Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Lenghty excerpts from Powell's speech to the UN.

This will be long and boring for some, but I have decided to post it because my desire for truth outweighs my concern for your boredom. It is now clear that Saddam has lied and will continue to lie to American or UN officials. We must now evaluate the extent to which this lying might conceal or reveal the security threat that Iraq poses to America.

The material I will present to you comes from a variety of sources. Some are U.S. sources. And some are those of other countries. Some of the sources are technical, such as intercepted telephone conversations and photos taken by satellites. Other sources are people who have risked their lives to let the world know what Saddam Hussein is really up to.

I cannot tell you everything that we know. But what I can share with you, when combined with what all of us have learned over the years, is deeply troubling. What you will see is an accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behavior. The facts on Iraqis' behavior--Iraq's behavior demonstrate that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort--no effort--to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq. The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq's elite military unit, the Republican Guard. (Play audio tape.)

Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard between these two officers. First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is coming, and they know what he's coming for, and they know he's coming the next day. He's coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things. But they're worried.

"We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?"

What is their concern? Their concern is that it's something they should not have, something that should not be seen. The general is incredulous:

"You didn't get a modified. You don't have one of those, do you?"
"I have one."
"Which, from where?"
"From the workshop, from the Al Kendi Company?"
"What?"
"From Al Kendi."
"I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left."
"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."

Note what he says: "We evacuated everything." We didn't destroy it. We didn't line it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.

"I will come to you tomorrow."

The Al Kendi Company (shows photograph): This is a company that is well known to have been involved in prohibited weapons systems activity.

Let me play another tape for you. As you will recall, the inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads on January 16. On January 20, four days later, Iraq promised the inspectors it would search for more. You will now hear an officer from Republican Guard headquarters issuing an instruction to an officer in the field. Their conversation took place just last week on January 30. (Play audio tape.) Let me pause again and review the elements of this message.

"They're inspecting the ammunition you have, yes."
"Yes."
"For the possibility there are forbidden ammo."
"For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?"
"Yes."
"And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there."

Remember the first message, evacuated. This is all part of a system of hiding things and moving things out of the way and making sure they have left nothing behind. If you go a little further into this message, and you see the specific instructions from headquarters:

"After you have carried out what is contained in this message, destroy the message because I don't want anyone to see this message."
"OK, OK."

Why? Why? This message would have verified to the inspectors that they have been trying to turn over things. They were looking for things. But they don't want that message seen, because they were trying to clean up the area to leave no evidence behind of the presence of weapons of mass destruction. And they can claim that nothing was there. And the inspectors can look all they want, and they will find nothing.

This effort to hide things from the inspectors is not one or two isolated events, quite the contrary. This is part and parcel of a policy of evasion and deception that goes back 12 years, a policy set at the highest levels of the Iraqi regime.

We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called quote, ``a higher committee for monitoring the inspections teams,'' unquote. Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament. Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs. The committee reports directly to Saddam Hussein. It is headed by Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. Its members include Saddam Hussein's son Qusay.

This committee also includes Lieutenant General Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to Saddam. In case that name isn't immediately familiar to you, General Saadi has been the Iraqi regime's primary point of contact for Dr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei. It was General Saadi who last fall publicly pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi's job is not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing.

We have learned a lot about the work of this special committee. We learned that just prior to the return of inspectors last November the regime had decided to resume what we heard called, quote, ``the old game of cat and mouse,'' unquote. For example, let me focus on the now famous declaration that Iraq submitted to this council on December 7. Iraq never had any intention of complying with this council's mandate.

Instead, Iraq planned to use the declaration, overwhelm us and to overwhelm the inspectors with useless information about Iraq's permitted weapons so that we would not have time to pursue Iraq's prohibited weapons. Iraq's goal was to give us, in this room, to give those us on this council the false impression that the inspection process was working.

You saw the result. Dr. Blix pronounced the 12,200-page declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and practically devoid of new evidence. Could any member of this council honestly rise in defense of this false declaration?

Everything we have seen and heard indicates that, instead of cooperating actively with the inspectors to ensure the success of their mission, Saddam Hussein and his regime are busy doing all they possibly can to ensure that inspectors succeed in finding absolutely nothing. My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

Orders were issued to Iraq's security organizations, as well as to Saddam Hussein's own office, to hide all correspondence with the Organization of Military Industrialization. This is the organization that oversees Iraq's weapons of mass destruction activities. Make sure there are no documents left which could connect you to the OMI.

We know that Saddam's son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam's numerous palace complexes. We know that Iraqi government officials, members of the ruling Baath Party and scientists have hidden prohibited items in their homes. Other key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.

Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq's nuclear program.

Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council?

Our sources tell us that, in some cases, the hard drives of computers at Iraqi weapons facilities were replaced. Who took the hard drives. Where did they go? What's being hidden? Why? There's only one answer to the why: to deceive, to hide, to keep from the inspectors. Numerous human sources tell us that the Iraqis are moving, not just documents and hard drives, but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors.

