Killer Apes and Mental Illness: the Sons of Abel Versus the Sons of Cain

There are millions of people kept in prison because their behavior is seen as threatening to social order and safety-- and yet the primates that threaten the most lives, even show blatant disregard for innnocent bystanders, are not only free to roam the streets, but lionized by their peers. Because Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ayman al-Zawahiri are seen as enacting the wishes of a group, they surround themselves with armed guards and issue orders that will murder or maim thousands of people who never voted for them, never met them, and wouldn't like them if they did.

Like it or not, we have to share a planet with these gangsters and have to find a way to remove them from power without turning into one of them. If human's outer appearance matched their internal demons, the problem would take care of itself in a few generations: no sane person would want to have sex with them, and the species would die out. But the killer chimps among us are breeding as rapidly as the peaceful bonobos, and the chimps don't mind cooking the books by killing a few thousand bonobos to make the world safer for their bloodthirsty kind. It may be time to talk about the genetic elephant in the room: why are some of us Abel, happy in our own garden, and too many of us worshippers of Cain?

If we can agree that the brain and the nervous system are electro-chemical, that our perception of reality-- and our response to it-- depends on a certain balance of dopamine, serotonin and all their building blocks... And within a given population, there are bound to be variations of that chemical balance in individuals, making (to borrow the ancient personality types) this one choleric, that one sanguine, this one melancholic and occasionally choleric. And just as variations in the pancreas or the thyroid gland can cause life-threatening illness, imbalance outside the normal range in brain chemistry can bring on mania, depression, delusions and hallucinations of the five senses. We've known since at least World War One that not just physical trauma, but repeated emotional trauma can carve channels in the mind that induce post traumatic stress disorder, multiple personalities, and many other illnesses. It may be that the tragedies of schizophrenia and autism might be traced back to a virus.

If all this is so, might there be an unpleasant secret hidden in plain sight: that within a given population, there will be highly organized indiduals who seek power over others and then use that power to wage war on neighboring tribes? That just as humanity wars tribe against tribe, there is an undeclared war in every community between the sons of Cain and the children of Abel?

There are horrible ironies in this relationship. A peace-loving but curious primate named Einstein followed a line of inquiry that made it possible for a desperate, threatened group of his peers to deliver a terrible weapon into the hands of the killer apes. Archimedes of Syracus was killed by a Roman soldier while lost in thought over a problem he had drawn in the sand. Marcellus, the Roman general in charge of the expedition, had given direct orders that Archimedes was not to be harmed-- but as many a commander has learned since then, you can't turn a thousand soldiers loose in a foreign country without a few bad apples and some collateral damage.

The peaceful ape can be provoked to violence, just as any animal can. Many a Cincinnatus has been called from his plow to fight savagely for hearth and home, but then-- the reason the name Cinncinatus is immortal-- when the threat is over, the peace-lover returns to his plow and turns his back on any temptation to power. But the goodwill of a thousand citizen soldiers can be undone in a second by a few rapists, torturers and murderers and the commanders who enable them.

How does a peace-loving soul contain-- or, terribly, eradicate-- his violent brother and his friends? If we were still a small band living in the trees, it would be evident that the violent mobs are scratching each other to death, and endangering our peace-loving children. The political question of the 20th century will look to Mandela and Havel and other martyrs who survived to wield power themselves. We must rescue hostages to fortune, take the dangerous toys away from the violent boys, and discourage our daughters from joining in and breeding with them.

THANATOS VS. EROS

This morning Saddam Hussein and his cohorts were sentenced to be hanged. The president is congratulating himself, one assumes, on having burnt down the barn and the whole damned farm and provoked a civil war in order to get rid of a handful of rats. This afternoon the inventor Ray Kurzweil is on C-SPAN talking about nanobots the size of a blood cell and machines that can pass the Turing test for artificial intelligence by the year 2029. As Kurzweil is thinking about medical applications and demonstrating a wonderful translation device that will permit you to talk to almost anyone in the world using your cell phone, someone in the American military is dreaming of robot "soldiers" within a decade.

The great Ingmar Bergman described his life's work as contributing a block or two to the great cathedral of human civilization. Myself, I'm only a grunt in the race between Creation and Destruction, trying to hold the line in my small classroom outpost against xenophobia and violence, earnestly introducing children to Shakespeare and Thomas Paine and the Ishtar Gate. And I'm wondering tonight if we're outnumbered, if the busy little hands building bombs and the wagging tongues spreading hate aren't working faster than we are to bring down that cathedral.

They don't even have to work that hard; it only takes a moment for one person to destroy thousands, to put a bullet in Gandhi or blow up the building in which one year old Baylee Almon went to day care. This is a problem inherent in our race, a killer ape intelligent enough to invent a weapon but not smart enough to use it wisely, as the Roman soldier murdered Archimedes while he was drawing circles in the sand.

