terrette

On working conditions for foreign university professors in Japan

2012-01-13T05:34:00.002-05:00

Last week, I learned of the decision at my place of work to change the status of foreign full-time teachers from contract work (任期雇用) to lifetime employment (終身雇用). Currently, all full-time foreign teachers (and, until recently, I was the only one) are given contract positions, requiring renewal every three years, while all Japanese full-time teachers are given life-time employment upon being hired. I had no idea why this two-tiered system exists, nor did anyone else seem to understand it, much less care about it. It has always felt to me like a vestige from the war years.

A foreigner seated with the rest of the faculty

I was told by two different colleagues that no one at the school was responsible for the policy and that if I wanted to question it, I would have to face off against politicians. My colleagues seemed to want to discourage me.

Visions of myself making halting speeches in some legislative body occasionally did cross my mind. However ridiculous those visions may have been, what possible justification could anyone make for such an unjust policy? I wanted to ask, in particular, how does it benefit the prefecture to introduce such instability into the lives of certain employees?

I also wondered with respect to my own case: what if I wished to remain in Japan? Should I rent an apartment for only three years at a time? Should I consider home ownership as being too risky? Plan to get a new girlfriend or wife every three years, just in case my contract is not renewed? Lease a car for three years at a time rather than purchase one? In short, how is a person suppose to plan a life by three-year increments? And why should anyone have to?

Such segregationist rules would be blatantly illegal in the United States, and it's great to see that many public colleges in Japan have decided to discontinue them. The matter didn't seem to attract any interest from my fellow employees, but to me, it is a matter of great relief and even celebration. It will remove a number of unjust, irritating, and humiliating conditions to my job.

What were those conditions? And what did I learn from the situation? That's what I would like to explain.

Every three years, in renewing my contract, I have to reapply for my position, including submitting a report of all my academic activities for perusal by other members of the Literature Department and, eventually, all other faculty members, and absent myself from the general faculty meeting while all full-time teachers discuss my reapplication. Weeks after this, there is a formal ceremony in the president's office, attended by the highest administrators and conducted as if no one had met me before. Second, I have to undergo a second health examination -- in addition to the annual one that all employees take. This costs more than the equivalent of 130 US dollars and once required my receiving two chest X-rays within the same week. I have gone through this twice and will have to go through it once more in two and a half years before I can receive lifetime employment.

But these are just irritations. What is worse is the mere fact of being treated like a second-class employee.

When I decided to come to Japan, I suppose that part of my curiosity was to know what it is like to live as an extreme racial minority. I could have remained part of a racial majority in the United States, but I made this choice and knew I might face unfavorable treatment. But I think members of a majority often have a kind of "imagination gap" with respect to minorities. It is not impossible but it is very difficult for them to imagine what the experience of the minority is like. Moreover, very few of them ever take an interest in minority issues or empathize with minorities. They remain protected by the larger group and its conception of itself as being not only normal but fair and just in most matters. Similarly, before coming to Japan, I did not fully imagine what it would feel like to be treated as being a less dignified employee simply because I am not Japanese.

I asked about the contract nation of my employment when I interviewed for my job at the school and was willing to accept it. It was the best offer I had at the time. However, something happened two-and-a-half years into my first three-year contract that enlightened me about the unjust nature of such professional segregation. First, I came to feel that one higher-up seemed not particularly favorable to the idea of my renewing my contract. This person actually questioned me whether it was my intention to renew, as if that had to be clarified verbally. Worse, another employee, jealous of the fact that that this first employee had always managed to get me to do extra personal work for her, decided, months before the new contract was processed, that it could be altered in such a way that such duties be included as part of my general job description. No other full-time employee at the school has any such "additional responsibilities" written into their contract. I had always done this work -- editing of academic papers -- even though it was not my duty to do so and simply because I did not know better. But the second colleague saw my contract renewal as a chance to serve her own interests and acquire the use of my labor by making it an official duty. The result of this machination, which was discussed openly in front of me during a sectional meeting, is that I became aware that i) changing fellow teachers' contracts is deemed illegal by the administration (amazing, huh?!) and ii) the work that the first employee had always insisted was my duty to do for her was in fact not my duty at all. It should have been considered a personal favor. I also understood why I was never thanked for doing the work, since doing so would have acknowledged the favor as being just that--a favor and not a duty. Gullible me, I had just assumed that arrogance was the reason I was never thanked!

So, what did I learn from this? I think I learned something about the discriminatory nature of segregation. What makes segregation unfair is not that it is intrinsically discriminatory. It is not necessarily unjust to separate people into groups. Rather, the act of separation is like an open door that any person who wishes to discriminate against others may pass through easily. It can suggest discriminatory behavior and provide a smokescreen or appearance of legality and fairness to those who engage in discriminatory behavior. This is obvious when one group is given worse conditions or worse treatment from the outset, but I think it is also true when mere separation of groups is established.

Separating foreigners and non-foreigners in one's hiring conditions is unfair and needs to be banished in every institution in Japan. There will always be someone who will try to manipulate the administrative differences for some personal advantage. The 1954 US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education rejected the idea of people being "separate but equal" on the evidence that, in fact, blacks were always given worse treatment. That is different than the point I have made here. To my mind, segregation is discriminatory because it enables acts of discrimination, whether or not evidence of the discrimination can be found.

None of my colleagues seemed particularly interested in the topic -- there was no actual discussion of it -- but, as members of the majority, why would they be? They are already taken care of, and the whole system perhaps only looks to them like a minor inconvenience to me. Only a few persons I know of might have reason to object to my being treated on equal terms, but those are purely selfish reasons that they cannot defend publicly. With this decision, their tyrannical behavior towards me will no longer be tacitly encouraged by the school itself, and they will have to treat me with the same professional dignity that they show towards others.

I don't know if I will remain in Japan till retirement, but it doesn't matter. The point here is one of fairness, and it is not only about me. It is about other foreigners and it is about Japan as a society. In short, for the sake of foreigners working in Japan, and for the sake of Japan itself, it will be a great day when the system of contract employment for foreigners is abolished in all public institutions. I was delighted to hear the news and I applaud my fellow colleagues and for the administrators around Japan who first put this process of change in motion. Thank you!

Of course, the national trends are going in the other direction, as contract positions are increasing in number for both foreigners and Japanese, but this is a bright moment that I would like to acknowledge.

外国人教員の終身雇用

2012-01-12T05:32:00.000-05:00

先週私の雇用が任期雇用から終身雇用に変わることに決まったと知らされました。現在、常勤の外国人教員は全員(最近までは私１人だけでした)3年ごとに更新が必要な任期雇用です。一方で日本人の常勤の教員は全員終身雇用で雇われています。なぜこの２層のシステムが存在するのかまた、なぜ他の誰もそれを理解したり気にしてないようなのか分かりませんでした。私にとってはそれは戦時中からの名残のようでした。

２人の違う同僚にこの学校には政策に対して責任がある人はいないので、それを問いたいなら政治家に言わなければならないだろうと言われました。同僚は私を思い止まらせたかったようでした。立法の権限がある人々の前でたどたどしい演説をする自分の姿が頭をよぎりました。しかしながらそれらの思い浮かべた場面がどれだけおかしくても、そのような不当な政策を正当化する証拠として何があったのでしょうか。特に、外国人教員の生活に不安定さを取り入れることは県にとってどのように利点があるのかと尋ねたかったです。

自分自身についても考えてみました。もし自分が日本にずっといることを望んだら?3年だけアパートを借りるべきなのだろうか?家を持つことをそんなにリスクを負うものとして考えなければならないのだろうか?もし契約が更新されなかった場合のためだけに、3年ごとに新しい恋人や妻を得る計画を立てるべきなのだろうか? 車を購入するより3年間借りるべきなのだろうか?要するに、なぜ人生が3年ごとに計画されるべきなのでしょうか? そうしなければならない人がいるのでしょうか?

そのような差別的な規則はアメリカでは明らかに違法となります。同僚たちはにとっては興味を引くことではなかったようですが、日本の多くの公立の短期大学それを廃止するを目の当たりにするは素晴らしいことです。そのことは私にとってはとても安心できることで、仕事において多くの不公平やいらだち、屈辱的なことを取り除いてくれ、祝いさえしたいことです。

それらの条件はどのようなものだったのか?あの状況から私は何を学んだのか?それが私が説明したいことです。

3年ごとの契約更新では、私は学術活動のすべてのレポートを提出して文学科の他のメンバーや他専攻の教員たちに精読してもらうのも含め今の職に再応募し、私がいない教授会で他の常勤の教員は私の再応募について話し合います。その数週間後、学長室で最も地位が執行部の職員たちが出席して行われる正式な儀式があります。そしてまるで誰も私に会ったことがないかのように振る舞います。次に職員全員が毎年受ける健康診断に加えて2回目の健康診断を受けなければいけません。これは130米ドル(日本円で1万円ちょっと)以上かかり、一度は同じ週に2度胸部のX線検査を受けなければいけませんでした。私はこれを2度行い、終身雇用になる前の2年半でもう1回行わなければいけません。

しかしこれらは単なるいらだちです。最も悪いことは劣った職員のように扱われることでした。

私が来日することを決めたとき、極端な人種的少数派として生活することはどんな感じか知りたいというのは好奇心の一部だったと思います。アメリカで人種的な多数派で居続けることもできましたが、わたしはその選択をし、好ましくない扱いに直面するかもしれないことは分かっていました。しかし多数派の人たちは少数派に対してしばしば「想像力のギャップ」のようなものがあるように感じます。彼らにとって少数派の経験がどのようなものか想像するのは不可能ではありませんが困難です。それが理由で、少数派の問題に興味を持ったり少数派に共感する人は非常に少ないです。彼らはより大きなグループやほとんどのことにおいて普通であることだけではなく、公平であるという概念に守られています。

同じように、来日前、単に日本人でないから劣った職員として扱われるのはどのような感じか完全には想像していませんでした。

私は面接の際に雇用契約について尋ねそれを喜んで受け入れました。それは当時私にとって最も良い条件でした。
しかしながら、最初の3年の契約の2年半の間に専門的な区別の環境について知らされる出来事がありました。まず、１人の上司は契約を更新するのにおいては特に好ましいとは思えないと感じるようになりました。その上司は実際にはっきりと言葉にしなければいけないかのように契約更新する考えはあるのかどうか尋ねてきました。さらに悪いことに、同僚の１人は最初に話した上司がいつも私に個人的な仕事をさせていることにずっと嫉妬していて、新しい契約が手続きされる数ヶ月前に、それが私の通常業務の一部として含まれるよう変更することを決めました。他の常勤の職員には契約に書かれている "追加の責任" はありません。私にそうする義務はありませんでしたが、単によく知らなかったので、その論文を校正する仕事をしました。しかし２人目の同僚は私の契約の更新をそれを公式な義務にすることによって自分の興味のために役立て私の労力の使用を獲得する機会だとみなしたようです。専攻会議で私の面前で話し合われたこの策謀の結果気づいたことが
あります。

1) 同僚の教員の契約を変えることは執行部によって違反だと考えられている(ビックリですよね?!) 2)１人目の同僚がずっと私の義務だと主張してきた仕事は実際は全く私の義務ではなかった。個人的な頼みだと考えられるべきだったのです。またなぜそのような仕事をして感謝されなかったのか理解しました。そうすることは義務ではなく、頼みはそうあるものであるとしてとらえられていたのです。 (私は騙されかけていて、その横柄さが私が感謝されなかった理由だったのです!)

私はこのことから何を学んだのでしょうか?区別から来る差別について学んだのだと思います。区別を不公平にするのはそれが本質的に差別だということではありません。それは人々を不当にグループに分けることは必要ではありません。むしろ、区別という行動は他人を差別することを願う人が誰でも簡単に通り過ぎる開かれたドアのようなものです。それは差別的な振る舞いを暗示したり、偽装や規則厳守と差別的な振る舞いをする人々への公平さを生みま
す。

これはあるグループが最初からより悪い条件をあたえられたり、扱いをされた時明らかですが、単なるグループの区別がされた時もそうであるのは事実だと思います。

雇用条件で外国人と外国人ではない人を区別することは不公平であり、日本の全ての組織で廃止される必要があります。個人の都合のために行政の違いを操ろうとする人は常にいます。1954年のBrown v.Board of Educationというケースで米最高裁は人々が「区別されているけど平等」という考えを実際に黒人は最悪の扱いをされているという証拠に基づいて却下する決定をしました。それは私がここで述べる点とは違います。私の考えでは、差別の証拠が見つかろうと見つからなかろうと、区別は差別の行動を可能にするゆえ区別は差別と同じなのです。

私の同僚は誰もこのことに特に興味はないようでした。それについて実際の話し合いはありませんでしたが、多数派の一員として、なぜ興味を持つでしょうか? 彼らはすでに面倒を見てもらっていて、私からすると恐らく彼らにとってシステム全体は不都合なことは少ないように見えているのだと思えます。私が知っている人のうち私が対等な関係で扱われることに異議を唱える理由があるのはほんの数人だけなのかもしれません。しかし、それらは公式には支持されない利己的な理由です。この決定で彼らの私に対する制圧的な振る舞いが学校自身から暗黙に助長されることはなく、彼らは私を他の人に見せているのと同じ専門家としての威厳を持った扱いをしなければなりません。

私は定年まで日本にいるか分かりませんが、それは関係ありません。ここで大切なのは公平さの１つであり、私についてだけではありません。他の外国人についてでもあり、社会としての日本についてもです。要するに、日本で働く外国人や日本自身の利益のためであり、外国人への任期雇用の制度が廃止されるのは素晴らしいことでしょう。私はその知らせを聞いて嬉しく、自分の同僚や初めてこの過程を始めた日本中の執行部を賞賛します。

もちろん日本人と外国人のどちらも契約という位置付けは増えているので、全国的な流れは別の方向で進んでいます。ですがこれは私がお知らせしたい明るい瞬間です。

Democratizing the Arab World

2011-01-19T08:34:00.005-05:00

We blow a hole in the national treasury, poison our foreign relations, kill over a million people, mock the Bill of Rights, lay waste to an entire society, torture and kidnap hundreds, send thousands of our own to premature deaths, injuries, and madness, and all for "a democratic Iraq" which would "serve as an example to the Arab World." But when an Arab nation seems set to accomplish the feat for its own sake with relatively little violence and bloodshed in just a few weeks of outward tension, our press gives a communal sigh and turns the sports page.

I guess it's not about democracy, then, either, is it? And for all of you who followed the Bush Administration up the garden path all these years, and who argued with the likes of Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times that all the homicidal madness we unleashed in Iraq was worth it in the end, if it favored democracy, what can one say now but "Suck on this!"☆

☆ Words of Thomas L. Friedman, addressing the people of Iraq and threatening them for no rational reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOF6ZeUvgXs

(Clip of Friedman talking apparently from the future, at a time when the war in Iraq is already over.)

Healthful living for lefties

2010-12-31T20:08:00.008-05:00

It's time to draw up some New Year's resolutions. I usually start with those relating to health. Now, if you're like me and consider yourself to be a person of the left, politically speaking, then consider that you have an advantage over your friends on the right when making your New Year's resolutions. The right-wingers can boast a robust rhetoric of total liberty, entrepreneurship, and so on, but such high-minded ideas are usually meant to put one's conscience to sleep and rarely inspire anyone to take persistent action to improve their affairs. Most often, they are just cover for the privileged, who hope by championing this rhetoric to hoist more burdens and labors on the back of the currently underprivileged. Now, that is no way to lose a few pounds or go easy on the bottle. No one is going to go jogging or avoid insalubrious food items because these actions promote "freedom." In fact, plenty of well-fed right-wingers overindulge in food and drink precisely to demonstrate that they deserve to be overstuffed. If their luxuries are not the proof of triumphant initiative, at least they do not exclude the possibility that, one day, they, too, might hold a job down and not simply live off inherited wealth. The image of a starving entrepreneur inspires no confidence. What really works in these situations is something that pisses a person off. And what better target than the pernicious intrusion into our lives of corporations?

Make a list of your 10 worst habits; those that compromise your health in the short or long term. It is very likely that corporations can be blamed in part for every one of them. Who has been trying to seduce you to eat sweets, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, sit in front of your TV for hours and hours? Who has poisoned your air and water by assuring deregulation of heavy industry?

If you want to get back at some of these inhumane forces of greed and improve your health in the bargain, just imagine that in abstaining from unhealthful habits, you are doing so in a spirit of revolt. You don't have to blame Monsanto and Dupont and the rest of them directly; and there may well be no causal link between your unhealthful living and their routine violations, but even if you are fully conscious of this fact, the placebo effect will help you along.

Compare these two resolutions.

i) I am going to stop smoking because I am totally free and am moved by the spirit of personal initiative.

ii) I am going to stop smoking because I know that some evil corporations have lied to the public for years about the dangers of tobacco, filled cigarettes with hundreds of poisons in an effort to increase their appeal, and done everything to sicken the public so as to enrich themselves.

Left-wingers, you have a huge advantage here. Now, put it to use!

p.s. photo taken during a morning walk made in a spirit of revolt against the manufacturers of automobiles, which I know have corrupted governments the world over to disfavor public transportation and unassisted mobility.

A la poursuite du blaireau anglais

2009-10-27T07:11:00.003-04:00

Pardon the French title; it's the only way I could manage the necessary word play on Blair's name. Blaireau: i) badger ii) fool.

Enough for the title.

Have you ever felt like making a citizens' arrest of Tony Blair for his unpunished crime of aggression against the people of Iraq, of whom anywhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 were murdered -- yes, that's the correct word here -- as a direct result of Blair's and Bush's commands? (Let's forget Bush for the time being. There's simply too much material when it comes to this homegrown criminal.)

Maybe you have felt it more than once. Maybe you simply dreamed of seeing others making the arrest and sighed in deep nocturnal relief. Well, if so, consider that Guardian journalist George Monbiot has neatly spelled out not only the case against Blair but also a somewhat plausible means for having him arrested. The only problem with the scheme is that it involves first putting Blair back into a position of great authority: the presidency of the European Union. Such a risk would in no way be worth taking if it were Bush we were talking about. Few Americans wake up these days without feeling profound relief that that murderous buffoon no longer disturbs the public peace at home or abroad. Oblivion does him and the rest of us little justice; but at least it gives us a workable peace of mind.

Embarrassing Face of the Nation

2009-10-20T09:04:00.005-04:00

The public TV station I receive shows a series of news reports from around the world with a doubled voice-over (so that you hear both the original and the Japanese interpretation), each 15 or 30 minutes in length. Consistently, the ABC broadcast comes off looking, in comparison, like Teen Magazine presented by a bunch of serious looking men and pin-up girls. It is truly the most embarrassing awareness of being an American that I ever experience. This last week was so bad, I felt ashamed to leave my apartment for a few hours after the program came to an end. There was the boy-in-the-balloon hoax, pursued as if it were a matter of national security, then a drawn-out investigation into John McCain's daughter having shared a picture revealing her cleavage on some social networking site. This was preceded and followed by other nations reporting on climate change, terrorist attacks, international summits and the like: the sort of stuff traditionally associated with the word "news." The American programming included a few other pieces of fluff that were so insubstantial that I cannot even recall what they were about. And of course there was the chitchat to top it all off and make everyone feel good.

No wonder why Jon Stewart is so funny. His writers have an embarrassment of material. And corporate news in the US is now a parody of itself to the point where I'd be pressed to distinguish much of it from the Onion's intended parody.

Happy Birthday, Not

2009-07-06T10:31:00.007-04:00

12 shot at birthday party

There's always more gun violence going on in the US on any given day than a person could possibly keep up with, but in a report of one of today's colorful episodes, the following statements caught my attention:

Police around the country are increasingly seeing shootings with high-powered assault rifles.

"This is a sign of the times. It's no longer a .32-caliber," Timoney said. "We're finding dozens upon dozens of rounds, innocent people getting hit. It's just an awful situation."

I wonder if there's a connection between this "sign of the times" and the federal government allowing the ban on civilian ownership of assault weapons to expire in 2004. The journalist who wrote this report didn't think to mention it, but it's not as if such nationwide trends materialize spontaneously out of the ether.

The Best and Brightest Now Dimmed

2009-07-05T09:58:00.001-04:00

photo by terrette

Vietnam War Engineer Has Died

The early comments at the Times suggest that the deceased Robert McNamara is getting little love from the public, to wit:

Hell welcomes a new 'platinum tier' member. Robert, may you burn there slowly for eternity for the evil you so willingly brought to this world.

McNamara is dead, but according to the Wiki, 4.8 million Vietnamese people were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in 400,000 deaths and disabilities, and 500,000 children born with birth defects.

Judging from the tenor of the earliest posted comments, "de mortuis nil nisi bonum" has apparently been set aside for a special occasion.

At least McNamara, the Rumsfeld of the previous generation, found it in himself to do some soul searching. I, for one, can never see Rumsfeld mustering even the slightest blink of self-criticism. And McNamara went as far as to say that he was a war criminal and would have been prosecuted as such had the US not been victorious in WWII.

Public forgiveness, puh-lease

2009-06-25T05:24:00.013-04:00

This is delicious. Mark Sandford, Governor of South Carolina, gives a rambling, groveling discourse rich with flattery, self-adoration, requests for forgiveness, flamboyant adverbs, and, at times, it's-just-hard-to-make-out-exactly-what. (Maureen Dowd gets her claws into this one with gusto.) Two women can be seen smiling and, it seems, giggling at times in the background. I was totally with them. It's not out of Schadenfreude, it's just that the performance is brilliant in a self-pitying but steadfastly delusional way. It's impressive, however you cut it. My favorite line of all:

"The biggest self of self is, indeed, self."

I am tempted to turn the best parts of this into a 7-minute Dylanesque ballad, a comic tribute to that distinctly American art wherein politicians fess up to their extramarital affairs. Can't you just hear Dylan croon?: "The biggaaaast... self of se-huh-elfuh... is-a selfuh."

Uh, no, I can't either.

Washington doublespeak

2009-06-24T07:56:00.010-04:00

1. 'Dozens dead' in US drone strike

2. Obama condemns 'unjust' violence

No, those titles do not both refer to the same incident, one that has repeated itself time and again since Obama took office. I reconstituted these two BBC titles just as I had first found them on the BBC news feed. I thought they were highly eloquent when placed next to one another. And I wondered whether in being reshuffled, the titles' embarrassing proximity had been noted by someone at the BBC. I don't think I need to translate, but seeing "US president kills scores of innocent people" and "US president bemoans deaths and brutality against scores of innocent people" next to one another like that gave me pause. Obama's quote was equally eloquent in its lack of self-criticism: "We deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere it takes place." Did he merely forget to say, except for when it takes place in Pakistan and/or Afghanistan under my command? One wonders, because it's hard to put much sense to his words without postulating such an omission.

While my courageous Yellow Sth Sth friend seems at the end of his patience with the corporate control of the political process in the US, which seems incapable of delivering the health care that the people want and need, Obama keeps pursuing his vain attempt to crush resistance to foreign intervention in Afghanistan. And it doesn't seem to disturb the president one bit to take words from the mouth of Martin Luther King Jr., a man who would have been the most influential and strident critic of the campaign of violence in Afghanistan if he were still alive today. The arc of the moral universe might be long, but it doesn't bend toward the indiscriminate and unjustified bombing of civilians.

According to the Pakistani government, there have been 60-something drone attacks, which have resulted in 14 "bad guys" killed and over 700 civilians. When your "precision weaponry" is proven to be that bad, isn't it time to shelve it? And when its only significant consequence is that the flames of hatred against the US have been fanned far and wide, can you find a better example of the meaning of "counterproductive"? That's the most generous word that can be used to describe this campaign.

Let's see Obama quote MLK Jr. meaningfully and not spit on all that he stood for. Let's have the president make the same connection that MLK Jr. made between the unjust and costly military adventures abroad and the denial of services that are a public right to citizens at home.

Armagideon Times

2009-04-22T02:29:00.005-04:00

The ice age is comin'
The sun's zoomin' in
Meltown expected
The wheat is growin' thin
A nuclear error
But I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning and I
Live by river

Well, latest reports put to rest even that one sliver of comfort. Joe Strummer of the Clash did sing that last line tongue in cheek, but were he still alive, he could add that the rivers are drying up, too. Such are the findings of certain "US researchers" who have studied the world's major rivers over the past 50 or so years.

The thing about this sort of report is that it is becoming as habitual as the endless number of health studies that are carried out every year around the world and that, whatever their initial pretext, all lead to the conclusion that consumption of fruits and vegetables, accompanied by regular exercise, is good for one's health. The growing sense is that, whether we are getting sufficient vitamins and exercise or not, as a species, we are on an inevitable path to self-destruction for which none other than the Four Horseman seem bound to serve as our guides.

Kind of makes you want to start a big family, doesn't it?

Chuckling at the mainstream

2009-04-05T00:51:00.021-04:00

I've just read a series of articles in so-called mainstream online press that all made me laugh because of their ridiculous use of English. Consider these samples, from the two tabs that remain open on my screen at this moment.

First, in the New York Times article on a Korean missile launch, I encountered this surprising assessment of a certain international mindset:

Nonetheless, the series of tests in recent years — in 2006 and 1998 — is prompting fears of North Korean proliferation among Japanese, Chinese and Western leaders.

Indeed, it would be at the very least odd to have "North Korean proliferation" among the leaders of other nations, especially if this means the language spoken in that country. Unless, of course, the infected leaders were from South Korea, where the Korean language has already proliferated to an astonishing degree. However, since "North Korean" does not refer to a distinct language, perhaps what is feared is that a proliferation that is somehow related to the habits and customs of North Korea will spread throughout the leaders of the world. (If it refers to the habits of North Korean leadership, I tremble at the thought that leaders around the world might also wear dark sunglasses at all hours and consume pornographic movies daily.) Or perhaps the writer just meant to say this:

Nonetheless, the series of tests in recent years — in 2006 and 1998 — is prompting fears among Japanese, Chinese and Western leaders of weapons proliferation in North Korea.

The other one comes from an unnamed BBC journalist who was dispatched to Binghamton, NY, to report on the conditions surrounding the shooting spree that took place there a few days ago.

Sheltering from the rain in a doorway, smoking a cigarette, I found Darlene Trunkowski, who speculated that economic pressures could have been a factor.

It's a mystery to me why the reporter felt it was necessary to report that he or she was smoking a cigarette while out reporting. I also wondered, how do you "discover" someone in a doorway while you are sheltering there from the rain, smoking? Just how big is that doorway? And how long were you there before you made your discovery? And what was Darlene Trunkowski doing in the doorway, if not also sheltering from the rain? (I doubt she was also smoking, for that would have given her away at once; never mind any discovery.)

Let's see if we can repair the sentence while our BBC friend likely remains ensconced somewhere in a doorway, smoking, awaiting new discoveries.

I found Darlene Trunkowski sheltering from the rain in a doorway, smoking a cigarette, and she speculated that economic pressures could have been a factor.

Has copy editing also fallen victim to the economic downturn? Sheesh.

In Tokyo

2009-01-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

Climate debate (or something like it)

2009-01-16T20:19:00.014-05:00

Have a look at this debate over climate change, hosted and posted by Channel 4 in the UK. (You have to click on "watch the report" within the first lines of the write-up.) This shows what any such debate should really look like, as long as it's not manipulated from the get-go by corporate news handlers. In short, the side without evidence should be exposed as such and summarily trounced.

I am not an expert on US media by any means, and in recent years my exposure to it has been minimal; but I do not recall ever having seen such a debate as this one. Partly this is due to the preparedness and sharpness of George Monbiot, the Guardian journalist who faces off against David Bellamy, the botanist, prolific author and, more recently, freewheeling denier of anthropogenic global warming. Monbiot makes the easy task look easy. I have seen other such debates in US media where global warming deniers are given equal credence -- such stand-offs seem to be the rule, not the exception -- but none in which they were trounced by competent spokespersons for the scientific community, as they should be in every case. In the States, one is exposed to much louder and more arrogant versions of Bellamy's line, notably from that great source of intellectual darkness, Rush Limbaugh; but Limbaugh and his ilk are never seriously challenged on air.

What this debate really shows is that people like Bellamy have had their little moment of noise-making and that such false debates -- false because based on the moronic assumption that whether global warming exists and is caused by fossil fuel consumption is still in doubt -- need to be replaced with the truly pressing question: what to do to reverse course and slow the destruction of the biosphere even as it may already be too late?

The only recourse the denier, Bellamy, has, is to repeat: "show me the evidence." It is not enough for him that thousands of peer-reviewed articles present that evidence. (Does he dislike reading to that degree?) Apparently, for Bellamy to take notice, one would have to raise a glacier above him and have it commence melting into his lap in voluminous waves of bone-chilling water, with a convoy of SUVs rolling noisily by.

This was a debate that concluded as it should have, with the humiliation of the professional denier, but it should also be the last of its kind. It's time to stop asking the brain-dead question of whether glaciers are melting and whether global climate change is real. It's time to stop denying that the burning of fossil fuels is at the root of the problem. And it's time for radical policy shifts across the globe and especially in the United States.

Harold Pinter, a writer of conscience

2008-12-25T23:12:00.006-05:00

On the occasion of the death of the British author Harold Pinter, I invite visitors to this site to take a moment to watch a true writer of conscience give his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for literature. Such writers are increasingly rare, and one of the few remaining has just left us.

In his speech, Pinter reminds Americans that, with its 702 military installations in 134 countries, the U.S., which is now on a permanent military footing, maintains as its core policy the threat of nuclear annihilation. Moreover, it does this while selling its countless crimes in the post-war period as democracy promotion and effectively--that is, successfully--brainwashing its population on a massive scale.

In light of this, to have confidence in a Clinton-Obama foreign policy today would require one to forget or actively not to care that, since W.W. II, the U.S. has supported and in some cases engendered right-wing military dictatorships that have provoked the violent deaths of millions of innocent people in Indonesia, Greece, Brazil, Vietnam, Paraguay, Uruguay, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, Haiti, Turkey, Iran, and Chile, among other places, and to imagine, like the completely useless idiots that most Americans are when it comes to assessing the state of the world, that the administration heading to Washington D.C. repudiates this long history of deception and violence and in no way intends to extend its tyranny into the future.

Hiatus

2008-11-08T21:38:00.008-05:00

I am taking a hiatus from blogging and may return early next year. Thanks, Steve Bates, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, Charles2 of The Fulcrum, and others for stopping by through a tumultuous but victorious election season. For the time being, I am going to focus on my non-virtual existence--teaching, writing, living a life.

Frank Rich has penned a masterful summation of the Obama election that I'd rather tip my hat to than try to rival ("It Still Felt Good the Morning After," November 9, 2008). And should anyone care to see a good movie, I recommend The Visitor. This modern Bildungsroman takes place within a very Bushy post-9-11 New York City, a once-vibrant community now splintered by paranoid security overreaches and strangled with xenophobic immigration nets, and we can only hope that the film will begin to appear dated in some respects by early next year. The human element of the film, buoyed by superb acting, will surely not fade, but it's hard to watch this film and not feel bitter about the cruel turn given to American society under Bush and Cheney.

The grand democratic hand

2008-11-05T22:06:00.006-05:00

Tonight's victory of Barack Obama and Joe Biden signals a defeat for many very bad things. I have no political enthusiasts around me; so, to celebrate, I am going list a few of the horrible people and things that have been smacked upside the head tonight by the grand democratic hand of American voters.

The Republican Party, Karl Rove, Rupert Murdoch, John McCain, George Bush Jr., Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, racism, hate, ignorance, corporate fundamentalism, election theft, dirty politics, the Religious Right, and that woman with a big mouth in the video posted below.

These pestiferous people and things will surely not go away any time soon, but it is very comforting to know that, tonight, they have been solidly rejected by a majority of Americans. Do you know how long I have waited for this day? It feels like a lifetime. And it is exactly what I have been asking for ever since I started blogging.

