demonstrated the ability to access the computer systems installed in many automobiles. combined with automated voice recognition and automated summary-generation technologies, these tactics represent a significant advance in the potential for mass surveillance of citizens.

the party line's conventional wisdom states, "if you're not a terrorist, then you have nothing to worry about." what, then, are the police worried about?

progressives for progress in iraq

2006-11-14T21:07:00.000-06:00

assuming a diplomatic solution to the war in iraq involves:

1. cooperation with iraq's neighbors

2. synchronization with the interests of iraq's neighbors

3. fullfillment of our promise to bring greater stability to the region

then the countries most likely to be directly involved include:

kuwait
turkey
saudi arabia
jordan
pakistan
egypt
syria
lebanon
israel
afghanistan
iran

of these countries, we should probably:

1. rule out (at least in the short term) cooperation with iran.

2. secure public political support from saudi arabia, israel, and pakistan.

3. strengthen support with egypt (egypt is home to the league of arab states, and has recently sent boutros boutros-ghali to head the united nations. although egypt has been sited for human rights abuses, there is a growing reform movement, "kifaya").

3. build support with turkey (perhaps leveraging their desire to join the eu by softening up key european states)

4. redeploy troops from iraq to afghanistan (such a redeployment should involve close cooperation with international bodies such as the un and the red crescent)

5. encourage internal political reforms in kuwait.

6. encourage regional efforts with syria (i.e., host a summit)

7. to get the ball rolling, greatly increase direct assistance (both political and economic) to jordan and lebanon (especially jordan)

jordan:

borders syria, iraq, saudi arabia, and israel. shares gulf of acaba with egypt.

jordanians are generally well-educated and pro-western; jordan supported united nations sanctions against iraq. this would seem to be a good groundwork for a constructive relationship.

jordan should be financially compensated for our roles (direct and indirect) in iraq and the arab-israeli war. a support agreement may supplement or resemble the eu-jordan association agreement.

the egypt connection is politically important: jordan shares many tourists with egypt, and egypt has a generally progressive attitude towards us and key allies (such as israel and japan). egypt is also the home of the arab league of

direct assistance could also be an incentive to improve jordanian relations with israel (such as the ending of certain official discriminations against jews).

a stronger jordan may be very good for the region, but may threaten syria. hosting a summit involving jordan and syria may help dissipate this perceived threat.

lebanon:

borders syria and israel. lebanese are generally entreprenurial; lebanon has a demand for tourism, and was once known as the banking capitol of the arab world.

lebanon should be financially compensated (perhaps through trade agreements) for our (indirect) role in the arab-israeli war; the 2006 israeli conflict was especially painful to lebanon because they are still recovering from a civil war. moreover, the redirection of funds to rebuilding efforts puts lebanon in a difficult situation because lebanon has few natural resources and depends heavily on regional commerce. the growing popular reform movements should be encouraged.

we should foster support for a un peacekeeping and rebuilding operation in southern lebanon (israel shouldn't object to this).

hopefully genuine good will in the region will be perceived as indirect good will towards iran. diplomacy in iraq will require a broad, coordinated effort and a serious financial committment, but in the long run, peace should be cheaper than war. right?

vote for america jones.

2006-11-04T18:09:00.000-06:00

greetings, voters, citizens, whoever you are. as we near
our elections here in americana, i would like to take this
opportunity to remind you to vote for america jones wherever
you vote next.

in this age, when our environment is over-saturated with media
technologies and powerful messages of conflicting values and
intentions, it is becoming harder than ever to figure out where
major-ticket candidates stand. it would seem the only remedy for
this is a greater simplicity. therefore, by campaigning on the fascist
ticket, the message of america jones is rendered most articulately:
"vote for me once and you'll never have to vote again."

beyond the obvious appeal of this message to the convenience-
oriented sensibilities of americanians, it would be foolish
not to acknowledge that, despite the bad rap fascism has picked
up in recent years, voting for a third party candidate is an
important way to register one's discontent with the two-party
rule that seems, of late, to have jammed up our fine democracy
so profoundly. if a voter should becomes apathetic and simply
choose to give up on voting, that voter's apathy becomes
defeat, and that voter's discontent remains unheard and
unregistered.

at the end of the day, this is the beauty of america jones:
by bringing together the apathetic with the fanatical,
america jones becomes a uniter and not a divider. america jones
represents compassionate fascism at its finest.

so remember when you head to the polls this tuesday november 7,
and every time you head to the polls confused or disenfranchised
or with a bone to pick: a vote for a fascist is a vote for
independence!

diplomacy in iraq

2006-10-27T09:09:00.000-05:00

despite military victories in iraq,
it may soon become painfully evident
that unilateralism - as a premise
and as a strategy - and the impact
of the war on neighboring states
must be addressed directly.

if the bush administration means
to prevent this conflict from
shifting in nature from national
to regional, it would seem a viable
course of action would be to include
neighboring states in diplomatic
talks facilitated by the united nations.

nations in the middle east with
existing entrepreneurial and democratic
tendencies, such as lebanon and jordan,
may find their fledgling democratic
ideals bolstered by the opportunity
to meaningfully participate in such a
diplomatic process.