I'm for scuffling and shoring up and trying to hold the world together with duct tape. But what do we do about the stupid people who think they're smart enough to decide who lives and who dies? Didn't Hussein see himself as "creating" something when he took over Iraq and committed his murders with Stalin as his role model? Tim McVeigh thought he was sparking the third American Revolution, creating a better world for himself. Somebody trusted George W. Bush with the most powerful military force on earth.

Ray Kurzweil is an optimist, and has charts to show the advance of intelligent machines in spite of two world wars and the Great Depression. He looks forward to extending life expectancy with technology, with little thought as to who will take control of that immortality and use it to abuse the have-nots. A student of history, I worry about the collapse of Rome and the suicide of the Greek democracies. I wake up an optimist and go to bed a pessimist. If we are in a race between the forces of destruction and the forces of preservation and creation, which side is running fastest?

OUR VICTORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR CRAZY PEOPLE WITH GUNS

Warning. Warning. Warning.
All members of the Sunni community, Wahhabis and Takfiris, are required to leave the Abu Al-Khasib province immediately as a result of the killings and deportation suffered by the [Shia] followers of the Prophet’s household. We do not exclude anyone. You have destroyed holy sites and you have slaughtered the Shia based on their identity. We were patient but not any more. We will not be silent from now on. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and the first transgressor is more unjust. We will take revenge for the Shia and the followers of the Prophet’s household. We will not stay silent in the face of injustice. Never. We will not tolerate humiliation. You do not have much time to leave. He who has warned is henceforth excused.

***
Warning.. Warning.. Warning
To the worshippers of the Sajjad mosque: Beware of coming near this mosque, or your fate will be death. Woe to the unjust. Death to transgressors. Damn you, lackeys of the occupiers.

***
In the name of Allah, the most merciful

Warning. Warning. Warning.
To the Palestinian traitors who allied themselves with Wahhabis, Takfiris, Nawasib and Ba’athist Saddamists, especially those who inhabit the Dar Al-Shu’oun area: We warn you that we will eliminate you all if you do not leave this area entirely within 10 days.
He who has warned is henceforth excused.

***
In the name of Allah, the most merciful

Subject: Deportation
As a result of the criminal and sectarian behaviour of what is called (the disgraceful) Jaish Al-Mahdi and (the treacherous) Badr forces by killing, kidnapping and deporting the Sunni community (at Mahmoudiya, Rashidiya, Sha’ab, Shu’la and Hurriya), as well as violating the honour of Sunnis and plundering their possessions, the organisation has decided, Inshallah, to return the strike twofold and treat them the same (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth). It has been decided to deport you from Sunni areas, including Ghazaliya, within 24 hours, or otherwise your heads will be cut off, the same as your militias act with members of the Sunni community. He who has warned is henceforth excused.

The Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers Organisation
The Mujahideen Shura Council

***
To: Director and employees of the Adil District [Internet] centre
Subject: Warning
We write down this warning for the employees of the Adil District centre (particularly the rejectionists among them), and ask them: what is the purpose of this centre? And what kind of department is it, where work is for 24 hours, uninterrupted not even by electricity outages? And what kind of department lacks a sign or notice that explains its purpose and under the authority of which ministry? Why do its employees sneak in and out through the back door, while the front entrance on the main street is locked? What is the need for such a large number of engineers and workers, even though the centre is closed, with no contact with the public? And, and, and… many other questions that we have listed.
We clearly state here that we suspect this centre is controlled by a certain party, and that it is being used for special surveillance operations, without mentioning further details.
If this matter is confirmed to us, then we inform you that you have openly renounced your religion and your faith, and that you have declared war against the Mujahideen. We swear by Him, who has lifted the sky without pillars, that you will be legitimate targets for us to sacrifice for Allah, may He be praised. You should learn that killing you is easier to us than a drink of water. The American forces that you serve will not help you, let alone the helpless pagan guards or the forces of insurrection. We will follow you and deal with you at your department, or while you commute, or even at your houses and in your own bedrooms. And we stress ‘if confirmed’, for we will not shed the blood of Muslims with uncertainty; our Lord, religion and morals forbid that.

Since we are still at the stage of investigation and research, and since there has been no evidence against you so far, we have spared your lives. Therefore, we demand the following 3 requirements on your part:

1- Put up a public notice at the entrance of your department, mentioning its name, its specialty, and its jurisdiction (like other governmental departments).

2- Open the main entrance on the street. All employees, workers and vehicles should enter and leave solely through this entrance, and not like ‘thieves’ from the back door.