While we were here in this council chamber debating Resolution 1441 last fall, we know, we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were to be moved every one to four weeks to escape detection.

We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities.

Let me say a word about satellite images before I show a couple. The photos that I am about to show you are sometimes hard for the average person to interpret, hard for me. The painstaking work of photo analysis takes experts with years and years of experience, pouring for hours and hours over light tables. But as I show you these images, I will try to capture and explain what they mean, what they indicate to our imagery specialists.

Let's look at one. This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji (ph). This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions. In fact, this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells. Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.

How do I know that? How can I say that? Let me give you a closer look. Look at the image on the left. On the left is a close-up of one of the four chemical bunkers. The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions. The arrow at the top that says security points to a facility that is the signature item for this kind of bunker. Inside that facility are special guards and special equipment to monitor any leakage that might come out of the bunker. The truck you also see is a signature item. It's a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.

This is characteristic of those four bunkers. The special security facility and the decontamination vehicle will be in the area, if not at any one of them or one of the other, it is moving around those four, and it moves as it needed to move, as people are working in the different bunkers.

Now look at the picture on the right. You are now looking at two of those sanitized bunkers. The signature vehicles are gone, the tents are gone, it's been cleaned up, and it was done on the 22nd of December, as the U.N. inspection team is arriving, and you can see the inspection vehicles arriving in the lower portion of the picture on the right. The bunkers are clean when the inspectors get there. They found nothing.

This sequence of events raises the worrisome suspicion that Iraq had been tipped off to the forthcoming inspections at Taji (ph). As it did throughout the 1990s, we know that Iraq today is actively using its considerable intelligence capabilities to hide its illicit activities. From our sources, we know that inspectors are under constant surveillance by an army of Iraqi intelligence operatives. Iraq is relentlessly attempting to tap all of their communications, both voice and electronics.

I would call my colleagues attention to the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday, which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities. In this next example, you will see the type of concealment activity Iraq has undertaken in response to the resumption of inspections. Indeed, in November 2002, just when the inspections were about to resume this type of activity spiked. Here are three examples.

At this ballistic missile site, on November 10, we saw a cargo truck preparing to move ballistic missile components. At this biological weapons related facility, on November 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly.

At this ballistic missile facility, again, two days before inspections began, five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house cleaning at close to 30 sites.

Days after this activity, the vehicles and the equipment that I've just highlighted disappear and the site returns to patterns of normalcy. We don't know precisely what Iraq was moving, but the inspectors already knew about these sites, so Iraq knew that they would be coming. We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what they had or did not have?

Remember the first intercept in which two Iraqis talked about the need to hide a modified vehicle from the inspectors. Where did Iraq take all of this equipment? Why wasn't it presented to the inspectors?

Iraq also has refused to permit any U-2 reconnaissance flights that would give the inspectors a better sense of what's being moved before, during and after inspectors.

This refusal to allow this kind of reconnaissance is in direct, specific violation of operative paragraph seven of our Resolution 1441.

Saddam Hussein and his regime are not just trying to conceal weapons, they're also trying to hide people. You know the basic facts. Iraq has not complied with its obligation to allow immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted and private access to all officials and other persons as required by Resolution 1441.

The regime only allows interviews with inspectors in the presence of an Iraqi official, a minder. The official Iraqi organization charged with facilitating inspections announced, announced publicly and announced ominously that, quote, ``Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.''

Iraqi Vice President Ramadan accused the inspectors of conducting espionage, a veiled threat that anyone cooperating with U.N. inspectors was committing treason.

Iraq did not meet its obligations under 1441 to provide a comprehensive list of scientists associated with its weapons of mass destruction programs. Iraq's list was out of date and contained only about 500 names, despite the fact that UNSCOM had earlier put together a list of about 3,500 names.

Let me just tell you what a number of human sources have told us. Saddam Hussein has directly participated in the effort to prevent interviews. In early December, Saddam Hussein had all Iraqi scientists warned of the serious consequences that they and their families would face if they revealed any sensitive information to the inspectors. They were forced to sign documents acknowledging that divulging information is punishable by death.

Saddam Hussein also said that scientists should be told not to agree to leave Iraq; anyone who agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq would be treated as a spy. This violates 1441.

In mid-November, just before the inspectors returned, Iraqi experts were ordered to report to the headquarters of the special security organization to receive counterintelligence training. The training focused on evasion methods, interrogation resistance techniques, and how to mislead inspectors.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

For example, in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.

On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.

In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to replace the workers who'd been sent home. A dozen experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein's guest houses. It goes on and on and on.

As the examples I have just presented show, the information and intelligence we have gathered point to an active and systematic effort on the part of the Iraqi regime to keep key materials and people from the inspectors in direct violation of Resolution 1441. The pattern is not just one of reluctant cooperation, nor is it merely a lack of cooperation. What we see is a deliberate campaign to prevent any meaningful inspection work.