Palin is beyond help

2008-11-04T03:51:00.008-05:00

If the thought of Sarah Palin wielding executive power has not yet stunned you, you should listen to her take a completely wacko prank call completely seriously for nearly 6 minutes. After provoking her repeatedly with nonsense claims and irreverent comments, the prankster has to come out and tell her "you have been pranked" before she realizes what she has been rolling in giddily. This comes after the prankster, for instance, refers to Johnny Holliday as his "special American advisor" (in fact, he's a miserable French pop star) and praises "Nailin' Palin," a porno flick that derides Palin which the prankster calls "a documentary they made on your life." Palin, ever the shrewd one, thanks him joyfully for complimenting her on the "documentary." Throughout the entire conversation, Palin keeps pushing out the memorized "good energy" phrases, flatters "Nicolas" (who sounds nothing like Sarkozy), and generally acts like she's about 9 years old and in the midst of her first sleep-over with friends.

Executive material, you think?

It is no wonder that many prominent conservative commentators have abandoned the Republican ticket for the first time in modern history.

A plea for Barack Obama

2008-11-01T09:40:00.013-04:00

I do not have the time before November 4th to present a fully reasoned endorsement for Barack Obama. This is partly because I have many other responsibilities before me and partly because the reasons for the choice are too numerous to be explained in a few words. However, it seems to me that the vicious tenor of the McCain-Palin campaign -- both its strategy to bury its main opponent with tireless mud-slinging (an example?) and the concomitant rage and ignorance that flared up among McCain-Palin supporters -- is a very pregnant sign about not only what sort of leadership those two would provide, but also of what sort of country the United States would become with them in power. In short, McCain-Palin promise more years of divisiveness, hate, aggression, government-fed falsifications and bald-faced denials of substantiated wrongdoing, increased social stratification and increased wealth distribution to those few at the top who least need it.

There are those toward whom I would be silent if they gave their votes to McCain and Palin: for instance, the super wealthy, who clearly have it in their interests to see Bush's tax cuts for the super wealthy become "permanent" in accordance with McCain's will. Or, again, those for whom anti-abortion rights legislation is the only issue that matters. I do not fathom that such people will ever be persuaded to see the world differently; they shall forever be led by the rigors of their single ideological pursuit: making all abortions illegal. However, there is apparently a stunningly large number of people who are ready to vote, or who have already voted for, McCain-Palin simply out of a spirit of partisanship or on the basis of an erroneous and misguided sense of what that ticket may offer them. For these masses -- many of them fans of Fox News, the Drudge Report, or Rush Limbaugh -- I think the best response might be something like the full-page advertisements taken out over the past few years by the religious right in an attempt to persuade homosexuals to "convert" to heterosexuality. That advertisement campaign was offensive for its erroneous assumption about the nature of homosexuality; but the strategy might well fit if applied to those who apparently cannot learn from the eight-year example of failure upon failure that the Republicans have put on display for them in virtually every domain of government. After all, no one is born Republican. And certainly no one without special issues is born incorrigibly stupid.

Of course, time is tight, and the resources for such an advertisement campaign are lacking. Nonetheless, should any Republican supporter read these words and feel moved, by courage or other human sentiment, to testify that they are determined not to be duped any longer, and not to be brought once again to vote against their own economic and political interests on the basis of bogus fears, kindly leave a few comments below.

Is it just me, or are 95 percent of the reasons given for opposing or fearing Obama truly just cooked up somewhere?

I close this post with lines sent to me from a friend who works in Cleveland, Ohio. A sign of the times, for sure:

I volunteered one afternoon for the Obama campaign to knock on doors to encourage voters to vote early. One registered voter told me he wouldn't vote for Obama because he said Obama was a Muslim and would use weapons of mass destruction against America. I started chuckling because I thought he was joking and tried to continue my conversation with him. When he continued to stare at me without saying anything, I realized he was serious. These people are out there.

I've always hated college football coaches who run up the score against weak opponents. That being said, I have a lust for running up the score in this election.

Fish, Milton, Lennon

2008-10-28T10:50:00.009-04:00

I never imagined I would discuss the literary critic and sometimes New York Times editorial writer Stanley Fish favorably, but his recent opinion piece is a stinger, especially if you read it with the religious Right in mind. Fish has a penchant for casting tame arguments in scandalous terms or, at other times, for making truly scandalous claims in an off-hand manner. The upshot of his most recent piece is that, in one important respect, Obama is like Jesus while McCain is like Satan. Forget for the moment whatever Fish might mean by that, because the comparison is bound to create a storm. This may well be the objective for Fish, a veritable storm chaser of essay writing.

Fish's piece reminds me of the famously twisted words of John Lennon, who at the height of Beatlemania in the United States quipped that the Beatles seemed to be more famous than God. The religious Right went bazookey, running wild with the assumption that Lennon meant something like, "I think that I should be more famous than God" or some such blasphemy, and destroying Beatles paraphernalia, getting the group banned from radio, etc. Could a similarly mindless little storm be kicked up in the wake of this oddly couched argument from a literary critic? Fish's piece is really nothing more than an appreciation of the Obama campaign articulated on the basis of Fish's reading of Milton's "Paradise Regained." It is reasonable enough and somewhat colorful, but I can just imagine its getting twisted into something truly execrable -- for instance, final proof that Obama IS the anti-Christ. Let's see. I'll give it 48 hours. Check back.

How to win a crime

2008-10-23T06:11:00.008-04:00

Senator McCain keeps bellowing forth that, as president, he is going to "win" the greatest crime of the Bush administration -- the violent invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. (Of course he doesn't call the crime a crime. He prefers the inaccurate, righteous-sounding word "war." But let's be serious.) McCain's claim is that, by contrast, Obama can only lose the crime by seeking an end to it. Well, not only is there very little possibility that Obama will end the crime or prosecute those who are responsible for it, the idea that McCain can in any way "win" it is simply inconceivable -- that is, unless by "win" McCain means perpetuate the greatest international crime of the last 60-some years and crush any idea of justice and democracy in Iraq. What a win that would be, huh? And what a whopper of a campaign promise. If this is what is meant, McCain's achieving "victory" would require us to invent a new expression in English -- "to win a crime." But, if that is not the sense intended, it remains unclear how McCain intends to achieve "victory" in any honest use of the word. How, precisely, would McCain appease the vast majority of citizens in Iraq, those who have always rejected U.S. presence there, let alone bring real security and a functional infrastructure back to what remains the most dangerous nation on the planet? And does he intend to do this without withdrawing all US troops, in accordance with the wishes of the Iraqi people?

I don't know if Senator McCain pays much attention to events in Iraq, or to the criminal nature of Bush's designs on that nation and its resources, but it is worth underscoring that the

US president has just signed, or issued a signing statement, showing the intention of the US government to take control over Iraq’s oil.

So notes Raed Jarrar, an architect in Washington, D.C. who translated the relevant documents. Here are his comments:

I think this is an amazingly frustrating and shocking thing to do at the same week that the Bush administration is trying to sign a long-term agreement legitimizing a long-term occupation of Iraq. So, it gives, I think, the wrong—or maybe the right—message to the Iraqi people, that the US will continue occupying their country to secure oil, to control their country’s oil...

Jarrar's blog, Raed in the Middle, presents the translated document in full (also pdf'd here) and also shows photos from anti-occupation demonstrations that just took place in Baghdad. According to Jarrar,

the city witnessed another demonstration with more than one million Iraqi, Arabs and Kurds and others, Muslims and Christians and others, Sunnis and Shiites and others demonstrated together against the occupation and the long term agreement, asking for a complete withdrawal the leaves no permanent bases, no troops, and no mercenaries.

Put the pieces of this puzzle together. On the one hand, you have massive public rejection among Iraqis of all forms of U.S. occupation and intrusion into their nation -- a fact that is left without comment in the U.S. other than in a few independent news sources such as Democracy Now! (see, in particular, show of October 21, 2008); on the other, you have a U.S. president who, never having been even censured for his massive crimes there, continues to pursue, via the ruse of a signing statement, his ultimate goal of controlling Iraq's natural resources, thereby sitting on and butt-smearing any notion of justice or democracy for the foreseeable future.

In the midst of this conundrum peeps up little soldier boy: "I will never concede defeat, my friends. I will never surrender in Iraq!"

Sounds impressive, Johnny.

Now, what the hell does it mean?

terrette photo: Etretat, France 34173

Choose your elites with care; it matters

2008-10-22T01:50:00.024-04:00

Noam Chomsky speaks on voting without illusions and on why it is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama articulated health care initiatives that, while still falling short of the needs and stated desires of most Americans, nonetheless promised improvement to the currently dysfunctional and brutally expensive health care system:

THE VIDEO WAS MADE UNAVAILABLE WEEKS AFTER THIS POSTING

After years of mulling this question over and at times drawing different conclusions, I can say solidly that I concur with Chomsky's view on the value of a disabused approach to voting, and my vote for Obama in the State of Ohio reflected that.

Our dysfunctional way of life

2008-10-19T10:11:00.004-04:00

Andrew J. Bacevich makes a number of insightful comments about the state of the nation in his two-part interview with Bill Moyers. A sample from the online transcript:

I think that the Bush Administration's response to 9/11 in constructing this paradigm of a global war on terror, in promulgating the so-called Bush Doctrine of Preventive War, in plunging into Iraq - (an) utterly unnecessary war - will go down in our history as a record of recklessness that will be probably unmatched by any other administration.

But (that) doesn't really mean that Bill Clinton before him, or George Herbert Walker Bush before him, or Ronald Reagan before him, were all that much better. Because they all have seen military power as our strong suit. They all have worked under the assumption that through the projection of power, or the threat to employ power, that we can fix the world. Fix the world in order to sustain this dysfunctional way of life that we have back here.

The implication here is that equating "freedom" with consumer choice, as so many Americans do, is going, eventually, to lead to a perilous financial and political state for the nation as a whole.

I think the nation would be served well if Bacevich were asked to be the next president's speech writer. His are hard truths that need to be told repeatedly and heard far and wide.

Holy fraud!

2008-10-18T03:04:00.026-04:00

The Washington Post reports that Sarah Palin, noting some "movement" in the polls (of the statistically irrelevant sort), attributes the apparent pause in her ticket's weeks-long trouncing to the influence of none other than God.

Giving credit to a higher power for the day's poll ratings, the Alaska governor told the roughly 500-person audience that things might be changing. "We even saw today, thank the Lord," she said, looking upwards and raising her fist, "We saw some movement."(source)

I understand that Palin has been shielded from news -- both voluntarily, over a long period, and, of late, by advisement from her handlers. That is unfortunate, for had she been paying attention, she would have noticed that a recent case brought against selfsame God, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent "death, destruction, and terrorisation (sic)," was dismissed on account of the fact that the defendant has no address and that therefore no legal papers can be served. (BBC report)

This fact should give pause to those like Palin in the GOP who like to imagine that God is on their side in a political campaign. Imagining that God would take a partisan stake in such a matter comes dangerously close to imagining that God would, in essence, cast a vote in favor of the GOP. And, as we have seen, lacking any address, God cannot in fact be registered legally to vote. And since the Holy One has no dog in this fight and no legal means of intervening, any advice or influence God might exercise upon the proceedings would surely be unwarranted.

To stop appearing absurd, Palin and those like her who hype charges of voter fraud need to stop evoking the Godhead as an active member of their team. Is it reasonable to whine publicly that Mickey Mouse has been registered to vote while at the same time boasting that the Creator of the Universe is pushing one's campaign forward by tinkering with poll results? The most Mickey could ever do is toss a single vote in for Obama and Biden; whereas God, if we are to believe Palin, could actually alter the votes of millions of legally registered citizens. Try to tell me that such unwarranted intrusion would not be voter fraud on a massive scale and the end of democracy as we know it.

It is only fitting that I end this post with a retouched quote from John McCain's debate-delivered tirade:

"We need to know the full extent of Governor Palin's relationship with God, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

terrette photo: Carpathian Mountains, Poland.

34096

Ohio voter?

2008-10-17T03:10:00.006-04:00

If you vote in Ohio, know that this page, from the League of Women Voters, gives you a heads-up on all state issues that you will be asked to make a choice on. I just sent my ballot in. For Americans living in Japan, the postage costs the equivalent of about three dollars and ninety cents this year, which is a little better than in years past on account of the weak dollar.
(34078)

Chalmers Johnson on a national blind spot

2008-10-13T08:24:00.005-04:00

If you have a moment, watch this video of historian Chalmers Johnson explain how US military spending cannot go on at its maddening pace without threatening the prospects of our presumably democratic nation (via the Real News Network).

Jewish Cemetery, Warsaw. Photo: terrette

This is a point that right wing sympathizers, political conservatives, Limbaugh fans, Republicans, and so on, would do well to consider. It is also a point that sorely needs to be raised in the October 15 debate. Of course, for structural reasons relating to party power and owing to the industrial complex stranglehold on political discourse in the United States, there's not a chance in hell that it will.

McCain pulls up, wherefore?

2008-10-11T22:08:00.013-04:00

I am not sure what to make of McCain's shift in strategy. After a week of ludicrous mud slinging, he has confronted, albeit timidly, some of the animosity, ignorance, and rage stoked by his and Palin's distortions and distractions about Barack Obama. Le Monde presents a video that brings together a few of these moments where McCain confronts his own supporters. This could be a momentary truce in the preparation for the third debate. More interestingly, it could be another white flag of surrender from the McCain camp (after the one raised in Michigan). Or it could be simply an acknowledgment that the mud slinging had no effect on public opinion at large and that swift-boating your opponent out the way with slander is not going to work this time. In all three cases, it is a sign of desperation. Things look very bad for Republicans this election cycle. And they seem startled to find that hiding their harmful and bankrupt policies behind slander of their opponents is not working anymore. (Links to NYTimes op-ed by Bob Herbert and NYTimes article on the "rough week" for the McCain campaign.)

In the Washington Post, novelist Khaled Hosseini writes that

pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.

What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words. They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.

Well said, Khaled. Incidentally, the BBC has added another document to the series of videos from various sources showing "delusional voters" who support McCain and Palin. This time, they interview the clueless in Ohio and sound a note of warning. The warning, on its surface, is that Obama could lose Ohio and the election as a whole; there is also the implication, however, that his personal safety may be compromised by the degree of suspicion and hate being cooked up against him.

Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times, provides a solid summation of this whole issue. His article ends with these words:

The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.

The Annointed One

2008-10-10T09:16:00.005-04:00

The relatively new-to-the-net The Daily Beast, not to be confused with the wonderful source of provocative satire and anti-right wing commentary from Buffalo, NY known as The Beast, has posted video from in and around Sarah Palin's house of worship. Some of those interviewed will surely strike non-initiates as downright wacky. To take them at their word, Sarah Palin has been chosen by the Lord to lead the nation from the "crown" of all fifty states, Alaska. There are also several moments within the secretly recorded church service of "crush our enemy" types of chants that seem to anticipate the "Love Israel, death to everyone else in my way" foreign policy Ms. Palin delivers with a smile and a wink. If this is a glimpse of what a Palin vice presidency or eventual presidency would look like, I'd say we risk having more than just one disaster on the nation's hands at the moment.

Personally, I'd really like us all to avoid another four years of editorial warfare of the sort we saw relating to George Bush Jr., as writers of various political stripes weigh in on the question, "is he/she really an idiot? or is this just political cunning shrewdly enveloped in down-home manners?" Let's just avoid such vain questions all together this time, shall we? President Barack Obama would save our many fine editorial writers the mental anguish involved in trying to postulate hidden capacities and God-appointed leadership.

The pre-approved debate

2008-10-07T22:27:00.011-04:00

On the "town hall" debate between Senators McCain and Obama: Wow, those were horrible questions. Those were NOT questions from human beings (except for, perhaps, the one about whether health care is a commodity, which, not surprisingly, neither of the candidates answered). Those were questions that surely, in one way or another, made a tortuous route through the hands of party operatives. I don't know how these questions were selected, wheedled down, and packaged for public voicing, and if anyone has any light to shed on that, please comment below, but this "town meeting" was more smoke and mirrors from the "Presidential Debate Committee" and another lost opportunity for the American public.

Update 1: Democracy Now! reported that all questions were "pre-approved." The host, Amy Goodman, also picked out the one "real" question that I highlighted in the paragraph above, written just as the debate ended. Goodman also noted that, although, like McCain, Obama dodged the question about "commodifying health care," he did remark later that health care "should be a right for every American." I note that between "is a right" and "should be a right" can easily slip many millions of Americans-without-health-care. It's plenty dainty to say what "should be a right;" but saying that health care IS a right is the only honest way to approach the issue. It's too bad that Obama's answer was also apparently pre-approved.

Update 2: Associated Press writer Philip Elliott reports that, "Tom Brokaw of NBC, the moderator, screened their questions and also chose others that had been submitted online." So, the party influence was not perhaps hands-on, but this is hardly a sign of democratic health. Tom Brokaw is another furrowed-brow showmaster-masquerading-as-a-journalist. Who in their right mind could expect a tough question, let alone a glimmer of light, or a capacity for feeling, from dud-on-arrival Brokaw? This doubles the shame of the process. Not only do we have our democratic process to mourn, we also have the state of journalism to execrate.

Can you imagine questions such as the following? Warning: you are about to enter the Realm of the Politically Unthinkable.

What will you do to alleviate the suffering the Palestinians, who have seen their land and water supply taken, divided up, and parceled off for consumption by the State of Israel?

The American Society of International Law Newsletter, March-April 2004, maintains that,"the invasion (of Iraq) was both illegal and illegitimate." Do you agree with the majority of legal scholars who have studied the matter, that the so-called war in Iraq was undertaken by the Bush administration both illegally and illegitimately, and, if not, why not?

And I could go on, but I think my point has been made. This was a duping of the American public. There should have been a boycotting of the entire damn event.

夢の船

2008-10-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

Near Hakone

Stuck in the past, but who?

2008-10-05T05:04:00.010-04:00

After repeatedly accusing Joe Biden of being stuck in the past whenever Biden made the reasonable and verifiable claim that Palin's and McCain's policies would largely continue those of the current Bush administration, Governor Palin is now parading an attack on Barack Obama by focusing on an acquaintance he had some forty years ago. As Michael Cooper, writing in the NYTimes on October 4, reports:

Stepping up the Republican ticket’s attacks on Senator Barack Obama, Gov. Sarah Palin on Saturday seized on a report about Mr. Obama’s relationship with a former 1960s radical to accuse him of “palling around with terrorists.”

The fact that no substantive link has been established between Mr. Ayers and Obama and that the matter is very, very far from relating to anything like an Obama policy seems a small matter to Palin, the sprightly hypocrite.

So we should all ask, I think, who is truly stuck in the past, and why?

Turning decidedly toward the future, with a very scary insinuation, Frank Rich has penned an incisive commentary on the present state of the McCain/Palin ticket, which concludes like this:

You have to wonder how long it will be before (certain Republicans) plead with (McCain) to think of his health, get out of the way and pull the ultimate stunt of flipping the ticket. Palin, we can be certain, wouldn’t even blink.

For "social conservatives," those who, for instance, vote on the issue of abortion alone or on a few "moral" issues while ignoring issues of war and the economy, Palin is the perfect candidate. For them, it matters not that she is ridiculously ignorant of politics in the full sense of the word. Should a ticket-flip be pulled on the American public--McCain's health, argues Rich, may well warrant it--it would be a victory for the most radical social conservatives within the Republican party, whether or not Palin actually succeeds in her presidential ambitions this time around.

On a related note, Maureen Dowd has made a sobering assessment of Ms. Palin's "inspiring" use of language, and it ain't pretty.

On the VP debate

2008-10-03T11:16:00.016-04:00

I watched the debate between Palin and Biden and here are a few thoughts.

Beyond all that can be said about substantial differences between the candidates' statements of facts and proposed policies, the whole debate stank a stench of party control the likes of which we have not yet seen, even when accounting for the prosthetic brain that Bush had had wired under his coat on one occasion. It was obvious that both candidates knew every question that was going to be put to them, as well as the order in which they would be raised. It is no wonder, then, that the two parties, who control these debates so as to exclude all other parties and prevent serious questions from being asked, refused to divulge the terms of their agreement concerning the conduct of the debate. That's why the criticism of Gwen Ifill that was launched before the debate even took place was particularly foul -- because it ignorantly or willfully neglected the much larger fact that the entire debate process and its "committee" lacked fairness and objectivity. None of the four candidates for office even deigned to mention the fraudulent name of the committee, which was hatched to give it an air of officialdom and legitimacy. It is no wonder, given this highly concocted and safe-guarding strategy on the part of Democrats and Republicans (and especially the two representatives of those parties who have undemocratically and in a highly partisan way controlled the whole debate process since stealing it away from the League of Women Voters) that "bipartisanship" was praised with such mad insistence by the candidates. Shouldn't they, in fact, be ashamed of it? Where is there any resistance anymore to the policies of these two parties' leaders? They seem delighted whenever they find a issue on which they agree (as in the cruel and one-sided policies towards the Palestinians or the totally unjustified rejection of same-sex marriage). Caving in to the other side, which is the "other side" many times only in name, has become synonymous with being a "maverick," something McCain surely is not.

As for the exchange, I will leave aside commenting on Sarah's mannerisms, which Saturday Night Live did a good job of portraying. I cannot stand but care not to discuss the winking, the cutesy and cheap one-liners like "Say it ain't so, Joe," and so on, all of which made Sarah's performance look trivializing, fake and inept. What really pissed me off was the glaring falsity, one that seems to be at the heart of the Republican party, in which Sarah claimed, out of one side of her mouth, that government has messed up and, out of the other, that government should be weakened. Somehow, by means of this double speak, we are supposed to believe that the government messed up because it was too strong or that it exercised oversight too well, when obviously the opposite is true and the opposite conclusion should follow. (And we are also supposed to forget, as well, that in principle the government serves as the representation of the people, not as its adversary.) By listening to Sarah, you would think that if government could only be reduced to a barely functioning outpost, then pathological corporations and enterprisingly happy families could finally exist in a state of endless harmony. That's forgetting that, at the same time, this idealized pair, having crushed their own government, would have also to maintain an ever-expanding military and economic empire across the globe. We've seen how well the first steps in that direction have turned out.

In case you think I am going exaggerating the contradictions of this candidate to one of the highest offices in the land, recall what Sarah said the other night:

"Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper."

What a goddamn idiot assessment of how the country and its government work. Is there any way to shake this stupidity out of American society, now that the Republicans and their fawning media empire has spread it far and wide?

I was pleased to see that the NYTimes underscored some of this rubbish in their editorial, which included these lines:

When it came to domestic issues, Ms. Palin mainly relied on enthusiasm and humor, talking about hockey moms, soccer moms and Joe Sixpack almost as often as she used the word “maverick” to describe Mr. McCain or herself.

[....]

Ms. Palin’s primary tactic was simply to repeat the same thing over and over: John McCain is a maverick. So is she. To stay on that course, she had to indulge in some wildly circular logic: America does not want another Washington insider. They want Mr. McCain (who has been in Congress for nearly 26 years). Ms. Palin condemned Wall Street greed and said she and Mr. McCain would “demand” strict oversight. In virtually the next breath, she said government should “get out of the way” of American business.

[....]

In the end, the debate did not change the essential truth of Ms. Palin’s candidacy: Mr. McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment. It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.

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Fun zealotry

2008-09-03T03:24:00.003-04:00

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter.

For the first time in many tries, I have been amused by an op-ed signed Maureen Dowd. Here is the link, or permalink, which I hope means that it will never go away; that it will be accessible as is until at least the Armageddon.
Could thinking on the Republican camp be as "refreshingly cynical" as Dowd would have us believe? I cannot stomach the thought. But only because it smells plausible.

Shooting down everything

2008-08-20T07:51:00.005-04:00

Guardian journalist George Monbiot has penned another incisive article. This time he writes of the missile defense system that was restarted by Reagan, the man who, according to a pet phrase of those who pollute US media with child-like formulas for understanding the world, 'won the cold war.' How anyone could have won a war that, as continued US government spending on missile defense shows, still seems to require hundreds of billions of dollars to be waged, is no small mystery. The system, which apparently has not a chance in hell of ever working, seems to amount to a singular ambition: shoot down everything that is evil. However, since this ambition, while perhaps comforting if placed within the narrow confines of right-wing political discourse based on irrational fear and illusory solutions, would amount, for reasons that Monbiot explains, to that of shooting down everything and bankrupting the US government in the process, one wonders why opposition to it is never aired in US media. But that is almost like asking why favorable results from the Cuban olympists are never featured by US media covering the athletic events in Beijing. It remains beyond the pale of the thinkable.

Kinko Bay

2008-06-22T03:39:00.005-04:00

Featuring the ever-active Sakurajima stratovolcano as seen from Yoshino Park.

Life-threatening Livestock

2008-06-20T11:43:00.006-04:00

I discovered Mark Bittman giving a thought-provoking speech on livestock and its impact on the planet. Bittman highlights the fact that, after energy production, livestock

is the second highest contributor to atmosphere-altering gases. Nearly one-fifth of all greenhouse gas (18 percent) is generated by livestock production, more than transportation... And it's not just methane (that is a problem). Livestock is also one of the biggest culprits in land degradation, air and water pollution, water shortages, and loss of biodiversity.

Given this, one wonders why Al Gore never mentions meat consumption in his talks, including his most recent one. One also wonders why people continue to eat meat everyday. Of the many reasons why anyone might not eat so much meat, cruelty to animals, Bittman argues, is, by comparison to the environmental impact of livestock production, a red herring. As Bittman suggests,

let's get the numbers of the animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left.

He's referring to the fact that in the US, for example, every year 10 billion animals are killed for eating. And the important thing is not simply that that amounts to 10 billion acts of cruelty per year in the US that could be avoided altogether and in so doing promote health across the nation, but that the overproduction and overconsumption of livestock worldwide currently swallows up 30 percent of the Earth's service and that the amount of land needed is predicted to double in the next 35-40 years. In short, what Bittman argues is that eating beef regularly is not only bad for an individual's health, but bad for the health of the planet and in a very serious way.

Bittman's NYTimes article on the same subject can be consulted here.

This is homeland

2008-05-29T23:53:00.016-04:00

When I fly home to the US, I inevitably have the same impression. Even if I anticipate it in advance, the sight of so many fat people startles me. It starts with the middle-aged men's bellies I see being walked around in airports.

All the pot bellies on men in airports moving steadily by, almost as if they were arriving to attend the same pot-belly convention. As my eyes are drawn to them, it seems that they stare back at me, leaving me to wonder if they might be communicating something from behind the shirts, and imagining that they are whispering something as they pass each other by. Perhaps a code word or merely the sustained wink of knowing comrades. Like cyclops with fabric wrapped over their heads, they communicate to one another in complicit squints, each in its gentle rocking motion excreting the idea of a comforting, forgetful homeland.

After living for years in Japan, a country that like so many in the world has few extreme body types, I find that the bellies really stand out. It's as if they had all just popped out the moment you entered the airport. So, is this what MEN look like?...you can't help but wonder. The impression hits you like that. And then you start to notice the floating masses that somewhat resemble human limbs, you see colossal bodies laboring to fix themselves upon chairs that are swallowed up in the hovering mass, and you begin to feel you are in a hospital ward rather than an airport. It's interesting to me how you get used to that, too, when you stay for a time in the States. The hospital ward for the morbidly obese expands and becomes your society. You begin to see much of humanity in that condition and not to think twice about it. But when you consider it with respect to the peoples of the world, the anomalous nature of it gets stuck inside you.

It is no secret that the US leads the world in obesity and its related health problems. It is also known that the societal patterns that lead to obesity are spreading around the world with great rapidity, especially in the UK. However, I think of all the visitors to the US who must also get hit with the same impression. They might not see cyclops, exactly, but I am sure that like me they are shocked.

Our local friendly volcano

2008-05-18T03:09:00.012-04:00

Here's a photo I took in April while riding my bike to the grocery store. Just another eruption that no one paid much attention to. The kilometers-high cloud of ash was swept away into the wind within 30 minutes or so, with very little of it reaching the city, as far as I could tell. I don't know how often this happens, since some of the eruptions of ash occur when it's dark or simply when I am unaware, indoors. I don't believe they all get reported in the local news, but I don't watch that regularly, either. If you miss the eruption, its consequences can be wiped away within an hour. And, unless the wind pulls the ash into the city, which usually only risks happening in summer and only a couple of times a year, then you would have no idea it had occurred.

I live 7 or 8 kilometers from the volcano's base. Only a couple of times over a few years has it exploded with noise that reached me, shaking the windows the building where I work. I took a ferry to the volcano a couple of weeks ago to visit a friend who lives along its base and it was steaming and belching low clouds of ash. If you show enthusiasm about an ongoing eruption of ash to locals, you risk getting an impatient glare in return. Unbridled displays of joy, however, are common at the sight of the faintest winter snowflake, a far rarer occurrence.

The school children who live on it all wear yellow hard hats when outside. The volcano also spews lava, but I have not seen that or heard of it happening in recent years. Its last massive eruption was in 1913 or 1914, when it went from being an island (thus it's name: Sakurajima, meaning "Cherry Blossom Island") to its current status as a peninsula (no name adjustment was bothered with).

Especially when you're on the volcano, you may feel that you are in some pre-historic era. Ferns, gawky sea birds, palm trees, and the tumultuous volcano above... only dinosaurs are wanting.

Farewell report

2008-04-08T09:30:00.003-04:00

Fellow gun-control proponent M. Moore has an implicitly caustic juxtaposition at his site today of a memorial link for Charlton Heston and links to news reports of a typical day's carnage of gun violence in the U.S.

He had only the Heston link up, front and center, for a couple of days, out of apparent respect for the deceased. But Moore's broader conscience apparently kicked back into gear as he reflected upon the legacy of this former head of the National Rifle Association and weapons enthusiast.

Being at wit's end over the entire issue of gun proliferation in the U.S., I cannot say I am offended by the juxtaposition, but I can imagine that some would be; especially those who would kill to keep their guns, as Heston once said he would do.

The Power of "They"

2008-02-27T02:02:00.002-05:00

This post has been updated to reflect current estimations for the largely unpaid for invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S., private, and other forces.

If you want to be the president of the United States, you have to speak like the president. This means, among other things, identifying "enemies" by using vague third-person plural pronouns with abandon -- especially when discussing "terrorists," which, when you consider all the different (and many innocent) persons it has been applied to, is scarcely a surer target than indeterminate "they," "those," their," and "them." "Terrorists," or, for short, "they" (and its likenesses), are just two versions of the same dark cloud against which the leader of corporate America now expediently channels public energy and expense into hysterical group hate or--what often assures the same results--warps the general perception of history and current events.

Wroclaw Residence

By repeating the simple pronoun "they," spiced up here and there with neighboring adjectives like "ruthless" and "heartless," the leader discovers that he or she can wrench the people of TV LAND USA into a massive brain-lock and a state of nebulous dread. "They hate our freedom." "They hate us because we're so good." It hardly matters what material is stuffed into the predicate of such assertions, which perhaps explains why Bush's "because we're so good" did not at once evoke deafening and undying laughter. There, as always, the case is closed by the sweeping pronoun that comes first. "They are somehow analogous to a small group of people who we know did something wrong." "They are somehow connected to grave threats that may gather or wander or take a stroll through the park." And, an assertion that surely expresses the depth of metaphysical angst for any true patriot: "They are not us." Spoken in the earnestly menacing tone that many pretenders to the executive office seem to have practiced at their medicine-cabinet mirrors, any one of these could warrant all-out invasion of just about any country on earth.