3- Stick a small note on the main entrance with answers to the following questions: What is the function of this department or centre? Why is work for 24 hours? And why is such a large staff employed there, even though it is not open to the public? Be informed that specialists among the Mujahideen will view your answers, so we advise you to remain truthful.

We will offer you one week – no more – from this date to carry out these demands. If one is not carried out then our suspicions will be confirmed and we will direct our patrols to apply practical steps with you. He who has warned is henceforth excused, and Allah is witness to what we say.

Peace be upon our prophet Mohammed and his companions.

Military Administrator of the Kata’ib

Kata’ib Al-Mujahideen
Saraya Al-Ghadhab

Copy to:
- The media department.
- Commander of Al-Karkh sector.
- Al-Adil District centre.

***

In the name of Allah, the most merciful

To the vile rejectionists, and the grandsons of Ibn Al-Alqami, and those who have sold their religion and people for earthly gains. It has been clear that you have betrayed the pact of Allah and His prophet, and that you fight the Mujahideen with your beliefs and acts. Therefore, we offer you 24 hours to leave this untainted area or face punishment. He who has warned is henceforth excused.
Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. And praise be to Allah.

The Islamic Army in Iraq

***
To the honourable residents of the ***** province: The traitorous government, as you know, has passed a law to mark Saturday as an official holiday for all governmental departments. And as we all know, the traitorous government decided not long ago to change the flag to an Israeli flag. Now, they have chosen to mark an Israeli holiday. This is all to achieve their scheme of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Therefore, we ask all governmental departments in the ***** province to defy this law and to continue to open on Saturday as usual in order to foil these traitorous plans.

To all directors of state departments in the province: You are to inform your employees to attend work on Saturdays, or you and your employees will be held responsible.

Kata’ib Allahu Akbar
Sariyat Al-Mujahidun

COMMONPLACE BOOK of QUOTATIONS for September, 2006

“It makes me wonder what happens when the language of argument and the language of ridicule become the same, when the address of a potentate is voiced no more soberly than the goofings of some rube.” (Wyatt Mason

***


***

“No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. ...moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used.”
(Lt. General John Jeff Kimmons)

***
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Thomas Paine

***
“The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe. (Mark Mazzeti in the NYT

***

“George W. Bush's Sept. 15 outburst - threatening to stop interrogating terror suspects if Congress doesn't let him revise the Geneva Conventions to permit coercive techniques - is part of a pattern of petulance that dates back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new challenges to his authority.
“In summer 2001, less than six months into his presidency while confronting congressional obstacles to his domestic program, Bush told followers that he was ready to "go back to Crawford" if he didn't get his way on legislation....Back then, Republicans framed Bush's "back to Crawford" threats as a sign of his principled leadership as well as a new self-confidence in asserting his authority.” (Andrew Bard Schmookler, author of “Parable of the Tribes”)

***
“Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step [first time in 364 years], the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". The scientists also strongly criticize the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".”
(reported in The Guardian UK

***

The Royal Society—the world’s oldest learned society—has publicly taken on Exxon. Just so you know: this is the first time in the Royal Society’s 364 years that they’ve done something like this.

Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”.

The scientists also strongly criticise the company’s public statements on global warming, which they describe as “inaccurate and misleading

***
"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."
Robert A. Heinlein
***

“In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson has instituted what many consider an even better solution: Voters use paper ballots, which are then scanned and counted electronically....
“Paper ballots will not completely eliminate the threat of tampering, of course - after all, election fraud and miscounts have occurred throughout our history. As long as there has been a paper trail, however, our elections have been conducted with some measure of public scrutiny. But electronic voting machines are a hacker's dream. And today, for-profit companies are being given unprecedented and frightening power not only to provide these machines but to store and count our votes in secret, without any real oversight. You do not have to believe in conspiracy theories to fear for the integrity of our electoral system...” (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)

***
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (AP) -- A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers....
“Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican. Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan....Democrats fought all civil rights legislation from the 1860s to the 1960s. Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks.... Democrats want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat...Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent's consent and suing the Boy Scouts for saying 'God' in their pledge.... Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution."