My colleagues, operative paragraph four of U.N. Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall constitute--the facts speak for themselves--shall constitute a further material breach of its obligation.

We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test--to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they early on indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed to be an early test.

They failed that test. By this standard, the standard of this operative paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable.

Iraq has now placed itself in danger of the serious consequences called for in U.N. Resolution 1441. And this body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately.

The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: ``Enough. Enough.''

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Jo turns my head to loyalties long passed.

Before this week, Yugo-nostalgics still held to the shred of hope that Montenegro and Serbia might remain that ghost of a chance once known as "Yugoslavia". Alas, the trendiness of hope, combined with the reality of the new "Serbia-Montenegro", forces former Yugos to finally admit that in a Yugo, you go nowhere.

Yugoslavia's life-span of 74 years might have benefitted from a little of that universal healthcare provided by "peacekeeping regimes". Unfortunately, however, peacekeeping by force followed the same course as its fellow universal healthcare pipe-dream. This development certainly changes the theoretic argument for federation as a political structure well-configured to deal with problems of ethnic and economic diversity. What works in the United States does not work everywhere else in providing stable political arrangements.

On the particular question of Montenegro, Tim Judah's analysis of Montenegro's quest for independence is as insightful as it is modest. Of course, Judah's expertise on the postcommunist problems of the Balkans proves hard to match even for scholars as brilliant as Michael Ignatieff. Hopefully, Balkan scholars will take this opportunity to argue against the pigeon-hole development solutions that have plagued postcommunist states since 1990. The time has come to seek, not a third way, but a particular, situation-specific, context-driven way for each individual country faced with the problem of filling an authoritarian leadership void.

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Getting naked for your country.



So, ladies and gents, perhaps the time has come to organize your own community buck-naked statement in the name of liberty and patriotism for all.

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Australians fight over the express meaning of "local amenities" in neighborhoods.

Prostitutes in Australia have won the right to take their work home with them. The decision, passed a Council by merely a margin, allows prostitutes to work from home providing they work alone and do not advertise. A sex-worker by the name of "Thomas" expresses his delight with the decision in The Sunday Morning Herald:

Formerly a resident in a South Sydney Council area, which has a similar policy in place, Thomas said his neighbours there either did not suspect he was a sex worker, or they did not care. "To most people I was just that nice local boy who said hello in the street and asked them how they were," he said, adding it is more desirable to have more than one prostitute per house to ensure safety.

Yet those in the Opposition, like planning spokesman Andrew Humpher-son, hold that prostitution in the suburbs in any form detracts from "residential amenity". Humpher-son has called on the government to overturn the decision.

Wednesday, February 5, 2003

My intellectual love affair with Lewis Lapham soars to new heights.

An excerpt from his Harper's "Notebook" on regime change, which can be found in the February 2003 issue. I know Lewis didn't mean this as a Valentine for yours truly, but it makes a nice daydream.

I'm old enough to remember public speeches unfettered by the dogma of political correctness, a time when it was possible to apply for a job without submitting to a blood or urine test, when people construed their freedoms as a constitutional birthright, not as favors grudgingly bestowed by a sometimes benevolent government. I can also remember the days when people weren't afraid of tobacco smoke, sexual intercourse, and saturated fats; when irony was understood and money wasn't sacred; when even men in uniform could be trusted to recognize a joke.

The spacious and once familiar atmospheres of liberty (wise-cracking a open-ended, tolerant, unkempt, experimental, democratic) didn't survive the poisoning of Hiroshima or serve the purposes of the Cold War with the Russians. The easygoing provincial republic of fifty years ago gradually assumed the character of a world-encircling nation-state, its plowshares beating into swords, borrowing from its enemies (first the nonexistent Communist empire, now the unseen terrorist jihad) the practice of restricting the freedom of its own citizens in the interest of what the increasingly oligarchic governments in Washington proclaim to be "the national security".

Yes, Lapham is right-- at times, it feels that the Bush administration associates the American spirit with power instead of liberty, with global muscle-flexing instead of open trade, and with messianic conquest as opposed to laissez-faire. Perhaps the worst part of the deal, however, is that "national" security has come to matter more than "individual" security from overweening dictators, governments, and laws made by men for men.

I want to be protected from the policemen of Tuscaloosa, who are now armed with more powers in the name of fighting terrorism than their incomplete high-school educations permit them to spell. I want Bush to take back his sacred tax-cuts and replace them with a voluntary tax code which allows each of us to choose the annual government programs to which we will contribute our hard-earned cash. I want to take back the money that is making this inane defense-spending possible. And, most of all, I want to know that our voices as Americans, whether shrill or soft, might still play an integral part in defining our duties as citizens and human beings.

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Congressman Paul gives the silent resignation of American citizens a bad name.

Congressman Ron Paul's speech to the House on January 23rd revitalized a few challenging questions in modern political theory-- namely, the extent to which democracy carries the potential to undermine the individual liberty presumed for its proper functioning. This tension lies at the root of current conservative/Republican ideology, whereby the temptation to espouse majoritarianism sets up a conundrum in which the efficient good appears more attractive than the principle-based right.

