United States of Homeland Security

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?

On the Macroeconomic Subtext of Healthcare Reform

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

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

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

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).

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

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?

Gitmo '07 for Fun and Profit

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

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

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

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 Weaponization of the Magnetosphere

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?

Why the President is a Puppet

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

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.

Surveillance Society for Fun and Profit

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

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?

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.

What Are We Really Doing in Iraq?

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.

Hidden Costs of the Iraq War

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

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.