***

***

"Cap is about freedom more than anything else. He's about altruism and not being in anyone's pocket. He'd be repulsed by the idea of doing this as a job. He's all about civic duty. He's no lapdog and is bigger than any government, whether it's Republican or Democrat. He represents the ideal.... That said, I live miles away and am quite safe and it all makes great comics. Remember how dull books were under Clinton? Like the 80s, we need a Republican in the White House to react against to make good comics. Well done, Bush. May you reign forever." (Mark Millar)

***

“On 26 October 1988, the New York Times carried a full-page advertisement for liberalism. Headed ‘A Reaffirmation of Principle’, it openly rebuked Ronald Reagan for deriding ‘the dreaded L-word’ and treating ‘liberals’ and ‘liberalism’ as terms of opprobrium. Liberal principles, the text affirmed, are ‘timeless. Extremists of the right and of the left have long attacked liberalism as their greatest enemy. In our own time liberal democracies have been crushed by such extremists. Against any encouragement of this tendency in our own country, intentional or not, we feel obliged to speak out.’
“The advertisement was signed by 63 prominent intellectuals, writers and businessmen... But who, now, would sign such a protest? Liberalism in the United States today is the politics that dares not speak its name... As befits the new Gilded Age, in which the pay ratio of an American CEO to that of a skilled worker is 412:1 and a corrupted Congress is awash in lobbies and favours, the place of the liberal intellectual has been largely taken over by an admirable cohort of ‘muck-raking’ investigative journalists....the critical intelligentsia once so prominent in American cultural life has fallen silent.”

(Tony Judt in The London Review of Books)

***
“Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act....Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives...
“....To "reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act," Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban....The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice.... Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent....A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.” Elizabeth Holtzman, “Bush seeks retroactive immunity for violating War Crimes Act”

***
“One central characteristic of the [9/11 conspiracy] nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous, belief in American efficiency, and hence many of them start with the racist premise that "Arabs in caves" weren't capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work.”
(Alexander Cockburn in The Nation 9/25/2006)

***
As we are liberated from our own fear, our prescence automatically liberates others.
(Nelson Mandela)

***
"[Marvel Comics’] Civil War" provides problems in spades. The story opens with a reckless fight between a novice group of heroes (filming a reality television show) and a cadre of villains. The battle becomes quite literally explosive, killing some of the superheroes and many innocent bystanders. That crystallizes a government movement to register all super-powered beings as living weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent Registration Act will divide the heroes into two camps, one led by Captain America {against registration, thus criminalized by the Act], the other [pro-government] by Iron Man. Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: "Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?" ( The Battle Outside Raging, Superheroes Dive In by GEORGE GENE GUSTINES in The New York Times)

***

“So, why did they hate us after all? We sure blew off that question nicely. As with everything else in this country, our response to 9/11 was a heroic compendium of idiocy, cowardice, callow flag-waving, weepy sentimentality (coupled with an apparently bottomless capacity for self-pity), sloth, laziness and partisan ignorance.... We did just about everything except honestly ask ourselves what the hell really happened, and why.”
(Matt Taibbi

***

***
"The first thing a principle does, if it really is a principle, is to kill someone."
Dorothy Sayers

***

"As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place."
Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz

***

“What fears and desires does Civil War reveal? The fear is that we are coming apart; the secret desire is not for social and political unity, but instead for open conflict. The 20th Century hero fought for all of us and for an American Way that everyone supposedly shared. In the 21st Century, superheroes will fight over the very meaning of the American Way. The winners will decide who is an American ... and who is a criminal.” ( Jeremy Adam Smith)

My Time Has Come

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", muttered Shelley, probably while peering through an absinthe fog and wearing Mary Wollstonecraft-Godwin's teenaged thighs for earmuffs. Such things may fill a man with hubris and make him think he can go sailing in a thunderstorm or walk on water.

Until today, I have avoided the call to the dusty arena of politics. My hat was never in the ring. If nominated, I would not serve, if elected, I would move and change my name to Osbert Fleadick. Anyone who wants power over other human beings probably shouldn't be trusted with power.

An unfeeling public would almost certainly reject my plan to bring back the buffalo west of the Mississippi and restore the forests east of the Mississipi to pre-1850 numbers. They say a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic to the Mississippi in the trees without ever touching the ground. Swimming the river, he could travel on the backs of the buffalo herds to the Rocky Mountains, again without touching the ground.

I admit there were provisions in my platform that some found troubling. The call to re-establish grizzly bears to their former range "because Americans need a large dangerous animal in their environment to knock the snot-nose out of them" could probably have been phrased differently. The red states aren't ready to vote for a candidate who's come out in FAVOR of pornography, and the blue states don't see the need to purge all advertising agencies with a guillotine set up on Madison Avenue.

But now my time has come!

Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Michael Wynne wants to test "nonlethal" microwave devices on American citizens, to see if they really ARE non-lethal. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," says Wynne. "... if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

Never mind the world press, Wynne. The first concern will be my foot up your ass, as soon as the tremors wear off.

Candidate for governor Richard "Dick" DeVos ("Dick DeVos before he dicks you") wants Creationism-- excuse me, "intelligent design" taught in science class to "expose our students to more ideas, not less."

Ideas that once would have been derided as stark raving batshit are now in the mainstream. A once skeptical media, afraid of being "partisan" (that's what happens when you whore after advertisers or sell out to a conglomerate) now reports this stuff with a straight face.