A constitution in and by itself does not guarantee liberty in a republican form of government. Even a perfect constitution with this goal in mind is no better than the moral standards and desires of the people. Although the United States Constitution was by far the best ever written for the protection of liberty, with safeguards against the dangers of a democracy, it too was flawed from the beginning. Instead of guaranteeing liberty equally for all people, the authors themselves yielded to the democratic majority’s demands that they compromise on the issue of slavery. This mistake, plus others along the way, culminated in a Civil War that surely could have been prevented with clearer understanding and a more principled approach to the establishment of a constitutional republic.

Subsequently, the same urge to accommodate majority opinion, while ignoring the principles of individual liberty, led to some other serious errors. Even amending the Constitution in a proper fashion to impose alcohol prohibition turned out to be a disaster. Fortunately this was rectified after a short time with its repeal.

But today, the American people accept drug prohibition, a policy as damaging to liberty as alcohol prohibition. A majority vote in Congress has been enough to impose this very expensive and failed program on the American people, without even bothering to amend the Constitution. It has been met with only minimal but, fortunately, growing dissent. For the first 150 years of our history, when we were much closer to being a true republic, there were no federal laws dealing with this serious medical problem of addiction.

The ideas of democracy, not the principles of liberty, were responsible for passage of the 16th Amendment. It imposed the income tax on the American people and helped to usher in the modern age of the welfare/warfare state. Unfortunately, the 16th Amendment has not been repealed, as was the 18th. As long as the 16th Amendment is in place, the odds are slim that we can restore a constitutional republic dedicated to liberty. The personal income tax is more than symbolic of a democracy; it is a predictable consequence.

If you haven't yet grasped the courageous radicalism of Ron Paul's statements, then the following will leave you with no choice.

Unfortunately, too many people confuse the democratic elections of leaders of a republic for democracy by accepting the rule of majority opinion in all affairs. For majorities to pick leaders is one thing. It is something quite different for majorities to decide what rights are, to redistribute property, to tell people how to manage their personal lives, and to promote undeclared, unconstitutional wars.

The majority is assumed to be in charge today and can do whatever it pleases. If the majority has not yet sanctioned some desired egregious action demanded by special interests, the propaganda machine goes into operation, and the pollsters relay the results back to the politicians who are seeking legitimacy in their endeavors. The rule of law and the Constitution have become irrelevant, and we live by constant polls.

This trend toward authoritarian democracy was tolerated because, unlike a military dictatorship, it was done in the name of benevolence, fairness, and equity. The pretense of love and compassion by those who desire to remold society and undermine the Constitution convinced the recipients, and even the victims, of its necessity. Since it was never a precipitous departure from the republic, the gradual erosion of liberty went unnoticed.

But it is encouraging that more and more citizens are realizing just how much has been lost by complacency. The resolution to the problems we face as a result of this profound transition to pure democracy will be neither quick nor painless. This transition has occurred even though the word “democracy” does not appear in the Constitution or in the Declaration of Independence, and the Founders explicitly denounced it.

Over the last hundred years, the goal of securing individual liberties within the framework of a constitutional republic has been replaced with incessant talk of democracy and fairness.

Rallying support for our ill-advised participation in World War I, Wilson spoke glowingly of “making the world safe for democracy,” and never mentioned national security. This theme has, to this day, persisted in all our foreign affairs. Neo-conservatives now brag of their current victories in promoting what they call “Hard Wilsonism.”

If representative government exists-- if we elect a few to speak on our behalf-- then this is precisely the sort of serious thinking that representatives should be doing. Complacency is the bane of political and personal reform. Complacency is what makes goose-stepping easier than standing apart from the crowd. I encourage each of you, regardless of your political proclitivities, to tip your hats to a public servant that puts the other sycophants on the Hill to shame.

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Where are Christians lining up in the war on terrorism?

Or, rather, will they match the jihad of extremist Muslims with a holy war of their own? Take a look at this to see how the Christian virtues of tolerance and humility are interpreted by various sects and denominations.

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

The seatbelt Stasi.

Courtney Love got arrested in London for causing a disturbance in flight patterns. According to police sources, the 38-year-old Love "was being generally disruptive, using abusive language and refusing to sit down and put her belt on" during an overnight flight from L.A. to London. Upon her arrival at Heathrow, police questioned Love for 20 minutes, then arrested her. She was escorted off the plane shortly after 11am with a police officer on each arm.

Police sources said Love was in custody at Heathrow airport where she was being held on suspicion of "endangering an aircraft" and "disruptive behaviour". Out of curiosity, if one were to light up a cancer-stick aboard an international aircraft, might there be legal grounds for being arrested as "terrorist"?

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

A cultural collage.

John Seligman reviews Cass Sunstein's Risk and Reason for Commentary. Also, "Hello, Dolly!" by Jennifer Schuessler reviews two new books about robots and our modern search for the mechanistic lifestyle.