And so it is that, by virtue of "they," "those," "their," and "them," suspicion of evil is swiftly balled up into a target of general scorn. Little matter if the actual target turns out to be hundreds of thousands of civilians, as in Iraq, or if the cost of exterminating such civilians and destroying their society and poisoning their cities may surpass three trillion US dollars (which amounts to approximately $33,000 for each US household). The case was shut long before any of that was mentioned. And if actual threats emerge precisely because of this or that invasion, the leader will simply dispatch those into the same airy plurality that was at the root of evil in the first place. Let the pundits bicker over 'chronology.' After all, they still hate us, don't they?

Such thoughts occurred to me when I heard the following morsel of wisdom not from President Bush but from Senator Hillary Clinton, who, among other things, refers to the illegal and illegitimate US invasion of Iraq as a "war" while conflating the murderous invasion with the events of 9/11:

"I do think we are engaged in a war against heartless, ruthless enemies," she said. "If they could come after us again tomorrow they would do so."

Far be it from the public to ask, "Who the are 'they'?" "And why do we need to kill 'them'"? Or even, "How does denying Iraq its sovereignty or spitting in the face of democratic opinion there (which overwhelming calls for complete US withdrawal) protect 'us'"? Why does our "freedom" depend upon the annihilation of so many others? And so on.

It seems clear to me that calling "they" and "them" whoever happens to be next week's victims of US torture, aerial bombs, or radium-dipped weaponry is only the first step of dehumanization that is required by those who with the disinformed support of US citizens would crush Iraqi society to pieces and send all its humanity to hell for the sake of sucking the nation's oil from under it and leaving the Zionists in Israel to grin. Believe it or not, that's what they would not hesitate to do. That's the heartless, ruthless, and in the final analysis faceless plurality that wish to lead "us." It's amazing that, in listening to them, you might think that it is Americans who should feel some sort of privileged claim to the sentiment of terror... But if that is the case, is it because of the largely voiceless "they" that gets blamed tirelessly from election podiums and the White House, or is it rather because of those who are always blaming them?

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Blog-Power Strikes in Japan

2007-02-19T00:23:00.000-05:00

When a Japanese publisher distributes to convenience stores nationwide a magazine dedicated single-mindedly to demonizing foreigners, whom it portrays as lawless, heartless, and lewd, what's a foreign-born resident to do?

In the case of Japan's minority Anglophone community, dispersed throughout the archipelago, the answer was clear: blog, organize, resist. The results of these efforts, made over the first few weeks of February, provide a case study in civic resistance to exploitative racism. And since individually maintained blogs were the main vehicle of resistance, lessons can be drawn as well for the progressive power of blogging. This was something of the sort I had never witnessed in the United States, though perhaps readers can cite analogous cases.

I will let the original Web sites and documents bear witness, inviting readers to click into the story themselves as I limit myself to a thematic progression of events as I understand them.

Blogging: On February 1st, the American-born Japanese citizen Arudou Debito, a tireless activist for human rights in Japan, is alerted by an American-born educator friend of the February 29th publication of "Foreigner-Crime File," and posts scanned pages and a gist of the magazine's contents. The popular website Japan Probe echoes Debito's notification and requests information from readers.

Organization: Eventually, Japan Probe goes a step further and calls for a boycott of Family Mart convenience stores (the first of several stores recognized as carrying the magazine). Debito composes a letter of protest in both English and Japanese that he invites others to politely distribute to store managers in stores where the magazine is sold. Through his efforts and other channels, the foreign press is alerted and articles appear in, among other places, the Guardian and the Times (London) Blog.

Resistance: Perhaps a few dozen people participate in the distribution of letters. As a result of this pressure, as well as the full documentation of the issue online, after an initial gesture of resistance, Family Mart sends letters of apologies to those who had contacted it in protest and orders that the magazine be removed from all of its stores as of February 5th. These steps can be followed blow-by-blow as they are recounted at Debito's blog and Japan Probe, the two prime movers against the magazine and its publisher.

Reflection: It is particularly noteworthy that the magazine's editor responds to his critics at Japan Today. Indeed, Shigeki Saka's comments are themselves a case study in right-wing xenophobia and self-blinding racism. The responses to Mr. Saka by both Debito at his blog and James and other commentators at Japan Probe are forceful and in many ways enlightening.

The curious may peruse the entire magazine online.

One estimate put the total cost of the magazine's production and distribution at a quarter of a million dollars. The publisher, who could not find any sponsors to advertise within its vehicle for hate speech, will surely think twice before once again financing a project of shameless racial scapegoating or assuming that the English-speaking community will not notice when foreigners are viciously targeted in a Japanese-language publication.

The incident surely has increased the organization of the progressive English-speaking community in Japan. It remains to be seen if further chapters will be added to this resounding success.

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Joe Sets the Record Crooked

2007-02-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

When Vladimir Putin articulated in a restrained and unprovocative way a view that is both held on a majority basis throughout the world by populations and leadership alike and supported by legal scholarship, it was the trusty warmonger, Senator Joe Lieberman, who denounced the Russian leader and denied that the US government of George Bush has increased global insecurity through its illegal use of international violence (full article, quoted below). Having removed himself from the Democratic Party, Lieberman now pursues a course of unimpeded US lawlessness across the planet while deriding anyone who seems to notice it.

The AP Writer, David Rising, reports that, in Munich,

Putin told a security forum attracting top officials that "we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" and that "one state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. "This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law."

And here, from the same piece, is the delusional response of ol' Joe:

"Even our involvement in Iraq, certainly Afghanistan, is pursuant to United Nations resolutions."

The hesitant phrasing suggests that ol' Joe smells deception in the very words he speaks. "..., certainly Afghanistan.." This should give us pause. Hesitation over the invasion of Iraq is found in the speech of never-saw-a-military-expenditure,-corporate-lobbyist, -or-US-invasion-I-didn't-like Lieberman. And with reason.

Joe knows that he is bullshitting. The head of the United Nations at the time of the invasion proclaimed it illegal. To cite one respected legal opinion among the vast majority that concur on the matter (as Lieberman surely knows), Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and president of the American Society of International Law, puts the matter plainly:

"the invasion was both illegal and illegitimate."

(American Society of International Law Newsletter, March-April 2004)

The use of both "illegal" and "illegitimate" suggests that the two have different meanings. However, the words should not be twisted in such a way. Slaughter, who had once herself given the pseudo-distinction credibility, puts the matter this way to shut the door on the potential ambiguity. (The ambiguity was first created to excuse the US-led 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, which was deemed "illegal but legitimate." That is, its illegality was determined by the Head of International Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Kosovo war, who then called it nonetheless "legitimate" because "all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted" -- a claim that ignores two concrete diplomatic options on the table at that time, one by Serbia and one by NATO. The expression is now commonly used to patch over criminal actions of the US government with the appearance of necessity.) Nonetheless, putting strictly legal questions aside, the fact that the invasion of Iraq was perceived widely and accurately to be illegitimate (i.e., self-serving, based on falsehoods) is in some sense more significant, because it is this recognition that fuels and in some cases legitimates politics of violence and desperation across the world (assuming that others are allowed to use the same rationales for violence as the US government does). It is this that does the greatest damage to efforts on all sides to resolve disputes by non-violent and non-catastrophic means. The voices that refuse to recognize this increased insecurity, which are curiously grouped together within the US government and its client state Israel, believe perhaps that their actions enhance their nations' security. It is nonetheless worth remembering that the beliefs of the mad should not be held up as beacons of guidance for the world at large.

Indeed, the predictable deception on the part of one of the invasion's biggest supporters needs to be kept in the context of issues of global security. The opening lines of the Preface to Noam Chomsky's Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, a book that richly documents the trashing by consecutive US administrations of the international security consensus that emerged after World War II, serve that purpose well, and so it is with the opening lines that I close today's post:

"The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival. Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes {and as Chomsky explains, not the American people, who as a whole do not support the illegal government initiatives and its trashing of international treaties}."

On the US government's violation of international law, see also Howard N. Meyer

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A Film for Our Times

2007-02-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

If you have a little time, reward it generously by watching this film. My explanation follows.

Gdansk Panorama (bearing no relation to present post)

"I do believe that Hugo Chavez is destroying his own country economically, politically." Condoleezza Rice, conveying dangerous delusions to the U.S. Congress.

During my first year of leading a seminar on American studies in Japan, I tried to teach a group of five students, among other things, the power of broadcast media to shape public opinion; the importance and relative reliability of critical, independent media; the power of corporations to bend governments to their will without regard for the desires or needs of a nation's citizens; the democracy deficit in the United States and its causes; and the largely untapped but undeniable power that citizens in any country can wield when they come together and resist alien order. Well, it was quite a struggle to convey all these ideas in the time and constraints (many linguistic in nature) within which I worked.

The other night, however, I saw a movie that, with little dialog (albeit much in Spanish) conveyed all of these issues with gripping real-life drama. So, despite the fact that the movie's action takes place entirely in Caracas, Venezuela, it would have made for an excellent introduction to an American studies seminar. No big-budget spectacle, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is an on-the-spot documentary of a military coup as it develops slowly, is cynically executed, and swiftly reversed. Incidentally, the film bears the title that comes from a Gil Scott-Heron song that was, in fact, the primary object of one of my student's research papers. (The film is also referred to as "Chavez - Inside the Coup," perhaps due to copyright issues.)

The documentary was shot by two BBC reporters who had not anticipated the coup in which they were to be caught up at the risk of their lives. It was their intention merely to document the political life of Hugo Chavez, out of a desire for objective understanding rather than a spirit of ideological partisanship. I was riveted to the screen as the film played on my computer, for a couple of reasons. I was not aware of the details of the coup and therefore could not anticipate how it would proceed; and, a couple of months earlier, I had read a detailed account of the incredibly vicious and bloody U.S.-sponsored coup in Chile and recognized that all the same types of forces were pitted against one another in Venezuela, only with remarkably different results. In this case, not only does democracy defeat U.S.-backed corporate hooliganism, but it does so by avoiding a bloodbath.

Before I say another word or inflate expectations to bursting point, know that I found the document here. It can be watched online or downloaded here.

If you still find a shred of credibility in the petro-imperialism of Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration who cloak themselves in the language of democracy while working aggressively to suppress it; or if you spend regular stretches of your life gazing at the obsequious corporate media that echo the administration's war-mongering and banditry, have a look at this documentary. Ask yourself, who is willing to destroy not only Venezuela but any hope for democracy both there and, yes, in the United States of America?

The film goes miles further down the road toward exposing the nature of U.S. government policy and the dishonesty of its "mainstream media" than Micheal Moore's much-heralded-and-reviled Fahrenheit 911.

Here is an insightful article by Naomi Klein who puts the media troubles in Venezuela in perspective and compares them to the situation in the United States. And there's also an excellent information page relating to the film.

Because of its topic and the impassioned tone of the citizens it depicts, the film bears a striking resemblance to the incredible French-language film by the Lithuanian-based Englishman Peter Watkins. Called "La Commune (1871, Paris)," the film anachronistically portrays the radically different coverage given to the nineteenth-century popular uprising by "state TV" (corresponding to today's corporate media) as opposed to low-budget, independent media. And you can imagine which side portrays the popular uprising in an accurate light, and which distorts it as the work of "outsiders" or "terrorists."

Unfit for battle

2007-01-29T23:55:00.000-05:00

Gorals ("Highlanders")

The 2004 Freedom Roller, a post that first appeared in a university magazine, included a satirical scenario in which the U.S. government sets out to bypass all federal and international laws and regulations by hiring private citizens to intervene in international conflicts favorable to U.S. business interests. Here is the scenario, which is relevant to the discussion that follows:

The recently formed SUT Club, Inc. has commandeered a number of its members into a veritable vigilante fleet, capable of responding to the behest of local or federal officials. This drivers club (web site) describes itself as a not-for-profit corporation whose aims are to promote the adventurous and safe use of SUTs (Sports Utility Tanks) and to encourage its members to act as a social force for the security of the Motherland. It and similar clubs will be free to embark on deer hunting expeditions, take diversionary excursions through Yellowstone National Park, or patrol gang-infested neighborhoods and quell public expressions of political dissent or cultural ambiguity. The crime-fighting benefits may be called upon by the federal government to battle terror itself. With sufficient training, it is thought, such a club could one day confront brutal dictators suspected of potentially harboring, or of conceiving of, or of being able to share their conceptions of harboring, WMD-related-program-like activities (or conceptions). They would thereby spare the government from having to make academic presentations at the United Nations or appease dilly-dallying allies while threats gravely gather. Indeed, with such a swiftly acting force at its command, the government could redirect its military spending to much needed nuclear and space-oriented weaponry.

Even I was surprised to see that such a mad proposal--far from being satire--made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address last week--admittedly, with less detail and color. Bush's team has baptized the proposed hired team of internationally-operating civilian assassins with the benevolent-sounding name "Civilian Reserve Corps." Jeremy Scahill explains that the president,

slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

'Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,' Bush declared.

The frightening thing about Bush's proposal is that it is, in fact, already a reality, on a relatively smaller scale of approximately 100,000 civilian fighters in Iraq. As Scahill continues,

This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory.

Scahill has written on this phenomenon in his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

As Naomi Klein remarks in regard to Scahill's work:

If the Republicans lose in 2008, they will leave office armed and dangerous. Blackwater is the utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard.

One day, soon, it seems, "America's wars" may be fought not only for the sake of, but also entirely by, sweet-hearted corporations such as Blackwater. This shows just how confident U.S. leadership is in being able to sell their self-profiting wars as "matters of national interest." (It is understandable that the adventure in Iraq has emboldened them in the deception.) Even when the very fighters are connected to the U.S. only by virtue of the fact that it is U.S. taxpayer money that supports them, you can be sure that every conflict fought by such mercenary forces will be described as a privately-engaged patriotic enterprise (i.e., "Civilian Reserve Corps") that, as such, tolerates neither criticism nor, surely, governmental oversight.

A Just Resolution in Iraq

2007-01-27T06:50:00.000-05:00

Etretat, France (photos by terrette unless otherwise noted)

While many debates in TV LAND U.S.A. about U.S. policy in the current occupation and assault on Iraq are most often reduced by the duopolistic political machine and the media power that shapes and sustains it to questions of "procedure" and "efficiency," it is worth underscoring what a just policy would look like if the concerns were not only "how to do things easily" or "how to win." Imagine: to win at perpetrating a crime. That gives you a measure of the discussion's merit as broadcast daily across the United States. And it is worth underscoring that the spectacle of TV LAND U.S.A is in this case, as in many others, at odds with real public opinion in the United States.

Consider what historian Paul Street has written about the just resolution facing U.S. leadership and weigh, if you will, the magnificence distance between what Street proposes and what is both being said and done with respect to the occupation in Iraq today by leadership from the two major parties within the highly crafted but loud and persistent voice-and-image-factories of TV LAND U.S.A.

Here is what a civilized United States – a U.S. that actually cared about democracy, human rights, international law, and the people of the Middle East and the world – would “do about Iraq.” It would stop talking about the occupation of Iraq as a “mistake” and start speaking accurately and honestly about O.I.F ("Operation Iraqi Freedom") as a CRIME: a great international transgression for which the U.S. must make reparations and be held legally and morally accountable. It would end its military invasion and occupation and work with international agencies and other states (within and beyond the region) to guarantee Iraqi security with an international peacekeeping force. It would dismantle all permanent U.S. military installations in Iraq. It would abolish all laws/rules opening the Iraqi economy to foreign and predominantly U.S multinational corporate exploitation. It would renounce all U.S. designs on Iraqi petroleum reserves. It would convert a massive portion of the sum it currently spends on militarily attacking Iraq to the provision of basic health, social, and infrastructural services and reconstruction in Iraq. It would work with Iraqis and international agencies to assist and enable the holding of genuinely free and fair Iraqi elections devoid of U.S. pressure.

It would pay massive reparations for the staggering damage it has inflicted on Iraq over many years and indeed decades, not just during the current open military assault. In determining the nature and scope of these reparations, it would inquire into and then responsibly tend to the needs of the victims. It would work with international authorities to investigate, prosecute, try, and sentence the top guilty parties behind the invasion in accord with the well-known Nuremberg principles, the UN Charter, and numerous national and other international legal and policy instruments.

Those in my opinion are reasonable alternatives. You start by ceasing and desisting from illegal aggression. You begin by calling off the assault. You move to meeting others needs and accepting responsibility. You offer your criminal “leadership” up for accountability. You acknowledge, apologize, and pay for what you have done – the hundreds of thousands you have killed and maimed, the water systems and food supplies and roads you have destroyed and polluted, the resources and opportunities you have stolen, the exodus you have forced, etc. You contribute to healing as best you can. You ask for help from international others and empower those others in proper accord.

Doing the right... thing along these lines is in obvious concurrence with elementary principles of civilized internationalism. It is also very much in lines (sic) with reputable surveys of U.S. public opinion on foreign policy. Under current U.S. political, institutional and ideological conditions, however, it is nearly impossible to have a reasonable and relevant public conversation about these basic alternatives. (Quotation from "The Empire and Inequality Report," Issue no. 8, January 26, 2007)

This is the right note to close on, for sure. In my own phraseology, it is nearly impossible to find in TV LAND U.S.A a reasonable discussion of a just resolution of U.S. violence in Iraq.

U.S. Media Tirelessly Creating Evil Dictators

2007-01-22T11:31:00.000-05:00

Majdanek: Where corporate efficiency and bigotry meet

Here is a typically pro-war corporate news article, brought to you by the beautiful people at CNN (no single author takes responsibility for the piece). The title is patently absurd and irresponsible. It is designed to scare Americans and get them to hate Chavez by making them think that Chavez hates them; when, in fact, his comments were obviously directed at particular corporate-controlled U.S. critics of his government. The beginning of the article is meant to solidify in the mind of Joe and Jane Public the image of Chavez as a dictator. Did he speak of Marxism? Ooh, scary! Does he like Castro? That's evil! However, nowhere in the article is it mentioned that Chavez is the most popular leader among his citizens in all of South and Central America. Nowhere in the article are readers reminded that, far from hating Americans, Chavez has made serious efforts to provide cheap heating oil or reduced gas prices to impoverished communities in the U.S.

Despite its propagandistic tone, the article is not air-tight. It lets in two inconvenient details concerning life in Chavez's Venezuela.

One: the price of gas is 12 cents a gallon in that terrible socialist country. Oh my, socialism sounds terrible, doesn't it? 12 cents a gallon! Where is God in that country? Is this some kind of mind control? Gas should be at least 2 dollars, with 1 dollar and 88 cents of profit going to a couple of oil corporations who occasionally lease their executives into the halls of government. That's the free American way, right? Just as God meant it?

Two: the final line squeaks out a little inconvenient truth: Chavez was reelected in a landslide victory. Gee, I wonder why the leftist dictator is so popular? Didn't he say that gringos should go to hell? Doesn't that mean that he is evil? Since, you know, the U.S. is God's country, and all the company men who come from it necessarily carry out the intentions of God wherever they spread criticism of foreign governments?

Or is there something missing in CNN's comic-strip portrayal of Chavez?

Inconvenient impressions

2006-09-30T09:50:00.001-04:00

昼食は楽しい　

I have been accused by a friend of being "anti-American" and even disowned for the same. When I consider the charge, a chuckle murmurs within me at the thought that I could sweepingly reject or oppose all that is American or, worse still, hate something simply because it is American. Still, spending several weeks in the United States this summer gave me the occasion to note certain things that do displease me about my experiences there, without thinking directly of the nation's political character or policies (of which there would be too much to say). That is not to say that I accept the charge, which is truly preposterous and I think motivated by personal issues that have nothing to do with my reputed views on America; but I don't mind making known a short list I jotted down while flying home to Japan of things that I find disagreeable about life in the United States:

1. The preference for frigid air conditioning in public spaces.
2. The national obsession with ice cubes and sugared water in its various manifestations (from "sports drinks" to soda pop).
3. The 58 grams of sugar in my 6 oz. serving of "juice."
4. The tyranny of corn syrup, which is found in everything from "coffee creamer" to wheat bread.
5. The uniformly horrendous films consumed by the public.
6. The contrary, slow, tactless, distracted, self-entitled, chatty, and often clumsy service employees.
7. The omnipresent though unavowed credo, "Greed makes the world go 'round."
8. The near total indifference toward the global responsibility of recycling. (In the U.S., it pretty much all goes in the same damn bin!)
9. The near total failure of the nation to develop adequate and responsible public transportation.
10. And, most generally put, the default mode of American society: passively consuming the world's energy and resources at as high a rate as individually and collectively possible.

Several items on the list were clearly influenced by the scene in which I created it, but the important thing is that, on returning from the country, I felt a sense of relief that was as physical as much as psychological at not having to fight against extreme energy consumption and waste in my daily life.

Incidentally: Al Gore's film about the climate crisis, "An Inconvenient Truth," was one of four on the in-flight menu. As I walked to the bathroom, I looked around to see how many screens were tuned to Al Gore's film. Of the several hundred screens I saw lighted up, only one was tuned to "An Inconvenient Truth," and the person before it was sound asleep. I guess that Gore has a long way to go to rival the likes of Tom Cruise, whose face flashed all about the cabin. Whatever the case, I noted that, as important as this film's message is, Gore seems not to have noted the irony of his repeatedly being filmed taking international flights. It is as if Gore were totally unaware of the environmental damage his own relentless global trekking causes.

Pleasures of travel

2006-09-20T11:29:00.000-04:00

Vilnius, Lithuania, New Year's Day

I still recall the difficulty I had in trying to get out of Lithuania during the trip on which I took the above photo. The Gulf War was about to be engaged by the coalition forces, and the Soviet leadership was preparing to use the conflict as cover for their violent suppression of political dissidence in Lithuania. The parliament building in Vilnius was surrounded by barricades. The retail and grocery stores were nearly barren. As of January 1st, a new law would severely restrict movement out of the country by requiring a hefty sum -- something in the neighborhood of three months' wages for the average worker, as I recall -- for permission to travel abroad. Little did it help that I had a US passport. The trouble I faced came from the crowds that swarmed around the train ticketing agency and, later, at the train station platform. At the former, enraged crowds literally pushed their way through glass doors to demand tickets be sold to them before the end of the year; and several people, including myself, were nearly crushed or smothered in the surge of bodies over shattered glass. Days later, at the station platform, the mass of hopeful travelers clung magnet-like to the sides of the approaching train, with many people swinging arms into open windows and hoisting themselves inside before the train had come to rest. If it were not for the quick-wittedness of my host mother, who, with bottles or Orangina, bribed three overweight men into saving a seat for me among them, I would not have been able to use the ticket I had risked my life in acquiring.

Globalize

2006-09-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

Kamakura Daibutsu

In 1252, a more than 100-ton statue of the prominent Buddhist divinity Amida (orig., Amitābhā in Sanskrit) was cast by the sculptor Ono Goroemon within the grounds of Kotokuin Temple in the then capital city of Kamakura, 32 miles from present-day Tokyo. The large building that housed the figure was destroyed by storm in 1369, but the Giant Buddha survives today.

On vacation in the Ohio town where I grew up, I think about my first full year in Japan. There are so many things that I haven't quite figured out there and that leave me pondering that, for now, I think I should write about something else. I would write directly about the U.S., but I am losing the stamina required of those who wish to keep abreast competing American politico-media corporations, whose broadcast presence is often equated loosely with "politics," a word that not long ago--before the corporate take-over of mass media began nearing completion--had a very different meaning in American public life. My frequency with them is down. "Politics" used to mean canvassing, talking to other human beings, striving to be aware of one's environment and to nurture it as a commonwealth. This recalls that, increasingly, political participation in the United States means things such as striking postures over details of entertainment programs masquerading as open and fair debates and news.

Getting back to my sheep: I was listening to a French radio station tonight and, to wind up a long dialogue with a sinologist, the host put a final, resounding question: "And," he said, "returning to the matter of urban ghettos being created in China, of the massive exploitation of uprooted agrarians unfit for city life or its need for specialization, of fluent crime creation in the streets and corruption in government, new invitations to the spread of disease both among the population at large and in the industries that serve it... as a respected specialist, what do you see that is particular or unique in the way that globalization is progressing today in Chinese culture and society, as opposed to in the U.S. or E.U.?"

The otherwise eloquent interviewee, after a thought, responded, "nothing!" And with that, the interview was ended.

Our National Poverty

2006-09-06T00:21:00.000-04:00

I saw the Green Party candidate for the governorship of New York State spoken at on a program whose name sounds like a hybrid between an aggressive sport and a presumably seductive personality: "Hardball with Chris Matthews." This is a regularly televised crass money-winning campaign that exploits formats and styles formally unique to news. The genre now proliferates CABLE-TV-LAND. In response to a question that Matthews, in form, seemed to have moved beyond even as he asked it, the candidate said that he was running for office to combat poverty. If Chris Matthews did not laugh (my recollection is not clear), he so hastened away from the guest's response that, as a consequence, the idea of combatting poverty seemed a small, faint, fanciful thing. It at least deserved a chuckle, especially as it came from a man of his age. In a proud land, where men have always stood tall, the little Green guest could not be serious in assuming that politicians go to work for only dim targets and minor gains. Especially not in a time of war! And terror! And Iran! And Arabs that hate us! And nuke-you-lar threats!

For this widespread dismissal of the idea of fighting poverty, should I blame Matthews or the many similar production teams and corporate-executives-in-chief? I suspect that even if Matthews had for once discovered how to enter into dialogue with a guest, for instance to ask today's guest how exactly he proposed to combat poverty, most customer-citizens in TV-LAND would scorn the candidate in their hearts to hear him speaking like some Christian demagogue of old or incurable flower child. But then such has been their media-conditioning, and we are left to ponder the chicken or the egg.

Sad Eyes

2006-09-04T11:37:00.000-04:00

I praise President Bush for the remarkable business savvy he
has applied over the years to the single word 'freedom.'
Fault him for his intelligence; as an entrepreneur of the English language, the President has no equal.

The war-is-peace Democrat;

2006-08-03T10:41:00.000-04:00

or, kissing Lieberman goodbye.

Children's shoes on display in Majdanek death camp (Lublin, Poland) photo: terrette

In Connecticut, Bill Clinton is going to campaign for Lieberman against the challenger for his senate seat, Ned Lamont, a Democrat who opposes the unfettered U.S. occupation of Iraq. It does not surprise me that Bush once actually kissed Lieberman, but when Clinton goes to work to support Bush's war and the war-is-peace Democrat Lieberman, the public has a fine measure of how harmoniously most representatives of the two factions of the business-and-war party are singing the same tune on the most pressing issues of the nation, leaving mostly wedge issues and ethics scandals to bicker over in an effort to save the appearance of political integrity.

David Greenberg of the Boston Globe explains Lieberman's troubles with the Democrats (that is, anyone remaining in the party who stands left of the war-is-peace Clintons and their like):

First, deep trends in American politics have led both the Democrats and the Republicans to grow more ideologically uniform over the last generation, making it harder for dissenters to remain viable within their parties. Second, Lieberman--despite liberal stands on such issues as abortion rights and the environment that have tethered him to the Democrats--has in effect nominated himself for excommunication by spurning liberals not only on the war but ... consistently tak[ing] conservative positions over the years on social issues, where he calls for more religion in public life; on regulatory issues, where he favored leniency toward the accounting firms during the Enron crisis; and above all in foreign affairs, where he has even chided liberals for criticizing Bush's governance during "wartime." (full article)

If it is indeed Lieberman's view that during wartime leaders cannot be criticized without the critical themselves be blamed for 'not supporting the troops,' Connecticut voters should spare themselves the possible treason their present and future criticism of an idiotic enterprise in Iraq would imply by voting Lieberman out of office as soon as possible. The 'war'--that is, the military-supported, taxpayper-funded, anti-democractic, privatizing occupation of Iraq--is not likely to end soon. Given this fact, since Lieberman feels citizens must choose between counterproductive and costly initiatives of violence abroad, on the one hand, and, on the other, the essential tool of a democractic society--the capacity to have reasoned criticism of publicly elected leadership taken seriously--then let Lieberman embrace his false distinction all the way to bitter defeat, and let us savor the nation's remnants of democracy. May his defeat be a warning for Hillary Clinton and all other war-is-peace Democrats who plan on posturing over matters of national security in hopes of gaining political support from the misinformed.

You Want Toughness? Ask for Democracy Now!

2006-07-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

Despite the highly successful propaganda that makes many Americans believe that "the media is liberal," when actual liberals try to determine how it is that so many Americans have been led to vote against their own economic self-interests by right-wing war-mongers and corporate fat cats, the most solid hypothesis liberals can settle upon is that the same war profiteers and corporate tycoons just happen to control 95 percent or more of widely-diffused media in the land (not to mention abroad). The most reasonable conclusion they can draw from this is that, to better educate their fellow citizens, they should see that, in one way or another, the media does actually start to reflect concerns that are not only "liberal," where this means a well-defined voting block of progressive voters and issues, but "liberal," where this means "representing the overwhelming majority in its undisputable economic self-interests."

Soldier in Warsaw Who Never Saw War (photo by terrette)

Given this scenario, which I have stumbled into time and again as a blogger and in other folds of my existence, the least I can do, it seems to me, is to point out that Democracy Now! is an incredible resource for anyone who understands the mission, as set down in the Constitution of the United States, of the so-called fourth estate (as Carlyle first understood the term). In other words, if anyone, of whatever political stripe, acknowledges that the press should be critical of power and not take government press releases, speeches, and other potential tools of propaganda, at face value, then compare, will you, the coverage on virtually any issue of national importance as covered by the big-mouth, noise-punctured, intelligence-insulting, busty-and-bar-belled packaging it gets from the networks, from the incisive and penetrating analysis and healthy cynicism that Democracy Now! provides consistently, and all on the strength of a small, financially-strapped team of devoted citizens.

We've seen for years the Republican Party try to monopolize images of manliness, bravado, machismo, testosterone, and toughness... even to the point where Michael Moore, in a recent speech, gave credence to this well-organized posture of bulging masculinity and steadfastness on the extreme Right. The truth, however, puts the posture to shame. One could easily replay the well-known history of the many chicken hawks within the Republic Party who always preach war when, in their youth, they dodged the call to fight, or who always preach increased profits for the few bosses and increased hardships for the many laborers, when we know that they never worked an honest minute of their lives and have only ever lived in a seat of luxury secured by few merits or little toil of their own. But I would rather point to the voices of these different camps and draw attention to the types of lives they have led and, on the basis of that comparison, ask who is truly tough.

Pick your info-babe from anywhere in the vast world of hyped-up-corporate-entertainment-disguised-as-news-as-we-used-to-know-it-
in-some-semi-mythical-past and ask yourself, what has this primped up air-head ever undertaken in her life that could even come close to the notion of courage? For that matter, pick your loud-mouthed angry white guy from the next corporate dial over, and ask, has this bitchy little multi-millionaire prick ever put himself in front of a hostile weapon, or defied unjust powers that were far greater than he, simply because those powers were unjust? If you can name me a single example, please do so.

The big-mouths and pretty faces have been paid off and market-tested long before any dignity has been won by any of them. Moreover, being paid off as they all are assures us that dignity and courage will forever remain catch-phrases for them, rather than elements of their own character and experience. Georges Monbiot, author and editorial writer for the Guardian, has written some memorable lines under the rubric of "careers advice" for journalists.

This career path [that is, the path set out by journalism schools everywhere and tailored for a job in the mighty halls hysterical network self-promotion that we have all learned to call "news"]... is counter-educational. It teaches you to do what you don't want to do, to be what you don't want to be. It is an exceptional person who emerges from this process with her aims and ideals intact. Indeed it is an exceptional person who emerges from this process at all. What the corporate or institutional world wants you to do is the complete opposite of what you want to do. It wants a reliable tool, someone who can think, but not for herself: who can think instead for the institution. You can do what you believe only if that belief happens to coincide with the aims of the corporation, not just once, but consistently, across the years (it is a source of wonder to me how many people's beliefs just happen to match the demands of institutional power, however those demands may twist and turn, after they've been in the company for a year or two).