America! I have heard your call!

America! I'm putting my loony shoulder to the wheel!

Halfway Through September: Commonplace Book of Current Readings

“.... there are things that prose can do that visual media require both far more effort and vastly more artistic acuity to put across. What they are good at is transmitting extremely simple ideas; the villain kicks a dog, the hero grumbles at the outrage and shoots him. This is great if your goal is to sell a million movie tickets. It ain’t particularly good for the development of complex thought. Or, indeed, any thought at all.”
(John M. Ford, on the blog Making Light)

***
“It would be impossible to be taken seriously as a reporter or expert on Russia, France, Germany, Latin America, or perhaps even China or Japan without knowing the requisite languages but for "Islam" no linguistic knowledge seems to be necessary since what one is dealing with is considered to be a psychological deformation, not a "real" culture or religion.“
(Edward Said)

***
"In the aftermath of 9/11, the world was united with America. Even in Arab and Muslim countries, the sense of shock and feelings of solidarity with America far outweighed any sympathies with the terrorists. ...Immediately after 9/11, Al Qaeda seemed to be losing its battle with America and the West. Unfortunately, that changed when America invaded Iraq. The fight against the jihadists will not be decided simply on the battlefield; it will also be decided in the sphere of international legitimacy. ... Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the situation in Iraq could hardly be called successes.”
( Joschka Fischer)

***

“All the same, I suspect that we will miss Tony Blair when he is gone. The boyish charm is fraying but still intact. The exhaustion, the desperate need to convince everyone of the truth of his own delusions, the raw emotions worn as a kind of exoskeleton, all show one of the great actor-managers in heroic decline. Blair may be the last British prime minister able to trade openly on his emotions. He knows that we are secretly rather drawn to bad acting and are happy to collude in his exposure of his weaknesses.

“He is the beaten husband, still in charge of the car keys and the TV remote, but aware that the rest of the household despises him and is impatient for him to bring down the curtain. He jokes and winces, and makes fun of his own despair. The longer he hangs on, the more he can steer us towards the steamy, emotional bath we were happy to help him prepare. Would he like to drown us? After all, we like being lied to, we like promises that will never be kept, we like being locked into his smiling neediness.”
(J.G. Ballard)

***
“For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is a lot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I'm gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.”
(Outlaw Vern for 8/21/06)

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“Unfettered power... cannot go berserk like this and expect to hold it all together.” (S. Roy)

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“Is there anything about the current [9/11 commission] hearings that does interest the administration? From the evidence so far, they're interested in controlling what you and I find out about what happened, and what the administration did and didn't do about it. But they're only concerned about that because we vote, and because Dubya's perennially sensitive about the lustre of his reputation. Our actual safety doesn't enter into the calculation.”
(Teresa Neil Hayden on her blog Making Light)

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“Fending off the chaos that would almost certainly come with civil war would be a reason to stay the course, although it does not inspire the full-throated rhetoric about freedom that Mr. Bush offered last night. But the nation needs to hear a workable plan to stabilize a fractured, disintegrating country and end the violence. If such a strategy exists, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush could see it through the filter of his fantasies.” (NYT editorial)

***

“Another attempt on the scale of the 2001 attacks hasn’t been necessary. The last one is still doing the trick, and the terrorists’ resources are limited.”
(William Gibson)

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“In cultural evolution, [Susan] Blackmore claims, the replicators are hypothetical entities called memes, a term coined by Dawkins as a cultural analogue for genes. Dawkins intended it as a metaphor, but Blackmore (and others) argue that memes are real physical entities, like genes (DNA). Moreover, memes have a mind of their own; they compete among themselves "for their own sake" [Blackmore's emphasis]. ... Memes have taken control of our cultural evolution, she says.....
“The trouble is, memes don't really exist as a distinct causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won't make it so; I predict that they will prove to be more elusive than the Higgs boson. As a metaphor for various forms of learned cultural "information", the term might be quite useful. It has the advantage of being more generic than such familiar terms as "ideas", "inventions", "behaviors", "artifacts", etc., and it is certainly preferable to such clumsy neologisms as Edward Wilson's "culturgens". But as a shaper of cultural evolution independently of the motivations, goals, purposes, compulsions and judgments -- in short the minds -- of human actors, memes rank right up there with the fiery phogiston and the heavenly aether.”
(Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.: “The Invasion of the Memes: Is It Science Fiction?”)