For smart fiction, read an excerpt from Leslie Epstein's "Desert", which could not be more timely without sacrificing authenticity.

Monday, February 3, 2003

In defense of acknowledging our ignorance.

Given the reverence of Western civilization for Greek political philosophy, the reality of Greek democracy in ancient Athens-- to take a particular example-- might banish a few favored assumptions about the liberty-loving foundations of Western civilization. First I give you the facts, then I'll explain their significance.

Greek democracy in ancient Athens did not rest on the time-honored American conception of "individual rights". Instead, the importance of social class, status, family honor, and dignity secured social order, and provided the framework in which social relations and interactions were aggregated and organized. Although Aristotle can be credited with sophisticated philosophical explanations of "natural rights", insofar as these rights existed, they existed merely by virtue of the state's capacity to guarantee them. This might help explain the anti-liberal leanings of Aristotle's philosophy-- including his reverence for the state, his justifications of slavery, his motley gender theories, and his trumpeting of tyrants.

It also bears mentioning that participatory democracy in Greece served to maintain the economic and political structure of society, whereby an elite, masculine few enjoyed ample leisure to rule, theorize, and fornicate at their discretion, while the unfortunate many labored to maintain the hierarchy. Women were considered the property of men; marriage tore the woman from her kin and her household gods, delivering her to a husband who then instructed her as to her new gods and loyalties.

Why is this elucidation important right now? Well, the deifiers of Western civ took September 11th as an opportunity to wage war against open-mindedness, critical historical examination, and academic scholarship by characterizing Muslim civilization as essentially doomed to fundamentalism or extremism.

Such classification by civilization fossilizes political and cultural discourse in that its proponents presuppose a deterministic, Fukuyama-esque historical process. Needless to say, as the neoconservatives at The Weekly Standard make abundantly clear, our civilization will win. Just as Lenin believed that communism would triumph over capitalism by the laws of historical materialism, the "clash of civilizations" crowd believes capitalism and Western political democracy will necessarily triumph over other economic or political models. And just as Lenin, Stalin, and other great Soviets deemed it expedient to speed up the transition to global communism with the exercise of a little nation-building-by-bombing, our excitable Kristol-crazed necons consider 9-11 a mandate from heaven, encouraging America to hasten transition in the Middle East, Asia, and elsewhere that the ugly demons of "anti-Americanism" might rear their nastly little heads.

The sacred foundations of Western civilization, while worthy of intense study and reverence, should not be so-construed as a result of their percieved liberalism or individualism. Likewise, the foundations of other civilizations cannot be relegated to the category of authoritarian or anti-individualist merely by association. If neoconservatives and American academics continue such self-destructive trendology, the courage of our convictions might prove less resilient than the weakness of our committments to free thinking and democratic inquiry.

Monday, February 3, 2003

Evolutionary psychology-- the subtle science of grounding excuses for masculine shortcomings in a Darwinism everyone seems to enjoy.

It doesn't take a specialist to call a spade a spade, just as it doesn't take a scientist to recognize evolutionary psychology as a "fashinable ideology". In fact, while the writers at Maxim, Cosmo, or Stuff may not know how to spell the theory, they certainly consider it an underlying credo for all things hot and masculine. Color me disgusted. Come on guys-- you can conquer the world but you can't seem to accept personal responsibility for your weaknesses? I know, I know, blame it on evolution, genes, sex, whatever. And while you're at it, grow up.

Monday, February 3, 2003

Google gives forsaken lovers an opportunity for revenge.

Ugly. I don't know what to say except that I've never despised an ex-boyfriend enough to stoop quite so low. Honestly, problems in a relationship are never the fault of just one person. Usually, blame can be more evenly distributed than the simple resort to "bastard" or "bitch" lets us presume.

In the end, we each get what is coming to us in some shape or form-- a natural consequence of our good or bad decisions. The most poetic justice is the kind that never shows its hand. So don't bother. Vengeance sullies the soul of the bearer more than the soul of the intended target. Limit the collateral damage. Call it a day. Thank ex-man/woman for what he/she may have taught you about the world, about human relationships, and more importantly, about yourself.

Life, love, and the pursuit of happiness prove far too beautiful and elegaic to be drowned in revenge fantasies. That said, it can never hurt to check the google galaxy for unfortunate slips. Picture me grinning.

Sunday, February 2, 2003

Another little game that beats talking about global warming.

For those who prefer to use brain cells for stocking up information on favorite indie or emo bands, the Emo Game proves positively frisky. The goal-- to rescue the Get Up Kids from Steven Tyler. The charm-- that certain je ne sais quoi.

Sunday, February 2, 2003

Affirmative action just doesn't tap into the right human desires.