Indeed. And it's no wonder that Georges Monbiot is one of the many, many voices that is often featured on Democracy Now! From his online biography, we read of Monbiot that,

During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria. In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone.

Now, compare that track record to all the Hollywood-packaged toughness of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who needs to own something like 17 SUVS to assure himself that, off-screen, too, he is a big, tough guy. The host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman, was severely beaten with rifle butts by thugs from the U.S.-backed and U.S.-supplied Indonesian Army as she stood between them and defenseless and non-violent protestors from East Timor, who were out marching to show their opposition to the violence of the occupying forces. The report Goodman filed with the reporter whose skull was crushed in the same incident is presented in her book, The Exception to the Rulers.

"Conservatives" and Green Bay Packer fans out there who feel that you can solidify your manhood by latching onto the block-heads in the Republican Party better think twice about who is truly tough, and who is just play-acting. Who was tougher in 1930s Germany? The henchmen who oiled Hitler's way to power and had their butts wiped by brown shirts, or the few journalists who resisted the onslaught of fascism and paid for it with imprisonment, exile, or the firing squad?

Not that I NEED toughness and courage in every figure who undertakes journalism... it's just that, in setting out to write this post, I find myself in a far-off land from which my appreciation for Democracy Now! has grown by the week. It is, after all, a sign of political health in the plutocratic regime known as the United States that a widely-available engine of news and critical thought is produced in New York City without intervention from the State (the same State that did not hesitate to bomb the headquarters of Al-Jazeera when that news engine dared to report the misdeeds and brutalities of U.S. commanders in Fallujah).

Stumbling upon the pre-industrial farming era

2006-07-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

Poland and, in the background, the Czech Republic

Zakopane Speed

2005-11-25T11:56:00.000-05:00

This photograph, taken while I was an exchange student in Poland, will have to suffice for the present post. Anyone who has checked my blog occasionally over the months surely has noted a slackening of blog-pace on my part. This is due largely to the fact that, in my present location, I am faced with the necessity of learning well a language that, till recently, I had known only by bits. Until I can achieve a certain level of linguistic comfort in my daily life, I do not expect to blog regularly. It would be helpful if I had a camera to take new pictures; and that, too, will take some time to obtain.

Let me close with a short snapshot in words of what my life is like. This evening I attended a faculty party whose main purpose was to welcome me. For this, I had to give a short speech of gratitude in Japanese. I had prepared my comments over the last couple of days with the help of some accomplished Japanese speakers, but did not feel I had mastered them before the festivities began. Early into the festivities, the president of the union that was sponsoring the party introduced me, and everyone drank to her introduction. Upon witnessing this, I sat drifting between Scylla and Charybdis, not knowing whether her introduction had cancelled the need for my little speech. I decided to drink myself a little courage and wait the thing out. A colleague, to whom I confided my efforts at memorization, quickly spread the word that a speech would ensue, and thus my dilemma was "resolved" by fiat. I would no longer have to dread the thought of wasting my efforts at memorization, but I would have to give the speech.

I don't think I made any errors, and those in attendance seemed to put sense to the sounds I had learned to repeat. Whew! was the word that came to me. Still, if I had to make such a speech every week, I do not think I would ever learn the language well.

Wake up, old horse! C'mon, now!

2005-11-11T11:42:00.000-05:00

Just when it seemed like a lost cause, the American public seems to be getting a clue when it comes to its assessment of the Bush administration.

Vilnius, Lithuania (photo: terrette)

"WASHINGTON - Most Americans say they aren't impressed by the ethics and honesty of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its justifications for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

Almost six in 10 — 57 percent — said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest. Whites, Southerners and evangelicals were most likely to believe Bush is honest." [By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer]

If it's not too early to draw a moral from this scenario, I would venture to say that, sometimes, if you beat a dead horse long enough, it shows a glimmer of zombie-like wakefulness. So, pound away, undaunted citizens who have always known the score -- let's get the old horse up on its feet once again!

Useless and disputed numbers (or "terrorists")

2005-11-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

"When the Pentagon claims that it has just killed 50 or 70 or 100 rebel fighters, we have no means of knowing who those people really were. Everyone it blows to pieces becomes a terrorist."

George Monbiot has broken the great taboo of U.S. media, albeit in a London newspaper, by daring not only to speak of civilian deaths in Iraq -- that much alone is improper and indecent of him and somehow, obscurely, probably aids the terrorists (please savor the sarcasm)-- but also to point out that, despite a number of tough-guy, public statements from top Pentagon officials (Franks, Rumsfeld) claiming that the Pentagon doesn't count the useless corpses of useless Iraqi civilians, documents have emerged that suggest that, in fact, such counts are done and do exist (although the numbers are surely well hidden from public inspection).

All Souls' Day, Wroclaw, Poland Photo by terrette

Monbiot's article throws light on the purposeful obscurity cooked up by powerful media engines in the U.K. and U.S. around the issue of civilian deaths and the fair estimates of these deaths. It can be read here. The Guardian has appended a number of useful documents and links to Monbiot's piece.

Rain Flowers

2005-11-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

When I travel through international airports, I often have experiences that crystallize whole movements of thought or cast light upon whole periods of my life. So it was as I waited in the cabin of a plane in Buffalo, NY, as technicians worked for over an hour on repairing one of the plane's computers. I sat in a seat of a single-seat aisle, exposed to the relentless chatter and cocky remarks of those who sat around me. A few men made sarcastic comments about the presumed incompetence of the flight crew, and the young woman sitting behind me pestered the one hostess for something to eat. The worst, however, came from a man with massive forearms who was sitting one row back of me across the aisle. His commentary, offered unsollicited to the woman behind me, and delivered relentlessly, encapsulated all that I find revolting about the popular political climate in the United States. Some of the man's insights and recommendations included the following: "Do you listen to Limbaugh? How about Matt Drudge? That's the whole truth, people who don't cave in to the liberal media. 'Cause the media is liberal, you know." And then came this whopper: "Bush isn't like the other politicians. What you see is what you get. No influence." (When I heard that one, it was hard not to choke on the potato chips I was eating.) And then there was this little anecdote, rounded off by a charming non-sequitur: "Did you see the work the Minute Men are doing to protect our borders? If the government won't do its job, then the Minute Men step in. Where did your ancestors come from? Europe? Well, they all had to go through Ellis Island and sign up properly. Heck, my son works for law enforcement in Raleigh, NC. They've got Chinese down there with submachine guns."

I bore the commentary of my self-righteous and xenophobic fellow passenger as best I could, sensing that it was likely to be an ugly climax to my departure from the U.S. and thus something that I could look back on with a sense of relief, knowing I would not have to be exposed to such single-minded cluelessness day in and day out, on television, on radio, and, yes, in airports and airplanes.

Incidentally, here is some artwork inspired by the righteous crusade of the current U.S. government to defeat evil in all its guises.

お地蔵様

2005-09-22T09:05:00.000-04:00

Laura Veirs Comes to Cleveland

2005-09-21T13:06:00.000-04:00

Marquee of the Beachland Ballroom: former Slavic cultural center of some sort now transformed into a standing-only music venue, and on a balmy night of September in the year 2005, locale for the second ever show in Cleveland of Laura Veirs (click for homepage with links to some of Veirs' songs). From what Veirs told the crowd, the Beachland Ballroom was also where she first played in Cleveland, with the only difference being that, on this occasion, more than a handful of people were there to see her play. The greater showing can be attributed in part to the fact that she was headlining for Sufjan Stevens (pronounced: SOOF-yahn). Fortune has it that Stevens, a fine musician and songwriter, is currently the more popular of the two. But this is not the place to discuss Sufjan's formidable work, since I went primarily to see Veirs and since the digital camera I was using failed me midway through her performance, thus curtailing my evening's photo-journalistic ambitions by more than half. Together, the two acts sold out the Ballroom, and by the end of Veirs's performance, the bulk of the ballroom floor was covered with feet. What follows in this post is less an analysis of Veirs's music -- which deserves at least a front-page appreciation by a magazine like Uncut -- than my impressions of one night of music, and my sense of Veirs, the songwriter and performer.

Laura Veirs at mic and guitar, probably not singing these words:

Here come the sailors
Marching two by two by two
They pressed their pants and
Shined their shoes
Aren't they strapping and deranged?

The group did not achieve the frontal impact of practiced and polished stage performers. Still, a delight to the attentive ear: the four-member band captured the various timbres of distortion, the tasteful riffs, and harmonic coloring that mark a good deal of Veirs's music. The onstage performance might not be all that different from how Veirs and her band mates play in studio. They seemed to enjoy playing with each other, as evidenced by mutual smiles, glances, nods of various sorts. The cheery keyboardist Steve Moore was especially animated in this way, and it seems that his stage presence welled up on a few occasions, even to the point where I began to picture him as a sort of Ben Folds: an inspired and good-natured keyboard soloist capable of roping in an entire audience with his fingerwork and enthusiasm. Then again, Moore may turn out to be the American equivalent of Nicky Hopkins: a robust talent who sings back-up and applies his hands to a number of keyboards -- playing several during a single song, in some cases -- always adding parts that seem perfect.

The group's timing, dynamics, and harmonic intensity were impeccable for most of the night; but to enjoy the performance, as I did, I think it paid well to look in on the stage and take in the subtle interactions between the performers. For never having toured together before, the group is remarkably in tune with one another. You cannot expect them to jump out at you and compel you to dance or to overwhelm you with theatrical gestures or brute volume; but this fact takes nothing away from the music. There was incredible communication between all four players, whose combined efforts created a harmonic intensity that is far greater than what mere volume or physical agitation can achieve. Veirs might do well to turn her back less often to the audience and to face them other than from behind her microphone; she might also articulate her words better between songs. But for someone who loves Veirs's music, these unpolished elements of the performance mattered little.

Veirs often uses a thumb pick, which is presumably what she is reaching for here. She has a knack for wrapping powerful vocal lines around well-wrought guitar riffs, thereby enhancing the beauty of each. A fine example of this are the opening lines of "Ether Sings," which Veirs sings over a series of pull-offs on the first string while her thumb dances back-and-forth between the sixth and third strings of her guitar.

Steve Moore & Karl Blau, who typically plays bass but also plays guitar, collaborated on keyboards for one number. Tucker Martine, her brilliant producer and drummer, had agreed for the first time to join her and the others on the road, and so Veirs was on an inaugural tour with her entire three-piece supporting cast of musicians. The deceptively simple production that Tucker Martine employs in the studio allows Veirs's music to breath fully onstage. Nothing seemed lacking, and the four musicians often sounded like five or six, even when you blocked in your mind the occasional filler leaked in through a Mac.

If you feel you don't have an ear for "production," I think that, to appreciate Tucker's talent, you could simply compare the consistently articulate and clear sound of the albums he has produced for Veirs to the often muddled or overblown sounds on albums by comparable artists such as Rufus Wainwright and Nellie McKay. It did not surprise me when Tucker told me himself that, when faced with a choice between less or more, he generally opts for less -- a simple but useful principle that, he may know, philosophers call "Ockam's razor." (And why not apply it to music production?) Executing the maxim of "less is more" in the studio cannot be a simple matter, however, if one considers the countless failures of many other producers.

Now, imagine that you have a creative urge on par with that of Laura Veirs. One of her song's lines addresses this urge by means of a question.

Love of color, sound and words
Is it a blessing or a curse?

Though clearly this is not a question that calls for a one-sided answer, it does seem clear to me that Veirs is richly blessed not only with a talent for crafting original songs, but with the support of Steve Moore, Karl Blau, and Tucker Martine, all of whom contribute significantly to her music. The blessing is not lost on Laura Veirs. Finding her to be forthright and unassuming, I was able to speak with her for some 30 minutes as she sat behind her merchandise table and, at one point, she opened the booklet of lyrics for her recent album to the page showing a photograph of her and her band mates seated in the yard of a modest suburban home. Not only was the black-and-white photo impressive in its own right (as with the all the packaging and presentation of Veirs's work, which Jason Lutes has created for her last few albums), but so was her gesture. I'm sure that she was just as happy to share with me the quality of the photo as the close relationship between band mates that it suggests. Veirs is the master of her craft and fully appreciative of the talent that surrounds her.

I looked for an opinion on Veirs's music online and came across the following at allmusic, a brief overview written by Richie Unterberger:

Seattle singer/songwriter Laura Veirs sings personal songs of romantic intoxication, everyday vignettes, and occasional social commentary that are often heavy on introspection and intense character scrutiny. Her vocals and melodies rapidly shift and veer, true to her name, up and down her wide vocal range.

I'm not sure about "romantic intoxication" or "heavy on introspection" or "intense character scrutiny." None of these conveys the uniqueness of Laura Veirs's musical artistry. Does she have a wide vocal range? That's not clear to me, either. What she does have, however, is a clear artistic vision -- one that is all her own, and a voice that is not borrowed or imitative. Her imagery is her own, and she avoids stock phrases. She is not a virtuosic player or singer, and neither are her accompanying musicians and vocalists, but all the parts are well executed, and the whole is arranged and produced so well as to give the impression of virtuosity.

Veirs conveys her own vision of things and avoids the trite or grating line. So, if there is "romantic intoxication," or "introspection" in Veirs's work, these things are only an indirect and unintended effect of Veirs's well-crafted lyrics, rather than an obvious theme or target. "Romantic intoxication" and "introspection" might fit better as labels for all the aspiring female singer-songwriters that get played daily on NPR and in your local Starbucks. It is Veirs's uncompromising artistry that puts her leagues above these contemporaries. However personal the stamp she places on all that she creates, her perspective is too close to that of the poet Robinson Jeffers, she has too grand a view of the universe, to get locked in "introspection." Beyond the mere question of poetic vision, unlike many "introspective" sorts, Veirs's voice is mixed well above the music, and this fact means that her subtlety is earned by her lyrical smarts and unaffected vocals, and not concocted by a producer hiding her voice behind instruments, or dressing it up in reverb and delay. (Credit, again, Tucker Martine.) R.E.M. once used faint vocals and inarticulate singing to create a sense of inward mystery; but this approach has had its run, and it would be ruinous for anyone to take it up again today.

Laura Veirs, I believe, has staying power. She inherits and crystallizes musical traditions (folk, pop, blues, grunge) into a unified and personal artistic vision. Her mind consistently produces beautiful things to listen to and ponder, and her musical skills have blossomed fast and furiously. She's attuned to infinite spaces and geographical forms. Her writing, she knows, does not have to be limited by a single narrative idea. However, she's far from sinking into political cynicism, so it would be wrong only to see in her writing "introspection" and detached imagery. In short, with her last few albums, Veirs has already carved out at least one world of musical and poetic invention. There's no reason to believe that many more worlds are not lurking within her.

L.V. playing her Martin guitar, possibly under the sway of these lines (from "The Cloud Room"):

Music in the air
Plucked from the centuries
Presented in the form
Of a song by you to me
Seagull in the air
Floating in the updraft
See me on the ground
Think I just heard her laugh

Postscript: On the very rare occasion when I discover an artist as good as Veirs and realize, as I did again in Cleveland this past week, that she remains unknown to so many, I am galvanized anew to look for music outside of the massive marketing-dug channels that grind their way into everyone's lives, in shopping malls, on Web sites, on public transportation, shoving predictable and most often downright horrific music at a largely unsuspecting public, while leaving true talent starved for exposure.

This sort of discovery also tries my patience when the onslaught of bad taste starts to overwhelm. While paying for clothes last week in a shopping mall, I was handed, as a perk for my purchase, a CD full of what could only be identified as crap called music. Massive poster boards of the corporate representatives whose music is featured on the CD were hung here and there above the store's apparel. I did not know whether to assume quiet possession of the CD or step on it with crushing force, but my footwear was too meager to have the effect desired, so I left the CD in the bag and am determined to find a spectacular way of exercising violence against it soon.

Speaking of music that suffers from underexposure, this site supports unheralded groups, and Pandora helps one find new artists based on one's current favorites.

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What follows are some Laura Veirs-related links. For a reason that, in discussing the matter, neither I nor Laura Veirs was able to pin down, the French have a better appreciation of her achievements than do her fellow Americans.

A review of Veirs's work in which the writer concludes that Year of Meteors "will make you smarter, more sensitive, and probably a better lover -- and there are not too many albums you can say that about."

From Spin.com, a short piece that situates Veirs within a "neo-folk" movement.

Excellent interview (in French) in which Veirs reveals what the interviewer calls "the privileged domains that nourish her inspiration."

An overview of Veirs's latest works (in French), in which Veirs is acknowledged to have "confirmed, once again, her place among the great songwriters of folk music."

Interview with Laura (in French) in which she says that Ani DiFranco inspired her to undertake her own career.

A review of the album Carbon Glacier (in French), in which the writer says, "one rarely has the opportunity to listen to balads whose melodies are so sweet, so well arranged and sung."

all photos by fanni terrette (thanks, Pete, for lending me the camera!) (16950)

Mayville, NY in winter

2005-09-15T13:01:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (16518)

A President's Optimism

2005-09-13T00:23:00.000-04:00

This just in: recovery on the way for the dead.

Bush rode through New Orleans in an open truck with the governor and mayor, ducking under low-hanging tree limbs and electrical wires.

"My impression of New Orleans is this: That there is a recovery on the way," Bush said.

quoted by By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer.

Celebrating the Mass Murder of Civilians on 9-11

2005-09-11T16:31:00.000-04:00

Since we have reached a four-year anniversary of the day on which many civilians were murdered as retaliation for specific imperialistic Middle East policies of the U.S. government, it's good to remind ourselves of this proud nation's reverence for its own weapons of mass destruction. I myself was reminded of this little discussed phenomenon when, in an idle moment, as I turned the pages of a seemingly innocuous (and pricey) gift catalogue, I came upon this photo of the Enola Gay, signed by the pilot who flew this death machine over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing over 140,000 civilians in one fell swoop and leaving an incalculable amount of agony and death in its wake for years to come. Because of the way that these and other civilian bombings are justified in "mainstream" media and conventional histories, in America, a legacy of inhumanity and of an incapacity for self-criticism persist until the present day. I must truly be an aberrant case to find odd the inclusion in a gift catalogue for the wealthy a photograph of this sinister death machine and its pilot (cast here as a "hero" whose grandeur the owner of his autograph can experience intimately).

And if such a portrait were hanging in the household of a family that invites Japanese guests in? Imagine the discussion that could ensue:

House Guest: Oh, that's a big plane. Is that your relative? Did he fly during war?
Proud American: Naw, his name's Tibbets. He put an end to the Pacific War with the push of a button. He saved lives.
House Guest: I see... well, I'm a little ashamed to say this, but my grandparents were killed on that day, and my uncle endured horrendously painful skin cancer for the next thirty years, until his cancer-related death at the age of 40... Nice photo, anyway... impressive plane...
Proud American: Yeah, uh. You like football?

Considerations of household etiquette aside, this is part of the continually rehashed state-think ideology that pervades American society. A surprising number of people in this country "know" (without ever having studied the matter) that unleashing atomic weapons on major civilian populations in Japan was necessary and that its net effect was to "save lives." Just in case they did not "know" such a facile version of this historical crime, the publishers of the ACORN gift magazine have, in a caption that in the gift magazine appears just above the photo, taken a moment of their time to remind them of it:

Yes, for the modest sum of $110.00 U.S. dollars, you can place this memento of the last century's progressive history of indiscriminate civilian bombardments in your stately home. Personally, I am going to hold out, not only because the price is a little steep for me at present, but because I think I might be able to get a timelier and more radiant photograph. Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that I can get a photo of some soldiers in Iraq who have helped wipe out upwards of 20,000 civilians (in conservative estimates) posing before their "precision weapons." I think a color photo like that would really liven up the parlor, especially if it's signed by the very men who did the deeds.

Happy 9-11, America.

p.s. See a 90-second film that gives a quantitative appreciation of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal and of the expense to U.S. taxpayers its maintenance entails.

Addendum: Many fear the theocratic strain of the current U.S. President, who at times speaks as if his reckless militarism followed the ordinance of God. For perspective, however, we should recall the words of Harry S. Truman on the eve of his decision to use the atom bomb against massive civilian populations in Japan: "[The atomic bomb] is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies. And we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes." Personally, I find this type of talk, in which atomic weapons are aligned with the voice and intentions of God, to be far more frightening than any smug comment made by George Bush Jr. concerning his reputed empowerment by God.

(16314)

Two McSacks, Please

2005-09-09T11:19:00.000-04:00

(AP, not) A representative of the McDonald's Corporation, depicted here in local ethnic garb, uses Polish horses to test a new drive-thru feeding technique for the American market, which is particularly susceptible to the lure of copious and ubiquitous consumption. The sacks can be fastened to the consumer's head, as demonstrated here, to allow feeding at all times of the day, or fitted to both steering wheels and, for passengers, dashboards and the back of a car's front seats. Capitalizing on the feeding bags' efficiency and capacity for high caloric volume, McDonald's plans to distribute feeding bags to American motorists by the end of 2005. It is not yet clear whether such feeding bags will be restricted in use by drivers in the manner that cell phones are in some parts of the country, but, in a similar fashion, the matter is likely to be settled on a state-by-state basis.

photo by fanni terrette (16136)

Team spirits

2005-09-05T11:10:00.000-04:00

photo by fanni terrette. Shibukawa, Japan. (15834)

I've noticed that people from all over the world click on this blog from day to day. I would like to extend a welcome to you all. I write in English almost always but would like the challenge of reading your comments in the language of your preference. Leave a comment and I'll plant a flower in your name. (Not really, but such are my sentiments.) All good blogs are group projects, just like all good rock bands, made of a team of spirits. So, participate, dear visitors, in "terrette," a personal name that, fortuitously enough, means "small earth," as in (I like to say) "small world."

I want also to welcome "Mo Fo," the trombonist, bonfire specialist, hot pepper chef, and overall musical factotum who graciously welcomed me into his lakeside home one chilly September night and re-opened my musical horizons with his midi-driven, alchemic magic. This is the right address, Mo Fo.

Pour Magali

2005-08-29T12:09:00.000-04:00

La gralla est une sorte de hautbois à la sonorité bourdonnante qui se joue généralement en plein air et à deux. «Gralla», en catalan, veut dire «choucas» (oiseau noir, à nuque grise, voisin de la corneille). L’instrument est fait de bois et mesure 14 ½ centimètres. Je l’ai découvert pour la première fois en assistant à une fête médiévale qui se déroulait par un beau jour de printemps à Perpignan. La musicienne qui figure sur la photo m’avait dit que je pouvais en acheter une pour 600 francs dans un magasin de musique à Perpignan, soit l’équivalent d’environ 90 euros ou 110 dollars américains en cette année 2005 . J’ai cru bon de remettre l’achat à plus tard, quand je serais de retour à Paris... Eh bien, erreur ! Dans les semaines qui ont suivi, mes recherches acharnées dans les magasins de musique à Paris m’ont amené à conclure qu’il n’existe pas une seule gralla dans toute la capitale. J’ai donc compris jusqu'à quel point la gralla fait partie du patrimoine catalan. J'en garde pourtant un souvenir vif. Le son tonitruant de la gralla, qui fait reigner une atmosphère de fête sur tout un quartier en y apportant des airs des temps reculés et forts comme les cris d'une bête angoissée, avait de quoi me faire sauter de joie.

photo de fanni terrette, retouchée aimablement par la nuageuse. (15400 )

The Simple Life

2005-08-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

Inscription on barn: NO SMOKING

photo by terrette (15047)

Fact and Fiction: You Decide

2005-08-23T09:41:00.000-04:00

Blogger Calls for Pat Robertson's Death Tue Aug 23, 6:20 AM ET

An unidentified blogger suggested in a post that appeared yesterday that American operatives assassinate Pat Robertson to stop the United States from becoming "a launching pad for global right-wing infiltration and Christian extremism."

"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," the blogger said, while commenting on the Christian Broadcast Network's "The 700 Club."

"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm demagogue," the blogger continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Robertson has emerged as one of the most outspoken admirers of President Bush, and has accused Chavez, the popular, democratically-elected leader of Venezuela, of conspiring to topple the U.S. government and of possibly backing plots to assassinate Bush and maybe even other well-meaning Christians the world over. U.S. Officials have called the accusations ridiculous, and the blogger in question has apparently taken great offense.

Comments and questions posted at the blog in question were not immediately responded to Monday evening and it appears that a few may have been deliberately suppressed by the site owner.

Robertson, 75, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, accused the United States of failing to be more aggressive when Chavez was briefly overthrown by U.S.-backed henchmen in 2002. He called the incident one of "outsourcing gone awry."

Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil to the United States. The CIA estimates that U.S. markets absorb almost 59 percent of Venezuela's total exports.

Officials in Venezuela have demanded in the past that the United States crack down on Cuban and Venezuelan terrorists in Florida who, they say, are conspiring against Chavez.

The unidentified blogger has made controversial statements in the past. Nothing he or she has written can quite compare to the absurdity of comments made by Pat Robertson, however. In October 2003, Robertson suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. He has also said that feminism encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

See, also, the original article.

A Polish Sky

2005-08-13T18:15:00.000-04:00

I was particularly happy with this photo, since it captures the looming, roasted Polish sky. Those who have lived in Poland for a while are familiar with it. It has its own emotional presence. Indeed, the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski sought to capture the brooding, ominous, autumnal Polish sky so as to fit the mood of "A Short Film about Killing," but was forced to place a colored lens on the movie camera to achieve a consistent effect. Consistency was not a problem for me, but I can still boast that I managed the task without any alterations or special lenses.

The girl was unknown to me, and I never did speak to her, but the photo is one of many in which Polish citizens from all walks of life responded to the sight of my zoom lens and camera with what could only be called complicity or cooperation. A few of them also offered to buy my camera from me, too, and one of them actually made off with a tackle box full of virgin film that I had left unattended for a moment in a train compartment; but as long as they sensed that I was pointing my lens towards them, they tended to slow their movements and steady their gaze in my direction. In many places, it seems, the power of the camera begins when first the camera is simply seen.

Wroclaw, Poland, 1990. (14510)

お地蔵様　（おじぞうさま）

2005-08-10T15:55:00.000-04:00

On returning from Japan recently, I noticed, while walking down the airplane aisle, a headline on the USA Today that was being read by one of the seated passengers. It said something about the real estate corporate king Donald Trump offering to revamp the United Nations. Trump? The United Nations? Was I entering a magical world in which real estate and international diplomacy concerning affairs of health, war, and peace merged seamlessly into one giant contest -- a contest won by hubris and greed? No, I was returning home. Or at least to a place where people found it natural and well to think of the charter of the United Nations as having been conceived for the accumulation of wealth by the wealthiest of nations (but, then again, they might have a good argument). Thus, I discovered that only one week's absence from the Empire held a little cultural shock for me.

What's more, seeing George Bush Jr.'s face all over the omnipresent television sets playing in the airport felt like being forced to eat last week's leftovers. Was this flatulent man still in power? During my short time abroad, Bush had became a less pressing source of irritation, even to the point where I had succumbed to the delightful illusion that he had faded resolutely into the past.

May I return to that distant place soon, and lurk once more among places of quiet contemplation...

Stone figures (click for enlargement, photo by terrette)

Cheese!

2005-08-01T15:49:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (13868)

Pillboxing

2005-07-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

Welcome, long-forsaken readers, long-neglected keyboard. My failure to write a single word for a long stretch had a reason. I was scouring the four corners of the globe in search of the ever-elusive occupation known as, well, an occupation, which is to say, a job. To be sure, I exaggerate: I hit only three corners of the earth and, of those, only two in person, but the point here is that my mind and body have been elsewhere.

So, let me begin by thanking Steve, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, for his comments to my last post. And, although he showed no doubt and none was in fact warranted concerning the true object of the photo placed therein, I would like to put all possible suspicion to doubt by placing another photo from the same trip to what Americans have since WWII called Omaha Beach.

Pillboxes

So, no, that was not Cancun that you saw in the photo of the previous post; that was (at least formerly) a rather busy battlefield. I have to say that even I, who generally view war as an insult to human intelligence and a depraved endeavor of the worst sort, found Omaha Beach to be quite a moving place to visit. All the war junk lying around, on the beach, in the sea, or even inland -- as with these pillboxes -- is a curiosity that itself inspired different reflections in me. Not only did I wonder why all the junk was left lying around, but I wondered if one could ever measure all the refuse, psychological or material, that humanity's (but mostly the United States') vast history of modern war-making has left behind. A recent study discussed in the Japanese press interviewed survivors of the atomic bombing by U.S. forces in Japan, and a majority of them still have nightmares over the "incidents."

Every few years, we read in the press that some unexploded bomb has been unearthed in a family garden in Tokyo or Dresden. Obviously, this seems incongruous to those of us who tend spontaneously to believe that, when wars are declared over, most of their villainous consequences are wiped away, too, but it is surely the case that most of modern war-making's insidious and cruel consequences for innocent lives never make it to press. Think only of Vietnam and the systematic violence carried out on that nation's ecological fabric...

To return to Steve's comments and the film "The Day After Tomorrow"... I forgot to mention that in this film, which MoveOn.org felt was the best means by which to wake up the populace over the dangers of global warming, the most persistent act of product placement involved -- no, you would never have guessed -- the Fox "News" Network. Yep. The viewer of this film was made to believe that whenever there was anything of import happening in the nation, all eyes turned instantly to some Fox News beauty-head. Yes, Fox News, that corporation that goes out of its way to remove all possibility of criticism against the most decisively eco-resistant government in operation today. The possibility of irony here simply doesn't hold up, either. The Dick Cheney talk-alike in the film is actually made to appear capable of remorse, and capable of admitting that, on the environment, he committed a massive blunder akin to global assassination on the scale never before conceived. But this admission is made in a kind-hearted sort of way, by a sort of huggy and warm grandpa figure who speaks his heart to the people of the nation. It is as if the Vice President were speaking on Barbara Walters, so that we could all see his warm-and-fuzzy side. And that is exactly the portrait of the monstrous and deceitful Cheney that Fox construes for its viewing public on virtually every day of the year.

The only sense I can see in this sick approach to serious issues is that it confirms what Joel Bakan has said about the sham nature of all corporate-run "good will." Whoever made "The Day After Tomorrow" must have watched in glee as MoveOn.org and like organizations went haywire over the release of an "eco-friendly" film. It is not unlikely that they had seized upon this new market of "activists" to push across an "eco-theme," only to drown the whole thing in idiot catastrophe scenes and then smother it in butt-kisses for Cheney and his fellow thugs-in-office.

The Day After the Day After Tomorrow

2005-07-17T21:30:00.000-04:00

Every once in a great while I see a "Hollywood" movie. I do so always under similar conditions. First, it has not to require my paying for it directly--for instance, when I have taken international flights, or when I find myself at my brother's house and flip through the dozens of films his cable hook-up affords him. Secondly, through fatigue, mental laxity, or other extenuating factors, I persuade myself that in watching such a film, I might actually find something memorable and inspiring: if not a good performance, or a well-played scene, then at least a momentary, beautiful depiction of nature, or possibly even something resembling an original thought.

So it was that, last night, at the end of a long day, I started channel surfing at my brother's place and came upon the opening scene of "The Day After Tomorrow." Hmmm, I thought, this is the film that the progressive political organization MoveOn.org sent me a batch of e-mail about sometime last year, urging me both to see it and to get anyone who might not be educated about matters of global warming to see it. That alone suggested, at least superficially, that a thought might be lurking within what otherwise promised to be a standard "no risk" multi-million dollar visual and aural entertainment package on par with any hand-to-hand combat video game (but requiring less input from the consumer).

I won't hide the fact that the second condition of my viewing such a film is inevitably frustrated, and that watching "The Day After Tomorrow" was no exception to this apparent rule. But I should first say that the film did have an idea of sorts. Not an original idea, exactly, and surely not a filmic or artistic idea, but an idea imported from certain scientific circles. The idea--abrupt climate change--has its own merits (see intriguing documentation here) and surely has been served well by popularization--especially in the United States, where the reality of global warming remains idiotically in dispute thanks primarily to manifold pressures exerted by the coal and gas industries upon media of all sorts, decision-makers, and American culture generally. The question for me, though, is whether, in integrating the idea of abrupt climate change into a recipe film such as this, the filmmakers managed to make a good film. On that account, I was not witness to the least bit of supportive evidence.

I imagined a little scene in which two persons first exchanged ideas for this film.

A: We need some kind of catastrophe. Think post-9/11. The stuff is selling more than ever.
B: Yeah, that's right. And, you know, my nerd cousin Marty told me about this idea. It's not exactly the old global warming scare--that's probably too much a hot-button issue--but a kind of side dish to that. He said he read an article about it. It was *rapid climate change* or something like that. The thing is, it would be perfect for creating lots of panic scenes. We could have tornadoes in L.A., a freeze-over in Manhattan, torrential rain in D.C., and more. We could even flatter the Japanese market with a little ice storm in Tokyo.
A: Great, that's perfect! We're practically done. All we have to do is spit out the script.
B: Right. But what about the love interest?
A: Well, we'll get that cutey face who did "Heat of the Night" last year. His agent will let him join up for less than 40 mil. He's not yet the cream of the crop. We might be able to catch him as his wave begins to crest.
B: Kinters, you mean?
A: Yeah, that's the one.
B: OK, what about the girl?
A: Hmm... that's more difficult. I've looked into the names. The market is not good now for buyers. Let's just get a nice pair of knockers at a discount price. That should fit the bill. It hardly matters, anyway. The lines will be minimal. Just a few pouts, a display of touchy-feely, and maybe a dash through a traumatized crowd. Basically, a little bounce here and there, and a bit of face sucking will do the trick.
B: Right. Always does.
A: One thing, though. Can't we still manage to make this into something of a family movie? All it would take is a "man overcomes resentment towards brother" or an "overworked father insists on keeping his next promise to son." One of those cards.
B: Well, I don't see why not. As long as there's at least 10 parts noise and trauma to one part sentimentality.
A: Yep. That's the M.O.
B: Personally, I like to get back to the "repentant, overworked father" thing. It's been two or three films since we used that one.
A: I've no objection, believe me. Say, about the the stunts and catastrophes... We'll spend, say, 10 or 12 months with these and then, once we emerge from the stunt labs, find the cute faces we talked about to patch it all together into some kind of story line.
B: OK, so, I'll write the script tonight over a few beers and, if you think I might drop anything from it, then just e-mail me by tomorrow night. But there really shouldn't be much to change, since we've already been through the whole "risk avoidance" thing with corporate headquarters a hundred thousand times.
A: I know. Almost makes you sick, doesn't it?
B: Yeah, but it also makes you filthy rich at the end of the day, too.
A: Ha! That's certainly true!

So much, then, for my general sense about how this film was, or how it may as well have been, hatched.

One thing about the title of this film, a title whose relevance to the action or idea of the film is not particularly clear or suggestive. Does anyone share my sense that English-language, and particularly "Hollywood" movies, are increasingly left untranslated when introduced to foreign markets? I do sometimes wonder who makes these kinds of decisions. Surely it is not some underpaid college student who gets hired in haste to create subtitles for a film set on imminent release. I mention this because the title "The Day After Tomorrow" has, it seems, remained untranslated in Japanese, despite the fact that Japanese has a wonderful one-word equivalent, namely: あさって[asatte]. This word simply means "the day after tomorrow." It is, at least, economical. It also avoids the awkwardness of the original. I assume that the English title was retained not only because of the standard appeal of "exoticism" that presumably attracted Japanese audiences but also because, left in English, the title more easily functions as a kind of corporate label, much like "Coca-Cola" or any other corporate product name that resists translation. The fact that "Hollywood" films today are devised, market-tested, and marketed in much the same way as many other products--including soft drinks and prescription drugs--supports this rationale for opting not to translate. Perhaps other things are going on here, though...

In mentioning the untranslated title and imagining the little "creative" moment as I did, I have neglected to talk about the film "itself." But that was not without cause. The film is simply the same film you have seen everytime you have seen a "Hollywood" movie in the past decade or so. Yes, it raises a spicy little social issue of grave importance to the destiny of mankind. But that fact, and the catastrophe for which this issue sets the stage, does not obtrude upon the "happy ending," nor does it completely block out the "love and family" thematizing without which a "Hollywood" blockbuster wanna-be could not be recognized as such. The actors do not act so much as act like all the hordes of stereotypes that have gone before them. The lead male role, for instance, is played by Dennis Quaid, and Quaid does not create a character or personality; he just tries to hold the same poses, and employ the same voice tone as, say, Harrison Ford has done in his last twenty or so films (which is not to grant Harrison Ford any acting skills, either). Every gesture is stereotyped and pre-programmed with nauseating precision, and all Quaid has presumably done is to not displease his bossmen by attempting anything faintly original.

Mind you, there's a lot to laugh at in this film; only, none of the laughs are apparently sought out by the filmmakers. They are, rather, the unintended consequence of poor filmmaking whose sole pursuit of box-office wealth blinds the the filmmakers to the most outrageous aspects of their own film-product. For instance, I found myself chuckling at the fact that although the entire nation of Canada was obliterated in a deep freeze, no character even wastes a word on the matter. (Clearly, the Canadian "looney" or dollar demands much less attention from today's corporate filmmakers than does, say, the Japanese Yen.) The very fact that New York and Washington, D.C. remain the center of the world, as they always do in intergalactic or geo-catastrophic films, and that the Statue of Liberty gets buried--once again!--up to her crown and torch while Japan, as the world's second largest film-going economy--once again!--is patronizingly fitted with a complementary role, all caught me somewhere between a chuckle and exasperation.

It is perhaps too easy to criticize "Hollywood films." Perhaps it's no more difficult than putting one foot in front of the other. And, like the films themselves, the critiques run the risk of becoming repetitive. Still, such critiques are no less necessary, and I often wonder why they seem so rare in the nation's star-and-thumbs-up crazed movie press. Could we at least see some degree of subtlety introduced into the old thumbs-up, thumbs-down dichotomy? I can think of at least one other digit that could be useful in appraising "Hollywood" films...

There's much more to say about "The Day After Tomorrow," including its lamentable (i.e., noisy, clamorous, relentless) soundtrack--a soundtrack that, like so many today, dictates "emotions" to the viewer in shameless tyranny--but I will leave all that for another day after tomorrow.

photo: Omaha Beach, Bayeux, France - by terrette (13063)

提灯　（ちょうちん）

2005-07-14T18:51:00.000-04:00

Lanterns　by terrette (12911)

"Our Way of Life"

2005-07-08T11:27:00.000-04:00

In the wake of the bombings in London, we keep hearing the expression "our way of life" in the mouths of Tony Blair, George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and other corporate militarists. These three in particular have claimed that "our way of life" was the source of anger of those who planted bombs in London. Why do they keep saying this? To what does the "way" correspond? And to whom does it belong? Who is the "our" in the expression? Let's first sample a few quotes as we consider these questions.

Here's Blair:

I think we all know what they're trying to do. They're trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us from going about our business as normal, as we're entitled to do. And they should not and they must not succeed. When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed.

Here's Bush (from an Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People in late September, 2001, at a moment when presumably the convenience of the phrase was first seized upon):

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends.

And here's Condoleezza Rice (in an August 2004 discussion with Tim Russert):

On September the 11th, we were brutally attacked by people who had an ideology of hatred so great that they, with a few people, threatened to try and bring down our way of life.

As I see it, the expression is simply meant to obscure the highly probable reasons for terrorist attacks generally and, recently, the bombings in London. It is calculated to deflect indirect (but serious) responsibility from the leaders in Britain and the US who have conducted a needless, illegal, unpopular war that has already likely caused the death of over 100,000 unarmed civilians in Iraq while greatly increasing the threat of terrorism in the US and Britain in particular.

Bush, Blair & Co. want you, the public, to believe that it is you who are hated and not the policies of Bush, Blair & Co. (that many of you have rejected, anyway). They want to get your dander up. The expression "our way of life" is tirelessly floated out into public discourse as if it corresponded to some actual source of ire among the terrorists. It even does double duty as a deft recruitment device meant to deceive unsuspecting and easily-offended young men and women who can be duped into thinking that, in going off to kill and possibly die, they are protecting their own "way of life." Not only their own, but "our" way of life, every decent person's "way of life."

This strategy of deflection and distraction was exploited again yesterday when Blair went out of his way to state that the vast majority of Muslims in England abhor what happened in London -- as if we didn't already know that. In short, he tried, in this case, to make the whole affair seem explicable in terms of religious affilations. The "way of life" would thus, by implication, mean "our Christian, non-Muslim way of life here in Britain." In the end, though, the tactic remains the same: by talking about Muslims, Blair tried to downplay his own responsibility for the worldwide upsurge in violence and for the backlash against US and British military terrorism by casting the motivations of the bombers in false terms (whether of "lifestyle" or "religion"). Either way, this is a serious insult both to Muslims and to the victims of this latest wave of violence. To stoke anger and fear among the populace for things that are at best marginally related to the very likely movitations of the bombers is simply political opportunism and cynicism at their worst.

Some UK citizens have spoken forthrightly about the likely motivations of the bombers. Let's compare their statements to the woolly stuff we keep hearing about "our way of life":

George Galloway (British Member of Parliament):

London has reaped the (results) of Mr. Blair's involvement in Iraq .... because, of course, the vast majority of Londoners, and I have no doubt the vast majority of people affected by that despicable act of mass murder yesterday, were opponents of Mr. Blair and Bush's war on Iraq... It would be entirely dishonest to pretend that this came out of nowhere. Inexcusable, but not inexplicable. Sadly, all too explicable and explained, even before we did it, by the anti-war movement. We said this (war in Iraq) would not make the world a safer place, it would make the world a more dangerous place.

Juan Gonzalez (journalist, responding to George Galloway):

Your criticism of Britain's participation in the war... apparently there was a rebuttal from Home Secretary Charles Clark who said that, "This has nothing to do with Iraq or any other particular foreign policy, it's about a fundamentalist attack on the way we live our lives."

George Galloway:

Only a fool would say that, and only a fool would believe that. In fact, the terrorists themselves have said... that that's exactly why they carried out the act.

Galloway refers here to the statement posted online according to which the bombings were carried out, "in revenge of the massacres that Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan." That's the justification given for the violence in London by the group that took responsibility for the bombings on a website that has yet to be given full credence. Whether or not we can trust this statement as being authentic, it certainly sounds like it is concerned about politics more than about religion or others' "way of life."

Robert Fisk, of the UK's Independent News and Media, responded to Blair's strategy of deflection by stating that,

To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror..."

George Monbiot, a columnist for the London Guardian, cautions against assuming that we know who carried out the bombing, but does admit that,

There's no doubt that by invading Iraq we have caused a great deal of resentment and anger within the Muslim world and if that hasn't come back to haunt us yet, then it may well come back to haunt us in the future.

Stephen Grey, of the Sunday Times of London, also shows that he is under no illusion as to the probable motivation behind the bombings:

One important thing to understand about the nature of Islamic terrorism is that it's not just about a threat to the way of life to the West. If you talk to people who are actually close to these movements, they hate, above all, the policies of the West, (which) they extend not just to the invasion of Iraq, but also to the Middle East peace process, (and) the involvement in Afghanistan. Many of the people who are drawn to these movements are not people who are looking for some sort of Taliban lifestyle, they're people who are motivated because they support some kind of insurgency about the way the West is dealing with the Middle East. They feel the Middle East is utterly humiliated by the West and the Western policies.

With those sensible remarks in mind, it is very clear that my own "way of life" has nothing at all to do with Bush's and Blair's foreign policies, nor the policies of Bush's predecessors, Clinton, Bush Sr., and Reagan. It is not part of my "way of life" to order and subsequently pass over in virtual silence the killing of countless Iraqi civilians in a needless and illegal act of state terrorism and military aggression. It is not part of my "way of life" to oppress the Palestinian people. And it is not part of my "way of life" to support tyrannical dictators in oil-rich countries.

How about you? Do you recognize in these policies your own "way of life"?

I'll end this post by letting the eloquent George Galloway have the last word:

It's just basic common sense that... if you don't intervene to stop the ongoing Calvary of the Palestinian people, who for 50 years have been dispossessed, sent to the four corners of the world as refugees, regularly massacred, occupied, if you don't do something about the hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers occupying Iraq, if you don't stop propping up the puppet presidents and the corrupt kings who rule the Muslim world almost without exception from one end to the other, then you lay bare your double standards, your hypocrisy, when you talk about liberty.

What our leaders want is liberty for us, but only up to a point, and they're ready to take that away if it suits them, but no liberty for anybody else. And the people in the Muslim world can see it very clearly. They know that nobody gave a toss about the thousands who were killed in Fallujah. Nobody in the British Parliament raised any qualm about the American armed forces reducing Fallujah to ash and killing thousands of people. Yet, they go into the kind of emoting that we saw yesterday about the deaths in London.

I'm different from that, and most British people are different from that, when you reach them. The blood of everyone is worth the same. God didn't differentiate between a dead person in London killed by sheets of flying glass and red-hot razor sharp steel and someone who died the same death in Baghdad. These deaths are the same. And war of the kind that we have seen -- unjustified, illegal, based on lies, in Iraq, is terrorism of a different kind. Just because the President, who ordered it is wearing a smart suit rather than the garb of an Islamist in the Tora Bora doesn't make the orders more legitimate than orders if they were given from bin Laden.

(12517) photo by terrette. Warsaw, Poland

An appeal to machismo

2005-07-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

The billboard pictured below was photographed in what is euphemistically called an underprivileged neighborhood ("un quartier défavorisé"). This means that it is extremely poor and inhabited principally by African-Americans. The location of the billboard was certainly not chosen fortuitously. The search for desperate mercenaries among the poor of the nation, who, in Iraq and elsewhere, are needed to fight this generation's wars for the sake of the rich is in full swing in the United States. As always, the military-corporate take-overs are dressed up in banners of national pride and glory and, as pictured below, sold with mega-labels like "liberty" and "life," and rationalized as issues of "national security."

For French readers, I offer a translation of the macho billboard phrase: "Vie, liberté, et la poursuite de tous ceux qui la (?) (sic) menacent."

The phrase is hard to translate because it is not clear what the word "it" refers to. To life? Liberty?

What half-wit composed this thing, anyway?

The Architectural Circus

2005-06-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

Buffalo, NY [photos by fanni terrette] (11760)

“War Is the Health of New York State.”

2005-06-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

The title of this post is not just an abstract “leftist” slogan or a phrase torn from a page of a George Orwell novel. It comes from my observation that Randolphe Bourne’s original line, “War is the health of the state,” written in the midst of the First World War, has again taken on concrete significance for citizens of the United States. Indeed, it could very well serve as part of the figurehead from the mail that I’ve been receiving from New York State senators. As a case in point, I have scanned a portion of a letter I received today from New York State Senator Mary Lou Rath.

At issue in Senator Rath’s letter is her attempt to keep the Niagara Air Reserve Station open. This is a social drama that is playing out in communities all over the United States today in which military bases are being threatened with closure by the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission. As Senator Rath writes, in lines scanned below (and, here, with my underscoring):

“Local, state and federal representatives, along with the Niagara Military Affairs Council (NIMAC), are banning together in a monumental effort to keep our base open, keep thousands of workers in quality jobs and keep our economy alive. We know how much is at stake!”

The kicker, for me, comes in the second paragraph shown here, where the senator argues for the military base’s importance (click on image for enlargement):

In other words, as Senator Rath sees things, keeping the economy alive requires nothing less than a robust “War on Terror” so that the Niagara Air Reserve Station can continue to be a critical component in the nation's perpetual war-making. Note, as well, the importance granted to the “war” by the senator’s use of capital letters. Not only did she dispense altogether with both scare quotes and a judicious use of “so-called” before the expression “War on Terror,” she also, with a stroke of self-important capitalization, made the so-called war on terror look, in print, like the title of a Hollywood blockbuster.

On another note, one wonders if local and federal officials are so lacking in imagination that they can think of no other jobs than these, to stimulate local economies.

For the blog, here, typed out, is the handwritten response I mailed to Senator Rath:

***
June 20, 2005

Dear Senator Rath:

In response to your letter of June 14, 2005 regarding the Niagara Air Reserve Station, I would like, first, to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as follows:

“We are spending all of this money [on the war in Vietnam] for death and destruction, and not nearly enough for life and constructive development… When the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.” (1968)

Compare, if you will, the oft-cited words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." (1953)

Respectable senator, Erie County's debt has grown to an estimated $113 million and, at the same time, the amount the County's citizens have paid in taxes to support George Bush's gratuitous take-over of Iraq is rapidly approaching $100 million. [Editor's note of July 10: the actual figure for Erie County's expenditure on the Iraq War is 764.7 million dollars, as reported in March by National Priorities.] The latter figure will surely outstrip the amount of estimated debt soon.

In light of this, you have written to tell me of the need to "keep the economy alive" by contributing further to the so-called war on terror.

Respectable senator, I do not believe in your “War on Terror.” What I do believe is that the relentless militarization of our national and local economy is unhealthy for the citizens of this State, and surely unhealthy for the thousands of civilians the US government has killed, and is bound to keep killing, in Iraq and elsewhere. If supporting George Bush's murderous campaign of corporate self-enrichment that wraps itself in the U.S. flag and fans fear among the populace is the basis of your defense for the Niagara Air Reserve Station, then the sooner the Station closes, the better.

You can take your “War on Terror” and leap into Lake Erie, respectable senator.

Regards, (signed)

A Comic Genius Among Us

2005-06-15T20:30:00.005-04:00

I would like to signal the emergence of a talented comic strip artist, Nicholas Gurewitch. Nicholas recently was a student a little over to the right of me in the State of New York, though I have yet to have the pleasure of meeting him. His self-introduction and a generous if not complete series of links to his comic strip, the curiously named "Perry Bible Fellowship," can be found at his website of the same name. I first discovered his work in the locally-distributed magazine The Beast.

In breaking with the nearly-uniform principle of presenting only images that I myself have taken or produced in one way or another, I offer a few of Nicholas' strips below because Nicholas kindly agreed to let me reproduce them here and because merely talking about comic strips would not do them justice.

The test of a great comic strip must reside in two parts: one part, belly, one part, brain. The first of these is hammered on pretty soundly by the Perry Bible Fellowship. Before the belly has even come to rest, however, the brain starts to secrete some of its more delicious fluids, and if there is something like an after-taste in the frontal lobe, I must have experienced it several times upon discovering Nicholas's most recent strips. So it is that one is able to return to these strips repeatedly and, lingering on lines drawn with the strictest economy, savor, for instance, the intense expression of a hairless human figure devoid of color and shadow.

I will sample only five of the strips and leave the curious reader to visit the many links of the Perry Bible Fellowship archive.

1 "Moving Birthday" (alternately titled "April 2"): this is the first strip of the Perry Bible Fellowship that I came across. The strip dips into the ambiance of the times and, without crassness or mockery, imagines a humorous and authentically human response to penury as experienced by a small family unit. The father's action is a step cleverer than those of Roberto Benigni's character in the film "Life Is Beautiful," for it is laced with the ambiguity of a subterfuge that is both survivalist in its impulse and turned against the child it is meant to placate or assuage. That Nicholas was able to convey all of this in four meager frames is what made me seek out more of his strips.

2 "Book World" presents a wry recollection of happy-happy education propaganda the sort to which children the world over are surely exposed. Who can view this strip and not chuckle nostalgically at all the well-meant but insipid institutional morale-boosting of one's early days in school? As often is the case in the Perry Bible Fellowship, the gleeful look emanating from the beady black eyes of the child in frame #2 portends an ironic reversal.

Out-on-a-wing speculation: possibly some of the Christian purists who huffed and puffed over the black magic contained within the Harry Potter series could, with a little touching-up of the book title, turn "Book World" to their own propagandistic effect?

3 "Lord Gloom" : The Perry Bible Fellowship, a name whose sense somewhat escapes me, is at least at times anachronistic, since the comic strip is peopled by what appear to be figures of Nicholas's own mythological invention that nonetheless owe their features and dress to various realms of archeological or pre-modern history, including dinosaurs and armored knights, but that Nicholas endows with what I believe are original character traits. "Lord Gloom" exemplifies this no less than "Colonel Sweeto." (For the latter, see the archive.) It is surely one of the outstanding features of The Perry Bible Fellowship that its characters are so diverse, even to the point where they are depicted by means of a completely different illustration style than are other members of the Fellowship. Similarly, one never knows into which period of time the Fellowship will next travel. Moreover, the printing type or font is not mechanically uniform from one strip to another but varies to reflect emotional or historical elements in keeping with the figures presented. These ever-changing aspects open up a vast range of perspectives and attitudes that, we can only hope, the Fellowship has just begun to explore. In this, the comic strip is a true "fellowship" of moods and comic turns of mind and is thus superior to the typical comic strip that is limited by a set of characters defined narrowly from the out-set (say, "geeky white-trash suburban family from the 1950s") or, worse, by a single, rigidly conceived character ("indifferently arrogant cat").

All that being said, Nicholas works illustrative economy to such an effect that, at times, he simply dispenses with words and lets the images speak for themselves, as in the following strip:

4 "Chew Boy" : This is one strip among several whose title is indispensable (although, strangely, the strip titles do not appear in the paper in which I read The Perry Bible Fellowship). Here, as elsewhere, Nicholas chooses his title with economy and in a way that plays up possible ambiguities. "Chew Boy" : Is this the once frequent command of a dog-owning parent who at holiday time lacked foresight in crafting a son's or daughter's costume? The corporate name of a dog toy? Or, perhaps, a curt evocation of the hapless costume-wearer's fate?

This eloquently silent strip puts to shame whole reams of conventional Sunday comics. Its joke is all in the viewer's mind. Or, rather, Nicholas has slipped it into the interstice between frame #3, where a boy waves in holiday cheer, and #4, where the dog, whose fate may well appear unjust, simmers under its muzzle. In the interstice it is less our eyes than our mind that is called to linger... and laugh.

5 "Mittens" : With apologies to cat lovers everywhere, this strip concentrates its comic energy discreetly in frame #2, whose significance, I think, may not be apparent on first viewing. (Click on the strip to view an enlargement.) As with any comic strip that hits both brain and belly, "Mittens" pulls the reader's gaze back to frame #2, where it discovers the apparently immobilized image of a cat that, one soon realizes, is in fact in a fatal free fall. From this the reader's eyes return to frame #1 to savor the eloquently traced human faces. And, with this back-n-forth waking rapid eye movement, the final frame depicting a "father sitting in judgment" only gains in comic power.

All images presented by permission of the artist, Nicholas Gurewitch.

(11086)

In Memory of B.B. and Others

2005-06-14T12:42:00.000-04:00

In the wake of another teenage shooting in the United States, I would like to address a message to friends of Brandenn Bremmer. Not believing that Brandenn had made a single enemy in his short life, this includes everyone. And if the name "Brandenn Bremmer" means nothing to you, please see my original post on this child prodigy and apparent victim of suicide in early March of this year, at the age of 14.

It seems that approximately 10,000 visits to my blog have been made in just over one year of its existence. I have also received hundreds of comments and occasional e-mail correspondence from readers. Recently, I received e-mail from someone claiming to be "a very close friend of Brandenn's." This person, who signed their initial comments as "FriendsofBrandenn," requested by e-mail that I remove my March 28 post on Brandenn an account of the fact that she found it offensive. Although the necessity of the request was questionable to my mind, since, I thought, the person could simply choose not to read the post, I carefully weighed the reasons given for the request. In the end, I found none of them compelling. The person writing to me identified herself, in a final message, as the mother of Brandenn's close friend, and I surmise that her name is Mary Smith.

Although Mary Smith was unable to provide compelling reasons for my removing the fictional letter that constitutes the centerpiece of my March 28 post, I am going to discuss our correspondence here as a contribution to the issue of juvenile gun access laws in the United States.

Despite my informing Mary Smith that I was considering printing our exchange of messages, I cannot, in good faith, reproduce all of her messages word-for-word, since she has announced that she would not like to continue corresponding with me and I have not obtained her permission to reproduce her words in their entirety. I will, therefore, paraphrase the exchange briefly and reproduce only the most telling parts or parts that I wrote.

First, a brief summary: on March 28, I posted a fictional letter, identified as such, whose main purpose was to raise the following questions: why, in reporting the apparent suicide of 14-year-old Brandenn Bremmer, did the AP staff writer Sharon Cohen make no mention of parental responsibility in the matter, if only to ask how and why Brandenn had been given unsupervised access to a loaded weapon? And what does this omission suggest about the reporter's assumptions concerning the reading public? In other words, in the mind of Cohen or those for whom her article was intended, did the fact that a 14-year old was given unsupervised access to a loaded weapon count for nothing when it came to assessing the responsibilities for his death? Raising such questions was, as I said, the main point of the avowedly fictional letter. A second point was to question the reported rationalization for Brandenn's suicide as stated by Brandenn Bremmer's mother and, at other times, paraphrased by Cohen on the basis of the mother's comments. According to this line of rationalization, Brandenn may have killed himself because he was extraordinarily intelligent and because God had assumed a special role in his life on the day of his apparent suicide -- specifically, the role of helping Brandenn accomplish things not possible on Earth. It was implicit, but clear (at least to the readers who responded to the post by leaving comments in the comments box below it or by speaking to me personally), that in amplifying this rationalization by means of a fictional letter, I meant to draw attention to its insufficiency in explaining both the causes and responsibilities surrounding Brandenn's death. Of the former, we may well forever remain in the dark; but when it comes to the issue of responsibilities, much, I am sure, can still be determined. This seemed necessary to point out because, for one, the reporter Cohen did not herself draw attention to the exorbitant nature of the rationalizations, which may, admittedly, have been the fruit of a traumatized mind. Still, the rationalizations returned me to what they appeared to cover up or at least obscure: the role of parental responsibility.

Below is how, in sum, Mary Smith responded to my post. The possibility that, as someone who knew Brandenn well, she may have made these charges in a state of great emotion has not been lost on me; nonetheless, I feel compelled to give at least schematic replies to them (which I will do after each charge is paraphrased):

The message is essentially of two parts. In one half of her message, Mary Smith argues that I should remove the fictional letter because, in it:

1. I criticize someone I do not know personally;

my reply: I do not need to know someone personally to be able to establish a good reason for examining their reported words critically, especially when my criticisms are not ad hominem in nature, as they clearly were not in this case;

2. I criticize Brandenn's mother for not having handled the press well, when it is likely that I myself would not have handled the press perfectly if I had been in the mother's place;

my reply: my comments were not critical of the manner in which the mother handled the press but of the content of her rationalizations and the fact that the mother, as well as the reporter Cohen, omitted to question whether Brandenn's unsupervised access to a loaded weapon was a contributing factor in his apparent suicide;

3. I write with 'tunnel vision' because I am likely from the East Coast and likely do not have children;

my reply: it is strictly irrelevant whether the author of the letter has children or whether the author lives on the East Coast, neither of which conditions, whether they have been met or not, would restrict the significance of the letter in any way or cloud its author's "vision";

4. I base my criticism on an AP report that took the mother's comments "out of context."

my reply: the question of "context" is precisely the question to which the post was most sensitive, since the parents' not restricting or supervising Brandenn's access to a loaded weapon was surely, to my mind, a crucial part of the context out of which the mother's comments were taken; therefore, it is unfair to accuse me of having taken the AP reporter's words for granted -- as if I had assumed that they encapsulated the entire incident and all the relevant issues. Moreover, there is no conceivable "context" that would recast the mother's surmising that "maybe the physical, earthly world didn't offer [Brandenn] enough challenges and he felt it was time to move on and do something great" as a justification for the reporter's not raising the question of the parent's responsibility to supervise the child's access to a loaded weapon. It is unpersuasive to assert or imply that, by showing skepticism toward this rationalization, I had distorted it by omitting certain contextual elements.

So much for the reasons this good friend of Brandenn gave for requesting that I remove the fictional letter posted on March 28.

In the second part of her message, Mary Smith comes to the defense of liberal gun access for children and teenagers. In this, she reveals that she understood that my real purpose in writing the fictional letter was not, as she suggests in the first part of her message, to attack someone ad hominem or to respond uncritically to a single AP report but, rather, to raise a serious issue. I should say that this longer, more developed part of the message left me somewhat confused. If the mother had been offended by the remarks of someone who, to her mind, wrote insensitively about a friend, why also go to such lengths to defend easy gun access? I at first suspected that the author of the messages had only signed their comments as "FriendsofBrandenn" and not signed their e-mail at all so as to operate as a front for the National Rifle Association. Possibly, I thought, I was receiving mail from an NRA member masquerading unscrupulously as an acquaintance of Brandenn. Indeed, it took several days before I was able to put this suspicion to rest when, in a final, brief communication, Mary Smith revealed her identity and the nature of her relationship to Brandenn.

To defend lax gun access laws, Mary Smith provides a rebuttal consisting of three parts:

1. A "regionalist" argument. I provide this section of the message verbatim:

"Here in the Midwest, it is common (and our right as Americans) to have firearms...because hunting is a common tradition/sport, kids learn about hunting/firearms and archery at a young age, hunting with friends and relatives starts at a very young age. Deer hunting in the fall, turkey hunting at Thanksgiving - this tradition can start as early as ages 5 -8 yrs old, and very common from about 10 yrs old and on. No one around here would have considered Brandenn 'too young' to have access to firearms. And NO ONE would have reason to think he shouldn't."

my reply: While it is true that gun access laws vary from state to state, in Nebraska, where Brandenn lived, the laws relating to juvenile gun access are not radically different from those of New York State, where I currently reside. In short, in neither state are gun owners held responsible for leaving guns accessible to kids. In other words, there is "no state requirement that gun owners take responsible steps to prevent children from gaining easy access to their firearms. Gun owners are not held accountable for leaving loaded guns around kids, even if a young child shoots themselves or someone else with a gun left in plain sight" (source). So, in a legal sense, Mary Smith is correct to assert that the parents cannot be held responsible, but this is not a reflection of regional culture. I might put this point differently by noting that the NRA's influence expands far beyond the State lines of Nebraska.

Moreover, no matter how "common" the unsupervised or supervised access to guns among 5-year-old kids in the "Midwest" may be, does the "common" nature of an absurd and dangerous situation make it any less absurd or dangerous? The questions I have raised are not: Should one be permitted to have or not have guns? Does the Constitution allow for having or not having them in general? The question is: should parents be held responsible for supervising their own children's use of guns?

The lax gun laws as they relate to parental responsibilities do not justify what I suspect may well have been a clear case of parental negligence in the death of Brandenn Bremmer; rather, these lenient laws are themselves the problem. The reason I say this does not stem from my currently residing on the "East Coast" or the fact that I have not raised children. It comes from my assessment that letting kids use loaded weapons is at best negligent. It is further supported by my awareness that an increase in juvenile killings and suicides has been linked by the Department of Justice to increasingly lax gun laws.

2. The second part of Mary Smith's rebuttal consists of a "hyperbolic" argument that is developed as follows: Because some teens kill themselves with means other than guns, such as tree limbs and ropes, or household drugs, and because it would be foolish to conclude from this that only bad parents would ever allow their children access to ropes, trees, or medicine cabinets, then it is equally foolish to conclude that parents who give their children free, unsupervised access to guns should be held responsible for doing so in cases where their children use these guns to kill themselves or others.

my reply: This argument is based on the fallacious assumption that there is no difference in danger or power between all objects capable of being used as instruments of self-destruction. Guns -- I think I understand this much about them -- not only are powerful in a physical or mechanical sense but, in the United States especially, enjoy an exalted status as symbols of power, sex, justice, adulthood, manliness, ruggedness, free-spiritedness, frontiersmanship, decisiveness, and -- yes -- freedom. Given this situation, it is not surprising that, in such a society, the more guns one makes available, and the less supervision one insists upon for the children and teenagers who would be tempted to use them, the more killings there are sure to be. That we know this to be so is shown in studies such as the one conducted by the Department of Justice a few years ago, which concluded that "easier access to firearms contributed to a huge rise in the number of U.S. homicides and suicides among juveniles" (source). The opposite tendency is understandably also true: "From 1993 to 1997, the number of juvenile homicides and suicides dropped, according to the study, which credited the decline in part on tighter laws regulating access to firearms" (ibid., my emphasis).

So, in respect of the knowledge that, in whatever region of the United States it occurs, easing children's access to high-powered weapons contributes to a huge rise in juvenile homicides and suicides, my post was meant to draw attention to the lamentable state of affairs in Nebraska, New York, and many other States in which "there are no restrictions on juveniles possessing rifles or shotguns including semiautomatic assault weapons" and in which, when juvenile suicides by gunfire are reported in the press, questions relating to unsupervised juvenile gun access are not even raised, and those who may raise them in their own public forums are accused of being insensitive and asked to retreat into silence.

3. In the final moment of her message, Mary Smith suggests that, instead of concerning myself about gun legislation, I should have done "something actually helpful" like writing about "understanding the complexity of gifted individuals." When I asked her to explain what she understood by that phrase as it relates to Brandenn's death, instead of taking responsibility for the connection she had implied between the two, Mary Smith provided a number of web links to sites that she feels address "the complexity of gifted individuals."

my reply: this suggestion only repeats the tactic which I was critical of in Brandenn's mother's comments. It is surely possible that "the complexity of gifted individuals" -- whatever that phrase is meant to evoke -- played some direct or indirect role in Brandenn's untimely end, but my point is that I am not willing to simply accept that possibility as a fact. Nor am I willing to take this supposed fact as grounds for dismissing out-of-hand all other questions concerning the precise factors that led to Brandenn's apparent suicide.

If I may address my displeased reader frankly: I know it must suck to feel that some long-winded East Coast liberal who probably doesn't even have kids is trying to tell you right from wrong, but please know that I read the newspapers and see the incidents of juvenile suicide and homicide tallied month after month, and the whole thing has made me wonder: What's going on in this country? However much you'd like to believe that Brandenn Bremmer took that gun in his hands in a quiet little corner of Nebraska -- a place with its own rules and customs and that, as such, is radically exceptional to things that take place on the East Coast or in regions where liberals haven't developed a proper fondness for weapons -- the fact is that Brandenn killed himself in a nation where such incidents are common and where laws regulating minors' unsupervised access to guns are uniformly lax. Moreover, these laws are lax not because of some Constitutional right that the framers of that document set down in law so that all the nation's children could take up arms against a potential new wave of British Redcoats, or so that seasonal hunting traditions in the Midwest would go undisturbed, but because the National Rifle Association has long targeted our politicians in Washington with its powerful lobby and thereby assured its friends gun-sale profits at the expense of all social, regional, and safety-related considerations. If the NRA could facilitate the sale of semi-automatic rifles to all the teenagers of this nation, believe me, it would. And no amount of killing of and by our children would ever allay the NRA members' passion for peddling and glorifying weapons. Their short-sighted and self-serving claim will always be: "it's not the guns that kill, it's the shooters."

Let me say, too, that there's a lot that I don't know about Brandenn's particular case. I don't know what kind of weapon he used, what his personal acquaintance with guns was, whether he hunted regularly, or why on that day in March he had private access to a loaded weapon. Here, as in many such reports, all such details -- details over which legislators split the finest of hairs -- have been brushed aside and the whole incident has been boxed up and shipped off for public consumption under the journalistic rubric of "genius mind too genius for its own good, does self in." Given this hasty summation of the event and the lack of information available to the public, it is hard to draw fast conclusions about the nature of the irresponsibilities that likely contributed to Brandenn's death. Still, that fact does not relieve me, as a citizen of this nation, from the responsibility of inquiry and action.

I don't pretend to have all the answers and what I'm suggesting is, I think, fairly modest. When children and teenagers kill themselves with guns, can the circumstances in which the suicides occurred -- the "context," if you will -- be discussed, and the question of parental responsibility not be eluded or buried with the facile and complacent evocation of such things as "God's benevolent influence" or "unpredictable genius"? To go a step further, can the laws of this land lay some measure of responsibility with parents who knowingly or negligently allow their children unsupervised access to powerful means of self-destruction?

In my final substantive reply by e-mail to Mary Smith, I made the following remarks:

[Beginning of copied and slightly modified e-mail message]

Your e-mail has confirmed for me the importance of sharing my views in the way I chose to at my blog and for that I thank you heartily.

The sort of presumptions that I found disturbing in the case of Brandenn Bremmer, as reported by the AP, are equally present in your exchanges with me. They include the presumptions to have fully understood that:

1) the sole factor leading to Brandenn's death was his genius;

(And I ask again: how do you know this to be so?)

2) not an ounce of responsibility for Brandenn's death can be leveled against anyone else, and especially not the parents who, despite all their wonderful qualities (which I do not deny), apparently gave their son unsupervised access to a loaded weapon;

(And I ask you: how do you know that no such responsibilities can be identified?)

3) there is nothing at all unusual about the AP reporter's not raising any question about the boy's having unsupervised access to a loaded weapon;

(And I would ask: why do you presume this to be so? And do you know for a fact that Brandenn was trained properly to use such weapons?)

In addition to sharing these unsubstantiated assumptions, which were the original focus of my piece, you also added, by implication, more presumptuous claims:

4) Brandenn killed himself with a hunting rifle whose sole intended purpose was for hunting fauna or fowl in accordance with time-honored seasonal practices and traditions;

(Do you know that to be a fact, Mrs. Smith?)

5) only people who have children can be sensitive enough not to raise questions of parental responsibility when it comes to the question of parents who allow children to have unsupervised access to lethal weapons;

(It is, I believe, the duty of every citizen to take an interest in preventing needless violence, especially when it is carried out by and against minors.)

6) there is no difference in force or danger between trees and guns, or ropes and guns, and therefore all legislation that would regulate their use and children's access to them should be uniformly lax and indifferent;

(That is a patently absurd argument.)

I am not "insisting" on "leaving that letter" on my site anymore than I am insisting on leaving everything else I have posted there. It is part of my blog and will remain there until someone gives me reason to remove it. Your communication with me these past few days, which I do appreciate, has only confirmed for me the letter's importance, and I do regret that you have not understood the intent of the letter, or have chosen to appear not to have understood it. Surely the questions it raises are questions that, to date, you have given little thought to. Perhaps one day you will be able to see them in a different light.

[End of copied e-mail message]

To wind up this very long post, I note that whereas I speak particularly of Brandenn, someone I did not know personally, I always have in mind the numerous victims of gun-inflicted violence who die before they become adults. We should never lose sight of the following facts:

In the United States, "we loose 928 children and teenagers every year to completed firearm-related suicides. This accounts for more than two young lives lost per day. Of the total 1,890 completed suicides in 2001 for ages 19 and under, 49% were firearm-related. Guns are the method used in 88% of male teen suicides and 12% of female teen suicides." (source)

Given that we are losing so many children and teenagers to firearm-related suicides every year in the United States, I invite all those interested in taking concrete steps to preventing further incidents of the sort in which Brandenn apparently took his own life to take a moment to address concerns over our nation's lax gun access regulations to media representatives and legislators. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence provides all relevant e-mail addresses for this purpose. See, in particular, their action page. Surely, this would be something "actually helpful" when it comes to preventing such violence.

(10224)

Thanks for the visit

2005-06-13T12:29:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (9952)

Preaching State Violence

2005-06-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

This is part 6 of terrette's death penalty discussion.

terrette: I have read the Kerby Anderson piece and I would find it very difficult to discuss it as if it were a serious contribution to the topic of the death penalty. There is simply too much fluff, too many self-defeating contradictions, and too many outrageous claims in it for me to be able to approach the piece with the sort of care and attention I like to give to others' texts. So as not to appear dogmatic, dismissive and baseless in saying this, I will discuss at least one example of specious nonsense from Mr. Anderson. If I wanted to address all the specious nonsense in his piece, I would have to write a book-length study, and, as you can imagine, I have more important things to do now than to exert myself in this way.

However, before I discuss a single example of patent nonsense from Mr. Anderson, I need to ask how you position yourself with respect to Anderson’s piece as a whole. Your contenting yourself with pasting onto your message a few of Anderson’s statements showed, at the very least, a lack of generosity on your part (toward Anderson, but also toward me). It also now forces me to begin by asking you some elementary questions. You said that you have read Anderson’s piece carefully and that it "made the most sense" to you; and, so, without further clarification from you, I will have to assume that you wholly accept Anderson's:

i) transcendental monarchical politics and, specifically, the claim (which Anderson bases on a passage from Paul to the Romans in which Paul praises Roman government (13:1-7)) that government officials anywhere and everywhere are not so much voted into office and therefore accountable to voters as they are ordained by God and thus worthy of citizens’ unquestioned obedience (“…human government is ordained by God…”);

ii) fascist insistence, worthy of one of Hitler’s youth, on a principle of the government’s infallible use of violence (“We are to obey government for we are taught that government does not bear the sword in vain”/ “…we are to obey human government that bears the sword”);

iii) implicit but unmistakable call for the government’s widespread and frequent use of the death penalty ("So the increase in the crime rate [Anderson wrote his piece in 1992, before years of steady decline in all types of crime in the United States] is most likely due to many other factors and cannot be correlated with a death penalty that has been implemented sparingly and sporadically");

iv) refusal to recognize religion and politics as being of two essentially different orders and consequential desire for government (at any period of history, including that of the present-day United States) to be founded not so much on a democratically-supported constitution as on "moral principles," where this means a non-ceremonial "Old Testament law code" ("There is and should be a relationship between Old Testament laws and modern laws. We may no longer be subject to Old Testament ceremonial law, but that does not invalidate God’s moral principles set down in the Old Testament. Murder is still wrong [does anyone argue the contrary?]. Thus, since murder is wrong, the penalty for murder must still be implemented" [but the whole point of the discussion is to argue what the penalty should be, and why or why not it should be the destruction of a person's body. If Anderson is simply saying here that good government should not legalize murder, then I myself share his views; to the degree, however, that he believes that government is or should be an extension of a priesthood or Christian ministry that consistently creates policy on the basis of reductive, literalist readings of the Old Testament, then I cannot follow him].

v) simplistic and fantastical readings of the Bible, in which Anderson swiftly appeals to “the context” (as if there could only ever be a single context for a given passage) in order to reverse sensible readings, and refuses to take into account the many different registers of Biblical discourse, including, most importantly, the spiritual and/or prophetic import of certain books;

vi) wild speculation designed to feed and comfort fear-mongering (“…if the death penalty is used in a consistent way, it may deter as many as eight murders for every execution carried out”).

To Anderson’s credit, I can say that I sympathize with his desire to make two types of arguments. The first is that the complaints about the discriminatory use of capital punishment do not address what is wrong with capital punishment in principle; the second, that the claim that the government is committing “murder” by destroying the bodies of convicted murderers is not a sound one. Indeed, you will find in our recent correspondence evidence that I do not criticize capital punishment solely on the basis of its discriminatory implementation, nor confound “killing” and “murder” (though you have, possibly on the model of Anderson, argued on two occasions for the importance of this distinction, as if I had myself denied it or diminished it).
***
Let's now turn to the all-important "New Testament Principles" that Mr. Anderson dedicates a few lines to. This should be an important section to our discussion, because I have asked you to explain how it is that the teachings of Jesus Christ can be enlisted as support for what today we call capital punishment. So, how does Anderson’s piece, which you say “makes the most sense” to you, respond to this question? First, note that Anderson argues that such a question is not exactly relevant or necessary, since the idea that "murder is wrong" can be found already in Genesis 9:6 (as if that idea alone were sufficient to justify the death penalty!). In other words, Anderson argues that, strictly speaking, the rest of the Bible is unnecessary for our finding Biblical support for capital punishment. Nonetheless, despite Mr. Anderson's repeatedly arguing that the essence of what the Bible has to offer in support of capital punishment precedes even Old Testament theocracy, the fourth paragraph of this section takes on the daunting task of arguing that Jesus did not "set aside" "capital punishment." (Throughout this article, "capital punishment" is used with clumsy anachronism and a mindless conflating of religious and political orders and concepts. To speak with a minimal amount of seriousness about "capital punishment" and the Bible, one would have to ask where the juridical notion of "capital punishment" comes from and what its history is and not merely assume that the same notion is everywhere present, albeit in different language, in sacred scripture.) How does Mr. Anderson achieve such an ambitious goal of portraying Jesus as a supporter of "capital punishment" and so keep Jesus from contradicting a present-day political agenda based on a so-called creation-order principle? Let's read (I’ll underscore where necessary):

Some have said that Jesus set aside capital punishment in John 8 when He did not call for the woman caught in adultery to be stoned. But remember the context. The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus between the Roman law and the Mosaic law. If He said that they should stone her, He would break the Roman law. If He refused to allow them to stone her, He would break the Mosaic law (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22). Jesus' answer avoided the conflict: He said that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. Since He did teach that a stone be thrown (John 8:7), this is not an abolition of the death penalty.

Do you have a Bible at your house, or can you find one in the local library? If so, read, will you, John 8:7 and tell me: do you agree with Anderson that Jesus is here teaching “that a stone be thrown” and that, moreover, by implication, not only does Jesus not offer an “abolition” (what an incredible word here!) of the death penalty, he clearly opens the door for its support and prescription? Is it reasonable, especially for someone like Anderson who finds such self-empowerment in a recourse to “the context,” to chop off half of what Jesus says in John 8:7, namely, his call that a stone be thrown only by one who is without sin, in order to flatten the entire teaching of forgiveness and moderation into a call for violence? Anderson: “Since He did teach that a stone be thrown (John 8:7), this is not an abolition of the death penalty.” Can you read such a statement without cringing at its patent reductionism? Can you take comfort in its obvious attempt to falsify the text? If I myself may be allowed to appeal to “the context,” I would find it worth mentioning that, four verses later, in John 8: 11, John concludes his narrative of this incident by writing that Jesus himself said: “Neither do I condemn you.” So, does Jesus show himself to be a “death penalty” advocate here? Please tell me how!

But I need to comment, as promised, on your use of this piece. First of all, it is a little embarrassing for both of us, I think, that you gullibly incorporated elements of Anderson’s commentary on the topic you and I agreed to discuss and did so, moreover, without addressing its radical fundamentalism (the likes of which only that of an Osama bin Laden could rival) and without—I see this as a minimal requirement of responsible reading—stating how you position yourself with respect to it (what you accept and what you do not accept, in general—see my example above, if you need a model). One consequence of your slavish appeal to Anderson is that, in mimicking his language, you repeated its vagueness and thus brought into our discussion a whole host of problematic assumptions that neither you nor Anderson has justified. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at the part of Anderson’s piece that you reactivated for your own purposes:

Here is the passage you quoted from Anderson in an apparent show of unqualified support:

Within this Old Testament theocracy, capital punishment was extended beyond murder to cover various offenses. While the death penalty for these offenses was limited to this particular dispensation of revelation, notice that the principle in Genesis 9:6 is not tied to the theocracy. Instead, the principle of Lex Talionis (a life for a life) is tied to the creation order. Capital punishment is warranted due to the sanctity of life. Even before we turn to the New Testament, we find this universally binding principle that precedes the Old Testament law code.

You then asked me: “What did you think?” Well, I think that this is a highly simplistic and vague series of statements. (It is also my hunch, but only a hunch, that these statements are most likely motivated by a narrow agenda of radical right politics including things like increasing the military budget in the United States and resisting universal health care and a living wage for US citizens, but that is another matter that we can discuss another day.)

First, it is improper and anachronistic to speak of “capital punishment” within Old Testament theocracy. The advantage of this improper use, of course, is that it allows Anderson to treat the Book of Genesis as if it were a document to be read not only from a purely modern vantage point, but from a purely political vantage point; that is, it allows him to read the Book of Genesis as if it offered a code of law on par with—to be classed and consulted alongside—any other contemporary law code in a court of law. (In this respect, it is much like the attempt on the part of orthodox Muslims in certain parts of the world, such as northern Nigeria, to erect religious states in which the Koran becomes the law of the land in all matters.)

Second, Anderson employs a term of relation—“is tied to”—in a similarly vague way that you employ the expression “based on.” To say that the principle of “a life for a life” is tied to the creation order means what? Are we supposed to allow Anderson to get away with making the entire Bible seem to fall in line with this one passage from Genesis, to be “tied to” it, once the passage has been distorted into a modern code of state and/or federal law? To make the New Testament so collapse, one would have at the least to rewrite the entire Mount of Olives episode so as to make it appear that Jesus in fact, however surreptitiously, opts for the Law of Moses (but then this would have brought the adulterous woman to a swift, violent end at the hands of the bystanders, scribes and Pharisees). As we saw, this is, indeed, what Anderson tries to do, and he does this in clear contradiction of the event, its outcome, and its spiritual significance. He turns the Mount of Olives episode into an apology for the Old Testament law and, by extension, for retributive justice in the form of summary, mob violence.

Let us, therefore, reread the Old Testament passage in question. Genesis 9:6: “Whoever spills the blood of man, his blood will be spilled by man, because in the image of God, God has made man.”

(Let me note, in passing, and as another contextual reminder, that in the verses that follow, Moses extends his “alliance” to animals. The implication of his doing so is that the blood of animals is equally sanctified. Would you, therefore, in an attempt to follow Anderson, call for the death penalty for those who, in a premeditated manner, kill and consume animals? You have already insisted on the sanctity of human life, so you should be attentive, perhaps, to your own distance from this pre-theocratic principle and be prepared to accept its consequences and thus not to embrace Moses’s “pre-theocratic” alliance so unquestioningly and on second-hand alone with respect to other points.)

This passage from Genesis can be said to presage the law of retaliation and retributive justice, but that in no way authorizes us to apply retroactively Anderson’s (on my view, irrelevant) arguments about the interdiction of murder that he bases on the sixth commandment to the Book of Genesis. We cannot so “tie” one to the other in good faith. Nowhere is it a question for Moses of “murder” or of “premeditation” in the sense that you and Anderson seem to understand these terms (that is, as legalistic categories implying the fully conscious and pre-programmed destruction of human life). Thus, we could more pertinently argue on the strength of this passage alone that whenever a life is taken by man, another life must be taken by man, and so on, until no men remain, and the same for animals. Indeed, on this more faithful understanding of Moses’s words, the “universally binding principle” can know no bound, and life after life will be spun away until all lives have been lost and all flesh has been destroyed.

Of course, Christians do not usually argue in this manner (at least not as far as I know), but if they find reason not to, they do so by appealing to the New Testament and not, as Anderson does, by trying to force capital punishment ideology into Genesis or, what amounts to the same, pre-Christian Jewish codes of law, and subsequently to argue that the New Testament is effectively irrelevant and, at best, redundant on the issue of the death penalty. Anderson says, “Capital punishment is warranted due to the sanctity of life.” This statement is anachronistic and vague. How does capital punishment, the state-managed destruction of life, find a Christian justification in the Old Testament, due to the sanctity of life? “Due to”? If life were sanctified, how could the Old Testament be arguing here for its destruction? And by the state, no less?

You also wrote the following in your response to Anderson’s piece:

“The death penalty is an expression of the value of human life. The state does not ‘murder’ the one guilty of murder. The criminal gives up his/her own right to life when he [sic] commits the crime.”

I recognize in your words Anderson’s argument about the distinction between murder and killing (a distinction that I find compelling, but, as I said, irrelevant to our discussion), but I see that you have departed from Anderson in two significant ways (there is nothing necessarily wrong in departing from Anderson!).

Here, you argue in a way that I find highly problematic and that I’ve discussed in my previous letter that the right to life of the criminal is “given up” the moment he or she commits premeditated murder. This way of arguing is problematic because it tries to diminish the responsibility that agents of law and citizens of a democracy have in determining whether or not destroying convicts’ bodies is just; further, it is problematic because, if we accept it, then the logical consequence is that, in murdering others in a premeditated fashion, criminal citizens effectively “express” the value of human life, since their actions, you argue, immediately bring about the revocation of their right to life and this revocation—-these are your words—-is itself an“expression”of human life as a whole.

Your argument would thus inspire us to be good Christians by murdering our fellow citizens in a premeditated fashion. Insofar as the “expression” of human life has the importance for Christians that you attach to it, and insofar as that “expression” can only be achieved through the immediate “giving up” of one's right to life -- a revocation that is immediate and conclusive and that is only made official by means of the death penalty. Then, I suppose, we may as well start killing one another if we wish to celebrate the ultimate value of human life. Either you have to embrace these implications of your argument, and horribly murderous consequences follow; or you have to admit that there are other, equally good means of “expressing” the value of human life, and thus the argument for the necessity of the death penalty as an essential condition to expressing life's value is greatly weakened, since what it affords us can be had easily by other, less violent means. So, which would you prefer?

Tadoussac, Quebec. photo by terrette

Selling Death, Expressing Life

2005-06-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

This is part ⑤ of terrette's death penalty discussion.

terrette: My response to your mail will have to be in different parts. I'll state, in my own words, what I think your defense of the death penalty is so that you can verify if I have understood you well. Later, I will return to the Anderson essay, although I am less interested in Anderson's piece per se than in how you use Anderson or arrive at or make your own arguments. And, lastly, I will present, briefly, my own position on the death penalty.

First, however, I need to point out that you passed over some questions from my previous letter. For that reason, and for your convenience, I will copy them once again here and reformulate them so that I can be sure that you have understood them.

1) Why is it fair and just that the United States remains the only so-called Western democracy that practices the death penalty? I think this is an important question. I try to imagine you raising your children in a Christian heritage and I see such a scene as this: one of your children hears on the news or reads in a newspaper that one of the criteria for a nation's admission into the Federation of Europe is the abolishment of the death penalty. Said child then asks: Mom, why don't the Europeans execute evil people like we do here in the United States? What is wrong with Europeans? Do the Europeans not know the importance of the God-ordained value of human life? Do they not understand the importance of expressing that ultimate value? Has something changed in Europe, Mom? Are Europeans less God-fearing than we Americans are? Don't they understand that when someone takes another's life, his or her right to life is thereby revoked automatically, without anyone having to "take" it, and that, therefore, the death penalty is just? (You will appreciate, I hope that, in formulating these questions and in fictionalizing this scene, I have tried carefully to remain faithful to your own language, just as I imagine one of your children would.)

So, what do you tell your inquisitive child when such questions arise? And how, generally, do you understand this evolution away from the death penalty exhibited by all but a few developed nations (the United States, China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia--to name those that surpass all others in the application of the death penalty today)? Are you against the international movement away from the death penalty? Do you see it as a sign of moral decrepitude or degeneracy on a global scale? What are the consequences, do you think, of the "ultimate value of life" not being "expressed" by means of the death penalty in European states? Is the ultimate value -- life -- better "expressed" in the U.S., Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, today, than in other parts of the world?

2) Did God ever command for us to destroy the bodies of our fellow citizens? I am particularly surprised that this question received no clear reply from you. Indeed, I am surprised at how little use of scripture you make, given that your point of entry in debate (into this one, of course, but most likely as a rule) is to demand who is Christian and who is not, and who believes that Jesus is the savior and who does not. Can one seriously argue from and for Christianity by relying only on second-hand commentaries? I think my question would be more pertinent if, in it, I changed "God" to "Jesus" (though most Christians would see no difference between the two), since using "God" allows death-penalty apologists to make a facile recourse to certain texts in the Old Testament without, however, confronting the thought of Jesus Christ -- the figure who at the outset of our discussion seemed immensely important to you and whose importance I myself argued for, since Christ's having died at the hands of a mob-incited sovereign has, in my view, left a legacy of death penalty appropriations, permissiveness, and support throughout history. The problem with not citing the teachings of Jesus, of course, is not simply that it makes us look like poor scholars; rather, it tends to suggest that an important part of Christianity—Jesus!—has been obscured intentionally or unwittingly by the Christians who would speak in his name so as to defend the destruction of others' bodies. So, to repeat: where does Jesus teach that we should destroy others' bodies? Doesn't the most obvious, most widely recognized, teaching of Jesus go in the opposite direction, namely by insisting that we not use a recourse to violence, and not take steps to destroy the bodies of those who have or would harm us? If you feel I am simplifying or distorting the Christian message, please tell me how you think that to be the case, for, to this point, I simply cannot make sense of your keeping the voice of Jesus silent on the issue of the death penalty. Should I see significance in the fact that, when faced with the task of arguing on the “basis” of Christianity, you leave the Bible unopened and put your faith in Anderson’s Probe Ministries and….President Bush? A vestige of your Catholic upbringing, perhaps, this apparent recourse to “authorities” and a corresponding neglect of the Book itself? (Let me add here, in passing, that I did find, as you had asked me to over the phone, a substantive statement on the death penalty made by George W. Bush: it was the erroneous and long-ago debunked claim—that nonetheless appeals to the vengeful and fear-throttled masses— that the death penalty is dissuasive.)

I hope these comments have made my questions clear. Now, finally, I have a moment to read your message once again. You wrote:

Starting from the end of your letter, we were not talking about the same woman. All of the comments that I included about the Florida case were from her mouth, not from mine. I saw her speaking on television, and I later read her comments in a news magazine. She said that it was her desire to get the execution over with, that she knew she was guilty, that if released she would kill again, and that she didn't want to cost taxpayers any more money, or the families any more heartache.

Actually, I have been able to verify that we were speaking of the same woman. The State of Florida does not put so many female convicts to death for us to have been speaking about two different women. Moreover, my suspicion concerning the unstable and thus unreliable nature of the woman’s declarations was also supported by a number of accounts about which I’ll speak in a moment. But, before we explore the consequences of your insisting wrong-headedly that we were not speaking of the same woman, the question remains as to why you bothered to paraphrase her (here saying that the comments were “from her mouth,” as if there were no difference between paraphrasing and quoting), as if one could always, according to some sort of infallible ground rule, always be sure, in paraphrasing another’s words, to have identified and carried away another’s “actual” meaning, and be certain, moreover, that the other in question was master of all that their words “actually” mean.

The woman in question was named Aileen Wuornos.

In comments I found online, Ms. Wuornos also said, in what were apparently her final words, that she “would come back on the ‘big mother ship’ with Jesus.” Here are a few more of her words, whose actual meaning I would be wary to announce to others in a cocksure paraphrase, let alone claim to have understood myself: “I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock (Jesus) and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mother ship and all. I'll be back.” It is notable that she makes more references to Jesus in her final statement than you have till this point in our discussion. It is notable, precisely, because, as I said earlier, in the award-winning documentary on her that I viewed, Ms. Wuornos made several sarcastic and bitter comments about her trial lawyers’ greed and, notably, their attempt to “Christianize” her experience by claiming—in the face of her then staunch refusal of guilt and her unmistakably irreconcilable attitude—that Ms. Wuornos felt ready to die. They did this, she explained to the interviewer, with the sole purpose of ending her life so that they, the trial lawyers, could collect their money and be rid of her. Now, I am not sure that I can take as being reliable of any of what Ms. Wuornos said either during the program I watched, or on the news that you saw or read in a magazine (what magazine?) and subsequently reported to me. I say this not only for abstract reasons concerning the difficulty of interpreting another’s intentions. I say this, in addition to the reason I have just discussed, in light of the following information, which comes from another report on the documentary (no longer available online, where I first retreived it):

Wuornos' last interview was given to Nick Broomfield, the British filmmaker who in the early 1990s made a documentary film on Wuornos entitled, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. Following the interview, Broomfield told reporters that Wuornos was "mad" and "totally lost her mind."

In the same report, we learn that, shortly before putting Ms. Wuornos to death, the State of Florida contradicted this finding and stated that Ms. Wuornos was sane. But, in all this confusion, are you still so sure that you can paraphrase Ms. Wuornos’ statements without the least bit of concern for their reliability? Without the least thought as to whether they might not actually mean what they seem to mean? Personally, I think that, given her statements concerning the “big mother ship” and the “Rock,” the possibility that she might have been exercising, as I believe her to have done in the documentary named above, bitter, dead-pan sarcasm, must at least be taken into account. Just as we must take into account the very real possibility that Ms. Wuornos was not entirely in her right mind and might, for that reason, not even herself understood what she “actually” meant.

In the face of all these difficulties, what did you do? Without properly quoting Ms. Wuornos, and without citing your sources, you tried to stiff-arm me into sharing your cavalier approach to her statements and, subsequently, you roundly rejected my hesitation and concern whether we were speaking of the same woman. You tried, moreover, to convince me, afterwards, that you had done nothing but faithfully portray her actual thought; that you had added nothing and not expressed your own opinion, not even by implication as you included the paraphrase (unidentified as such) in the midst of your argument for the death penalty. You tried to make me believe that your paraphrasing what you heard on “the news” (what televised news program were you watching?) and included in the midst of your argument for the death penalty could not itself be interpreted as a reflection of your views or intentions, at least not without violation of Ground Rule #2. Listen, once more, as you do this:

You are in violation of one of our ground rules which was that you would not attribute to me any statements that seem to you to be what I would say. I did not add any of my personal opinion to her statement, nor did I express my opinion regarding her comments.

This is so easy for you to say, isn’t it? It is childlike in its simplicity. But why—I repeat myself—why did you include a paraphrase of her comments in the first place? Contrary to your claim that I was in violation by trying to understand your paraphrasing her words, there is good reason for interpreting your paraphrase as I did. Why do I say this? Because something you report her as having said seems to support your own views on the death penalty. It is central to your understanding that no one be held accountable for the death of the convict other than the convict themselves. No one “takes” the life of the convict, you say, since the convict, in killing another in a premeditated manner, has by that very act, “given up” their right to life. Given this logic, isn’t it conceivable that, whether you were aware of it or not, you paraphrased Ms. Wuornos for the reason that her supposed willing and non-ironic and wholly sane acceptance of her sentence would exemplify or console this very idea of a self-assumed self-destruction?

Wouldn’t it be convenient if all convicts threatened with the death penalty would spare the rest of us the shame we might feel or the guilt we might bear in seeming to have to “take” their lives from them by simply offering their lives up, willingly, in trustworthy, wholly sane, final-hour speeches whose meaning struck us all like a bolt of justice and reason?

One could certainly think you had had such a thought for the reasons I have just indicated, and that that is what appealed to you in how you understood Ms. Wuornos’ statements. But whether or not this was the case, it would be at least responsible for you to counter what you see as my misinterpretation of your paraphrase by saying why in fact you paraphrased Ms. Wuornos. It would be more responsible of you to say how I am to understand your including a paraphrase in a discussion about the death penalty than it would for you to enter into some kind of cat-and-mouse chase in which I am left guessing at why you asked me if I had heard the news of Ms. Wuornos’s death or paid attention to the words she reportedly spoke (and in which game I am deemed "in violation" of a ground rule if I guess incorrectly).

As a final note to this part of your message, let me recommend an interesting documentary that you might find at your public library or perhaps, like I did, see on cable television. It was done by the British filmmaker Nick Broomfield and is called Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer. With this film, viewers are able to explore many different types of people who profit from the demonizing and physical destruction of convicts in the United States. You, personally, can also, perhaps, reflect on your own gullibility in having swallowed whole and with apparent eagerness another death-penalty story packaged for your consumption by the press (which press?).

In the next part of your message, you give what I see as the clearest statement of your understanding of the necessity of the death penalty, first by remarking that,

Capital punishment does not 'increase ' the value of human life.

As I explained in a previous message, I have noted the correction that is implied by your use of quotation marks around a word that I myself used to characterize your thought. Now, I understand: capital punishment does not “increase” a value that always remains the same, that always remains, as you say, “ultimate.” What it does is simply to “express” the value. Here are your words, of which I underscore a few, to better draw out the line of questioning that follows:

Human life is of ultimate value because human beings are created in the image of God. The death penalty is an expression of the value of human life in that the highest penalty that could be imposed on a violator is required of one who would take someone else's life without just cause. Again, I don't see the criminal justice system as the big, bad guy here. The murderer gives over his right to life when he commits the crime.

Parenthetically: I don’t understand your use of the word “Again,” as if we had already characterized the criminal justice system as “the big, bad guy.” What were you thinking of when you used that expression? Did someone else characterize the criminal justice system in that way? Did you already take your distance from such a characterization? Where? When? With whom are you having a discussion here, other than with me?

Concerning the “expression” of the value of human life, I wonder: how do you understand the importance of “expressing” this ultimate value? Are there other ways of expressing it? If so, how do they compare with that of the death penalty? Is the death penalty necessary, as a means to “express” the ultimate value? Is it the best means available for expressing it?

Is the death penalty better at expressing the value of human life than, say, developing a universal health care system in the United States, much like humans enjoy in Canada, the European Union, or other parts of the world from which the death penalty has been banished? Is it more effective at expressing the value of human life than would be restraining corporations from polluting the air and soil in a way that leads to untimely sickness and death among humans living in the US and elsewhere? If I mention these two examples, it is, of course, because the same political groups that vociferously support the death penalty tend also to be those that argue against the regulation of corporate sovereignty and who forestall and obstruct in myriad ways the development of universal health care for US citizens. One could, of course, mention many more aspects of the ”conservative” agenda that seem, at least on the surface, to be very poor means of “expressing” the “ultimate” value of life. (By asking questions, you understand, I am purposely leaving you room to make corrective statements here, should my understanding of these issues appear to you to have gone astray).

One might also wonder if other “expressions” could be compared to the “expression” of life that you find in the death penalty. For instance, does playing volleyball with friends and family express the value of human life, as you understand these words? Does hugging our loved ones, or preparing food for them, also express the value of human life? However you understand the relation between these particular examples, the point remains: if you believe that the value of the death penalty resides in its capacity to “express” the ultimate value of life, you should at least be able to state what importance you attach to this “expression” and how it compares to any other way one might “express” the value of life. Is the expression of the value of human life via the destruction of others’ bodies somehow unmatched and irreplaceable? And if this is so, why is this so?

And what, generally, do you understand by “expressing” the value? Does the value remain only “implied” before someone “expresses” it? Why must the value be “pressed out,” as the etymology of the word “expressed” would have it? How am I to understand the existence of an “ultimate” and timeless value that, despite its ultimate nature and timelessness, calls for the destruction of human bodies in order to be “ex-pressed”?

There is a troubling implication of your argument that I'm sure you haven't noticed, and it can be stated as follows: Isn’t it true that the expression of the value of human life via the death penalty is implicated by if not accomplished in the very act of premeditated murder (since, you have argued, the murderer “gives over” his or her life when taking that of another, and so no judge, politician, or group of voters need “take” it)? Do not pre-meditating murderers accomplish the very expression that you find necessary or important? Isn’t that the irrefutable consequence of your thought, and not simply what you “would say”? Isn’t it an undeniable consequence of your death penalty logic that self-destructing sinners by themselves accomplish the “expression” of the “ultimate value” of life? Isn’t it a clear implication of your argument that, not only by their own deaths, but by those they inflict on innocent people, premeditating murders “express” life’s ultimate value and help us innocent bystanders and television news consumers appreciate the expression of the ultimate value of life? If you reject this implication, can you explain to me how you manage to do so, without falsifying your own arguments? Read yourself once more, since all of what I have said here is found, overtly or by necessary implication and not mere conjecture, in your own words:

I didn't say that God alone has the power to 'take' a life (I don't like the word 'take' here because I argue that the murderer gave over his [sic] life, but neither do I want to trivialize execution).

Neither the murder nor the execution which you see as following in a machine-like, nearly automatic fashion, can be trivialized, it is true, since they are mutually implicated. If I understand you correctly, one cannot think of a pre-meditated murder that does not call for, at once, the counteraction of an “expression” of human life (via the destruction of the murderer’s body). As for the next sentence from your message, I am afraid that I simply do not understand it well:

I said that because God creates life, not all cases in which God takes life are relevant to the question of whether men ever have authority to do so.

Simply put: when does God “take life”? What are you thinking of? More importantly—and this would be another question that you have left in abeyance from a previous letter—why do you think “men” have the authority to “take” life? (I assume that you mean to keep the idea of “taking” under reserve, even though you have left off the so-called scare quotes this time.)

You will notice that I do not find convincing this attempt to minimize human responsibility by suggesting that no real “taking” is going on, and that, simply, principles are being recognized, expressed, etc. So, the questions remain, no matter how passive and lacking in responsibility you would like to portray those who support and carry out the death penalty (and that would include you and me, in so far as we remain responsible for our government’s policies): Does God give them this authority? Does Jesus? When does this happen? How can we be sure? And if this “authority” were given, would it be automatic, in the sense that it wouldn’t require a responsible decision on the part of “men;” that is, would it, as you seem to be arguing, apply automatically, by implication or necessity, without ethical intervention on the part of humans?

Now, in your next statements, you are, I am sorry to say, in gross violation of Ground Rule #2, and for reasons that can be shown easily, reasons which any slightly attentive reader can find in our previous letters. Just to be sure, I will quote from the previous letter, after we read once again what you wrote to me:

Did you miss the part that I found most compelling about Anderson's essay? The Old Testament law code was tied to a kingship of a particular people. The principle behind that law code is without fault - human life is of ultimate value. No one in the United States is lobbying to extend the death penalty to fortune tellers.

From these statements, it appears that you think that I was concerned about the possible state-sponsored killing of fortune tellers in the United States. You argue as if I thought the particular crimes considered punishable by death were of utmost importance, in and of themselves. What did I write, though? :

I thought it was significant that Anderson did not on principle reject this wide-ranging list of brutal punishments, but only vaguely distanced himself from “particulars.” In any case, the Old Testament prohibitions whose transgression merited death by a sovereign power are interesting in that they remind us of how arbitrary the criteria and application of the death penalty can be, depending on cultural and period preferences.

In other words, I am not arguing only or primarily at the level of the “particulars,” whether that mean fortune telling or any other crime. The death penalty is indeed applied unevenly and with the effect of destroying individuals groups that are felt to constitute a threat to a perceived majority. For an example of this, one would only have to think of the thousands of black Americans lynched at the rate of one a week, every week, between 1882 and 1930 by hate-driven white mobs. But the more important point, as I see it, is that, whether or not it is clearly arbitrary or discriminatory in nature, the death penalty is, in principle, not just. That is why I wrote that it was significant that Anderson did not on principle reject the death penalty in its wide application.

As I will make clear when I finally get a moment to offer my own views on the death penalty fully, I don’t think that a convincing argument against the death penalty can ever be made at the level of such particulars. Many liberals or left-wing politicians, however, remain caught up in such short-sighted arguments (but for reasons that I sympathize with, since it is not easy to persuade the mass of vengeful and fear-driven citizens on the basis of principles alone). Are many more blacks and Hispanics and prostitutes put to death by state governments in the United States than are wealthy white men? Do blacks in the US give much less support for the death penalty than do whites? Yes, to both of these questions, we know the answer to be “yes.” Do these facts seem at least worthy of investigation? Yes, they do. But do they define the essentially unjust nature of the death penalty? No, since the death penalty is unjust no matter who is its victim and no matter which group is, at any particular time, singled out by it, or falsely comforted by it.

Like me, it seems, you wish to argue on principle and not be bogged down by a discussion of the wide variation in the application of the death penalty. On that we can agree and I think our discussion is the better for our having reached this point of accord. But, once we reach this point of accord, I begin to lose your argument, for I cannot fully understand the nature of the “principle” on which the penalty would be based, nor—and this is equally if not more important—how you understand the relationship whereby the one would be “based” on the other. So that my questions will be more easily understood, let us pick up what I consider to be the most resounding statement of your views, the one which holds closest to the principle that would justify and necessitate the destruction of others’ bodies in cases of premeditated murder:

If the execution is the right punishment for premeditated murder, based on the principle on the God-ordained value of human life, then it is right.

Let me see if I can follow the structure of this argument — if A is right, then A is right. I have to say that, simplified in this manner, yours is an argument with which I would find it hard to disagree. But let me not simplify it in this way, precisely because the subordinate clause that appears between the two identical halves of your pseudo-syllogism appears to carry all the weight of the argument, however odd that may seem (given that it has been subordinated). In particular, the highly indeterminate expressed “based on” is asked to carry all the weight of the demonstration. But isn’t our debate, in one sense, precisely about what it would mean to “base” legal codes on ethical principles? What does it mean to “base” execution on a principle? Does that mean that the principle should apply in every case where “premeditated” murder has been determined (and we will have to leave aside, for the time being at least, all the complexities and precariousness of the notion of “premeditation”)? If that is so, if the penalty were deemed to be automatic, if it flowed from the principle ineluctably, then no ethical, truly responsible decision would be necessary, would it? We could simply line up convicted premeditating murderers and allow the principle to apply itself like a beam of light emanating from the night sky. In this way, we could say, execution would be “based” on the God-ordained value of human life — based on the value because not based on human action and human responsibility. Indeed, it seems to me that, with such an irresponsible idea that our actions can be pre-programmed, or rendered irrelevant, by a single, ultimate principle, we have left the realm of ethical behavior altogether and entered a fairy-tail scene in which we all passively witness the auto-application of a single, timeless, “ultimate” principle.

The problem with this scenario, as I see it, is that once we begin to think and hope for such an action-determining principle, we have no reason for acting responsibly; since justice, we presume, simply happens, always and everywhere, and that all that there remains for us to do is, at best, to "express" it.

Of course, you may respond by saying: “No, I don’t mean that humans don’t have to do anything at all. Someone has to apply the lethal injection; someone has to hit the switch on the electrical chair; I only mean that they are not responsible for what they do in the same way that the convict was, and that their actions are not unjust, since they apply a principle that itself is just, whereas the convict broke the principle and so acted unjustly.” But to this objection, I would ask: have you thought what it means to “base” one’s actions on a “principle”? As I see it, there are two widely different ways of understanding this formulation. On the one hand (and this hand seems to be yours), one may think of this formulation as increasing the righteousness and certainty of our actions, since, like a mathematical principle, their “truth” can be demonstrated easily. For instance, how shall we act when we are asked to complete the following equation on the “basis” of the principle of addition? 2+2=____. I will take that principle—it is, you would say, “without fault”—as the basis of my response and write “4.” In this way, I am certain that I have acted on the “basis” of the principle and I am certain that I have acted righteously and given myself the basis on which to make heated arguments with those who would question the necessity of my responding by writing “4.” On the other hand, however (and this is the hand that I suspect is much more relevant in the case of the death penalty and, indeed, in all truly ethical situations), one can understand “basing” one’s actions on principle to mean that the principle does not conclusively determine the nature and righteousness of one’s actions. This is not to say that the principle is itself weak or relativistic, but only that, by itself, it does not suffice to pre-program and decisively regulate human decision-making and actions. (In other words, in accepting this “other” logic of principle-based action, I am in no way opposing “relativism” to your “absolutism” or “ultimatism.”) What, I think, is involved in “basing” one’s actions on such a principle is all the conditions that make for a particular context in which the principle would act as “base.” The “base” remains a “base” but it does not, by that token (as in the application of the mathematical principle) decisively prescribe a specific response or action. If it did, then the action would not be ethical, it would be, rather, of the order of knowledge. But once we have admitted that it is of the order of knowledge, then the action that would be “based” on it is in fact wholly determined by it; it is defined and circumscribed by the principle. It is the principle, caught in an act of perpetual self-application. As a human agent, I don’t need to make a responsible decision; I need merely to plug in a rule (that, moreover—and this is confirmed in your manner of arguing—essentially plugs itself in). That is, in fact, the illusion that you tried to pluck from the Mount of Olives and offer up as the fruit of knowledge in our discussion of the death penalty.

There is another significant point of obscurity in your way of talking. Specifically, with respect to the principle that you have repeated, namely of “the ultimate value of life,” it is, first, not at all clear how this “principle” is to act as a “base” in your view of the death penalty. Assuming that by “ultimate” you mean not only “final,” but fundamental, in the sense of that which “explains itself” and cannot be submitted to further analysis—what philosophers call a “first principle”— I should say that, strictly speaking, taking as “ultimate” such a value would mean that not even the value of justice could preempt or forestall the value of life, and that, therefore, capital punishment itself would have to be suspended if one wished not to defame, uproot, or contradict this ultimate principle. Indeed, with the strict application of this “ultimate” principle, one would no longer have the means to distinguish between the just and unjust taking of life, since life itself, it is assumed, is of ultimate value. No taking of life could warrant or justify further death, whether that death be “taken” or “given.” That seems to be a clear indication of your “ultimatism,” and yet you seem to prefer abandoning your own logic while at other times you repeat it. Can you explain why this is so? What do you understand by an "ultimate" value? Once you admit that there are lives that are just, and others that are not, then the "ultimate" value of life no longer appears "ultimate," does it? Rather, it depends, in your view, on a divinely-inspired government official's assessment of whether a principle, expressed as an ambiguous fragment, has been respected by a given citizen.

Allow me to explain what I mean by "ambiguous fragment." It strikes me as interesting that your “principle” hardly qualifies as a principle in so far as it remains a fragment, “the ultimate value of life” that can be read either as a subjective or objective genetive (i.e., life's value is ultimate or valuing life is ultimate). In either sense, however, it seems no more a principle than does “the price of coffee in Peru.” Stated in the more conventional form of principles, one could say: “Life is the ultimate value.” However, between this vaguely articulated principle and the principle that “those who commit premeditated murder revoke their right to life, give their life over (and the state, representing God's will, needs to make sure that they do),” I have trouble understanding the relation. What, if you will, is the principle that links these two principles? If I understand the relation by once more striving to grasp the meaning of “ultimate,” I find that the one principle hardly leads necessarily to the other and in fact undercuts it. So, for your thought to be consistent or comprehensible, the relation must be different and, moreover, “ultimate” must not have the sense in your discourse that one normally gives the word. Can you tell me what that relation is?

It seems significant to me in this respect that while there are certainly passages in the Bible that could be used to support the ambiguous fragment that you call a "principle" -- namely, the “ultimate value of life” (however vague and impressionistic it remains) -- the principle that says that “those who commit premeditated murder must be put to death” is nowhere, to my knowledge, to be found in the Bible. So, is this truly a Christian principle? Does Christian doctrine, in its undiluted form, speak even of “premeditation”? We cannot forget how central to your argument for the death penalty the idea of premeditation is— no matter how subordinated it may appear—since, without it, the death penalty is not justifiable, in your eyes. Consequently, no notion of premeditation in the Bible means no Christian defense of the death penalty as you understand it. But, strangely, not even this obvious consequence seems to have given you pause.

Not to neglect any part of your message, I will let resonate the final words in which you return to the necessity of discussing the issue of the death penalty in terms of principles and, at the same moment, as before, place the weight of your argument on the subordinated, ambiguous and wholly indeterminate and unstable use of “based on.”

If it is wrong, based on the same principle, then it is wrong. Issues of timing, expense, 'heartache', or other cultures seem less important.

In my next letter, after I discuss the Anderson piece, I will suggest why the application or enforcement of a capital punishment that is "based on" the principle that life has "ultimate" value is misguided.

(11838) photo by terrette. Chautauqua Lake, NY

What He Specifically Commands

2005-06-09T15:20:00.000-04:00

This is part ② of terrette's death penalty discussion.

Beth: I found this essay by Kerby Anderson and some others on a quick search. The Anderson essay made the most sense to me.

[Note: this piece, "Capital Punishment," by the minister Kerby Anderson, argues that the Bible supports the death penalty. The article is quoted in the letters that follow.]

The death penalty is an expression of the value of human life. The state does not 'murder' the one guilty of murder. The criminal gives up his/her own right to life when he commits the crime.

The author used Old Testament references to God taking life. I don't see this as on par with man taking life. He gives life; he can take it. We have to take our direction from that which He specifically commands for us.

I thought the distinction between the theocratic principle regarding the value of life, and the later need for 'law' was helpful. Here it is in Anderson's words (mine are coming out a bit foggy):

Within this Old Testament theocracy, capital punishment was extended beyond murder to cover various offenses. While the death penalty for these offenses was limited to this particular dispensation of revelation, notice that the principle in Genesis 9:6 is not tied to the theocracy. Instead, the principle of Lex Talionis (a life for a life) is tied to the creation order. Capital punishment is warranted due to the sanctity of life. Even before we turn to the New Testament, we find this universally binding principle that precedes the Old Testament law code.

What did you think?

Did you see the news on the lady from Florida that was executed? Apparently it was her desire to get the execution over with. She knew she was guilty, felt that if released she would kill again, and didn't want to cost taxpayers any more money, or the families any more heart ache. I have the direct quote from her if you are interested.

terrette: Allow me to begin by quoting your letter in a few different spots and interjecting comments:

The Anderson essay made the most sense to me. The death penalty is an expression of the value of human life. The state does not 'murder' the one guilty of murder. The criminal gives up his/her own right to life when he commits the crime.

The questions I have with respect to these statements of yours are: how does the state's destroying the bodies of criminals increase the value of human life? What justifies the state's assuming absolute authority in the question of who should live and who should die? Why is the "right to life" administered, controlled, and, most pertinently, withdrawn by government officials? What are the consequences of entrusting state apparatuses with the capacity to destroy the bodies of citizens? And, most generally, why is it fair and just that the United States remains the only so-called Western democracy that practices the death penalty?

Both authors used Old Testament references to God taking life. I don't see this as on par with man taking life. He gives life; he can take it.

If that is the case, the question posed above becomes even more pertinent: why entrust the state with a power that you see as belonging to God alone?

We have to take our direction from that which He specifically commands for us.

Did God ever command for us to destroy the bodies of our fellow citizens?

It is interesting to note the wide and truly outrageous types of "crimes" that were deemed punishable by death in the Biblical passages discussed by Anderson, of which I recall, at the moment, fortune-telling (cf. Lev. 20:27). I thought it was significant that Anderson did not on principle reject this wide-ranging list of brutal punishments but only vaguely distanced himself from "particulars." In any case, the Old Testament prohibitions whose transgression merited death by a sovereign power are interesting in that they remind us of how arbitrary the criteria and application of the death penalty can be, depending on cultural and period preferences.

I thought the distinction between the theocratic principle regarding the value of life, and the later need for 'law' was helpful. Here it is in Anderson's words (mine are coming out a bit foggy):

"Within this Old Testament theocracy, capital punishment was extended beyond murder to cover various offenses. While the death penalty for these offenses was limited to this particular dispensation of revelation, notice that the principle in Genesis 9:6 is not tied to the theocracy. Instead, the principle of Lex Talionis (a life for a life) is tied to the creation order. Capital punishment is warranted due to the sanctity of life. Even before we turn to the New Testament, we find this universally binding principle that precedes the Old Testament law code."
What did you think?

I think I'll have to reread Anderson before responding to this one passage. I'll save that for my next letter. In the meantime, could you give this week's one hour of thought to my questions above?

Have you seen the news on the lady from Florida that was recently executed? Apparently it was her desire to get the execution over with.

I didn't see the news concerning the lady you speak of. However, I have often seen a great eagerness on the part of the executioners and those who support them to elicit such verbal acts of "contrition" and "moral resolve," since such declarations, which are sometimes vehemently denied by those on death row in the face of the hollow and self-serving "Christianizations" of their experience that are orchestrated by others, give death-penalty supporters a feeling that their brutality has been justified on spiritual grounds. If such spiritual grounds do not appear sufficient, then death penalty supporters appeal to presumed financial and emotional gains, as you did in your next comments:

She knew she was guilty, felt that if released she would kill again, and didn't want to cost taxpayers any more money, or the families any more heart ache.

It is extremely rare for a convict to claim that he/she will kill again if released, and their doing so would in no way justify the state's destroying the body of said convict, since, for one, incarceration for life would be sufficiently preventative. Moreover, it is widely known (that is, outside of some narrow-minded circles that support the death penalty) that court costs necessitated by the death penalty sentence far surpass the financial burden of maintaining a convict in prison for life.

I have the direct quote from her if you are interested.

Sure. It could be interesting to read. We could also read the quotes from the woman put to death for killing her abusive sex partners (it may, paradoxically, be the same woman we are speaking about) in which she attacks her profit-motivated legal consultants for forcing words of contrition into her mouth. I watched a two-hour long program on this woman's plight, and I was stunned at the mediocrity of her legal support. Destroying this woman's body did very little to raise the value of life in the United States, believe me. If it did anything, it reinforced among the populace the idea that violence is a proper and just solution to society's gun-wielding criminals, and that the state is a sovereign, King-like entity whose authority is on par with that of God. [end of letter]

Addendum to this moment of the discussion. The following are acts that deserve the death penalty, according to the Old Testament:

1. Murder (Gen 9:6, Ex 21:12, Numb 35:16-21).
2. Hitting one's father or mother (Ex 21:15).
3. Speaking a curse against one's parents (Ex 21:17).
4. Committing blasphemy against God (Lev 24:14-16,23).
5. Breaking the Sabbath (Ex 31:14, Numb 15:32-36).
6. Practicing magic (Ex 22:18).
7. Fortune telling and practicing sorcery (Lev. 20:27).
8. Leading others to turn away from faith God (Deut 13:1-5, 18:20).
9. Adultery and fornication (Lev 20:10-12, Deut 22:22).
10. A woman having intercourse before marriage (Deut 22:20-21).
11. Two persons having intercourse when one of them is engaged (Deut 22:23-24).
12. The daughter of a priest practicing prostitution (Lev 21:9).
13. Raping someone who is engaged (Deut 22:25).
14. Having intercourse with animals (Ex 22:19).
15. Worshipping idols (Ex 22:20, Lev 20:1-5, Deut 17:2-7).
16. Incest (Lev 20:11-12, 14, 19-21).
17. Lying with another man (Lev 20:13).
18. Kidnapping (Ex 21:16).
19. Bearing false testimony at a trial (Deut 19:16, 19).
20. Being in contempt of court (Deut 17:8-13).

Now, that's a lot to be killed for! Number 3 alone, if practiced today, would surely lead to the execution of nearly every teenager in the nation. Number 15, for its part, would arguably lead to the mass extermination of all Catholics by the world's governments.

Personally, I am left wondering how it is that, among these twenty conditions that, according to the Old Testament, all merit death, Christians who argue for the Biblical support of the death penalty feel justified in choosing only number 1 and passing indifferently over the other 19, precisely when it is they who claim to take their direction from what "God specifically commands."

My Actual Meaning

2005-06-08T20:50:00.000-04:00

This is part ④ of terrette's death penalty discussion.

terrette: Thanks for your spirited reply. I am impressed by the boldness of your formulations and fairly convinced that I understand your view on the death penalty at this point. Still, I wish to reread the Kerby Anderson piece and, after that, present my own views on the death penalty and, for that, I will need more time, since other things are occupying me throughout the week. I hope that you will not have shut yourself off to me by the time I get around to presenting my own views.

For the moment, let's look again at a ground rule you referred to in your last letter. Here is the ground rule of which you say that I was in violation (on reading this legalistic turn of phrase you chose -- in violation of-- I did not know whether to laugh or tremble):

Please be sensitive to the way in which you voice your objections, being careful to respond to what I actually say and not to what you think I mean or what someone 'like me' might say.

Although I hadn't thought about this second ground rule clearly enough when I first accepted it, I think that, on inspection, although understandable in spirit (as I first accepted it), it presents an impossible request. What it attempts to do is to say: be a divine-like interpreter; know in every case how to distinguish between "actual" meaning and "unintended" meaning before you respond. Now, if things were only that simple! If only language could permit in all cases immediate, direct, unadulterated, irrefutable recognition of another's meaning! And if only such access could be erected into a code of ethics that would organize and help to police all discussions! Think for a moment about what you are requesting of me: How is it possible for me not to respect what I think you mean? How is it possible for me to distinguish what I think you say from what you "actually say"? Isn't it rather in the nature of discussion to try to determine what the other is "actually" saying at any given moment (rather than assuming that the "actual" can be identified, with stunning obviousness, in every case)? Is your "actual meaning" something that is so obvious to me, or should be? How can you so peremptorily insist that, as a rule, the other must understand your "actual" meaning? Can one think of a more heavy-handed and dogmatic and violent constriction on discussion? Shouldn't discussion between two parties allow some room for negotiation, so that misunderstandings can be corrected along the way? I would love to enter the fairy land where every thing I say is understood at once by good-willed conversation partners in its actual meaning but, unfortunately, I have to resign myself to the fact that such a world is impossible. So, from now on, I propose that this rule be retained in spirit--that is, I think that we should be allowed to correct one another's mutual characterizations and generally try hard to remain faithful to one another's thoughts--but not cast in the face of the other, should the other be suspected of having misunderstood.

Before you proposed this ground rule, I was not aware that I had in any case misrepresented your thought. There is one point in your last e-mail where I think, however, I may have misrepresented your thought, and I am willing to admit that you corrected my formulation.

Specifically, I denied that the state's killing of a woman in Florida had "raised" the value of human life, whereas, you never spoke of degrees of value, but rather of the "expression" of an "ultimate" value. This is perhaps only a subtle difference, since I still find questionable and perplexing your use of the idea of there bing an "ultimate" value, but I'll return to this point later and, for the moment, accept your corrective statement.

There are other points in your discussion in which you seem to be, if I have to express the matter with like brutality, in violation of Ground Rule #2, but I do not assume that you were so out of ill will or a desire to misrepresent my thoughts and I am willing to address these differences in our characterizations of my thought later if they seem relevant to the main issues.

As a final note, I am not yet convinced that we are speaking of a different woman. The influence of legal advisors and media on death-row convicts is immense and I still hold out the possibility that the woman in question, under long-term pressure, had changed her story so as to comply with the dominant Christian narrative of willed self-destruction, repentance, contrition, etc. To be sure, we would have to look up her name and get the facts up on our screens.

More significantly, though, it is not exactly responsible of you, is it?, to assert that: "She said these things, I didn't say any of it." One wonders why you went to the trouble of recording her words. One wonders, precisely, how you understood them. The most likely assumption I could make was that you found them convincing, found them consoling, found that they in some way confirmed your support for the death penalty. If this is so, then I would suggest your taking responsibility for quoting her by saying how you understand her words. You have charged me with a rule violation for making a reasonable interpretation of your words. When you quoted the convict, you didn't even bother to say, "She said..." Rather, you authoritatively assumed a tone of omniscient narrator, writing: "She knew she was guilty, felt that if released she would kill again... etc." So, how was I to know that your actual meaning was that she had said those things if you didn't even bother to indicate in writing that it was she who had said those things? And this brings us back to our original point, in a way, for, even if she had said such things, can you be absolutely sure that those are the things she actually meant? In incorporating her words into your own, in a way that supports your own views, can you be absolutely sure that you are not in violation or breach of Ground Rule #2?

Heartache Management

2005-06-07T08:35:00.000-04:00

This is part ③ of terrette's death penalty discussion.

terrette: I left uncommented one part of your appreciation of the death penalty. I quote you once more, underscoring the part that I neglected to address:

Did you see the news on the lady from Florida that was executed? Apparently it was her desire to get the execution over with. She knew she was guilty, felt that if released she would kill again, and didn't want to cost taxpayers any more money, or the families any more heartache.

I am bewildered at the thought that this assumption--that someone else's very existence can cause "heartache" for another citizen--has been made by a self-professed Christian. Would you, please, help me to find the Christian reference or support for such a thought of justifiable, death-willing vengeance?

I also find highly problematic the assumption that destroying the body of the criminal who had killed someone's loved one can lessen that person's "heartache." I am not saying that in all cases, such heartache would persist despite the destruction of the other's body (since there are too many perversions in the world for one to be able to take account of them all), but I find ludicrous the implication that the government should be responsible for managing such "heartache" by destroying others' bodies. Since when is the government responsible for managing "heartache"? Is there a Committee of Heartache Management in the Congress, perhaps? Even if it were true that in a majority of cases the government's destroying someone's body were an effective means of lessening another citizen's "heartache," I find that instituting such a practice as law plays into the basest, least defensible, least justified urges that humans (and humans acting within governments) exhibit. Moreover--and this is an entirely different point--the state-sponsored destruction of a criminal's body has the unhappy consequence of seeming to repeat, at least symbolically, the event by which the Christian God was put to death, and thus of reactivating the fantasy or spectacle of heroic martyrdom. Heroic martyrdom is the last thing someone such as Timothy McVee deserved, but certainly not always the last thing he and people who act like him desire and, in some cases, receive.

Beth: Starting from the end of your letter, we were not talking about the same woman. All of the comments that I included about the Florida case were from her mouth, not from mine. I saw her speaking on television, and I later read her comments in a news magazine. She said that it was her desire to get the execution over with, that she knew she was guilty, that if released she would kill again, and that she didn't want to cost taxpayers any more money, or the families any more heart ache.

You are in violation of one of our ground rules which was that you would not attribute to me any statements that seem to you to be what I would say. I did not add any of my personal opinion to her statement, nor did I express my opinion regarding her comments.

On to your other questions.

Capital punishment does not 'increase ' the value of human life. Human life is of ultimate value because human beings are created in the image of God. The death penalty is an expression of the value of human life in that the highest penalty that could be imposed on a violator is required of one who would take someone else's life without just cause. Again, I don't see the criminal justice system as the big, bad guy here. The murderer gives over his right to life when he commits the crime.

I didn't say that God alone has the power to 'take' a life (I don't like the word 'take' here because I argue that the murderer gave over his life, but neither do I want to trivialize execution). I said that because God creates life, not all cases in which God takes life are relevant to the question of whether men ever have authority to do so.

Did you miss the part that I found most compelling about Anderson's essay? The Old Testament law code was tied to a kingship of a particular people. The principle behind that law code is without fault - human life is of ultimate value. No one in the United States is lobbying to extend the death penalty to fortune tellers.

If the execution is the right punishment for premeditated murder, based on the principle on the God-ordained value of human life, then it is right.

If it is wrong, based on the same principal, then it is wrong. Issues of timing, expense, ’heartache’, or other cultures seem less important.

Death Penalty Ground Rules

2005-06-06T20:00:00.000-04:00

With this post, I am launching another multi-part discussion, this time to address the issue of the death penalty. The letters that comprise the first part of the discussion were exchanged between me and a long-time acquaintance, Beth. They will be posted over a number of days, and my most recent contribution, which I am now composing, will be uploaded in due time.

While I am for the universal abolition of the death penalty, Beth defends the death penalty on what she understands as religious grounds. I cannot say that I am a specialist on the topic and I'm open to all manner of information and arguments both for and against. So, if you have comments, please type them in and they will receive their response.

To kick off the discussion, I will quote from a work by Victor L. Streib, who in the final chapter of his historical overview of both the death penalty and the arguments for and against it, writes that,

"As the world community continues to move toward total abolition of all death penalties, the United States can expect to be seen as out of step with the 21st century. The fact that every other country in the world anything like the United States has now abandoned the death penalty is a serious issue of international relations for us. [...] Increasingly, the United States is being portrayed as a human rights violator by nations we consider to be our friends and allies" (2003, Death Penalty in a Nutshell, Thomson/West, p. 285).

Streib substantiates the global evolution away from the death penalty by noting that,

"The latter third of the 20th century saw an ever-increasing number of countries formally reject the death penalty, either by constitutional amendment, by statutory amendment, or by high court ruling. During this period, 58 additional countries abolished the death penalty (46 totally and 12 for ordinary crimes). [...] The five leading death penalty nations in terms of annual executions were China, Iraq, the Congo, the United States, and Iran" (ibid., p. 271, 272).

One task that Streib's work invites us to tackle is that of determining whether we can understand the meaning of the U.S. government's resistance to join this worldwide movement away from the death penalty. Hopefully, the following discussion will move in that direction.

Once the discussion topic was established, my discussion partner Beth sent me the following remarks:

Beth: I want to set some parameters for our 'discussion', if you will agree.

First, I don't have a lot of time on my hands, but I can commit one hour a week to our exchange, that is in reading and responding.

Second, I desire to learn from you, but I don't want us to sink to an exchange of insults. Please be sensitive to the way in which you voice your objections, being careful to respond to what I actually say and not to what you think I mean or what someone 'like me' might say. I will be careful to do the same.

Third, I think we will be most productive if we tackle one issue at a time, whenever that is possible.

Finally, I see Christianity as a defining issue here, meaning that it sets the ground work for all other discussions. I have asked you before who you think Jesus is, but have not gotten a response. I can live with that for now, but I see it as a key omission to our exchange.

I will happily get back to that when I hear your response to these 'ground rules'.

terrette: I think all of your "ground rules" are reasonable; only one, in fact, perplexes me somewhat. It concerns this statement, which may or may not have been intended as a "ground rule":

Finally, I see Christianity as a defining issue here, meaning that it sets the ground work for all other discussions. I have asked you before who you think Jesus is, but have not gotten a response. I can live with that for now, but I see it as a key omission to our exchange.

Well, this is the one "ground rule" (if it is one) that I don't wholly understand, even if I remain sympathetic to your will to profess your faith. If I thought that Jesus was a fictional fabrication of the neo-conservative majority in the House of Representatives, would that prohibit all dialogue between us on, say, the death penalty? If I thought of him as my savior, would it render our dialogue meaningless, because thoroughly harmonious in principle, if not in the details?

I understand the importance of Christianity, but saying that it sets the "ground work" for all other discussions means what? "Ground work," as I understand it, has a less dogmatic and circumscribing nature than you seem to want to lend the expression. It is a point of departure rather than a limiting horizon. Nonetheless, on the one hand, I completely agree, I think Western culture is unthinkable without Christianity, and that Christianity is in some sense the ground work of Western culture and society; on the other, I feel like I am being submitted to an identity check at the door of the public hall, and that, if I do not proclaim myself a believer, then you will shut me out and close off every avenue to thoughtful exchange.

I don't understand this demand on your part. I think that a possible difference in how we view Jesus Christ, the historical or spiritual figure, can inform our different perspectives on things without rendering us mute before one another. If you mean to say that, in every issue, "Jesus is the savior," can be the only answer and explanation, and that no reasonable discussion can be had that does not begin and end with this proclamation, then you are only admitting the limits you pose, from the outset, to open discussion. Unless, of course, you can show me otherwise. I would be interested to know--precisely!--how the thought of Jesus the savior can explain, justify, or lend support to the idea of a government of men and women that takes it upon itself to destroy the bodies of certain of its citizens.

It is worth mentioning that Jesus himself was himself tried, convicted, and killed by the state -- only, as any Christian would say, to live again. There is certainly something very significant in this Christian valorization of sacrifice that still informs modern-day thinking on the death penalty. Our discussion will have to take this into consideration, at some point, I would think.

(11314)

Complicity

2005-06-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

by terrette (10377)

On Intellectual Death

2005-05-27T09:16:00.000-04:00

Upon the death of the French phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur one week ago, the French press gave space to a number of reactions by members of the French government and prominent journalists. Le Nouvel Observateur, for instance, listed remarks made by everyone from the Head of State, Jacques Chirac, to the Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to Jean-Marie Colombani, chief editor of Le Monde.

Ricoeur is someone whose public speaking I have had the fortune to witness in person, and his work figures in my own "professional" writing. However, rather than sum up my own thoughts on this significant philosopher, I wish here only to mark a note of appreciation for a society whose political figures speak knowingly about the works of accomplished intellectual figures. (The responses to Ricoeur's work and life were in no way exceptional.) Can such a situation be imagined in today's United States?

When the current US president was asked who his favorite philosopher was, he replied, "Jesus." And when asked to explain his response, he was at a loss for words. (That should not surprise anyone who has ever read the words of Jesus and considered them in light of Mr. Bush's foreign and domestic policies.) In addition to the cheapened and popular spin on the word "philosopher" that the current president employed in this case, his reply betrayed total ignorance of his country's own rich heritage of philosophizing. More than that, when we compare it to the case of French politicians and members of the press, who regularly demonstrate that they are familiar with intellectuals' basic ideas, if not with their most accomplished publications, it seems clear that Bush's reply gave further currency in the United States to an already well-established disdain for the mind. In the United States, the president is applauded if it is suspected that he has read a book or newspaper, or possibly had his wife do the latter for his benefit.

* * *

To return to the figure of Paul Ricoeur, I would like to cite a few lines from an article that he penned in 1947 to address the question of colonialism in general, and French colonialism in particular. These remarks are not without resonance for the task of responsible blogging today. I will first inscribe my translation before copying the original text, which can also be read in its first extracted form.

This article's sole aim is to assess, in tandem with its readers, the breadth of responsibilities of the very person who is not a specialist of colonial questions and to determine a climate for the specialized examination that would be within our range of competence. This is precisely the responsibility of the non-specialist, of the man beyond the technocratic pale, that I wish to awaken within myself every day when confronted with the colonial question, despite all the voices within me that whisper such things as: "You don't know anything about the matter: if you had lived in Indochina, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Madagascar, you would no longer give any credit to the sentimental declarations of the utopians from the Metropolis." But I know well that my incompetence does not undo my total responsibility as a French citizen: I am one who sends the expeditionary corps to Indochina: and I don't have the right to abdicate my judgment for the sake of the colonists: thus it is that the Muslims and Annamese (Vietnamese) live, too, and as one might say, out of a sense of priority, overseas. Yet their righteous stance troubles me, when it turns against us the pathetic themes of national liberation that were raised in our own fight against the Nazis. I fear becoming a Nazi without knowing it. I listen to the Germans protest lamentably when one speaks to them of Auschwitz: "We didn't know." Upon which we pummel them triumphantly, "Your fault is not to have known." I don't know much about the French oppression in the colonies and I fear that my fault may be mostly one of not having enough information.

These are courageous words, especially given that they were written in 1947; in other words, in a mere moment's breath after France's triumph over the Nazis, and when most minds were still caught up in poses of vengeance or blindingly simple-minded opposition to "Communists everywhere." They also resonate with the current situation in which at times I find myself feeling helpless to keep abreast and oppose the Bush Administration-led, corporate feasting in Iraq, which is only another chapter in attempts by foreign powers to colonialize that oil-rich region and subjugate its people to the terror of indiscriminate violence and the humiliation of puppet rule.

Ricoeur's original words:

Cet article n'a pas d'autres prétentions que de mesurer avec nos amis lecteurs, l'ampleur des responsabilités de celui-là même qui n'est pas spécialiste des questions coloniales et de trouver le climat pour un examen technique qui soit de notre compétence. C'est précisément la responsabilité d'un non-spécialiste, de l'homme par delà le technicien, que je veux réveiller chaque jour en moi devant. la question coloniale, malgré les voix intéressées qui me soufflent : " Vous ne connaissez rien à la question : si vous aviez vécu en Indochine, au Maroc, en Algérie, à Madagascar, vous n'accorderiez plus aucun crédit aux prédications sentimentales des utopistes de la Métropole". Mais je sais bien que mon incompétence ne me délie pas de ma responsabilité totale de citoyen français ; c'est moi qui envoie le corps expéditionnaire en Indochine ; et je n'ai pas le droit d'abdiquer mon jugement au profit des colons : aussi bien les Musulmans et 1es Annamites vivent aussi, et si l'on peut dire par priorité, outre-mer. Or leur revendication me bouleverse, quand elle retourne contre nous, les thèmes pathétiques de la libération nationale qu'a amenés notre lutte contre le nazisme. Je crains d'être nazi sans le savoir. J'entends ces Allemands protester lamentablement quand on leur parle d'Auschwitz : "Nous ne savions pas ". Et nous les accablons victorieusement : "Votre faute est de n'avoir pas su". Je ne sais pas beaucoup de choses sur l'oppression française aux colonies et je redoute que ma faute ne soit principalement d'omission dans mon information.

Coated Colors

2005-05-22T12:30:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (9490)

This Blog Stops for Fair-Trade Oil

2005-05-21T11:00:00.000-04:00

The only oil I use for regular transportation is sprayed from a can of WD-40 once every four months or so on my bicycle chain. This amounts to an estimated annual expense of approximately 75 cents. At the same time, I realize that, due to a series of political decisions made over the past century, the daily consumption of oil for the sake of transportation is, for most, an essential aspect of participation in American society. The fact that, in the last few years, I have been able to escape this requirement and thus know all the attendant inconveniences and, yes, benefits, of traveling relatively oil-free is due largely to the good fortune of living near my place of daily occupation. I know, too, that, it is possible that, one day soon, if I remain living in America, this good fortune may change and that, to earn a living, I may be forced onto expressways of unwitting, benumbed, or regretful oil consumers. In the following post, I will therefore not simply preach the use of eco-friendly bicycles.

Although bikes are beautiful in so many ways and riding them has become an act of political defiance, in America, as in other industrialized nations, oil-thirst has been thrust onto the landscape like so many indelible and inescapable scars. This fact was once decried in mock piety in song lyrics written by Englishman Andy Partridge that often resonate in my head as I negotiate the increasingly commuter-clogged streets of a Western New York community whose actual population continues to decline: "Roads girdle the globe / We['re] all safe in your concrete robe / Hail mother motor / Hail piston, rotor / Hail wheel."

My point is that we drivers and internet surfers of the industrialized regions of the planet need other means of resistance to oil-thirst than our wonderfully foot-propelled cycles. That is why, today, I propose that readers contemplate Citgo, an oil company, and Oil Wars, a politically astute blog that covers events in oil-rich and democracy-friendly Venezuela. Let me now make the relationship between the two clear.

The reference to Citgo comes from a short article by Jeff Cohen that is posted at Common Dreams. In "Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!," Cohen points out that Citgo is a subsidiary of Venezuala's state-owned oil company and that,

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Cohen also provides a handy link that will allow drivers to locate nearby Citgo stations of the 14,000 that exist in the US.

As Cohen explains,

With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That's why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez.

This brings me to my second recommendation. A relatively new blog, whose stated purpose in the words of its keeper is to "make sure progressive people have access to accurate and timely news on Venezuela," provides links to sources that document US resistance to democracy in Venezuela, and comments on press in the US and Venezuela with both a great command of Spanish-language documents and a keenly critical eye. Consider these typical lines from the author of Oil Wars:

What concerns the U.S. isn't Venezuela becoming another Cuba -- that certainly is not going to happen. As has been mentioned here before even most Chavez supporters neither think nor desire that Venezuela become another Cuba. And having another Cuba wouldn't scare the U.S. so. A dictatorial country with a failed economy certainly isn't going to serve as a role model for change in Latin America.

But the Venezuelan model, with complete democracy, freedom, and a very successful economy all combined with extensive and highly popular social programs most certainly is a model which people all over Latin America are seeking to emulate. When Chavez shows up on a stage in Brazil with Lula it is Chavez who is cheered and who has to tell the crowd not to boo Lula. From the Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande there is no one more popular right now than Chavez with his 6 years in office and 70% approval rating. You don't win office in Latin America these days by running away from Chavez, you win by getting him to stand on the stage with you. And THAT has the powers that be in Washington mortified.

To that, my sole commentary is, "Vive la mortification! Vive la démocratie!"

To close this post, I note that, while the question has been debated whether there could exist such a thing as "fair-trade oil," Cohen's article suggests that not all oil is pumped equal, and Oil Wars shows us with great vigilance what this means, in particular as it relates to the populist government of Chavez and the Bush Administration's opposition to it.

La Grave, Toulouse

2005-05-20T19:54:00.000-04:00

posted with permission of the artist, Magali Vital.
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Memette 2

2005-05-19T08:50:00.000-04:00

The first part of this post answers question 1.

Questions 2-6.

2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Absolutely not. No more than I have ever had a crush on a painted figure, statue, or billboard. To me, the very idea of a "crush" seems wholly inapplicable to written fiction and, what's more, somewhat restricted in use to a period of emotional development that for many coincides with grade school or junior high school. At that period of my life, I worked as a hotwalk on training grounds for thoroughbreds. My favorite books were Gulliver's Travels and Watership Down, and I read the poetry of Dylan Thomas -- hardly material for the emergence of a "crush." But who, among authors worth reading today, writes fiction to make readers develop a "crush" on a given character? The question might have been relevant in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when serial novels may have had that effect among members of the leisure classes, but it seems irrelevant today.

3. The last book you bought is? Et puis, the French translation of Natsumé Soseki's (1867-1916) Sore Kara, which doesn't appear to have been translated into English yet. One reason I bought this novel, which is the second of a trilogy, is that the translator, Hélène Morita, finds remarkably witty and up-to-date formulas in French for Soseki's Japanese. I knew this by having read her translation of Botchan and I'd been waiting for her to translate another of Soseki's novels. Recently, I discovered that she has also translated, from English, interviews with Noam Chomsky.

4. What are you currently reading? See response to question 3. As for the category of what I might read next, I would cite Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (overview) and Joel Bakan's Just Words (reviewed intelligently).

5. List five books you would take to a deserted island. The question obviously weighs the answer towards large books, and therefore not necessarily toward books I have already read in their entirety. It also bends my thoughts towards "classics" and thus excludes from consideration remarkable works whose value cannot be appreciated as a capacity to bear rereadings.

Aside from the survival books that a clueless suburbanite like myself would have to take in order to survive long enough to read five other books at leisure, first on the reading list I would place Shakespeare's complete works, and preferably an edition that provides all the folio variants, including the three completely different versions of King Lear. The reason for this choice is that, like few other cultural productions of their type, Shakespeare's works, far from being the mere pet subject-matter of a few white male professors, are inseperable from both the evolution and undoubtedly the future of the English language. The call to read them is thus emitted from the English language and its history more than it is from a cabal of power-invested figures of patriarchy. Furthermore, since linguistic inventiveness experiences a rapture throughout Shakespeare's writings, one could, by reading Shakespeare, retain one's taste for words even in isolated conditions. Shakespeare does far more than provide simple scraps of neologisms to whet one's appetite for words. Not only does he invent a number of words that are now common (e.g., "assassination"), but he also wraps crushing phrases in lucid argumentation.

Second, I would, for similar reasons, take along Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Like Shakespeare, Proust is an author whose writings can provide illustrative quotations for the bulk of a given French dictionary's entries. More important, imitating his penchant for infusing incisive details with lifetime significance would serve a mind well when faced with what could otherwise appear a monotonous, if not purposeless, existence. What better way to pass the days on a deserted island than by remembering the populated past? Of the exercise of memory via the art of prose, Proust is the unquestioned master. After Proust's famous madeleine, who knows what reveries the taste of coconut milk might unravel?

Third on the list would be the largest volume of Immanuel Kant's work that I could find. The complete works I have in French separate the three critiques from the later essays, and so I would probably have to opt for the second volume containing the three critiques if I could find no other. If the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce could subsit, as he once claimed he had done, on reading the first critique alone for years and develop such a sharp mind as his, then surely the three critiques would provide sustenance on a remote island for mine.

Fourth would be Jacques Derrida's Voyous, translated this last year into English as Rogues. It's one of the greatest works by one of the last century's greatest minds, and although it concerns ideas of "sovereignty" and state power, its relevance for even a solitary island dweller could be argued. Indeed, it could be mined for illuminating parallels with a work of fiction such as Lord of the Flies.

Fifth: Lord of the Flies (if others were to inhabit the island with me) and Robinson Crusoe (if I were to remain alone).

6. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why? For two different reasons, I'm not going to pass this stick to anyone in an explicit manner. First, because, given my critical remarks above, I would first have to drop or radically reformulate the questions for the exercise to appear worthwhile and, second, because I think that, to respect the spirit of the idea of a "meme," as this was first proposed by Richard Dawkin in the 1970s to connote the "unit of cultural evolution" (on the model of the Greek word "mimema," meaning "that which is imitated," and with allusion to the opposed notion of "gene"), I will simply allow readers to pick up on my comments or not, to reproduce the questions on their own blogs if they wish, or to reformulate them anew. If the meme, or memette, as I have called my own replies, propogate and are adapted elsewhere, then so be it.

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Garden panorama

2005-05-18T15:09:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (9225)

Petition PBS

2005-05-17T09:55:00.000-04:00

Free Press has submitted a petition to remove the Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) who, in public comments, has been casting dirt upon journalist Bill Moyers, the former host of NOW, for that program's supposed "liberal bias."

Apparently, to Mr. Tomlinson's mind, having one hour per week of excellent investigative reporting on Public Television represents an intolerable use of public money. (He has already succeeded in chopping NOW down to thirty minutes.) I invite all who come to this page to sign the petition to express the opposite opinion. Know, too, that, in signing, you will not have your home or e-mail address revealed to others.

Incidentally, if you would like to know which journalist Tomlinson considers to be "a model for broadcast journalism," it's Jim Lehrer. (See this piece for Tomlinson's comments.) That should give pause to anyone who may have mistaken Lehrer's impassive facial expressions as a sign of "impartiality." As I see things, Lehrer has provided increasing disservice to the nation as the years have passed. The more acceptable he becomes to the right-wing media overlords, the more intolerable I find him.

Moyers Replies

2005-05-16T12:32:00.000-04:00

Everyone reading this is invited to take a moment to listen to Bill Moyers respond to charges of "liberal bias" that were recently made by Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Democracy Now deserves praise -- yet again -- and, where possible, financial support, for providing a platform for this kind of inspired and vital public discourse. This is even more so the case given that National Public Radio is, in many areas of the country, morphing decisively into the same sort of spineless and distracting info-tainment that is already blaring out of virtually all network media in the nation. (Micheal, of Musing's Musings, has a good post on this topic, which topic I will certainly return to. Someone needs to muffle Steve Inskeep and the whole gang of corporate-militarist apologists at NPR who provide light entertainment dressed up as "political commentary" in their "Morning Edition" program. Personally, I plan on submitting a petition to that effect very soon. I would like to see a total ban on all overtly political coverage by the staffs at "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." Let them stick to the "Man Eats 134 Hot Dogs" stories and stop deluding the public into thinking that they are providing political news responsibly.)

A transcript of Moyers's comments is also available. I will close this short post by citing one passage from them:

Mermin also quotes public television’s Jim Lehrer, whom I greatly respect, acknowledging that unless an official says something is so, it isn’t news. Why were journalists not discussing the occupation of Iraq? “Because,” says Jim Lehrer, “the word ‘occupation’ was never mentioned in the run up to the war. Washington talked about the war as a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us in journalism,” says Lehrer, “never even looked at the issue of occupation.” “In other words,” says Jonathan Mermin, “if the government isn’t talking about it, we don’t report it.” He concludes, “Lehrer’s somewhat jarring declaration, one of many recent admissions by journalists that their reporting failed to prepare the public for the calamitous occupation that has followed the liberation of Iraq, reveals just how far the actual practice of American journalism has deviated from the First Amendment idea of a press that is independent of government.”

Ecureuil

2005-05-11T06:35:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (8757)

Holiday Fracas

2005-05-10T15:16:00.000-04:00

“Showa Day” or “Green Day”?

[Contributed by Yoshihiro Yoshii and Fanni Terrette]

Recently, in Japan, a movement has sprung up among rightwingers, including the mayor of Tokyo and a number of celebrities and other public figures, to replace the current name of a national holiday, “Green Day,” with “Showa Day.” This has been seen by some as a symptom of rising nationalism within Japan. The following post analyzes a rightwing website and like-minded websites to which it provides links that all make arguments for preferring the name “Showa.” However, first, let us briefly consider the sense of these names.

“Showa” refers to Emperor Showa, or Emperor Hirohito as he is called outside of Japan in accordance with his family, rather than his honorific, name. His reign was from December 25, 1926 to his death on January 7, 1989. During this period, Japan’s postwar economy developed rapidly into the second largest in the world. Shortly after the Emperor’s death, the Diet changed the name of the holiday that formerly celebrated his April 29 birthday to “Green Day” because, the argument went, Emperor Showa loved nature. Undoubtedly, the thought also occurred to the Diet members that celebrating a deceased Emperor in name might not create the most relevant or inspiring holiday, especially as other Emperors (or, possibly, some would allow, Empresses) assume their privileged functions down the decades. Now, however, some argue that “Green Day” is not a suitable name for the holiday and that, moreover, “Green Day” should be moved to May 4 so as to be completely dissociated from a revived “Showa Day.”

To appreciate the mindset of the most ardent Showa enthusiasts, it is important to recall, as well, that according to Article III of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan as it remained in force until Japan’s defeat in WWII, the “Emperor is sacred and inviolable. The Sacred Throne was established at the time when the heavens and earth became separated (kojiki). The Emperor is heaven-descended, divine and sacred; He is pre-eminent above all His subjects. He has indeed to pay due respect to the law, but the law has no power to hold Him accountable to it. Not only shall there be no irreverence for the Emperor’s person, but also shall He neither be made a topic of derogatory comment nor one of discussion.” (Beasley, W.G., Japanese Imperialism 1894-1945, translation modified. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987: 32.)

Bearing the above historical background in mind, let us ask what exactly is at stake in this holiday fracas.

First, read this typical comment that, like the others that are quoted below, comes from the website of the self-glossed “Showa Day” Promotion National Network (SDPNN hereafter and, in Japanese, 「昭和の日」推進国民ネットワーク):

“The name "Green Day" is just a meaningless symbol that neither refers to a specific time period or to Emperor Showa. The government might have chosen the name in consideration of leftwing groups and without reflecting on public opinion.”

「どこにも時代を象徴するような意味がない、単なる記号に過ぎない名称である。時の政府が天皇制に批判的な勢力の反発を考慮して、国民の意に反した結論を出したようである。」

Consider, next, the following claim for the suitability of the later date:

This year’s “Golden Week” [the holiday week that falls at the juncture of April and May] must be a very suitable week for an ethnic celebration full of hope.

“今年のゴールデンウイークは、希望に満ちた民族の祭典にふさわしい週間になることは間違いない。” 「緊急声明書」 (source)

The language recalls the government propaganda that was employed in and before WW II. What do the authors mean by “民族の祭典” (“ethnic celebration”)? If this is supposed to refer to the Yamato race, which is very clearly an amalgam just as is every other presumably “distinct” race, do the authors harbor the notion that Japan consists of only the Yamato “race”? This claim would be easy to undermine by pointing out that the Ainu “race,” entrenched in Hokkaido since time immemorial, still persists, despite its near total appropriation into “mainstream” Japan, as a heritage of distinct cultural and racial components. If, however, “民族” is meant to include all Asian peoples, it would be hard to accept the implication that all Asians would want to celebrate “Showa Day” alongside this group of rightwing enthusiasts in Japan. One has only to consider the current tensions across the region. A revival of resentment over massive crimes perpetrated by previous Japanese leaders and the refusal of the current Japanese leadership to take full account of them is in full swing. This seems to indicate little shared enthusiasm across Asia for celebrating Japan’s former claim to divine leadership. Nonetheless, in their shortsighted nostalgia for notions of national glory and divine election, members of the SDPNN seem to believe that the questions of the holiday’s name and date concern “Japanese” alone. Not only is this clearly not the case, but the “Japanese” whom the holiday is supposed to concern exclusively do not constitute a pre-given, homogeneously racial or ethnic group. In the end, the SDPNN’s attempt to revive Emperor worshipping appears to be a desperate but futile effort at fixing Japanese “identity” once and for all by aligning the “Japanese” under the hold of a formidable figurehead.

Despite itself, the SDPNN, which would like to lay down the law of Japanese identity by means of reinvigorated Emperor worshipping on a national scale, provides a number of reasons for objecting to a return to “Showa Day.” One contributor to the SDPNN website provides two :

「昭和の日」必要無しとの声があり、国民の総意とは受け取れないが。

Only some people say that “Showa Day” is unnecessary; so, it seems, doesn’t it, that most citizens favor “Showa Day.”

　「昭和の日」反対の国民運動や議員連盟などは起っておらず、国民の大多数は「昭和の日」を望んでいるといえる。

There is no anti-“Showa Day” movement among citizens or the members of the Diet, so it is clear that a majority of Japanese citizens is calling for “Showa Day.” (quoted from 「昭和の日Q&A」)

It is absurd to argue thus that because there is no anti-“Showa Day” movement in the Diet, a majority of Japanese favors replacing “Green Day” with the name “Showa Day.” It would be just as persuasive to argue that, since there is no anti-Hula Hoop movement in the current Diet, April 29 should be declared “National Hula Hoop Day.” Indeed, it would make even more sense to declare April 29 or another day “National Hula Hoop Day” since hula hoops have till this point met with no opposition while the proposed return to “Showa Day” has. (Here, for instance, is the website of an "anti-Showa project.")

An April 11 article in The New York Times also warns of growing nationalism in Japan as evidenced by the "Showa Day" movement and the problem of textbooks recently sanctioned by the Japanese Ministry of Education that whitewash Japan’s imperialistic aggression. (Disregarding strong opposition from all over Asia, Japan’s Ministry of Education approved, on April 5, a New History Textbook that was submitted to it by the rightwing group, "The New History Textbook Compilation Committee.") Some members of the SDPNN seem to believe that the name of the holiday is a problem that concerns the Japanese alone, but can the Japanese government afford to think of such issues in the isolationist logic of previous centuries, as if nothing had occurred during all that time?

Consider, next, the following passage that was referenced at the SDPNN website. It attempts to establish, on the basis of an unsubstantiated anecdote, the existence of a sort of pan-Asian fervor for what could be called “Showanism.”

Title: Precious Showa History as Recounted by a “Malaysian.”
I had a chance to talk to a Malaysian on Jan. 9, 1988, 2 days after Emperor Showa’s death. After sharing his deepest sympathies over Emperor Showa’s death, he called the Emperor “Showa the Great” and told the following story: During the Great Asian War, we Asians fought against white Westerners. We drove the Westerners away and were overjoyed. Japan was the only country that fought with all its might, and the War was concluded by an imperial decree. We cannot fail to appreciate the role of “Showa the Great” in this turbulent period. (78-year-old, retired professor, Setagaya-ku, quoted in「国民の声」)

「マレー人」の貴重な昭和史
昭和天皇が崩御された二日後の平成元年１月９日のこと。来日した知人のマレーシア人と話す機会があった。…　彼は私にお悔やみを述べた後、昭和天皇を「昭和大帝」と呼び、次のような話をした。大東亜戦争は世界を相手に戦ったもので、緒戦で欧米の白人勢力を追い払い、アジア諸民族は歓喜した。アジアで国家の総力を挙げて戦ったのは日本だけだったが、天皇の詔勅で戦いの矛を収めた。…　激動の６０数年間の中心にいた「昭和大帝」の役割は無視できるものではない。
　(７８歳、元大学教授、世田谷区）

It would require a heavy dose of naivety to assume that the “Malaysian’s” comments, assuming they have been reported faithfully here, reflect the attitudes of the vast majority of Asians. Possibly the “Malaysian” remains unaware of the fact that the Emperor’s forces killed millions of Asians, submitted women to sexual slavery, and raided the natural wealth of Asian nations with impunity? It would be difficult to imagine that, knowing all of these things, the “Malaysian” would deny the insensitivity towards other Asians of self-righteous Showa worshipping in Japan. Similarly to the professor cited above, some of those who write at the SDPNN under the rubric of “ethnic voices” (「国民の声」) use the expression “sacred and wise decision”(「ご聖断」) to refer to the decree issued by the Emperor to signal Japan’s cessation of hostilities in WWII. Although the one who declared the end of the war in an official capacity was, indeed, Emperor Showa, it is no less true that Emperor Showa was responsible for preventing the war from breaking out in the first place. Moreover, his “decision” was hardly sacred and “wise” in some courageous or self-assuming way, given that he was compelled to make it by General MacArthur’s forces. Had he not, his reign would surely have met a grim conclusion. Thus, it was less an act of “wisdom” than it was of self-preservation or commonsensical (and lamentably belated) prudence.

If certain Showa enthusiasts wish to impose their program on the nation, then, in our view, it would be necessary that they do so to have others recall not only Japan's spectacular postwar economic development but also the murderous folly of the war years and the crimes of Japan's fascist rulers.

As things stand under the current rightwing leadership of Prime Minister Koizumi, the “Showa Day” bill has passed the House of Representatives and is being discussed in the House of Councils (Upper House).

If anyone would like to express opposition to “Showa Day,” please write in English or Japanese here. Those who see good reason for a return to “Showa Day” may share their opinions by sending them as a comment to this post or as E-mail that we will upload as a separate post for the sake of discussion.

Synchronized frolick

2005-05-08T18:34:00.000-04:00

photo by terrette (8533)

Memette 1

2005-05-07T10:06:00.000-04:00

As host of this webpage, I have been invited by Steve, of Steve Bates, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, to compose a "book meme." Steve describes the book meme as follows.

The "book meme" comprises a number of questions about the books in your life. The meme is self-perpetuating: you answer the questions for your readers, then tap three other bloggers whose answers you believe would be interesting. For your convenience, here are the questions.

1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
3. The last book you bought is?
4. What are you currently reading?
5. Five books you would take to a deserted island:
6. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Although I do not feel that I am particularly well suited to compose a book meme, for the simple reason that, of late, I have been reading very little and certainly very few books, I will do my best to hurry the baton to a trio of other bloggers.

Parenthetically, I have to admit that I do not know even how to pronounce the word "meme," which looks like a cognate for the French word meaning "same." Nor do I know the word's origin or precise sense. I have nonetheless taken the liberty of likening it to my name, for the title of this post, by attaching the "feminine" or "diminutive" suffix to it. The reader is thereby invited to hear a tone of modesty in the self-description -- not feminine modesty, but the modesty of small sizes and small enterprises.

1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I don't recall exactly which books were memorized at the end of Bradbury's novel, but I do recall feeling terribly frustrated with the presumptions that lie behind the scene in which certain human figures heroically adopt the memorization of a given literary work to the point of having their identity swallowed up entirely by the work. These figures of resistance "become" the work they memorize. The idea that books and therefore human culture might be preserved not only by strict memorization in this way, but by a state of "being" or "oneness," that is, self-identification with a given work (whose contours are thereby assumed to be clearly defined or embodied), seems to me the most radically reactionary and impoverished way of confronting the despotic powers of a culture-phobic regime. It amounts to adopting the conservative and unquestioned view of culture as a static product. If all these culture zombies can do is endlessly repeat their chosen work, then culture has died by other means than by fire. It has, in a sense, been frozen -- but only in one sense, because the metaphor of "freezing" or "ice" is perfectly problematic.

I suppose the idea that Bradbury's characters put their faith in is that, one day, the frozen culture might be thawed and reawakened by others; however, the notion that one might transport a "book," where this is assumed to constitute a self-defined entity and thus one whose meaning can be carried about like sacks of flour from one time period to another, without concern for changing contexts and readers, is an insult to the ideas and language that any book worthy of its own heritage might contain. So, in short, my answer is that I wouldn't want to "be" any book. The question is poorly formed, and Bradbury is wholly to blame for that, I'm sure.

(to be continued...)