(censored) senior administration officials

2006-10-26T22:40:00.000-05:00

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2.0 The Political Pit Bull link0 en Copyright 2006 Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:10:04 -0500 link1 link2 Nightcap Claudia Rossett was on Laura Ingraham's show today to talk about, what else, the UN and, more specifically, North Korea. There's a lot of good stuff in the interview but one of the more enjoyable moments is when Rossett puts a bullet through the myth that Clinton administration's deal with North Korea was some great diplomatic achievement. As Rossett says: "that deal combined the integrity of Bill Clinton and the political savvy of Jimmy Carter." Ouch. Anyway, if you have the time, check it out. It runs about 13 minutes so it's on the longer side. ]]> link3 link4 General Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:10:04 -0500 The Most Inaccurate Headline Ever? link5 Probably not, but it's up there . abcbushviet.jpg link6 500 80 In fact, President Bush only agreed that Thomas Friedman's comparison of the current level of violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive "could be right." That's hardly the same as him accepting the Iraq-Vietnam comparison. But who cares right? Liberals wouldn't ignore what Bush actually said, take this headline literally, and imply that he's now admitting we've lost in Iraq. Oh yeah, link7 they would . And by the way, is this not the perfect example of why pro-Iraq politicians in this country dare not veer away from their scripts? Any little concession or foray into an actual contemplation of an idea, however insignificant, is used as amunition by the opposition. It's truly depressing. Update : John Hawkins link8 makes a really good point about the Tet comparison: What was the Tet Offensive? It was a massive offensive by the Vietcong that was, from a military standpoint, a complete and utter disaster. To say that we decimated their forces during the Tet offensive is an understatement. Yet, what happened? The mainstream media in the United States portrayed an incredible American victory as an enormous American defeat. Saying that what's going on in Iraq is like Tet isn't an admission that it's a failure, it's a way of saying that the terrorists are losing, we're winning, and the media is botching the coverage. Of course, since portraying American victories as defeats is the standard operating procedure of the American media, it's not surprising that they weren't self-aware enough to understand the reference. ]]> link9 link10 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:03:07 -0500 LOST Open Thread Talk amongst yourselves. ]]> link11 link12 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:41:50 -0500 A Star Is Born! Well, MK's already a star. Albeit in that geeky blogosphere kind of way, but a star nonetheless. I just liked that title. Anyway, she's got her own vlog show now called Ham Nation. The premiere is about October surprises, scandals, and, er, bar napkins. You'll see. 425 350 movie link13 wmode transparent link14 application/x-shockwave-flash transparent 425 350 More link15 here . ]]> link16 link17 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:42:53 -0500 Lamont Has Really Bad Timing Not to mention a crappy grasp on the laws of supply and demand. link18 He's just now decided to blame Joe Lieberman and President Bush for high gas prices . A political genius, I tell you. Meanwhile, Harold Ford Jr., who's currently neck-and-neck with Republican Bob Corker for Frist's Senate seat, is one of few Dems that's link19 throwing his support behind Liebs . Kudos. Via link20 Ace and link21 Glenn Reynolds . ]]> link22 link23 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:54:28 -0500 Report: 7 NFL Stadiums Will Be Hit With Dirty Bombs This Weekend | Update: Debunked link24 This is breaking right now . I'll say right from the start that Homeland Security has already said that there is "no credible evidence" of such a threat. I'll have video from FOX in a couple of minutes. Update : A couple highly alarmist points. Catherine Herridge of FOX noted that this threat is connected to Adnan Shukrijumah and, link25 as I noted yesterday , The Sun link26 reported that he was planning attacks against 7 US cities. Again, all the rumors of nuclear attacks against the US have claimed that they would happen during Ramadan. This weekend would pretty much be the deadline for such an attack since Ramadan ends on Monday. Update : As promised, here's the video: Update : Jim Hoft has link27 a good refresher if you're not familiar with Shukrijumah. Update : Allah calls this a "moronic story." Click link28 here and you'll see why. Update : Rusty link29 reports that the original threat comes from...a 9/11 Truther. ]]> link30 link31 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:40:25 -0500 Space Weapons death-star-2.jpg link32 413 326 There's link33 a pretty cool article in today's Washington Post about a recent change by the Bush administration in US's National Space Policy. Basically, this shift leaves open the possibility for the use of space weapons by the US and also allow the US to block anyone hostile to our interests from entering space. Here's a taste: The administration said the policy revisions are not a prelude to introducing weapons systems into Earth orbit. "This policy is not about developing or deploying weapons in space. Period," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record. Nevertheless, Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that follows the space-weaponry issue, said the policy changes will reinforce international suspicions that the United States may seek to develop, test and deploy space weapons. The concerns are amplified, he said, by the administration's refusal to enter negotiations or even less formal discussions on the subject. "The Clinton policy opened the door to developing space weapons, but that administration never did anything about it," Krepon said. "The Bush policy now goes further." Theresa Hitchens, director of the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information in Washington, said that the new policy "kicks the door a little more open to a space-war fighting strategy" and has a "very unilateral tone to it." The administration official strongly disagreed with that characterization, saying the policy encourages international diplomacy and cooperation. But he said the document also makes clear the U.S. position: that no new arms-control agreements are needed because there is no space arms race. I wonder what political persuasion Ms. Hitchens is. You think she's a lib? Even in space, the Bush administration is too unilateral. Well, I'll put myself on the record right now and say that I hope the US government is developing space weapons. Some Death Starish thing that can take out target on the ground or a launched ballistic missile with precision. Then maybe countries like North Korea would have a little more incentive to stop screwing around. ]]> link34 link35 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:02:43 -0500 VIDEO: O'Reilly On The View I know what you're wondering: were there major fireworks between O'Reilly and O'Donnell? No, not really. But that's doesn't mean it's not worth watching. By far the most rewarding moment of the entire clip is when O'Reilly nails Rosie on Iraq; he asks her--three times--if she wants the US to win the war and Rosie refuses to answer. Rosie doesn't think it's possible. Rosie wants America to be what "the founding fathers wanted it to be." But Rosie won't say that she wants the US to win in Iraq. Wanting the US to win in Iraq is "antiquated thinking." Also amusing, Rosie says that she thinks that Lamont's going to beat Lieberman--probably wishful thinking since she's contributed the max to Lamont's campaign. Apparently she doesn't follow link36 the polls . Update : I meant to mention link37 this , but I forgot to. Here's Kirsten Powers on poor Elisabeth: "Why does Elizabeth Hasselbeck even show up for work? Every time I see a clip of this insipid show, Hasselbeck tries to say something and she is drowned out by the shrieks of Rosie." ]]> link38 link39 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:23:39 -0500 Hoyer's Race-Based Insults Against Michael Steele I link40 mentioned yesterday how the #2 Democrat in the House Rep. Steny Hoyer joked that Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele "slavishly" supports the GOP. Well, apparently, this wasn't the first time that Hoyer has used a race-based insult against Steele. Michelle Malkin has the details link41 here . And again, imagine that the #2 Republican in the House Rep. John Boehner made a similar comment about, say, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. who's running for Senate in Tennessee. "Ford "slavishly" support the Democratic Party." Would that be appropriate? Absolutely not. The only difference is that the MSM would be all over it like white on rice. Fortunately for Hoyer, racially tinged attacks by Demcrats are ignored by the media. ]]> link42 link43 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:02:29 -0500 DNC Goes Into Debt For DSCC According to link44 The Hotline , the DNC is going into the red to the tune of $5-10 million to help the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. While the money is not designated for any particular race, The Hotline speculates that it's likely going to be used in expensive media markets such as New Jersey and Virginia. The Hotline dubs this "contagious optimism," which, I agree, seems to fit. The dynamic has changed, the Senate is now in play, and this seems like a good strategic move on the part of the Democrats. They're going to try--hard--and I hope the GOP is prepared. Still, based on what I see now, I don't think the Republicans will lose control of the Senate. Others : link45 Dan Riehl and link46 BCB . ]]> link47 link48 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:24:30 -0500 Dow Crosses 12,000 Mark link49 Behold ! The nightmare that is our economy under President Bush and a Republican Congress. dow12.jpg link50 501 202 ]]> link51 link52 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:03:06 -0500 Nightcap I saw this earlier today. It's called "Why Vote Republican" and it was created by Larry Elder and Braden Barty of WireWerks.net. I don't know how convincing you'll find it, but it's at least amusing. 425 350 movie link53 wmode transparent link54 application/x-shockwave-flash transparent 425 350 ]]> link55 link56 General Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:23:32 -0500 VIDEO: "These So-Called Terrorists" I'm totally with Ace link57 on this one . The following clip should be all the inspiration you need to go out and vote Republican this November. According to Rangel, the "so-called" terrorists deserve habeas corpus rights and we can't use coercive interrogation to get them to spill their plans. The brilliant strategies just keep rolling out, don't they? Bottom line: Democrats just don't get it. ]]> link58 link59 General Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:40:37 -0500 President Bush And Talk Radio Hosts joekuty.jpg link60 510 245 From left to right: Mike Gallagher, Neal Boortz, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Michael Medved Looking at the above picture, Sully's link61 taken his typically restrained tone and has labeled the conservative radio hosts pictured above as "toadies" for being invited to the White House to talk to President Bush about his administration's policies. It's a low blow and, of course, Sullivan provides nothing to support his questioning of the objectivity of these individuals. But if you've been following Sullivan lately, you'll know this really isn't anything out of the ordinary; he's not all that keen on supporting any of his arguments with facts anymore--just hysterics. Anyway, does Sullivan expect President Bush to invite Al Franken to the White House? Or how about Randi Rhodes who has link62 fantasized about having him killed ? The fact is is that almost every liberal talk radio personality that I can think of is a rabid Bush-hater. More : Sister Toldjah takes Sully link63 behind the woodshed . ]]> link64 link65 General Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:11:06 -0500 Sanitizergate! Move over Foleygate, there's link66 a new kid on the block . ]]> link67 link68 General Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:22:15 -0500