Joe Keohane touts his Sam-Cooke-inspired theory of academic motivation in The Weekly Dig. What Joe wants to see is policy which taps into the insatiable common ground shared by most young Americans-- the terrain of lust. His argument:

Barring those weird monomaniacs in high school who evaluated their every pencil swipe in terms of how it would affect their attractiveness to colleges (a good number of whom ended up as freshman suicides anyway), most teens, though extraordinarily perceptive, lack the ability to think more than two minutes into the future. Which coincidentally is about how long it takes them to complete the sex act.

Furthermore, it goes without saying that the traditional carrots, only dubiously effective in the first place, aren’t faring so well these days. Abstract notions such as ambition, pride, dignity, self-betterment and the nobility of seeking knowledge are being increasingly obscured by our newer, more beloved American virtues, such as laziness, unaccountability, immaturity, incuriosity, personality politics, free-floating anger and hypersensitivity – all of which have worked hand in hand with the issue of insufficient funding to destroy the educational experience in America.

So Americans have lost taste for their once-cherished abstractions. Fine. It was bound to happen, and the sooner we admit it to ourselves, the better off we’ll be. What needs to be done then, in order to fix our foundering educational system and, by extension, better educate our people, is appeal to something closer to home to motivate students. Something more concrete. Something they hold dear, and possibly nightly: Lust. Lust is the real answer to affirmative action.

In its current form, affirmative action is cosmetic in the purest sense, because it values or devalues prospective students on the basis of their skin color. In any other circumstance, making assumptions about a stranger solely on the basis of his or her skin color is considered racist, but here it somehow isn’t. Either way, it’s not a sound philosophical foundation for reform.

This is where Sam Cooke comes in. “Wonderful World" dictates that we need neither a business-as-usual approach nor affirmative action. What we really need is a crack force of the aforesaid fetching, intelligent young men and women who vow to roll their eyes at romantic overtures made by the dim and uninspired. These people will serve to hold smitten students to higher standards than their parents, school administrators, the ACLU and the NAACP combined, thus improving everyone’s grades and, in turn, chances to further his or her education.

Joe, you have my vote for Caesar.

Sunday, February 2, 2003

The inner tensions which divide affirmative action programs.

James Traub urges us to "forget diversity" as the reason for keeping affirmative action programs in place. Assuming that we have reached a pleasant array of distinct ethnic, cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and national elements in academic life, Traub still believes affirmative action has not yet run its course.

What, exactly, is so great about diversity? After all, when the process formerly known as affirmative action was first established, in the 60's, the goal was to help black people overcome the historic legacy of discrimination. As President Johnson famously put it in 1965, it is not enough to ''take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains, and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with others.''' The goal of affirmative action in employment, which Johnson mandated by an executive order to his Labor Department (and President Nixon continued), was not to create a ''diverse'' workplace but to overcome hiring practices that had traditionally excluded or disadvantaged blacks. That remains the rationale for the highly circumscribed workplace affirmative action programs of today.

But ''affirmative action'' carries an explicitly zero-sum connotation; if one group of individuals is being advantaged, another group is, of course, being disadvantaged. From the outset, affirmative action, unlike older policies designed to spur integration, was attacked for establishing invidious racial categories. Universities eager to boost black enrollment fell under suspicion for the same reason. And then came diversity. In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell declared in the Bakke case that universities could offer a ''plus factor'' to minority students -- not to overcome the legacy of discrimination but to ensure a diversity of viewpoints.

Diversity has proved a much hardier rationale for the plus factor than the leg-up metaphor of President Johnson's speech, and for a simple reason: its central message is ''Everyone benefits equally.'' Encountering new people and new ideas is a core aspect of the college experience. In ''The Shape of the River,'' a scholarly brief for affirmative action, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok cite survey data showing that both white and black graduates of elite universities attach great importance to the ability to get along and work effectively with people of different racial and cultural backgrounds and also attribute ''a great deal'' of their ability to do so to experiences in diverse settings in college. The University of Michigan has tried to take this claim one step further by conducting a study that purports to show that both white and minority students learn better in racially diverse classroom.

I am sure this article will be hotly-debated in policy circles as the questions of racial preferences continue to animate political discourse.

Sunday, February 2, 2003

When "individualism" looks better in ad campaigns than on the ground.

As "be yourself" and "do your own thing" have become the advertising industry's modern catcall for lonely, bored teens, I have gotten accustomed to the sharp tightening of my throat when I talk to those who flaunt their trendy individualism in an ultra-"hip" brand or a "veggin" attitude. How did the credo of individualism descend into a debauchery of common sense? And why are some of us so obsessed with being "different" and "original" that we would forsake integrity and meaningfulness for the shock-tactic of scandal?

Linda Hall's "Coolspeak" comes as an apt reminder that individualist philosophy is such a wonderful thing because it allows us to grow into our own minds, to discover ourselves in the world. Those who clutch at individualism to justify the need for attention-seeking behavior dance to tune of a straw man.