***

“Earlier this month Banksy surreptitiously placed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantánamo detainee inside the fence of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, where it apparently remained for more than an hour before park officials shut down the ride and removed it. Recently he also smuggled 500 altered versions of Paris Hilton’s new CD into record stores around Britain and placed them in the racks.... [a] panel van with the notice on the back, “How’s My Bombing?” and an 800 number that links to a Navy recruiting office in Phoenix.... “1.7 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line. Every day hundreds of people are made to feel physically sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it. Anybody want a free glass of wine?”...Many comment on war, like the stark image of a television camera crew filming a child amid ruins as the producer holds back aid workers to allow for just one more shot.”

***

"ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush." (Frank Rich)

Dead Children of a Lesser God: Why the Terrorists are Winning, #247 in a Series

"What future other than one of fear, frustration, financial ruin and fanaticism can stem from the rubble? Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere? Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood? Can the international community continue to stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted upon us? Is this what is called legitimate self-defence?"
-- Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora seen here next to Condoleeza Rice, who-- I hope for the sake of her soul-- is covering her face in shame.

She just got out of a meeting in which she tried to explain to the gentleman Why He Can't Have a Cease Fire Right Now, in the name of Another Grand Strategy of the Bush Administration. I wonder how many more of those this country can survive?


The news is awful, with more children, blameless old people and animals being killed and suffering in Lebanon for the simple crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, while men (and some women) who have never suffered such horrors pontificate about other people's suffering and do nothing to stop it.

It should be stated here for the record that the politics of Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica have long been encapsulated in this credo by Brendan Behan: "I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer." Everything else is contingent on that goal for better government.

In both Iraq and Lebanon, we see the United States and Israel falling like passenger pigeons into a basket. This continues to baffle me, as I've always assumed this was a truism of terrorist planning:
Step one: attack civilians or soft military targets.
Step two: this provokes a response by the targeted state that's out of proportion to the original offense.
Step three: the logic of violence and the state's inability to surgically control a mass of soldiers and policemen guarantees that there will be atrocities, oppression, "collateral damage" against innocent bystanders.
Step four: this repression will provoke an uprising against the state, cycling into greater and greater violence until--
Step five, the original terrorists appear more sympathetic to the people than the now out-of-control state.

This apparently is too subtle for the saps in power in the US and Israel to understand. Thus Israel and the United States continue to lose the war on terror by doing exactly what Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda want. I don't see anyone explaining this dynamic to a broad audience; perhaps it's so "obvious" that it's invisible.

See Also:
Blue Eyed Body Count
Why We're Losing the War on Terror #3701 in a series
Why They Voted for Hamas

"The Peoples be Goin' Crazy."

As we say around these parts, the peoples be going crazy in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, and please God, not Syria. The phrase implies the point in a group dynamic when a crowd of humans has become so violent that the participants no longer act in their own self interest, and are as likely to trash their own property as well as another's, to maim friend and foe alike.

When I was small, the world almost got sucked into World War III because of Cuba-- little Cuba! -- and we owe our lives to Khruschev's willingness to back down. Now we have Putin, an elevated KGB gangster, in charge of Russia, and here-- oh. Possibly the least qualified president in history, a man compared unfavorably with Warren G. Harding, the last person on earth to settle things down. We don't even have the assurance that his advisors are professional, since he despises expertise.

If I were a politician-- defined honorably here as someone who solves conflicts with compromise and benevolent manipulation-- I would stay home every time Cuba or Israel are on the morning news. I would call in sick, invent a doctor's apppointment or a sick child. It is impossible to have a rational discussion about either. I wish someday that a public figure will tell the Cubans in Miami or the Jews in New York to look at a map, choose a country to be loyal to, sit down, and STFU. Stop demanding that politicians prove their love for your provincial arguments and start serving the larger interests of this country and simple humanity instead.

No American politician can speak honestly and openly bout the Palestinian and Israeli conflict without fifty professional hysterics jumping down his or her throat. They all must wrap their comments in ritual obesience to Israel's right to exist, the Palestinians need to renounce violence no matter how many times they are poked in the eye, blah blah blah. I recommend the writings of Alexander Cockburn and Edward Said as a place to start on this subject, and sadly one of them is dead.

I've already done my share of babbling on Peter David's website, but here's a simple thought:

If you kill, marginalize or shout down every moderate voice that speaks for the Palestinians, very soon there will be no one left but extremists and gangsters like Hezbollah and the unmourned Arafat.

The Palestinians have been backed into a corner like the Apache and the Sioux; every move they make will be born of violent desperation, and easy to condemn. The Israelis have made themselves the enemy they deserve, and I hope the rest of us don't get pulled down with them. And God Save Lebanon.

SAMUEL JOHNSON on HENRY KISSINGER

... So I'm researching Henry Kissinger for a non-fiction comic on the Middle East-- specifically Kissinger's comment, after inciting the Kurds to rebel against Iraq and then leaving them undefended against Saddam Hussein, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work."
... and I stumble across this by Dr. Johnson: "Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful."