nationalism exploited by a central authority to preserve social inequality for a privelaged few

2006-10-25T19:22:00.000-05:00

In 1932 Benito Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism:

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death....

...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of..Marxian Socialism...

Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism...

After Socialism, Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage....

...Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....

The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State.

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....

...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence. Peoples which are rising, or rising again after a period of decadence, are always imperialist; and renunciation is a sign of decay and of death. Fascism is the doctrine best adapted to represent the tendencies and the aspirations of a people...who are rising again after many centuries of abasement and foreign servitude.

...If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.

more doublespeak?

2006-10-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

...Bush's signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."

His rationale was that it "rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061005/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_privacy_1

the united nations has too much diplomacy and not enought strait speaking.

2006-09-20T18:22:00.000-05:00

maybe the united nations isn't useless...
maybe the u.n. can give the world a forum
to school the united states on the destructive
effects of our present american governance and
over-consumption.

perhaps if the media paid more attention to the
united nations, the united nations would become
more important. in an era of increasing
globalization, why are there hours upon hours
of local news coverage on broadcast television,
but only five minutes a week broadcast on the
united nations?

it doesn't seem like most americans understand
that when we talk about troop levels in iraq
we're talking about 140,000 us troops fighting a
war in a plot of land not unlike texas,

or that israel is the size of new jersey

or that americans are not lazy, but work more
than any industrialized people on earth

or that, adjusted for inflation and growth in
productivity, the federal minimum wage is worth a
quarter what it was just a few decades ago

maybe the only way americans will wake up
is if other nations put us in our place.

if other nations want americans to wake up
other nations must understand that our
ignorance is far too lucrative for our own
government to give up without a struggle...

america is in dire need of charity.

we need other nations to show us art,
to subsidize our learning...

representation and taxation

2006-09-17T21:17:00.000-05:00

october 25th, 2005:
i'd like to thank the congress for their
22 seconds of silence on the occasion
of the 2000th american casualty in the
iraq war, and for the expressions of regret on
the part of those among our representatives
who voted to allow the war.

1817-1862 federal government income exclusively
derived from tariffs on imported goods.
1862 income tax established to fund civil war
1895 supreme court rules income tax unconstitutional
1913 16th amendment passed by congress to legalize
income tax
1918 $1billion collected on income
1920 $5.4 billion collected
1945 $43 billion collected
1985 $450 billion collected

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."
-Thomas Jefferson

"America was born in the midst of a great revolution sparked by oppressive taxation. There was something about the American character—open, hard-working, and honest—that rebelled at the very thought of taxes that were not only heavy but unfair. Today the proud American character remains unchanged. But slowly and subtly, surrendering first to this political pressure and then to that, our system of taxation has turned into something completely foreign to our nature—something complicated, unfair, and, in a fundamental sense, un-American. Well, my friends, the time has come for a second American revolution."
-Ronald Reagan

after the iron curtain

2006-09-13T12:39:00.000-05:00

if, during the cold war, the world had two powerful
idealogically-motivated governments each struggling
for the global dominance of its ideology, and each was
willing to destroy the entire planet with weapons of
mass destruction for the sake of that struggle, can
anyone really say that the victory of either side
could bode well for humanity?

i'd rather have an erection than an election

2006-09-10T20:50:00.000-05:00

are you more afraid of terrorists or drunk drivers?

afraid of second-hand smoke? what kind of car do you drive? do you use an air-conditioner in summer? do you frequently consume disposable cups, plates, utensils?

google "failure"

patents assigned to the national security agency

2006-06-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

the following patents are all issued to the national security agency, and describe one proprietary method the nsa may be using to analyze the network traffic it intercepts by tapping into data streams at telecommunications companies such as at&t:

***

United States Patent 6704449
Method of extracting text from graphical images
US Patent Issued on March 9, 2004

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method for extracting text from an image which is typically displayed on web pages of the World Wide Web. The character recognition will be determined to be successful by comparing the extracted text to a lexicon of legitimate words, computing the likelihood of the sequence of characters (e.g. "Qxv" is highly unlikely in English, whereas "com" is relatively common), or character recognition software which can provide a confidence measure for each character based upon how well its pixels matched the nominal template or features.

***

United States Patent 7020338
Method of identifying script of line of text
US Patent Issued on March 28, 2006

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Script identification is a useful preprocessing step in automatic document recognition. Most optical character recognition (OCR) devices are trained to recognize a limited set of scripts. If an OCR device was presented with a document that includes text printed in a script for which the OCR device was not trained to recognize then the OCR device would not be able to process the document correctly. So, there is a need for a method of identifying each script in which a document is printed so that an OCR device that was trained in all of the scripts can be identified and used to process the document.

***

United States Patent 6904564
Method of summarizing text using just the text
US Patent Issued on June 7, 2005

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Prior art methods of processing text typically incorporate linguistic knowledge that is not resident in the text (e.g., document) being processed. Prior art text summarization methods often rely on a collection of exemplary text that is external to the text being processed to assess the role a word plays in the text being processed. For those methods that rely on a collection of exemplary text, it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a single collection of exemplary text that can be used to successfully summarize textual documents on widely different topics because a word in one context may have a different meaning in another context. This problem is often overcome in the prior art by generating multiple collections of exemplary text, where each collection is tailored to a specific topic (e.g., scientific, financial). Generating a collection of exemplary text is difficult, time consuming, and prone to error (e.g., biases of those generating the collection).

***

United States Patent 6990634
Method of summarizing text by sentence extraction
US Patent Issued on January 24, 2006

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The field of automatically summarizing text consisting of a collection of sentences has been studied for over forty years. However, automatic text summarization has received greater attention recently because of its pervasive use in present information retrieval systems. One type of text summarization method consists of extracting a number of sentences from the text that convey the essential points of the text. The number of sentences extracted from a text may be few to present only enough information to allow a user to determine whether or not to read the entire text or many to act as a substitute for the text.

***

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-mailer/intelligence-101a_b_1142.html

rhetoric, propaganda, and the archive

2006-04-22T12:21:00.000-05:00

An archive, like a history, is an abstraction: a product of selective omission. Through a process of critical decisions, certain pieces of information are selected for inclusion. Those pieces of information that are included (or excluded, as the case may be) present to posterity the attitudes and values that informed the decision making process.

The general problem presented by the archive is neither the collection nor the collation of information, but rather, the retrieval of information: an archive requires an interface, or a set of conventions, whereby the user is able to determine what information is important, and how to access that information.

Using Mumia Abu Jamal, a journalist, as a symbol for the primacy of the word, the Voyager CDROM Live from Death Row archives a man’s extensive critique of political authority in order to critique that same authority.

Live from Death Row exploits the conventions of various media formats to establish the perception of authority for its rhetoric. Framed within a window on the computer screen, the graphic composition of the archive resembles the familiar cinematic technique of mise en scene. As is particularly well evidenced in the “Background” portion of the disc, the synchronic features of the mise en scene consistently segregate interface elements that control how the user navigates the disc’s hierarchy (on the left in “Background”), and those that control what audio/visual information the user can access on a given level of the hierarchy (on the right). The diachronic features of the mise en scene (with one notable exception I’ll later discuss) provide visual feedback (context clues such as rollover effects or background changes) as the user navigates through the archive. This clarity of visual order authoritatively establishes the capability of the archive to effectively convey information, yielding the impression that the disc is a type of reference material, and underscoring the position that information itself is of value. Furthermore, the selective use of full motion video, as in the “Death Penalty” portion of the disc, invokes the authority of the documentary format in television and cinema; and the strong narrative thread running throughout the “Background” section of the disc invokes the power and authority of the storytelling tradition, abundant in the motion picture arts (as elsewhere). Another important use of full motion video on the disc is Mumia’s 1989 interview in prison, which includes footage of the cameraman adjusting framing and focus, to invoke the value as authority of unedited footage as record.

Beyond the use of cinematic devices to ground the archive’s rhetoric, the disc presents people involved in Mumia’s case as authorities on the subject, and makes extensive use of text and sound to emphasize the primacy of the word (since Mumia is, after all, a journalist, symbolizing the power and authority of the word). The sheer volume of Mumia’s writings amassed on the disc demonstrate that his positions are not arbitrary, but well-reasoned. The sheer volume of words spoken in impassioned tones points towards the power and authority of the voice, which predates the written word, and is near (if not at) the root of all artistic (and archival) traditions that followed. And – this notable exception to the consistent implementation of the interface’s idiom – when we are presented with the archive of Mumia’s writings, the visual formatting conventions of the disc change. In the “Live from Death Row” portion of the disc, it is as though the authority of the word has undermined the cinematic interface conventions that are employed in the “Background” portion of the disc: the graphic design of the disc here resembles a magazine layout, and when the user chooses to hear Mumia read these words, every last interface metaphor has been supplanted by the spoken word, and the “pages” of this “magazine” turn for us as Mumia reads.

Using the movie camera as a symbol for the primacy of the image, Man with a Movie Camera archives images from disparate times and locations to explore how cinema can reveal human truths. It is possible for a person to mean to say one thing and have those words understood differently; Vertov grounds the authority of his rhetoric in the unequivocal formal properties of the image, thereby critiquing words as a suitable medium for the conveyance of human truth. The advantage of the image over the word is that it is unequivocal: the eye is democratic, and everybody sees the same pictures on the screen, whereas a word like “tree” will call to mind a different image depending on who reads that word. Vertov concluded from this premise that a grammar of imagery would lead the way to a more absolute truth than the word can supply.

Although Man with a Movie Camera lacks many elements common to cinema, such as staging, characters, and dialog, it makes extensive use of various formal devices to demonstrate the authority of the image. Like most cinema, Man with the Movie Camera is carefully organized to excite certain impulses in the audience at various times: there is a glory in the way Vertov photographs machinery in motion, and a humor in the mannerisms of couples getting married and divorced. And despite Vertov’s rejection of any literary influence on cinema, Man with a Movie Camera has a clear beginning, middle, and end: a narrative orientation of sorts, constructed of a series of distinct vignettes. His use of mise en scene is used to compare movement through space to movement through time is a manner that expresses the dynamism of the industrial age. Vertov’s selective use of these cinematic devices allows the audience to orient themselves within the film, and his consistent use of montage focuses the audience’s attention of the specific juxtapositions of images as the primary source of meaning in the film.

Regarding Man with a Movie Camera as an archive that represents the values of Dziga Vertov is advantageous to the time-specific meaning of the film (as part of a larger movement in art and cinema), but problematic to the intentions of the filmmaker. Although the images Vertov combines are formally unequivocal, divorced of its social and historical context, the meaning of Man with a Movie Camera becomes muddled. The juxtapositions of changing traffic lights against a couple getting a divorce can be read (from the present historical context) as a statement about how the technology exerts a controlling influence on us, and is breaking down traditional forms of social order (rather than as a wry statement about what remains undeniably human amidst rapid technological advances). The mise en scene sequence of a worker packing cigarettes can be read as a statement about how the division of labor is like a cancer, reducing humans to mindless machines (rather than as a rhetoric extolling the beauty of human movement, or the desire for a more perfect man in the machine). Aside from the formal enthusiasm for movement, the meaning of Man with a Movie Camera ultimately requires reference to Vertov’s critical writing, which would undermine the authority of the image Vertov attempts to establish. It is possible that this changing of meaning in Man with a Movie Camera could be seen as a dynamism similar to that which Vertov sought to encapsulate in his film, but in such a case, the meaning of the images is not unequivocal, and no more privy to truth than the word.

The use of authority for rhetorical purposes is a large part of propaganda. Both Live from Death Row and Man with a Movie Camera exploit authority not only to make a point, but also to motivate audiences to accept that point. Both seek, by propagandizing, not only to motivate future actions that audiences might make, but also each seeks to contradict the past, informing the present thereby. Live from Death Row seeks to influence future attitudes towards incarceration and political authority by critiquing a legal case that took place in the past; this dialectic of past and future comments on the current state of political affairs. Man with a Movie Camera seeks to influence the attitudes of future filmmakers and audiences by critiquing the state of film at the time, thereby affirming the objectives of the film (towards establishing conventions for a new cinematic tradition). The public library is an example of an archive that does not serve a propagandizing function: the Dewey Decimal System (as an interface for the library) is not a rhetoric that seeks to mobilize the information the library houses in order to incite the user to accept Mr. Dewey’s values as authoritative.

Even the archive itself is a sort of authority: it imposes a type of logical necessity upon a set of objects (as in, what it logically means for an object to be a member of a particular archive), establishing a relationship between those objects which, in the absence of the archive, would cease to apply. In the case of Live from Death Row, there is a definite narrative that comes through the way images, sounds, and text are grouped together, and how the hierarchy of the disc suggests a linear direction for the navigation of the material; where it not for the disc, that particular narrative implementation would not exist. For Man with a Movie Camera, its nature as archive requires that certain images be sequenced in a certain way: if the frames of the movie were organized differently, the frames would constitute the same film. The inherent authority of the archive furthers its value as propaganda by providing a tautological justification for a specific rhetoric.

logically consistent poetry

2006-04-19T18:53:00.000-05:00

“The Painted Word” is a satirical essay by Tom Wolf that considers the consequences of how, in contemporary art, artists often produce works of art in order to illustrate particular critical statements.

Tom Wolf’s notion of the painted word finds corollaries in the writings of such aestheticians as Arthur Danto and George Dickie. Arthur Danto has discussed at length how, in contemporary art, it is no longer possible to determine if a given object is art or not based solely on appeal to the formal properties of that object (a common illustration of this point is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain). In “Art, Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Art,” Danto uses Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Box” as a case study in the importance of theory in contemporary art (a demonstration of the total equivocality of art objects). Danto wonders:

"why were his boxes works of art while the almost indistinguishable utilitarian cartons were merely containers for soap pads? Certainly the minor observable differences could not ground as grand a distinction as that between Art and Reality!"

George Dickie, in his essay “Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis” offers as a reply that an object may qualify as art if it is recognized by intellectual art institutions as art; the way in which a given object garners the status of art object is often by appeal to critical justification.

Like many trends in contemporary art, the painted word was prefigured by various figures in the Dada movement. The justification for the aesthetic concerns of, for example, Hugo Ball, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst, was an implicit ideology that required an explicit articulation given the art-historical context and the expectations of the art-going public of the time. Although for a lack of political convictions Kurt Schwitters was not permitted to officially join the Dada, the work of Kurt Schwitters demonstrates a virtuosic array of aesthetic and technical concerns. Schwitters indulged in the realms of surrealist and opto-phonetic poetry, expressionist painting, collage, and assemblage. Through association with such prominent artists as Theo Van Doesburg, who was connected to both De Stijl and the Bauhaus, Schwitters demonstrated a highly refined sense of geometric formalism; Schwitters also produced work bearing a strong resemblance to the neoplasticism of Piet Mondrian.

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is the critical statement Schwitters printed in the periodical “G,” No. 3, 1924, Schwitters included a treatise on the subject of “Logically Consistent Poetry.” A structural linguistic analysis, Schwitters’s statement on logically consistent poetry assumes that “it is impossible to explain the meaning of art,” and in his construction of a critical reductio-ad-absurdum proceeds to postulate that “the basic material of poetry is not the word but the letter.” To quote Schwitters:

1. The sequence of letters in a word is unequivocal, the same for everyone. It is independent of the personal attitude of the beholder.

2. Sound is only unequivocal in the spoken word. In the written word, the sound depends on the capacity of the beholder to imagine it. Therefore sound can only be material of the reciting of poetry and not for the writing of poetry.

3. Meaning is only unequivocal when, for example, the object signified by the word is actually present. Otherwise it is dependant on the imaginative capacity of the beholder.

4. The association of ideas cannot be unequivocal because it is dependent solely on the associative capacity of the beholder. Everyone has different experiences and remembers and associates them differently.

Schwitters concludes that “a logically consistent poem evaluates letters and groups of letters against eachother.” To this end, he composed his “Ursonate,” which clocks in at about 45 minutes when recited, and requires an elaborate system of graphic notations to indicate what sounds correspond to which symbols on the printed page.

Although Schwitters ultimately demonstrated the compatibility of critical insight with aesthetic beauty, he also demonstrated the limitations of critical methodology by using his art to illustrate the way in which critical elucidation often leads to satirical consequences or blatant absurdity. In composing his “Ursonate,” which is linguistic gibberish, Schwitters was able to make an extremely articulate statement about art and criticism in conjunction with his writings on methodology.

While it is possible to illustrate the subtlety and complexity of Schwitters in the context of a deconstructive analysis of the dissolution of the boundaries between

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while a work of art may seem meaningless or pointless, for better or for worse, it can (and often is) related to a very specific subjectmatter in a very specific way that is mediated by critical methodology.

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addiction to oil

2006-04-18T07:38:00.000-05:00

one obstacle to overcoming america's addiction to oil is the internal combustion engine itself.

the best internal combustion engine designs are only 30% effecient: this means 70% of the energy in gasoline is lost as ambient heat due to friction between moving parts. moreover, much of the energy used in accelleration is also lost as heat during breaking.

a novel mechanical solution is to use flywheel technology to convert linear motion into angular momentum during breaking, and then to convert this angular momentum back into linear motion at driving speeds, thereby reducing the load on the engine.

another solution is to invest in quality mass transit and walkable neighborhoods. grocery stores and park spaces within walking distance of homes are key to walkable neighborhoods, and increased taxation on the wealthy (mass transit tax on luxury vehicles) is key to creating quality mass transit.

structure of religious experience

2006-04-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

there are two fundamental types of religious experience, each with a distinct structure.

the religious experience common in semitic/christian traditions is of the structure subject-content-object, that is, the subject (worshiper) has an experience (a prayer answered) of a particular object (god). in this model, the content of the experience is evidence that the object (god) exists if the causes and conditions of the experience accord with the attributes of the object (god).

the religious experience sought after in buddhism is of the structure subject-content, that is, the subject (adept) has an experience of enlightment or satori, which has no particular object necessarily. in this model, the cause (object) of the experience (content) is irrelevant; all that is relevant is that the content of the subject's experience accords with attributes consistent with enlightenment or satori.

the latter type of experience can be found in semitic/christian traditions in the concept of time (and causality) found in the old testament book of ecclesiastes. it is akin to poetic truth, which is different in kind from logical truth, but literal in much the same sense.

paul valery wondered why defunct philosophical theories are still studied as having philosophical value, while defunct scientific theories are relegated to history. he concluded with a certain idea of poetry, a poetry of ideas...

a poetry that transcends the forms of art, to live through its very own being...

to embody even wretchedness, because there is no distinction between samsara and enlightenment...

because distinction is entirely arbitrary when confronted with the truths of the soul...

when the truth of the soul is seen from afar, and whose presence is felt with a sublime pious terror...

when all one can do is follow this truth, and revel in the beauty of the world...

mere ideas struggling to inhabit the world with this beauty...

change as process

2006-04-14T21:50:00.000-05:00

from eddies in turbulent flows to fractures in glass to ion doping in semiconductor design it is imperfections that form the fabric of our existence. friction is imperfection. psychologically friction is a metaphor for frustration, conflict - but in the absence of friction, there is no motion either. no progress without imperfection. how to learn to adapt intuitively to imperfection, to pattern a whole mode of constructive discourse around the imperfections we ourselves may cause or contribute to...

the notion of a "wicked problem" has a general applicability in describing nonlinear sorts of problems like one often finds in sociology; for example, it came as a great surprise to traffic engineers a couple decades ago when they tried to relieve traffic congestion on interstates running through cities by making the highways larger: rather than ease congestion, the larger highways just made more people drive, leading to more congestion, more pollution, and a socio-economically destructive de-urbanization...

how to bring about positive change...

spirit and practice.

2006-04-14T14:30:00.000-05:00

despite being an irish catholic jewish zen buddhist by both upbringing and practice, i have mixed feelings about ritualized religion; i do think with some certainty that being religious about things has a great deal of value. i am trying to be more religious about always cueing my videotapes to the end of my recording so whenever i have a tape sitting in or near my camera i can just pick up my camera and record should the spirits move me. i am quite religious about always carrying a notebook and a pen. religiousness is a way to emotional certainty.

public service

2006-04-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

it bothers me to hear how defensive administration officials become when confronted wih criticism of the wars in iraq and afghanistan. public servants should serve the public, not the other way around.

i would like to see a prewar cost-benefit analysis that considers the effects of proactive programs to strengthen governments in moderate and progressive middle eastern states like lebanon and jordan.

i would like to see footage from multiple angles of the plane that hit the pentagon.

i would like to know why the world has seen over and over the world trade center collapse, but why nobody has seen even a single clear image of the attack on the pentagon.

i would like to know why effective inter-city and inter-state mass transit is not a national security priority: 40,000 people die every year on highways.

i would like to know why those who rely on mass transit pay a larger percentage of their transportation costs compared to those who commute by car.

i would like to know why mass transit is viewed as something subsidized by the weathy for the poor, but roads that are subsidized by the poor for the wealthy are viewed as an entitlement.

i would like to know what sacrifices the president has made for the wars.

i would like to know why there is a bounty on osama in the tens of millions, but we've spent hundreds of billions to get saddam, who never did anything to us.

fragment on information economies

2006-04-13T17:15:00.000-05:00

as a general rule it is easier to produce or store information than it is to retrieve or identify relevant citeria for the retrieval of information. as economies deindustrialize and information becomes a primary economic exchange commodity, data mining will become an increasingly valuable service.

the shift in america to an information economy is evident: who marries who on a sitcom, who swindles who on the news, novels, stock prices, and music are all consumed simply as different types of information...

thinking ain't illegal yet.

2006-04-13T10:51:00.000-05:00

too many white americans are afraid to face the truth that institutional racism is not only real, but requires more than opening up one's wallet to address. we need to open our hearts, to see that there is not just white america, black america, hispanic, asian, etc., but privelaged, underprivelaged, and oppressed america.

the fact is that those in power have an incentive to keep the privelaged anesthetized with a constant onslaught of costly entertainment, and to keep underprivelaged and oppressed working three jobs while raising kids and still stay poor: if enough americans had enough time to sit around and think about what is going on around them, it would be so painfully obvious that the ignorant privelaged couldn't live with themselves.

a well educated populace is the greatest single threat to a fascist regime.

there are third world living conditions all over here in america.

thought is not free.

sacrifice is not just a word used in political speeches.

psychology is not a marketing strategy.

Lost Highway and Mechanized Warfare

2006-04-13T07:33:00.000-05:00

David Lynch's Lost Highway is an allegory about the horrors of modern mechanized warfare. While it is tempting to read Lynch's sanitized world of ritualized action and wooden speech as representing a defense mechanism against a world of physical brutality, sexual violence, and sublimated subconscious impulses, Slavoj Zizek in The End of Psychology argues that exactly the opposite is true.

In modern warfare, soldiers may or may not be aware of whether, how, or when they've killed an enemy. Zizek argues that, therefore, soldiers must construct fantasies about killing opposing soldiers in face-to-face situations as a defense mechanism against the knowledge that technology shields them from any sort of verifiable account of what acts they’ve committed in battle. Censored images of brutality in the news therefore make war more horrible, as do fictionalized depictions of bloody battles, because both cases deny the psychological reality of modern armed conflict. Such a denial is especially harmful in mass media because it collapses the boundaries between the private suffering of individual soldiers and the public awareness of what suffering takes place. David Lynch’s film mirrors this conflation by deliberately confusing alternate narratives: experienced reality is often less convincing than constructed reality.

I find Zizek’s argument quite appropriate, particularly because it agrees with intuitive accounts of why a given individual’s expectations may motivate an individual to act contrary to “objective” accounts of reality (because reality constructed from a set of expectations can be extremely convincing). Zizek also provides an account of why efficient mechanized warfare as a political endeavor is inherently immoral (I personally believe we’d get into far fewer wars if we fought like the Viking Berserkers, who ate large quantities of psychedelic mushrooms and tore opposing warriors apart with their bare hands), and provides prescriptive actions for public servants and the owners of media outlets who are responsible for shaping public opinion about armed conflict. Zizek’s account moreover describes why control of media is important in modern authoritarian states: as more people get more information about the world from mass media, the control of mass media becomes an increasingly useful tool for manipulating the constructed realities of large numbers of people.

metaphysics and linguistics

2006-04-12T06:33:00.000-05:00

whether knowledge and belief
entail the same type of truth value,
or whether one entails the other...

if one knows something must one also believe it?

are knowledge and belief subject to
different standards of validity?

knowledge is traditionally defined as
true justified belief...

what if one overhears a stranger using
bigoted language? one may then believe that
this other person is a bigot. how can one then
acquire knowledge of whether or not one's belief in this
case is true (such a belief is justifiable, since it
is supported by linguistic evidence) or whether
one's anger at hearing such language is
justifiable?

in a sense, one's orientation towards such a
situation is entirely dependant upon what is
in one's own mind: it is a product of both
what one has heard another person say and do,
as well as what one believes oneself.

one is then left with a metaphysical problem
and a practical imperative: one may feel one ought
to address the use of bigoted language without
being as radical oneself (lest one be hypocritical,
or more intollerant than that which offended one
in the first place).

although one, in such a situation, may be uncertain
how best to behave - in part, perhaps, for fear of
causing a scene over what may be a bad joke -
one may be left with the sense, however one
chooses to behave, that one ought not to have been
faced with such a problem in the first place.

bigotry is rooted in corrupt language.
a practical approach in a collective sense is
to take the power of bigoted language away from
the bigots. this effort was advanced by parts of the
homosexual community with words like "fag" and
"queer." by using these words freely themselves,
many homosexuals advanced a program to "normalize"
derogatory terms, to defuse this language of its incindiary
power. such an approach is fundamentally american
in its sensibility: if one american can use a word,
any american can. connotation is to an extent
consensus. there ought not be any privelaged
vocabularies: we all speak the same language, and
we're all americans.

this is not to suggest we ought to be frivolous or
irreverent with words that have a painful history,
but merely that exclusivity - in language as well as
economics or politics - breeds a power that will be
exploited.

a practical approach in a personal sense is to
remind oneself of the importance of tolerance:
the use of bigoted language by one person, if
addressed reasonably, may inspire another to
change his or her habits. otherwise, anger just
breeds anger, and anger is blinding.

if one is angry all the time, it is hard
to let love life beauty and satori into one's
life, and the bigots win.

a good place to start perhaps is by discussing
language, by finding out what a word means to
the person using it, what that person understands
his or her words to mean...

soviet montage

2006-04-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectics in a larger philosophical context are subject to critique from the perspective of the relationship of his politics to psychology.

In Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein's politics is overtly addressed through his dialectics – and not only in virtue of his Party affiliation, nor his State commission to produce the piece. He seems more than willing to criticize the Party to which he credited his support: the revolutionary soldiers – even as the heroes of the revolutionary tale – on their first glorious military excursion destroy only one thing: the opera house. This would be an odd statement for an artist with Eisenstein’s beliefs to make (considering his use of metaphor generally: as with the ideogram, musical terminology, or visual sensibilities (rotten meat)) if he didn’t mean to present a subversive critique of the Party. If he showed willingness elsewhere to interpret history for the sake of his tale, he might also have changed the target of the revolution’s attack (that is, being an artist using the opera house as a symbol for his own vocation. the historical authenticity of that event in the film is not unequivocal for me; subjectivity, unlike objectivity, can explain human fault; objectivity can only describe our failings as humans without offering any rational suggestion for how we might improve our lot: useless!); perhaps, this curiousity is an unavoidable demand of his dialectic methodology: thesis and antithesis, as in, a film that portrays its own destruction – or impossibility. Eisenstein could be using his political dialectic to speak anagogically, as the Dada spoke about the destruction of art; or he could be speaking literally, as in, “this is what happened 20 years ago,” or, “these are the formal possibilities of the medium (sheer potential to be sudden, to shock with the impact of an explosion, to record movement, to be edited in various ways)”; he could be speaking allegorically, as in, simply using an arbitrary overt politics to call attention generally to the fact this film is not just a tale about the revolution, and to thereby imply any number of possible interpretations.

About shot and montage as a dialectic of the physical and mental (critique of dialectical materialism?). Pavlov’s conditioned stimulus-response model could be interpreted as relating the societal understanding of cinematic technique (external conditioning/the shot) to the mind’s understanding of a particular experience of cinema (internal response/montage), in virtue of the fact that (as Kuleshov demonstrated) the juxtaposition of various images is understood by humans in ways that are somewhat definite and regular. Stimulus is objective (external: other people are objects in a way that “I” am not), response subjective (internal: language has objectively described syntax with definite physical corollaries (the shapes of letters) – none of which is ever influenced by the meanings they convey, and thus can be used to describe the meanings they convey (by definition) without being required to explain the meanings they convey. In the sentence “I saw a truck,” the word “truck” stays the same as if it were in the sentence “I’ve never seen a truck.” “Truck” is a syntactically vital descriptive word in the sentence “I saw a truck,” but the sequence of letters ‘truck’ does nothing to explain what a “truck” is, nor does it shed much light upon what it is to see.). Shot is objective, physical: it, although not like a block or a letter, is not unlike a word, or an idea, or a house. Shot is contiguous in many ways similar to our experience of consciousness. The shot is the causally-related material origin of any particular experience of cinema. The montage, however, is what the individual spectator sees and understands. It is like how, when one reads a word, one understands the word rather than each individual letter in order; or the meaning of a sentence supercedes the meaning of a word. The film (both a strip of celluloid as well as an idea in minds) is therefore a dialectic of shot and montage.

Interesting to note that Eisenstein’s understanding of montage has tremendous descriptive strength insofar as it describes how the individual relates to film as a mass media; Eisenstein’s view, however, suffers from an important shortcoming of behaviorism generally. Behaviorism is very strong descriptively, but has no explanatory strength without an implicit appeal to cognitive terms. By analogy, Eisenstein’s view of cinema makes no room for much of experimental cinema (which can be art in virtue of the critical statement that informs it, while at the same time lack any formal property that would identify it as art (this point is discussed at length by Arthur Danto. Common examples of art objects that cannot be identified as art objects based solely on appeal to physical properties, or material rules of causality: Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp (who denied that he was an artist or that he was making art); The Brillo Box, by Andy Warhol (who replicated consumer goods and had other people paint his paintings)) – unless elements other than shot and montage (or any element whose meaning can be understood by appeal to physical properties, for that matter) – are sufficient to qualify a film as being cinematic (or to have meaning in relation to cinema by implication).). A similar problem afflicts behaviorism: to understand why a person steps out of the way of a moving vehicle – a person who, in such a case, responds to a material stimulus in a conditioned way without any sort of causal relation that resembles the way a rock falls from a cliff, or a protein interacts with an enzyme, or a person when burned recoils from fire – requires appeal to cognitive terms that find no material analog, such as, understood, believed, or was afraid. Any psychological state montage in film causes for a spectator can with equal validity be said to have been caused by the film. Science derives its value from predictive strength. Behaviorism and the stimulus response model – if for nor reason other than the sheer range of past experiences spectators bring with them to movies – cannot relate a film

a definite seor any spectator; the syntax of film is not unequivocal. The spectator, to Eisenstein, was not a part of the cinema. If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear it, of course it makes a sound.

anarchism and decentralizaition

2006-04-11T10:18:00.000-05:00

anarchism is a democratic form of governance that emphasizes a decentralized socialist economy, regional political autonomy, freedom of association, and the importance of a free press. anarchist society comes to resemble a federation of federations, and promotes both individual and corporate diversity, while promoting cooperation for the good of the whole.

one feature separating anarchism from communism is decentralization: this removes incentives for political leaders to amass individual power by diminishing the ability of powerful individuals to manipulate large numbers of individuals and corporations.

among the benefits of this type of decentralized organization are economic and political redundancy and efficiency. redundancy and efficiency may seem like contrary notions, but their agreement is this: by having multiple individuals and organizations working to solve the same problems, there exists an additional resiliency to catastrophe, multiple sources to supply a commodity, and an increased probability that a given problem will be solved (in virtue of a greater number of different individual or corporate sensibilities working on the same problem).

this type of distributed infrastructure is key to the longevity of many of the planet’s oldest and most successful animal species. the termite exists in a decentralized colony that, although containing a queen termite, operates without central direction from the queen. ant colonies are similar: through the arbitrary behavior of a large number of independent agents, extremely efficient and complex behaviors emerge from the collective behavior of the many ants.

for example, an ant colony seeking food will send out many ants to accomplish the task. as the ants wander around looking for food, they leave behind a trail of chemicals called pheromones. when an individual ant finds food, it follows its trail back to the nest, reinforcing the strength of that trail, and adding an additional pheromone that indicates food has been found in that direction. when another ant who is also wandering around looking for food comes across the trail of the first ant, the second ant follows the first ant’s trail, further strengthening the pheromone trail. when hundreds and thousands of individual ants are involved, their chemical trails evolve extremely efficient routes to the nearest food resource. this efficiency is not the product of the behavior of any individual ant, but is product of the collective behavior of many ants; furthermore, there emerges from this collective action a sort of goal-directed behavior, without any central direction. it is the multiplicity of individuals, each behaving individually within a structured environment (structured by the formal properties of pheromones), that is important.