Have we ever made so much of individuality, and has it ever been so distrusted and despised? “Broadcast your individuality,” the Magazine for Your Me Years instructed (and then, several issues later, it ceased publication). But true individuality, which is not the same as eccentricity, is rarely conspicuous. Survival requires that it travel under cover of darkness (an idea that informs Flaubert’s too-famous dictum, “Live like a bourgeois so that you may think like a demigod”). Quiet precision of thought and speech is individuality’s prerequisite, its lifeblood, its hallmark. You cannot speak for yourself if you are not capable of speaking at all.

Saturday, February 1, 2003

Nerve now.

Nerve's breakdown of the Sundance Film Festival this year is a good place to start planning for the rainy, glum weekends of the new year.

Also, don't miss Lori Sharkley's stab at the frivolous soap-opera-dumb that is today's so-called "reality TV".

Saturday, February 1, 2003

The ideology of capitalism as the best way to wage war against terrorism.

Economist Hernando de Soto argues, in the tradition of Julian Simon, that capitalism is the greatest foe of ideological threats in the modern world, like terrorism, for example. In a feature article for The Economist, De Soto's rise to policy-consulting prominence is described.

So far, over 20 government leaders—from Afghanistan to Mexico to Russia—have sought his counsel. This week alone he was championed by Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum in Davos; and then he discussed development with Bono, a rock star, and Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer.

Mr de Soto is charismatic and sells his ideas energetically. But he is no mere talker. Besides Peru and El Salvador, which made reforms some years ago based on his ideas, Mr de Soto and his think-tank, Institute for Liberty and Democracy, have recently been working with the governments of Mexico, Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras and Haiti—which is expected to be the first of these countries to introduce new legislation in April.

De Soto's pet topic is the importance of property rights in guaranteeing the function of markets, the credibility of contracts, and the social cooperation which serves to eliminate conflict. The fact that he named his two pet dogs "Marx" and "Engels" makes perfect sense after De Soto explains that he named them such because "they are German, hairy and have no respect for property".

Saturday, February 1, 2003

Top writing from Ha'aretz.

Zvi Ba'rel ponders some of the finer not-where-but-when's of the war with Iraq for Ha'aretz. What follows is a series of selected paragraphs from this very insightful article.

The Blix report delivered the goods to everyone: It stated that Iraq had fulfilled its commitment to cooperate with the inspectors and allow them immediate access to all sites, but it also made clear that Iraq had not provided information on its own or facilitated interviews with its scientists. Those who did show up for questioning demanded that an Iraqi official be present.

Blix said he had found no proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but in the same breath, he said that doesn't mean it has none. All it means is that the inspectors have not managed to find any. Meanwhile, the hunt will continue, on the working assumption that Iraq does have such weapons - an assumption that may never be proven unless the United States goes to war, knocks out the regime of Saddam Hussein, and loosens the tongues of scientists and military personnel in charge of chemical and biological weapons programs.

So those who want to go to war on Iraq on the grounds that it has violated Resolution 1441 will find what they are looking for in the reports of Dr. Hans Blix and Dr. Mohammed El-Baradei: Iraq has not extended full cooperation. At the same time, those who want to avoid a war will also find what they are looking for: There is no proof yet that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons. America is not the only one that needs time to organize. The Mecca pilgrimage season begins in early February, followed by Id al-Adha in mid-February. Better to get through that safely before starting a war, the thinking goes. Every time, something else comes up that requires a postponement. Last time it was the elections for the U.S. Congress. Before that, it was the Arab summit in Beirut. And before that - prior to September 11 - it was the sanctions idea.

We ought to remember this, but in February 2001, Colin Powell made a lengthy visit to the Arab countries to persuade them to impose sanctions on Iraq: "smart sanctions," in which countries bordering on Iraq, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria would install customs officers to monitor goods entering and leaving Iraq. The principle behind it was to almost double the number of civilian products that could be imported, while broadening the ban on military supplies. In this way, the United States could fend off claims that it was responsible for the suffering of Iraqi civilians.

Powell's trip was a resounding failure. None of the countries approached agreed to adopt this new policy of sanctions on Iraq. Iraq threatened them with an oil embargo if they accepted the U.S. plan, and the Americans could not guarantee their economic stability. If the Arab countries had gone along with this idea back then, they probably wouldn't have had the threat of war on Iraq hanging over their heads today.

This is worth mentioning to emphasize that war on Iraq was not always the Bush administration's preferred option. When Bush first took office, sending inspectors back in to Iraq was not a top priority either. Actually, up until 9/11, Iraq was not associated with terrorism. For a long time, Colin Powell, then foreign secretary, was opposed to a U.S. offensive in Iraq, and found his career on the rocks in a militant administration whose new heroes were Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

From their perspective, the successful campaign in Afghanistan and quick regime change were proof of the importance of keeping the momentum going. Neither bin Laden nor his deputy had been captured, and the Taliban were continuing to organize and attack American targets in Afghanistan. In the frenzy over a war on Iraq, the war on international terrorism was almost forgotten. The U.S. administration tried to drum up global sympathy for the American people, which had been hurt so badly by Al-Qaida, in the hopes of building up a coalition for the Iraqi offensive - but to no avail. Not everyone in the Arab world agrees that Saddam Hussein must be overthrown, and there are objections to the way America wants to bring this about.