Why is Henry Kissinger considered a deep thinker? Because everyone says so. Why is his supposed intelligence (to paraphrase) "respected by friends and foes alike"? Because everyone says so.

I put it to you that a diplomat who leaves almost a million people dead in his wake is not a successful diplomat, but a master of public relations and image enhancement.

But then, I'm not as smart as Dr. Kissinger, and consequently have no right to criticize or question. How do I know this? Everyone says so. It's a common assumption.

Arguably, the deluded naked emperor was better educated and more experienced than the rude child who pointed and jeered at the pimples on the emperor's pasty ass. Everyone says so. It's a common assumption. I'd just like someone to do the math some day comparing the number of lives Kissinger saved while making the world safe for American interests, and the numbers killed directly or indirectly by his arrogant decisions. Kind of like a Nobel Prize earned run average.

BLUE-EYED BODY COUNT: sponsored by Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica: call on our friendly team of demonologists for all YOUR unpleasant details!

Hm, Zarqawi killed...
Laurence Foley
Nicholas Berg
plus 700 killings in Iraq during the invasion, and the attack on that NATO summit 2004 in Istanbul..
about 70 more people in three hotels in Amman, Jordan... 22 UN people killed by the bomb in the Canal Hotel...
So, rough numbers, that's almost 800 people that somebody loved, dead because of an abstract idea. He killed those people like they were things, objects unlucky enough to be included in whatver crazy personal drama al-Zarqawi was playing out in his head.
Second battle of Falujah--? FUCK, Jamie was in that... what would we have done if this pinwheel eyed motherfucker had gotten off a lucky shot and killed James? And would have felt no worse about that you would feel taking the arms and legs off a Barbie doll.

Funny thing is, there are still people in the Middle East who think al-Zarqawi's a hero, because he was "fightin' for Palestine" you see, and that forgives a lot of sins in the Arab world. Makes him a resistance fighter not a terrorist. They BELIEVE that crazy shit over there. That's it's okay if someone you don't know gets killed for someone else's reasons.

Ken Bigley, the Zarqawi beheaded him, poor fella. Sergio Vieira de Mello, perfectly nice guy, much loved apparently in UN circles. You and I, we're just obstacles in the great struggle. What kind of monstrous self-importance would someone have to have to do this to other people? The son of a bitch had a 14 and a 16 year old "wife" with him when the bomb hit. And he wore New Balance shoes.

Hm, Samarra, Iraq. Five American soldiers and one Iraqi soldier were killed. "Appointment in Samarra", eh? With John O'Hara dead, I wonder if anyone else remembers that story besides me and Idries Shah? Okay, I'm coming up with one thousand people, tops, killed by this fantasist who saw himself as a hero.

Okay, now, MR. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH'S TURN TO STAND UP AND BE COUNTED, the face our society wears on television:
hm 38,475 minimum civilian deaths, maximum 42,889 reported civilian deaths, add in 2,500 American soldiers...

Oog, as Pogo used to say.

“We don’t do body counts” General Tommy Franks, US Central Command, and I can see why. It's insulting; at this level, comparisons are odious. WE burn down the motherfucking BARN to get those rats! And Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops? “Change the channel.” Fucking amateur night, Abu Musab the Zarqawi the fuck indeed.

THREE LITTLE GIRLS: JENNA, BARBARA and UNKNOWN FEMALE AGED 5 to 7 YEARS

"Five others died in the airstrike, including Sheikh Abd-al-Rahman, al-Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, who died of head wounds and a massive skull fracture, Caldwell said Saturday. The total casualties included three males and three females; one of the females was a child between the ages of 5 and 7, he said." -- CNN June 11, 2006

What kind of human being is this, that the world is made better and not diminished by his death? What a horror is this, that a little girl were killed alongside him-- but the menace you pose to other women, other children was so great that the cost of collateral damage was not considered too high?

This has me thinking about that scene in "Night of the Shooting Stars" (La Notte di San Lorenzo), when the villagers are trying to decide what to do about the schoolboy son of the town fascist, a pretty blonde child in a tiny black uniform who practically froths at the mouth with the poison bred by his father in his fangs. Then one of the men makes a decision for the sake of all the children of the town, and does what has to be done. "Who Must Do the Terrible Things?" asks a Japanese proverb; "He Who Can", comes the answer.

And the mad pain of the father, chewing at his own flesh and crawling like an animal in the dirt to see his child killed, a grotesqe, demonic, almost comic display. Then someone remembers that for ten years this pitiable creature felt not a drop of pity for thousands of pretty little children being sent to their death by the carload, and they end the animal's torture with a bullet.