Afghanistan is a country without a ring of protective interests. It has no economic resources or political patrons. Iraq is a different story. It lies in the heart of the Arab Middle East, and its oil reserves are the second largest in the world. At least six Arab countries maintain direct economic ties with Iraq. Turkey and Iran have an important political interest in keeping Iraq intact. Many European countries, as well as Russia and China, have signed contracts with Iraq which they do not want to lose. Everyone has an interest in maintaining the status quo. On the other hand, none of these countries have the power to get Saddam Hussein to change his policy and give up his weapons of mass destruction.

Sending the UN inspectors back into Iraq was thus the most convenient option for all concerned. Even the warmongers in Washington understood that it was better to let this team do its work, so that America could arrive on the battlefield with "clean hands." Iraq's friends in Europe hoped that the inspectors' findings would get them off the hook as far as war is concerned.

For the Arab nations, it was the only way to cover up for their inability to persuade an "Arab brother" to act in the interests of the Arabs and keep America from declaring war. After the bitter experience of the Gulf War, in which Saddam thumbed his nose at Arab diplomatic efforts to get him to withdraw from Kuwait, they are probably under no illusions.

Under Amr Mussa, the Arab League has less power and influence than it did when Ismat Abdelmajid was secretary-general. A few weeks ago, a senior Jordanian official told Ha'aretz that "inspection is a good ladder for climbing down from the Iraqi tree." That seems to say it all. Arab leaders who voiced strong opposition to the war on Iraq have taken steps to prepare their people for its outbreak.

In Davos this week, King Abdullah of Jordan remarked that "only a miracle will prevent this war." Jordan has informed its citizens for the first time that U.S.-made Patriot missile launchers will be placed at strategic sites around the country, and 150,000 tents will be erected on the Jordanian-Iraqi border to provide shelter for thousands of refugees expected to flee from Iraqi cities. No refugee, incidentally, will be allowed to enter Jordan: The camps will be established on Iraqi territory.

A million people gathered in Yemen for an anti-war rally, but in Egypt, Bahrain, Damascus and elsewhere, the turnout for such demonstrations has been poor. This is not to say that protests will not erupt when the war begins, but it does show almost complete control over the Arab masses. From the standpoint of the Arab countries, "preparations for the war" are complete - emotionally, at least.

"All we want is for this war to end quickly," an Arab commentator said this week on Al-Jazeera. But there is a schedule, don't forget. At the moment, the inspectors have been given more time to complete their work, at least until the end of February or early March. Then things will depend on the new report submitted by the inspectors, Iraq's response, the unearthing of more "interesting" materials, the weather, and the mounting public pressure in the United States and Britain against the war.

Saturday, February 1, 2003

Time to start thinking about space dimplomacy.

The Eisenhower Institute's greatest legacy, besides, of course, the intellectual diligence of General Eisenhower's grand-daughter, Susan Eisenhower, will probably be the concerted, realistic attempts to ameliorate US-Russian relations through a joint space program.

The Eisenhower Institute's study, Ten Years Later: Assessing US-Russian Engagement in Space is due to be released this coming summer. According to the press release, for the past two years:

"...Institute personnel have worked with investigators to carry out project research and conduct over 200 personal interviews around the world. Fifteen project investigators were responsible for submitting research reports that detailed specific perspectives on US-Russian cooperation. In addition, the Institute has made trips to Italy, France, and Russia for meetings with high-level space officials, diplomats, policymakers, and cosmonauts, and has met with a range of administrators, engineers, doctors, and astronauts at Houston's Johnson Space Flight Center and NASA's headquarters in Washington, DC."

A look at the Project Overview, as well as the composition of the Project Advisory Panel demonstrates the seriousness of Susan Eisenhower's endeavor. I am curious as to whether US-Russian relations will take backseat to appeasement of potential Middle Eastern states as the war on Iraq approaches. If so, then the Bush administration will have much to lose and, unfortunately, very little to fall back upon in terms of international credibility.

Saturday, February 1, 2003

New powers for the INS.

Joseph Iskra brought to my attention the increasing powers granted to the INS with the war on terrorism's concern about immigration and travel. Apparently, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has proposed a new rule that would require all individuals leaving or entering the United States-- including U.S. citizens -- to provide detailed personal information in advance of an aircraft or vessel's arrival in or departure from the United States.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this rule "harms personal privacy and flies in the face of Americans' Constitutional right to travel". EFF also believes that the rule has been rushed through Washington without adequate time for public comment. If you are interested in signing petitions or engaging in other kinds of public protest against this rule, such materials can be found here.

"GIVE BACK MY BOOK AND TAKE MY KISS INSTEAD.
WAS IT MY ENEMY OR MY FRIEND I HEARD,
"WHAT A BIG BOOK FOR SUCH A LITTLE HEAD!"
-Edna Saint Vincent Millay

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