Did Zarqawi had a moment of regret for the death of his own child, or was he still calculating his options and thinking about how to escape this attack?

Evidently Zarqawi spent the wonder years in and out of Jordanian prison for a variety of crimes, then found God and politics in jail. This is an old story, this prison recruitment of stone killers. Sure, you like killing folks in horrible ways, but you're not to blame-- "they" are, they ones who who locked you up in here. The King of Jordan, the Jews in Palestine, the Americans, the Saudi paarty boys. My brother, I offer redemption. You can still kill people in horrible ways, but now you're killing for the Cause, killing for God, and can saw away at infidel necks with a righteous glow.

I wish I could say that this kind of bug only rises to the top in fanatical Islam, but we've heard enough smug boasting from G. Gordon Liddy, from Oliver North and his Contras, from Bill Casey and his Phoenix Program in Vietnam-- to know that this kind of useful sociopath is always going to be around waiting for someone to give them permission to hurt their fellow human beings. Tim McVeigh and his war on day care centers could have had a sterling career at CIA if he'd had just a little more discipline. Gangsters used to call them "bugs", meaning a useful but not terribly reliable tool for setting fires or committing murders. You gotta wonder if Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Arthur Bremer-- or Lindsey Englund-- were such as these.

And now as an example to the children, we have Barbara and Jenna Bush's Daddy; an affable stooge who has arsfardled his way into spending 2,500 American lives, billions of dollars and thousands of people dead that I never even knew existed. But Daddy's not a monster, because his road to Hell was paved with words like Freedom, Liberty, Democracy and "Patience" that he doesn't understand.

I have no conclusions about any of this; just idly doing some dark math, one of those silly little mental games demonologists play.

No wonder the girls drink.

SHAKESPEARE ON OUR CURRENT WAR LEADERS

Here is Harry Percy, known as "Hotspur", defending himself to Henry IV against a charge of insubordination.

HOTSPUR

My liege, I did deny no prisoners.

But I remember, when the fight was done,

When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,
Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword--

Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd,
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap'd
Show'd like a stubble-land at harvest-home;

He was perfumed like a milliner;
And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held
A pouncet-box, which ever and anon
He gave his nose and took't away again;
Who therewith angry, when it next came there,
Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talk'd,

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms
He question'd me; amongst the rest, demanded
My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold,
To be so pester'd with a popinjay,
Out of my grief and my impatience,
Answer'd neglectingly I know not what,

He should or he should not; for he made me mad
To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet
And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman
Of guns and drums and wounds,--God save the mark!--

And telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;

And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villanous salt-petre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier!


This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord,
I answer'd indirectly, as I said;
And I beseech you, let not his report
Come current for an accusation
Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

CHICKENHAWKS COME HOME TO ROOST

JAMES IN IRAQ: UPDATE

A friend of James', a team leader, was killed last week by a suicide bomber.

They're guarding a hydroelectric dam, not much safer than his old job of banging down doors with bolt cutters and a shotgun; the dam is a stationary target, and the advantage of surprise belongs to the attacker.



If you're new to this blog, family friend James Whelan signed up with the Marines after the September 11 attacks and is on his third tour of combat duty in Iraq. He is second from right in the wire photo here. The current (Saturday morning) cost of the war in Iraq is $236,892,800,000 and counting. The cost for a nation that feeds its young to the mother sow Death, all for the sake of a foolish Texan's vanity project, I leave up to you.

See also AP story with James, Bush Broke It, You Bought It, Kipling's Choice, Suspicious Death of Colonel Theodore Westhusing , Scylla and Charybdis in Iraq, Kipling on Blowback, Self-Delusion and Truth, others

"Mostly he cries for his parents and his home, and wonders what has happened, what will happen, to him."

From Colleen Mondor's review of "Kipling's Choice" by Geert Spillebeen:
"As he suffers great pain and loneliness in the time before his death, John does not reflect philosophically upon his life or his loss of it. Mostly he cries for his parents and his home, and wonders what has happened, what will happen, to him. It is one of the more realistic and emotional portrayals of a death that I have read and shows far better than any movie just what dying in a war is all about. It is worth noting that in the Battle of Loos the British army sent their men out to be little more than cannon fodder. They marched them into German guns, hoping they would overwhelm their defenses; they were wrong. The same thing happened in Gettysburg and Fredericksburg in the U.S. Civil War; the same thing happened in Gallipoli also in 1915. There are a hundred similar battles I could list here, give me time and it could be a thousand. And all of the soldiers are dead just like John Kipling, and all of them died just like he did. And it is never pretty, and it is never glorious. Death never is any of those things and if you think it will be different in battle then you are a dreamer; we are all dreamers."

"And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire"