Are They Kidding?

by Morgan Dash

I came across two "news" items---that is, items apparently purporting to be factually true, reported by reputable outlets--- that are causing some family dissension. Brother Chris, the family dramatist, claims that if he allowed himself to believe these items, they would be evidence that the world had now gone so far beyond the credible that the already dubious occupation of trying to make dramatic sense of this existence would be rendered futile beyond redemption. (I hope I'm not overdramatizing his position.)

Brother Theron of course believes them with all the roaring absurdity of his simultaneous love-hate relationship with humanity, not to mention the apparent laws of the universe.

I can't settle the argument---maybe you can. Here are the two items. Truth? Fiction? You decide.

1. There is a best-selling book in America called Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It's a slim volume containing a fable which some have found revelatory, about adapting to change. The premise, apparently presented without irony, is that the reader is expected to identify with rats who run the rat race maze, but who are confounded when their expected reward (i.e.”the cheese”) is not in the same place it always had been. (As nuts as that sounds, that's at least a verifiable part of the story.)

It seems that this book has also caught on in China, where it has inspired a number of follow-ups (or "imitators" as stated in the Times Literary Supplement column that is the source for this tale) . These tomes published in the erstwhile land of Confucius include: Can I Move Your Cheese? by Chen Tong; Who Dares to Move My Cheese by Kang Yanning; Make the Cheese Yourself by Dong Huangfu; Whose Cheese Should I Move? by Wu Yizhou, and No More Cheese! by Lin Zhanxian.

The column (signed by "J.C.") concludes the item by observing that "most Chinese people have never eaten cheese."

2. This story involves the Klingon language and the United States National Security Agency. As you may or may not know, Klingons are a race of aliens invented for an episode of Star Trek some 37 years ago. Klingons were somewhat reinvented for the Star Trek motion picture series and became important in subsequent Star Trek TV series. (Worf being the most famous Klingon.) In the first Star Trek movie, a few words of a language meant to be Klingon were heard. These were invented by the ace linguist and master of voices of the Enterprise crew, James Doohan, who played Scotty. (He invented the first Vulcan language dialogue for that film as well.) When Klingons talking in their own language became more elaborate later in the film series, linguist Marc Okrand invented a Klingon vocabulary and rules for a basic language. There's a Klingon dictionary of some 2,000 words; some Shakespeare and parts of the Bible have been translated into this language, and some young fans, who probably would not be caught dead taking Russian or Spanish, learn and converse in conversational Klingon.

You may have guessed a little of where this story is going if you've recently seen the film Code Talkers or if you know that Navajos used a code based on their language--a language, like all Native languages, that the U.S. government tried long and hard to suppress and destroy---for the U.S. armed forces in World War II. The Japanese were never able to break it (although if it had only been used as it was in the Code Talkers movie-to radio back the firing coordinates for fixed enemy positions--- it would have been irrelevant. Presumably the Japanese already knew the position of their own artillery, and whether they knew that the U.S. had a fix or them or not hardly mattered, since they couldn't move them.)

So finally, here is the story: Lawrence Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute, recently gave a presentation to the National Security Agency on the Klingon language, as the "government was curious about the potential for al-Qaeda operatives" to communicate using Klingon.

First we mourn

by Morgan, Christopher and Theron Dash

First we mourn those who died, who suffer lost limbs and deep wounds of the body and the psyche. We mourn the peace of mind of soldiers who will carry with them the consequences of these weeks, these days, and what they saw or did in a single moment. We mourn the future of children estranged by violence. We mourn the continuing suffering of people without adequate water and food, without light.

We are grateful that more life was not lost, that more lives were not rent apart. We are grateful for the acts of courage and restraint, the acts of charity and compassion. We are grateful for those who return to their families, and hope for the best for all in the future that is bound to be influenced by the violence in Iraq.

Now on the level of consequence some things seem to come clearer. There is still much we do not know about why this war really was fought, and why it happened the way it did. We do know that while there was no adequate plan for protecting hospitals or saving artifacts of the cultural memory of many centuries, there was attention paid to securing anything to do with oil production.

While much attention is focused on how long a general occupation of Iraq will go on, and the U.S. insists there will be an Iraqi government run by Iraqis, it has also been more quietly reported that whatever the timetable or eventual form of governance, the U.S. plans to maintain military bases in Iraq for the long term.

That very well could have been a chief purpose of this war. It represents an enormous strategic advantage. The U.S. doesn't even have a real presence in Israel, let alone Arab countries. But with military presence, the U.S. can let the Iraqis have whatever government they want-they can still always protect the oil, which is mostly what "America's vital interests in the region" means, and they can intimidate the entire region, including current "allies" like Saudi Arabia.

So the U.S. doesn't have to ensure domestic order in Iraq---let them squabble and slaughter each other over the spoils, let the factions within the factions have their intrigue, and let criminals run their rackets-none of it will matter except to Iraqis, and the U.S. can claim it has done what it promised to do: liberate Iraq from Saddam and turn over the country to "the Iraqi people," after getting rid of the weapons of mass destruction (made much easier in that so far none have been found, although some will surely show up, and just as surely, many in the Arab world and elsewhere will suspect Americans planted them after they took over.)


In the U.S., the current wave of approval for the war is as predictable as the dead children once the bombs fell. A large portion of the American public got its news about the war from the cable news channels, who had every possible incentive to sell the war and very few to cover it soberly. American commercial television is about only one thing: Adrenalin sells. The audience must be excited, because excited people buy things. Positive people buy things. The only contrast that's allowed is some wallowing in sentimentality with affirmation at the end, so the catharsis leads to that positive buying. Sure, people go shopping when they're depressed, but when they are really sad, or chastened, or fearful, or worst of all, thoughtful, they might stay home. They might feel alienated. They might think, what's the point of buying that gas guzzling SUV? So my grandson as well as my son can be sent over to shoot at children grasping after fallen grenade launchers? So my granddaughter as well as my daughter can live with the nightmares of having dropped bombs on sleeping cities?

Being mad at somebody is good, because it's adrenalin. But it's better that they're mad at weenie peacenik Frog-loving appeasers than piggish CEOs or businesses that ignore global heating and the final solution for the planet's forests, rivers, air and oceans. You want them to admire the stalwart cliché-spouting flag-wrapped president, not be afraid of a fundamentalist fanatic who disdains Darwin as a fuzzy thinking liberal. Basically, though, you want them to feel good about America, the TV series. You want them to tune in, and absorb the commercials. Buy a flag. Better yet, buy a big car and a flag decal for the windshield. You'll probably be paying the interest on the loan for the rest of your life, unless you are a CEO, but that's not a ratings problem, that's not going to be on this quarter's report.

That's the name of this tune. The piper gets paid later.

This just in: later is on the way.

Occupation

by Phineas Dash

The model currently being punditized for the reconstruction of Iraq is the Marshall Plan and the occupation of Germany and Japan as they were transformed into democracies after World War II.

What no one is mentioning is that the Marshall Plan was not without its critics at the time and since. Not for the generous amount of money that was spent or the overall goal of reconstruction, but because it was a United States-only program.

Albert Einstein was one who opposed the Marshall Plan on these grounds. It was an important moment in establishing the United Nations as a force in postwar order, and Einstein believed that the Marshall Plan should have been under international auspices, specifically through the United Nations.

He also argued that if it was only the United States controlling the reconstruction of western Europe, the Soviet Union would see it as an attempt to establish hegemony in the area, and to threaten the Soviet Union. This in fact is how the Soviets saw the Marshall Plan, and they tightened and expanded control over Eastern Europe. Perhaps the Cold War would have happened anyway, but the Marshall Plan was arguably a factor in creating it.

Now the U.S. wants to establish a min-Marshall Plan for Iraq, which will be seen as establishing American hegemony in the Middle East, the one place in the world where political tensions are similar to those existing in Europe in the 1940s and most of the rest of the century. An international program, through the United Nations, would mitigate this image, and also enrich the possibilities for Iraq's democracy. The American model is not the only "successful" model in the world, and European models or the Japanese model, for instance, might offer more of what Iraq needs.

Of course this would loosen American corporate control over the Iraq economy and its oil. So it's not likely to happen. But it's worth mentioning that the Marshall Plan model is not without danger.

But the one thing the U.S. occupation has going for it is that occupation is boring, and it will soon disappear from the media. Does the media have anything at all to say about the administration of Afghanistan? The troops still in the Balkans? Iraq largely disappeared from view after Bush War I and now that Bush War II is about over, it soon will again.

Massage from the President of Freedonia

Freedonia congratulates America on winning the war in Iraq. You're on a roll, all right. An Iraq and roll. I'll have mine with relish and mustard, but no French bread! Freedonia wanted to be part of the coalition of the willing, but where there's a will there's a way, and there was no way we were going to get involved in something like that! But we'd like to do something for your next war effort, like not be the target of it. We'd lend you a musket but we need that for parades. We have a lot of veterans parades, and a lot of veterans of a lot of parades. Unfortunately we can't afford wars but our veterans don't seem to mind. Oh, they complain now and then, how the young veterans don't know what it's like to have it rain on their parades, but they'd really get upset if we gave away their musket. So the best we can do is contribute one of our national songs, adapted for the occasion by one of our national songwriters. It's not really finished but our national songwriters are. We can't afford to support the arts anymore, now that we've poured all our resources into convincing you to go to war on somebody else. And boy can we pour it on. Now we're all poor. Go reign on somebody else's parade!

Sincerely yours
President Rufus T. Firefly

[To the tune of "Lydia, the Tatooed Lady")

Syria oh Syria
let's go get Syria
Syria, we'll tatoo shady

she's another wayward nation
ready for decapitation

Syria oh Syria
the latest hysteria
on Syria the axis will fall

we've got to round up this whole terrorist crew
maybe we'll get to the Bosphorus too
and claim all the oil for the red white and blue
you can get a lot from Syria!

Milky Way Week in Review


Our cousin and Canadian correspondent, Lemuel Dash, reports that folks are wearing anti-infection masks on the streets of Toronto. There's a press report that the reputedly laid back and tolerant Canadians are casting a suspicious eye at anybody that looks Chinese. And somebody else is reporting that so far there are no SARS cases in Japan, despite the frequent traffic to and from Hong Kong. That complicates the "yellow peril" picture, but it won't stop the kind of folks who treat anybody with a vaguely unfamiliar skin tone as al Qeda.


Brother Morgan (and for all we know, he might be a Zen monk by now) was impressed to see his nearby city of Eureka, CA make the Big Crawl on CNN for having the highest gasoline prices in the U.S. Unfortunately, the price they quoted was 5 cents a gallon less than what Morgan had just paid.

What's with this Google news site? Their computers seem to have these recurring obsessions-one week it was the Dixie Chicks (same basic story headlined for five days straight) and lately it's been cannibalism among dinosaurs (with a variation lately on cannibalism among early humans.)

Back to Boredom Already?


I can't believe it! No more white explosions in the green night, and embedded reporters with movie star matted hair and theatrically dirty faces? No more maps and pointers, anchors with caffeine voices, city by city, block by block? Air strikes, armored columns, firefights---all gone already?

And the vocabulary we've just barely learned: embedded, regime change, decapitation. Of course that last one turned a little grisly, when the U.S. tried to "decapitate" the Iraqi regime with four huge bombs that left a sixty foot deep crater where a restaurant used to be. They may not have gotten Saddam, but they definitely separated the head from the body of a young woman. But no use dwelling on that. We kept the ugly wounds, the pain and the dying babies off screen.

But how could it end so quickly? One minute we're watching the rowdy crowds in Baghdad and the Marines pulling down that statue of Saddam. And the next minute...The stock market tanks, and the cable channels start reporting other stories. I guess that was the signal:The stock traders all watched the statue come down, and when they turned back to the business at hand, what they saw was the same old screwed up fading economy that was there before all the adrenalin started pumping and the flag began to wave?

Could this be the end of blowing up stuff? Now it's all talk of reconstruction, restoring order (those burning hulks of cars are pretty neat, though) and putting together some government. And, oh yeah, the whatayacallit, hue-mani-tarian aid. Borrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnnnnng.

And SARS and North Korea and the old Israel/Palestine, Britian/Ireland stuff had the gall not to solve themselve while we weren't looking. They're still there! Really, REALLY boring.

Damn, we're back to the same old same old, and it's a hell of a letdown. But wait---why is Rumsfeld talking about Syria all the time now? Could it be---sure, why not! We've got all those troops over there, all those planes and tanks and stuff, still in good shape. Two wars for almost the price of one! Wind it up! Let's crusade!

Theron's Nineteenth

by Theron Dash

Morgan is supposed to be the literary one so why did I get stuck with book reviews?

For two reasons: I'm not reviewing the books. I haven't read them. I'm reviewing a review of the books, and then I'm reviewing the fact that another book was written. With me so far? Since I'm the brother in charge of unsubstantiated raving, these tasks fall to me.

First case: Ted Widmer's review of Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? and Herbert J. Gans' Democracy and the News in the New York Times Book Review that has been in the pile since mid March and is damn lucky to have been read this soon.

I've got no problem with the review or the books. I just want to answer a couple of questions Widmer brings up. He agrees with Alterman that the image of the liberal media, while a great fund raising tool, is so clearly not true as to be either dishonest or delusional. Maybe it was true, they say, like twenty years ago. But it isn't anymore, and Alterman suggests a lot of the reason has to do with Richard Mellon Scaife and the millions he put into extreme right wing think tanks, foundations and media.

Widmer then suggests Alterman didn't spend enough time answering a key question: "why is it that liberals fare badly on live radio and television?" Fair enough, I'll answer that one.

The first answer would be, how would you know they don't? They are seldom seen or heard. But let's say they do "fare badly." It's perfectly reasonable that they would fare badly.

Why? Because they are reasonable. The people who do well on television shout and spit. They are dismissive, vituperative, utterly shameless. They are the studio wrestlers of discourse. They are the car salesmen of ideas. One big bargain lie after another.

People are so busy, right? They need something short, like a slogan, repeated endlessly. Something familiar, like sex and violence, used to sell everything on TV and always used to sell newspapers. Sexy newscasters can make anything seem frivilous. As for violence, hey, you won't be seeing any reporter embedded in negotiations--the problem with them is that if there are big explosions, they've failed.

The media is divided, somewhat along class lines, into the Endless Business Report and Political Survivor. The corporate interests talk to each other, gull the unwary to feather their nests with self-serving stock tips and advice. The interests of working people and the poor are not so sumptuously served. No, it's circuses for them, and they love it. Entertainment value is the only value. What else can you say about a country that puts "Stupid White Men" on the top of the best-seller list, only to be toppled by "The Savage Nation"?

But it's all part of the same deal. Keep people stupid. Smart people figure out that the commercials aren't true. That's bad for America, my friends. If they got beyond being viscerally simple-minded, they might figure out that buying the right stuff doesn't make them happy, it just makes them work harder and longer and get deeper in debt.

So we can't have thought. We can't waste time producing evidence for our assertions, or actually try to work our way through difficult issues to find a solution. So we make sure to make fun of anybody with a vocabulary and thoughts to go with it. We demean anybody who isn't mean, laugh at any expression of empathy. No, sad situations are great entertainment, little stories of pain and suffering to make us feel better.

Laugh at those bleeding hearts! Those weepy eyed kids who want to save the world! And we won't listen to them because...because they're talking therapyspeak, they're talking hard words, they know all this history about Iraq, they're so...boring.

There are well-intentioned "liberal" "intellectual" people in this country who drone on and on, who can't speak five words without six of them being jargon, who have never met a circumlocution in passive voice they didn't like. But there are also people of liberal imagination who are trenchant, witty and eloquent. You don't see or hear them first of all because they might say something contrary to the interests of our sponsor, and second, they are too damn reasonable, they don't get people mad, frothing at the mouth and calling in, convincing sponsors that billions of people are watching and listening, and eager to stuff into their mouths anything they sell.

Later in the review, Widner writes: "These are all fair critiques. The problem is that Gans, like the rest of us, has no workable idea about what to do next."

Yeah, well I do. That is, I have ideas, and lots of people do. The rub is that word "workable." What's workable? An idea on how to balance the unbalanced right, that will get the approval of the unbalanced right media? The folks who will cry and repeat and repeat and repeat because that's what they do best, "It'll never work!"

Want liberal commentators? Why don't some of those supposed "limo liberals" in Hollywood and wherever else they are pony up some of their millions and do just what Scaife did? Put some power into liberal think tanks, foundations and media. Finance a next generation, and get off the stage.

As for fostering more democracy and the news, the whole political landscape can be transformed, probably state by state, with laws that require public financing of campaigns, that begin making rules that encourage, that mandate, substantive political discussion among and on behalf of candidates for office. No more thirty second campaign spots-if you can't talk on an issue for five minutes, what good are you? There are creative ways of accomplishing this, if you're honest about what the problems are.

The truth is that people with lots of money don't want more democracy, because the power would shift to people who don't have lots of money, since there are usually more of them, thanks to the control of public policy by people who do have money.

So that's those books. Now a book so new it's probably not out yet, called Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age by Bill McKibben. A piece of it appeared in Harper's. The book is apparently about genetic engineering. My question is WHY? WHY BILL MCKIBBEN ARE YOU WASTING YOUR TIME WRITING ABOUT GENETIC ENGINEERING?

It wasn't so long ago that Bill McKibben was seen on C-Span talking about the climate crisis as the greatest thread to humanity and the world of our age. The consequences could very well be mass extinctions, which would include the human animal. Because of all this, McKibben said, raising awareness of climate change and making sure we do something about it "is the first morally compulsory, urgent issue since the Civil Rights movement."

So-HELLO, BILL? I've got a question---if the climate crisis is such an overwhelming threat that it must be urgently addressed-why are you worried now about genetic engineering? Significant alterations of humanity through genetic engineering is years away-and if global heating is so urgent, GENETIC ENGINEERING AIN'T GONNA MATTER. Unless you’re worried about genetically engineered amoeba. Artifically altered cockroaches. Bioengineered lice.

This has been the problem with environmentalists for at least a decade. There are all these fiefdoms now, all with their issue, their fundraising, their foundations, their turf. And there is no sense of setting priorities.

HEY: THE PRIORITY IS THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE. The issue of global heating and the climate crisis is a meta-issue anyway: it leads to most of the other issues in environment and energy, as well as political and environmental justice. (Including, eventually, bioengineering, especially in the food supply.) It is not only the single most crucial issue---it is a made to order organizing principle.

Peace, there’s another meta-issue. Can’t have it without human dignity, self-determination, non-interference, justice, freedom, peaceful conflict resolution, shared costs, shared sacrifices and shared interests through permanent cooperation.

World Peace. Climate Crisis. That's enough of an agenda for us to handle, thank you all very much.

Skip the War, Pass Me the Hypospray

by Phineas Dash

The war is everywhere but it's not the most important story unfolding, at least in terms of our ultimate fate in this century.

The crisis that will threaten our polities, our societies and our existence in the coming decades will make this war and the wars that follow irrelevant, or simply contributing factors.

The unfolding story of consequence is the disease currently called SARS, about which little is known except that it is spreading quickly and is often fatal.

It will be a story repeated in one way or another for the rest of this decade and this half of the century. For awhile, not many people will notice this, because the stories will seem unrelated. But eventually there will be a generally acknowledged crisis and it will be called a public health crisis.

It will certainly test what is called the public health system, which is not a system at all, at least in the United States. But though it will resonate with the public by being designated a public health problem, even that won't be exhaustively accurate.

Another way of analyzing it would be as an environmental crisis. If and when this becomes a consensus explanation, or even a media-accepted Big Story, it's going to shake the planet.

We would learn that many more illnesses that the public was allowed to realize are caused by environmental factors: air and water pollution; the interactions of chemicals in everything we consume or touch; diseases in food caused by lack of screening or by additives and alterations; the changing climate of global heating; and all of these combined with overcrowded cities, sick buildings and air travel that spreads pathogens rapidly around the world.

Some information will emerge but a lot won't, partly because we don't know very much. It will all stay "mysterious." Of course, we have the computer power to begin to put data together and maybe have a fighting chance of figuring it out. But it will take a big effort, and would likely result in big changes in how we live. Some people---like the people making big money from the way we live now---aren't going to like that.

We will feel utterly betrayed, because the companies that make money making and using these chemicals and biological agents, using genetic manipulation, causing the pollution, etc. have made damn sure nobody is forthrightly studying these factors and their interactions, with anything like the appropriate resources and level of concern.

We will feel betrayed, that is, if we ever find out. We probably won't. We'll follow the news reports about mystifying diseases that kill quickly and dramatically (and never suspect the ones that have relatively minor or transitory symptoms and perhaps cumulatively fatal effects) and in the end we'll never know what hit us.

A public health crisis will eventually get dramatic enough for reporters to be embedded in hospitals and research labs. We'll learn about as much from them concerning how we got in this fix as we learn from reporters embedded in a particular tank division. Maybe we'll watch ourselves die off on TV.

This will be happening as poor people in backward countries are running out of water. Non-poor people in advanced countries will be paying for their water at rates we would now regard as fantastically high. But then, look at the gas pump and remember 1977. That lack of water in places with lots of people will add to the public health crisis everywhere.

But let's not worry about this now. We are embedded in TVland, wielding weapons of mass distraction. Let them drink oil.

The circus has started, the media whipped war fever is underway.

It’s almost inescapable—wafting through the drug store, the frenzied voice of radio DJs hyping the prospect of bombing which will be described the moment it happens so don’t touch that dial, the flow of idiocy on TV that pops up when the VCR is not yet on to play something sensible (Aaron Brown of CNN describing in detail the meaning of an Oval Office photograph as if he were describing a Polaroid of the Last Supper, only to be contradicted by his White House correspondent who says it was taken at an entirely different time with a completely other purpose, and then goes on to describe “riveting details” of the bombing’s beginning, how Our Lord Bush sayeth unto them the historic eloquent holy words, “Let’s go.” Jeez, whatever happened to Let’s roll? So 2001!)

In the meantime a couple of stories from the back pages: telephones in diplomatic offices in a European Union headquarters were bugged, and the U.S. is suspected. A similar charge was made concerning the offices of European officials at the UN.

And, that tape of Bin Laden that Colin Powell made so much of may be a fake. At least, Swiss audio experts cannot confirm that it is authentic. Brendan Koerner, a contributing editor of Wired, reports this as well as contextual evidence that suggests the tape is not authentic, including unusual mentions of U.S. officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Had to put yourselves in the story, didn't you guys?

Of course, the antennae on the alien heads of resident Paranoids here at American Samizat twitched immediately when Colin Powell announced the existence of this tape at the UN, and that it had been received at the A Jazeera satellite channel before Al Jazeera actually knew it received it.

But mitigating against it being an American-made fake is that the link it purported to establish between Osama and Iraq was unconvincing. Or considering the quality of disinformation coming from the U.S. and Britain up to now, maybe not.

Quote of the day

"Wilhelm II remains a poster child for all that is wrong with hereditary government. Vainglorious, desperately insecure, hugely ambitious, quick to take offense, ill-educated, boorish, narrow in his interests, knowledge and associations, the young Kaiser was both a patsy for those in his government and in his army who were gripped by the lust for power---and dangerous in his own right, as he dreamed of the glory that could be his as lord of a world-dominating state."
Thomas Levenson, of the monarch who launched the Great War
in Einstein in Berlin


HOMELAND SECURITY ALERT!

CODE BLEU! Homeland Security will now enforce certain provisions of the Homeland Security Act and monitor all VIDEO/DVD RENTAL stores for traitors and other malcontents who attempt to view any and all movies en francais, including dubbed and subtitled versions. The following films are on our terrorism don't-watch if you know what's good for you list. Innocents are hereby warned that said films may contain coded messages, with instructions to dissidents. These are the FORBIDDEN titles :

Grand Illusion Jean Renoir
J'Accuse Abel Gance
All Quiet on the Western Front (not actually French, but from a novel by a guy with a Frenchie kind of name, made by Hollywood dupes. Don't worry, we're watching them, too.)
Stolen Kisses and The Last Metro Francois Truffaut (disrespect to the military)
anything by Jean-Luc Godard (ditto)

Video stores are "requested" to sanitize other movies of objectionable references and/or francais for example, by eliminating the singing of a certain national anthem in Casablanca.

In addition, libraries will be monitored for so-called American citizens taking out books by Emile Zola, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Moliere, Jean Cocteau, Carolyn Forche, Erich Maria Remarque, and above all, Alexis de Tocqueville.

If we catch you reading these, we won't even have to read you your rights. (You don't have them anyway.)

Just a matter of days...

Before children die because some leader wants to convince some other leader to go away, or die.

Before our lives become even more at risk, tempting terrorism and North Korea's missiles, possibly tipped with atom bombs. Before our young die because the only solution our leader can fix on is to eradicate the Evil in his eyes. Before we begin paying and paying with our sweat and time for the means to begin and then continue for who knows how many years this reckless, destructive and self-destructive venture, and all that will follow from it.

Before he lets loose the dogs of war. And dogs eat dogs. A self-fullfilling prophesy, making the world the way they think it is.

But it isn't, not necessarily. It doesn't have to be.

A new world is creating itself, within the skin of the old.

We, I, and even humanity, may not live long enough to see it walk the earth, if it ever gets that chance. Are we then witnessing the partial-birth abortion of hope?

Theron's Third Grade Quiz

Now let's review.
Iraq MAY have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea MAY NOT have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES.

Iraq MAY be able to make a nuclear bomb in a YEAR or two.
North Korea CAN make a bomb in a MONTH or two, and many more after that.

Iraq MAY provide nuclear technology to terrorists, if Iraq has it, which it PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea WILL provide nuclear bombs TO ANYBODY WHO CAN PAY FOR THEM, and it DEFINITELY HAS NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY.

Iraq has NOT threatened to use nuclear weapons.
North Korea HAS THREATENED to use nuclear weapons.

Iraq has NOT threatened to sell nuclear bombs to anybody.
North Korea HAS threatened to sell nuclear bombs to everybody.

So of course the United States is deeply and completely involved in stopping-which country?

Really?

Never mind.

Why?

by Phineas Dash

Why is he doing this? He is going to bomb Iraq, invade Iraq and now he has said he will occupy Iraq after Saddam is disposed of, until he is satisfied with a new government. He is going to do this with or without United Nations Security Council approval, with or without allies, with or without bases in Turkey or other help from governments in the region, and clearly without the approval of world opinion or the American people.

He is going to do this with few allies to share the costs, with no plans for how to pay for the costs, after telling the nation's governors already unable to pay for vital programs that they're on their own.

Instead he has made this invasion and occupation only the first step to transform the Middle East, and he justifies using this military power with a doctrine that suggests he will do it again repeatedly elsewhere in the world, to destroy governments he feels may threaten American security, and/or to replace them with democracies, as he defines the term.

Why?

As head of the Dash Brothers philosophy department, it is left to me to attempt an answer.

Every matter of importance, as Scott Peck points out, is overdetermined---it always has more than one cause. If the question is why the Bush administration is doing this, the well documented close ties of VP Cheney and other administration powers to oil and other corporations that stand to profit has to be part of the answer. The foreign policy pronounced and military strategies discussed are generally the work of exactly the same Republicans who first tasted power in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and were devised partly in their years of bitter exile during the Clinton administration. On the economic side, crippling the federal government was part of the Reagan agenda, and led in part to the lack of oversight that permitted corporate highway robbery, and the privatizing of public services that's led to more highway robbery.

But I suspect that when we come to George Bush himself, there's something else going on. His basic personality was there for all to see during the campaign: the skilled extravert, the easy manipulator, the salesman; emotionally immature, intellectually unskilled and undeveloped, with an overriding assumption of entitlement. He's the CEO as PR man. He was dangerous mostly for the people he would return to power. That, of course, was plenty dangerous.

But his "vision" was pretty much what a recent Doonesbury comic described: "no sex in the Oval Office." Then came 9-11, and I'm convinced I saw the moment of his transformation on live TV. He was standing on the rubble at the World Trade Center. He looked uncertain, uncomfortable. He started to speak to those who were still sifting through the wreckage. He didn't start well. Then he realized that some couldn't hear him. And he made a joke, something to the effect that the people who did this would soon be hearing America clearly. He got a rousing cheer. It surprised him. But that was it---that was the moment. G.W. found a purpose.

I'm only guessing, of course. I have no idea what latent beliefs this moment helped to galvanize. But this is my speculation: he became a true believer. He likes talking tough, and getting admired for being a strong leader. But he seems to believe this: that the United States is the salvation of the world, and its military might is the instrument of that salvation. I doubt that anyone around him is telling him anything different. You da man, is more like what he's hearing.

An extravert who is not a thinking person is easy prey to becoming convinced by a single simple belief, and becoming fixated on it, and finding clarity and purpose in it. Jungians point out that we’re most vulnerable at our weakest point, what they call our inferior function. It’s why thinking people get done in by sex, for example. People who don’t have a lot of thinking skills get done in by Big Ideas that make them feel smart and above all, right.

There are those who support this administration, and I would guess some who are in this administration, with a related motivation: they believe that the moment of apocalypse is at hand, that the final battle of good and evil will take place in the Middle East. The land now within the borders of Iraq is fraught with significance in the pre-history of humanity, especially for adherents of the desert religions: Christians, Muslims and Jews. Their mythologies dominate the cultures now in contention. The fact that the most contentious and extreme wings of each of these religions is currently in power in nations or regions armed to the teeth lends some credence to this apocalyptic scenario. (Of course, they may all be trumped by North Korea, now threatening nuclear holocaust in their part of the world. They are a little paranoid about being attacked by the U.S. I wonder where they got that idea.)

There are apparently some who expect this definitive showdown in the erstwhile Holy Land, and assume that in the end they'll be the ones who are saved, because they are the right and the righteous. I don't know if G.W. Bush's conservative Christian beliefs go that far. But to describe his speech last week as messianic, and to describe the Bush administration foreign policy as evangelical (as a Frontline program recently did), seems to be part of the answer.

It may be that Bush himself, along with the evangelical right, believes this to be a moral crusade, for which they are willing to spill the blood of everybody but themselves. The political right, some of whom are surely believers in a Christian mission or an apocalyptic showdown, or both, is not given to charitable behavior. Their scorn and hatred for anyone opposing them has no visible restraint; it's become part of their game. They find the moral absolutes congenial, especially those which justify immoral, unethical behavior, as well as behavior antithethical to civilized democracy. Bush can talk grandly about overcoming the evildoers. The ideological footsoldiers can handle the dirty tricks and character assassinations.

The Cheney faction may or may not believe any of the theology, but they don't have to. It works to their advantage, since they apparently believe this war will make them money, though I find it difficult to credit their judgment or even their sanity on that score.

Maybe it's still sinking in, that the vision described in Bush's speech to an ideological right wing audience went beyond the "nation-building" he once decried, to become the announcement of American empire-building.

At least this much has been clarified: UN inspection, even coupled with more limited military options, was never seriously considered as a solution because disarming Iraq was never the complete goal. Taking over Iraq is the goal that Bush and Cheney agree on. Bush may be naïve enough to believe the American Empire will only be a temporary necessity, and democracy will bloom once that damn satanic Saddam is gone to hell.

At the moment that the right wingnuts are vilifying the French for daring to question the Bush delusions, Jonathan Schell points out in Harper's that the nations of "Old Europe," which immolated themselves for the first half of the twentieth century in the World War, parts I and II, are now becoming a single peaceful political unit. We should be celebrating and studying what they have accomplished, instead of demeaning them and ourselves.

Old Europe is dealing with mixed races, clashing cultures and classes, economic challenges, and pretty much everything America has to deal with. But they're facing up to environmental challenges, not denying them. They're trying to solve social problems, not hide them. They have far less violent crime, despite the fact that in order to be allowed into the European Union, a country cannot have capital punishment. In standing up to the military and economic colossus of the world, France and Germany are acting with far greater courage than the political lackeys feeding off the ill gotten gains of rich corporations, the radio-inflamed bigmouths of America, safe in their righteousness and cynicism, far from harms way.

Zealots have been stopped short of causing absolute catastrophe in recent decades by those who asserted the primacy of political calculation. That's not happening this time, at least not so far. The political will necessary to sustain a long war, or even a long, costly and bloody empire-building occupation, does not exist. The economics of a costly war and occupation in a recession, with the government proposing to raise less money than it raises now, make no sense. There is no moral consensus that the announced ends of this war will justify the death and destruction it will cause. There is no general agreement that this war will effect those ends, or even that those ends are the war's real purpose. There is no moral consensus that this kind of war to prevent the possibility of being attacked is moral. Some people still believe that the question is whether the war is necessary, and they mostly don't believe that it is.

It may be that Americans are waking up to the fact that this is not just another reality TV show. Right now President Bush's poll rating is more than 10 points lower than President Clinton's was when he was being impeached.

Maybe the Canadian compromise will slow them down, but it's not likely. All we can hope for is that our system is resilient enough to survive until regime change can be effected in 2004, in Washington.

Antidotes to Terror

by Theron Dash


These are not easy days to live in America, as we wonder what sort of storm this is the calm before. War in the land beloved of apocalyptics, for certain. Slow strangulation of public services and further squeeze in the economy very likely. But what about terror-that is, the kind we associate with terrorist evildoers? The kind we were once told we were at war with?

Two impressions are finally beginning to penetrate the American consciousness, and they aren't pretty: that the commencement of the Iraq invasion is probably a signal for terrorist acts to begin, and we in America are woefully, inexcusably unprepared.

Last week the PBS series "Nova" ran back to back hours on dirty bombs and on biological weapons. Apart from this maddening trend of repeating every fact two or three times in a row, these were reasonable treatments on origins, the nature of the problems and relative risks such weapons pose. Even so, they aren't easy to watch. (I haven't even gotten through the whole biological weapons hour.) But it seems at least the dirty bomb threat could be greatly minimized by more attention to detection and to preparation. The technology to detect radioactive material is available. And the most severe effects of a dirty bomb would be the terror that explodes in a panicked and unprepared population.

These programs aired when America was supposed at a high state of alert, and it was quite clear that nobody really knows what that means, or what they are supposed to do about it. The information that came from the federal government is already a well-known joke. Duct tape became a punch line.

Then it snowed in Washington. Again. And again a snowstorm pretty much paralyzed the nation's capital. Let's not even mention for the moment that such freakish weather suggests the climate crisis is already having consequences. (And yes, just because they call it global warming doesn't mean the effects are sometimes going to be unusual cold.) But it didn't pass unnoticed that a city supposedly on alert for terrorist catastrophe couldn't even handle a little bad weather.

None of this exactly inspires confidence, does it? In most places, local governments are probably the best prepared for known threats and disasters, though they complain that the resources and funding promised them for terrorism preparations has never materialized. What about information delivery? We're largely dependent on local media for emergency information that is necessarily local. That's not very comforting. In many places, there is less in the way of news media that is truly local. Many if not most radio and TV stations, and even newspapers, are mostly just a transfer point for whatever their absent corporate owners supply in bulk. Few radio stations even have a news staff anymore, and local television stations don't have the numbers of reporters with the kind of training and experience that they used to. Even five years ago there were still (barely) enough seasoned newspeople working at TV stations in large to medium sized cities to rise to the occasion of emergencies. I doubt that's true now.

If we have to rely on the kind of people I see on Fox and other cable "news" stations, we're better off on our own. All they will transmit is panic, because all they transmit now is anger, silliness, idiocy and fear.

Of course a terrorist attack on the electronic infrastructure would make that moot anyway.

As for our federal leaders...You'd think that by now, the President or somebody would have gone on TV and said: Here are the basic possibilities for terrorist attacks. Here's what we are doing to keep it from happening. But if it occurs, here's what might happen, and here's what you should do. Here's who will be in charge. Here's what you and your family, your neighbors, your town, your county, can do to prepare.

For example, this is what a dirty bomb is and what it does (a small explosion can set off radiation that can eventually cause cancers.) We can detect radiation, and we've deployed this many thousands of detection units. We aren't going to say where they are, but we can tell you that some will be concentrated all the time at high risk places, and others will move around general public places.

This is the kind of thing you would expect leaders to do. It's what President Kennedy would have done, or President Eisenhower. Or President Ford or President Carter. In fact I expect that it's what every single president in my lifetime would have done, with the exception of presidents named Bush. (Reagan would have wanted to, but I'm not sure his people would have let him, since an awful lot of them are running the government now.)

But it hasn't been done, and the American people have not demanded, have not even asked, that it be done. Is it just that we don't want to think about it? Do we trust our Washington leaders so much, or so little? Do we have such absolute confidence in them, or maybe we can't face our suspicions that nobody there has their eye on the ball?

Do they in Washington have so little confidence in ordinary people? Maybe they didn't notice who took care of things on 9/11/01.

Some are starting to call this government to account for its lack of preparation. But what if it is intentional? What if America remains vulnerable to another terrorist attack, not just by default but by design?

I know this sounds paranoid. Pretty soon I'll be having delusions that our leaders are committing this nation to a long costly holy war while cutting taxes on the very wealthy and bankrupting the public sector simultaneously. But look at what happened after 9-11. Look at how easily this administration took absolute power, trashed civil liberties and used that crisis to pursue a radical foreign policy it essentially designed half a decade or more ago.

They were able to do this because people were shocked and they were scared. If in the many months since then, Americans had been actively involved in preparing to handle emergencies caused by terrorist acts (as opposed to either turning in suspicious looking foreigners or forgetting the whole thing and going shopping), then the level of fear would have diminished. Because we wouldn't feel so vulnerable to attack and helpless if it happens.

But as Michael Moore and others have pointed out, fear sells. News media use fear to capture viewers, ratings, advertising. Politicians use fear to raise money, motivate votes and now, perhaps, to enact an agenda for their own ends.

And fear will be used again, I fear. To keep that proven weapon in the arsenal could even be why so little has been done to prepare the country for terrorist threats, other than to color code them.

If the Iraq invasion does signal a successful act of terror, that fear will come in handy to solidify support for the war that is losing credibility by the minute, all over the world.

But maybe at least we can be prepared for that possibility-not just of terrorism, but of the use of terrorism for political ends. And if we just imagine that such manipulation might be coming---though of course it's really too paranoid to contemplate as a real possibility---we might know it when we see it. And we won't get fooled again.

There are lots of reasons why terrorist acts are terrifying. But one way to lessen their terror somewhat is to domesticate them by looking at prevention and response as problems of organization, participation and action. Many of us live in parts of America that are prone to one natural disaster or another: to earthquakes or tornadoes, floods or fires. They are all scary. Some of them can happen without warning, and most of them can be as devastating as 9/11 in terms of lives lost, buildings destroyed, and trauma to families as well as the civic infrastructure.

But all we can do is prepare as best we can, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, civic entities. And we do so with a sense of balance. We know that thousands might die in an earthquake. But we know that millions do die in car accidents, so we have to think about safety and sobriety. We know that hundreds of millions do die every year of preventable cancers, and many hundreds of millions around the world die of easily preventable diseases. We can't become obsessed with any one problem or prospect, and we can't become so obsessed with preventing or preparing for disasters that we no longer live; nor can we ignore them. Then we are easy prey for fear.

If we thought the same way about terrorism-especially if we would work together to address the problems that might arise-terrorism might lose enough of its terror to be dealt with as you'd expect a generally wealthy, healthy and educated citizenry of human beings should approach its challenges.

All War All the Time

by Theron Dash

Remember when...? Watching the purple city through infrared night cameras, as the scuds fell, the scud-busters rose and supposedly destroyed them? (It turns out they didn't but it was a good show anyway.)

And the interview in a bunker in Israel or somewhere, when word comes that a scud attack is imminent, and both female interviewer and male interviewee don gas masks, and when nothing much happens and there's only dead air, they continue the interview without taking off the masks? And sound just as cheesy as before, except slightly muffled?

Yeah, well you can bet they remember every thrilling moment at CNN. It was the height of their glory, when Sadamm and George Bush the First both watched them to see what the hell was going on. So did everybody else. The Gulf War made CNN into the global news network.

So it's little wonder that the prospect of Gulf War II has them salivating. CNN has fallen on hard times. They managed to outgun a couple of competitors though they felt some heat during the Get Clinton hysteria, but Fox News comes equipped with Murdoch long range missiles and satellites and stuff. Suddenly Fox is riding high and CNN decides to compete by getting rid of its actual reporters and filling the air with airheads like Rudi Bactiar, who smile winsomely at all the science news they don't understand, and emote appropriately for the sad stories, by at least the third time they report them. Never has a universally watched network become unwatchable so quickly. And especially unlistenable--those awful perky singsongs. But then, they all are now.

Strident Fox, the network of ugly white guys getting rich fawning over already rich stupid white men, with a few token easily outraged girl Fridays, except they aren't smart enough to be Fridays, they're more like Tuesdays. (Of course they have a few good folks. They all have a few good folks.) But they've got their niche---shameless radio call-in ranting with smirking faces! Manufactured conflict! What could be better?

Only one answer: a war. Boom, boom, cry, cry, hooray hooray.
So big surprise that CNN has been camped on an aircraft carrier for the last three months, panting for a war it can cover with minicams: the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, now the Gulf War II logo and the flag is still there! And live remotes with the authentic three second delay, even if the reporter stud or babe is in a hotel room. I love how TV news makes up "live" "remotes," like when the anchor says, let's go live to Jack Ace, live in our newsroom for a live update. And you see Jack, who is actually about fifty feet away, with his jacket off, looking all earnest and sweaty. Potent stuff.

And even less of a surprise that CNN (along with NBC and Fox) refused to run anti-war ads---slickly made, with celebs and legitimate product spokespersons like major clergy, and with cash in hand to pay the same price for the time as Budwiser or the Republican National Committee would. CNN made up a policy on the spot: "we do not accept international advocacy ads on regions in conflict." Region? Conflict? Either that leaves out exactly no region I know of (not even northwest Antarctica) or CNN is breaking the story---It's war! It's war! CNN is going to war!

Oh the nostalgia, oh the ambition, to recapture lost glory and save the collapsing Time-Warner-AOL empire! Yes, it's the empire strikes back, in more ways than one!

Tune in, America, it's all war, all the time! Peace is way too boring, not even our perky anchors can distract you from the foaming at the mouth over at Fox. And the beauty of it is, CNN has more footage of Gulf War I than anybody else. Show it again, Sam! Who'll know the difference! Un-mothball the Scud Stud! Bring back the good old days!

Milky Way Week in Review

With the Dash Brothers

PHINEAS
Welcome to Milky Way Week in Review. The name refers to the galactic rather than the gastronomic level of existence.

MORGAN
Maybe to emphasize that the world doesn't begin and end in Washington.

THERON
Well, it might end in Washington.

PHINEAS
Point taken. Let's move on. I'm your host, Phineas Dash, and around the table are distinguished experts on everything, which of course doesn't distinguish them from anybody else---my brothers, Theron, Phineas and Christopher. Gabriel is off consulting with his muse.

CHRISTOPHER
He's asleep.

PHINEAS
That's what I said.
So let's start with a roundup of the good news. Just when we thought the whole country was asleep---

MORGAN
We get maybe half a million protestors in Washington, and another 150,000 or more in San Francisco, plus significant gatherings in a number of other cities in the U.S. and around the world. It turns out that three-quarters of the American people are against attacking Iraq and want to let the inspections option play out.

CHRISTOPHER
Then the French government made a strong statement that they'd veto a UN authorization for an attack in the Security Council. Most of the other members are against it as well. There was a trans-Atlantic huff over the Secretary of Defense referring to the French and Germans as "old Europe," sort of too over the hill to fight, I guess. That wasn't nearly as provocative as the guy the defense department sent to represent them on the PBS News Hour, who said flatly that the French and Germans are irrelevant, that they have no power in the world. Only the Brits count.
And though the British people feel about this impending war about as the American public does, their government is sticking with the Bushies.

THERON
Did you see Tony Blair on C-Span the other day? Appearing at parliament in this weird pale green shirt and patterned tie of the same color? He looked like he was auditioning to play Dr. Who.

PHINEAS
And just when you thought the American press had definitively rolled over, or bent over, we get a firebrand going after the White House.

CHRISTOPHER
Yes, and who should this brash, impudent and insolent purveyor of non-minced words be but eighty-two year old Helen Thomas, who has covered more presidents than anybody else---and she really loathes this one.
Helen had been the definition of the nondescript scribe---a wire service reporter---but she's become a columnist, and she's like a Phoenix rising from the ashes and being let out of her cage. "I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter," she said recently. "Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'

The neat thing is that with her seniority she still starts the White House press conference questioning. We've got a taste of what that's been like recently, direct from the official transcripts. Who wants to do Helen?

THERON
I'll be Ari Fleischer.

CHRISTOPHER
The White House Press Secretary. Okay, here it is:

MR. FLEISCHER: Good afternoon and happy New Year to everybody. The President began his day with an intelligence briefing, followed by an FBI briefing. Then he had a series of policy briefings. And this afternoon, the President will look forward to a Cabinet meeting where the President will discuss with members of his Cabinet his agenda for the year. The President is going to focus on economic growth, making America a more compassionate country, and providing for the security of our nation abroad and on the homefront.
And with that, I'm more than happy to take your questions. Helen.

Q At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.

MR. FLEISCHER: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.

Q My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends --

Q They're not attacking you.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- from a country --

Q Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then.

Q Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.

Q Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost.

Q And he thinks they are a threat to us?

MR. FLEISCHER: There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.

Q The Iraqi people?

MR. FLEISCHER: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi --

Q So they will be vulnerable?

MR. FLEISCHER: Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has not dispute with the people of Iraq. That's why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq --

Q That's a decision for them to make, isn't it? It's their country.

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don't think that has been what history has shown.

Q I think many countries don't have -- people don't have the decision -- including us.



PHINEAS
Now that's entertainment! So what's the consequence of all this going to be?

THERON
On the war? Probably none. The troops are there, the weather's right, the moon will be dark, CNN has taken up residence on aircraft carriers, and Bush's poll numbers are starting to tank. So sooner rather than later. The ides of March is still a safe bet.

MORGAN
I agree. What has changed is the prospects for Bush in Congress, and especially the '04 election. Once again, arrogance is going to be the Republican downfall. They're pushing a radical right agenda on every conceivable front, and though they're likely to do a lot of collateral damage, they're also getting the opposition's full attention.

Democratic candidates are already campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire. Nobody is sounding like a Bush clone anymore. The Bush agenda is going to get critiqued from several points of view-the primary debate is probably the healthiest thing about this process.

CHRIS
I heard bits of some of the Iowa speeches. Strong words, strong proposals, clear language for the most part. And ideas. Changes of direction. Kerry invokes the Kennedys---it's interesting how he's challenging his own generation to get involved again. That could be a potent argument---the baby boomers are still a huge generation, and a relatively high proportion of the older half are known voters.

THERON
Was it Kerry or somebody else who proposed a kind of senior Peace Corps? Man, every American I know whose been in another country recently has had a real hard time. They're getting abused. It's more than just tourist inconvenience. There's real prejudice. It's like a lot of old anger is just letting loose, thanks to the Bushies. And I'm not talking about the Middle East. I mean Australia. I mean Switzerland.

MORGAN
I think maybe I'd still volunteer to help the cafes of Paris reclaim their former glory. Or Turino even.

THERON
You'd go that far? What a patriot!

PHINEAS
So-anything else happening in the Milky Way?

THERON
Jerry Springer may run for the U.S. Senate. I wish that was a joke.

CHRIS
What's going on with TV documentaries? Why do they repeat the same point over and over? I thought attention span was a problem. I feel like I'm being bludgeoned.

MORGAN
You're talking about that "Journey of Man" thing on PBS the other night.

CHRIS
The latest example, yes. Lots of long lingering shots of blond, boyishly handsome Dr. Spencer Wells, and every single point repeated at least three times in succession, and frequent recaps of the repetitions. How dumbed down can you get? But the story---if you can ever get to it---is absolutely fascinating: the attempt to trace early human migration from Africa throughout the world by following genetic markers. All the wonder of it, utterly smashed by the mind-numbing prattle, repeated and repeated and repeated. For two endless hours!

THERON
Not enough time for any counter-evidence, I noticed. Or any contrary opinions on the migrations. Seems that guy solved the whole thing all by himself. And his personal cameraperson.

MORGAN
It's the same effect as commercials, isn't it? There are so many ad messages now, a half dozen of them one after the other, that you completely lose the thread of the main program. By the time it comes back on, who cares?

CHRIS
Kiss dramatic tension goodbye.

PHINEAS
Speaking of which, I'll bet you can't wait till next week's edition of the Milky Way Review.

THERON
I can.

PHINEAS
Be kind to each other, will you? And goodbye out there.

Last Days in the Kennels for The Dogs of War

by Theron Dash

Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war.
Julius Caesar III, 1
- William Shakespeare


In yet another example of accidental intelligence, the Bushies managed to make the war they haven't launched yet into boring old news. The American attention span having already been exhausted by the heavy fever in the fall, it's as if it all happened already and we're on to the next thing. But it hasn't happened; this is the last lull before what could be the perfect storm. And it's coming.

Come the Ides of March, the dogs of war will be frothing at the mouth all over the Gulf region and the Middle East, and who knows where else. There are too many weapons, too much anger and ambition, and warfare feeds on itself, the frenzy trumps judgment and overrides other considerations. When the biggest bully on the planet is talking the talk and bombing the bombs, everybody gets permission to cry havoc---which in Shakespeare's time meant to fight until you've destroyed everyone and everything.

There will be valiant headlines, and there will be excitedly portentous news voices and endless speedfreak telexpert chatter, and once it's over, if it ever is, we'll find out what really happened in a few months or a decade or pretty much never.

At first we'll get the pretty stuff---the war is hell if hell is a good slasher movie stuff---but some collateral damage will seep in. There's a story today about American military pilots in Afghanistan being pressured to take amphetamines, making them a bit trigger happy when they mistook Canadians for al Qaeda, or maybe for zombies from the stratosphere. An Air Force spokesperson referred to the "Go pills" as a "fatigue management tool." That speed makes folks meaner than a junkyard dog, as the saying goes, is pretty much common knowledge, and doubtless hasn't escaped the notice of the dogs of war.

We're already hearing the fears of veterans of the first Bushie Gulf War that this time, like that time, all the nice smart bombs acting just like video games on TV will distract from the massive equipment failures and shoddiness, like gas masks that don't work, that harmed the unknown soldiers of that desert storm. Then there's the Gulf War Syndrome, until recently classified as a mental illness suffered by low class recruits and news directors during sweeps periods. Now it turns out that all those people really did get awfully sick, probably from chemical exposure. Whether all the energy and money expended on denying the problem existed hampered efforts to solve it for the next batch of cannon & chemical fodder is something we'll just have to wait and see, if we ever find out at all.

Soldiers have been killed, maimed and sickened in all modern wars because of shoddiness by suppliers and by the screwups of the military machine, the ambitions of politicians and generals and other careerists. Maybe you won't read that in the latest gauzy nostalgia about the Greatest Generation, but look at some closer to contemporary and closer to the ground accounts of World War II and it's there in abundance. Soldiers come home cynical not only because of all the carnage they've witnessed. There are veterans who never saw combat at all whose memories are bitter, and who also don't like to remember or talk about it.

One of AmericanSamizat's international correspondents sent along a report from the Guardian that also quotes a Newsweek story, concerning America's 82nd Airborne division in Afghanistan. After coming under heavy unanticipated fire and suffering losses probably because some of their Afghan allies betrayed them, the 82nd went on a scorched earth rampage through villages. One military observer bypassed Vietnam to go back to the Mexican war for a comparable wave of destruction. As far as I know, not much has been made of this on U.S. media. But then, it's more fun to take pictures on an aircraft carrier.

This war is particularly inflammatory because the bar has been set so low on why it's going to be fought. The official reasons, that is. Now anybody who thinks somebody else is evil, or is afraid somebody else will get bigger and better weapons, or is preparing weapons that might someday threaten them, even if they are preparing them with such intense secrecy that foreigners trained to detect them can't find much of a trace so far, well--that's good enough to start a war that will costs millions of dollars and many lives, though a lot of those will belong to people who won't be counted in death any better than they counted in life.

But of course everybody in the world knows the real reason, and so twenty-first century enlightened America endorses one of the chief motives for war of the 10 thousand years of so-called civilization: greed. Great to see we've come so far.

Once it gets going, war is a disease epidemic. People who think of themselves as normal do incredibly awful things for what seems like rational reasons. They put themselves, or are put into situations where they will kill anyone and destroy anything that seems to threaten their lives or the lives of their buddies, and pretty soon anything that threatens their military careers or their honorable discharge. Meanwhile, people who find themselves surrounded by war will fight back, and some will attack anybody they have a grudge against-or have had a grudge against in the last five thousand years---regardless. Permission has been granted by the dogs of war, and the international arms industry---including the good old USA's---have supplied them with the teeth and the jaws and the claws.

Why is it that every generation has to learn all this for themselves?

The Big Dogs Won't Hunt

Some things on the Homefront are apt to be predictable---the increase in latitude for government intrusions and the increase in intolerance for dissent, the viciousness with which dissenters are attacked and peace advocates are insulted for being wusses or (worse) liberal-humanists---but other aspects could be different. Modern industrialized war used to stimulate the domestic economy, but it's not clear that will happen this time, even if the fighting spreads and is prolonged. Postmodern war might have the same effect as other prosperous postmodern economic engines: it might make an obscene amount of money for very few, and subtract from most everybody else.

Catching bits and pieces of end of the year economic news over the holiday left a nagging impression that the world economy is in much more precarious condition than the daily surprise ups and downs news of the media would indicate (all those chirpy anchors who are surprised by everything, but in a good chirpy way).

In the U.S., governor after governor began the year talking about budget shortfalls. How the states got into so much debt after half a decade of boom is amazing, especially since the Bushies weren't in charge of all of them. State and local government is a major economic force in many places, particularly the most vulnerable. And it is there---in programs for the poor, sick, undereducated, elderly and rural---that corporate big city fat cat lobbyist-conscious pols are going to go for their cuts. In terms of the economy the effectiveness of these cuts will all be cosmetic and psychological, if you believe that big business has anything sophisticated enough to be called a psyche. But in terms of people's lives, the local economies and the economy in general, the effects will be 100% bad.

We're also beginning to see just how weakened many megacorporations were by the stock market crashes (that everybody who plays Lotto knew were coming but apparently investors have their own version of war fever) and their stupid investments and greedy takeovers. With not so much available cash, with debts for stock and ownership in worthless companies accompanied by their own debt, they are becoming increasingly demanding. They're demanding you had over your money to them. Just don't ask for much in return. In fact, in certain industries, you'd better not ask for anything.

The computer industry leads the way in the consumer field. They may be tapdancing now, but the customer still isn't getting much of a break. They've "upgradeable" a joke. Buy a new machine every few months or forget it. And software? Hey-Microsoft has a profit margin of 85% on Windows and 78% for Office. That's the cost of business.

But even Microsoft can't hold a candle to the insurance industry. They demand 100% profit, minus costs for envelopes and stamps (all deductible, though). If you dare to make a claim, they are highly insulted. They up your premium or they inform you that you no longer will enjoy the privilege of sending them your money and getting nothing in return. You'll have to burn it in your own fireplace.

Too bad it isn't that easy. Make a claim on your car insurance, or even if somebody else makes a claims on theirs for damage in accident that was their fault but you were involved---it don't matter, your car insurance premium goes up. But if you want to drive a car, you are required to carry insurance.

Homeowners in California and I assume elsewhere find that if they make an ordinary claim they risk losing their home insurance, and thanks to computer databases, they are likely to be refused by every other insurance carrier in the galaxy. (Maybe they'll be taken on as a "high risk," and honored with tripled premiums or worse). If nobody will insure their house, they can't even sell it. This is pretty serious. For the vast majority of Americans with any equity, it's almost all in their homes. It's their material wealth, their economic stability. Unless of course they lose their jobs for a long time, then it won't matter.

At least one of these insurance companies (State Farm) says it can't insure homes in California because it loses money here. Turns out that State Farm lost a bundle on the stock market and on acquisitions. Somebody has to pay for those mistakes, and it ain't going to be the folks who made them. Call it the fortunes of war.

Gored

Al Gore has decided not to be a candidate for president in 2004 and who can blame him. The psychotic radical right media, which apparently owns cable news, talk radio and so-called conservative think tanks as well as the religious right, has relentlessly ridiculed him, making him their heir to Bill Clinton. Apparently Gore has few friends in the so-called establishment press, so the radical right drumbeat echoes through other coverage.

If the polls are an indication of anything but the echoes of news coverage, voters have taken their anger and shame over the 2000 elections out on Gore, the victim of that shameful absurdity, rather than Bush, who as president became the country's designated father figure, quickly enabled by fear and war fever.

Never mind that Gore is the only major Democrat to oppose war in Iraq in no uncertain terms; that he has outed the psychotic radical right media, come out boldly for a single-payer national health care plan, and has strongly opposed Bush's suicidal economic and environmental policies.

The people who thought and still think that there is no essential difference between a President Gore and a President G.W. Bush are fools. Even those in the immediate post-9/11 days were reverently whispering that maybe Bush was meant to be, are seriously deficient in judgment. The idea that Gore wouldn't have handled himself well, or guided the country to a much more effective response to terrorism with much less threat to domestic rights, is dumb and insulting to Gore. Maybe he doesn't have the fratcharm aplomb of Bush, and the nation is often more comfortable with the dumb regular guy than somebody who might know something, but we would be so much better off right now with President Gore that our situation amounts to yet another national tragedy.

Gore didn't run a good campaign, he squandered his political capital and he's paying the price. But it turns out that the thrust of his campaign, which struck people as odd in such flush times, was just ahead of its time. He talked about fighting for working and middle class Americans because he knew that even in the Clinton years they were the ones left out and left behind, along with the working poor and the unable to work poor. The Clinton prosperity had to be extended, and Act II---the Gore presidency---would use the hard-won benefits of budget surplus to make up those social deficits, to strengthen Social Security, to adjust welfare reforms now that many of its premises and provisions have proven to be delusional, and by now to lead the charge for national health care, among other needful things.

People didn't understand this all that well in 2000, and Gore didn't do a great job of explaining it---and probably the press did its usual poor job of communicating what he did say. Only the president---and only occasionally---gets to have what he says simply reported, and then commented on. What everybody else says (and what the president says most of the time) is packaged by news show biz interpretations, and most of the substance is left out.

But the Bushies understood it, so the first thing they did was vaporize the surplus with tax cuts for the already deliriously and shamefully wealthy, and more military spending. So now it seems they can't do anything but privatize the public sector, so people can pay even more in fees than in taxes in order to benefit lobbyists, advertisers, accountants and lawyers specializing in takeovers and corporate consolidation, just to have expensive and bad health care, and expensive and bad schools and so on. And they can turn their social security checks into lotto cards playing the stock market.

So for 2004, candidates can do worse than resurrect some of Gore's 2000 phrases and speeches, because it's becoming obvious who is getting gored by the current administration.

You Never Know: A Response

by Phineas Dash

My brother Theron vented spleen on the outcome of the midterm elections, a family custom. (See below: 11/6/2002) I offer not a rejoinder exactly, because mostly I agree with his point of view, but a response of a more philosophical tenor.

While attempting to minimize their official gloating in the intervening time since the election, the Bushies have nevertheless begun to spend the spin capital of their alleged victory of ideas, as well as use the perception of elected power to quietly push their agenda. This is just as dangerous as Theron said, insidiously so since a lot of it is relatively subtle. Still, San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll caught on to the implications of a Bushie proposal to take control of the dissemination of federal government information from the Government Printing Office and give it to the politically controlled cabinet agencies: even technical information will be subject to censorship and spin. It's likely the public never would have seen the recent report on global warming that "the bureaucracy" produced, because it contradicts the Bush line.

Several columnists and newspapers have also caught the biggest move the Bushies are making, without official accountability to anyone: by administrative fiat, they are instantly destroying the jobs of more than three quarters of a million federal civil service workers, a bold and insidious slaughter in their ongoing class war. In the guise of privatizing for efficiency, they will further cripple the federal government---good for corporations that don't like being regulated---and ensure that these functions (for they aren't getting rid of the tasks, just the people doing them) will be performed less efficiently by lower paid workers, without the benefits and status and above all, job security of the civil service, since that would conflict with the Bushies' political agendas. It's what we're going to get more of: politicizing the government, centralizing the control, class warfare.

The Homeland Security act is rife with special interest provisions benefiting corporations and limiting the public's ability to get information about the government (by negating Freedom of Information Act rights) while it increases government's ability to get, organize and store information about the public. This is "less government"? This is Big Brother.

Last year a Hollywood film ("The Majestic") was able to rewrite the history of the 1950s so that a falsely accused screenwriter could tell off the House UnAmerican Activities committee and the public automatically saw that the injustices of the McCarthy/Hollywood Blacklist were themselves un-American violations of liberty. Don't you think that actual Hollywood screenwriters tried to make that speech at the time? It got them jail time for contempt, and a vast chilly silence from the public. Well, it's happening again--there are already blacklists relating to supposed terrorists making the rounds, denying people their rights, getting them fired or not hired, getting them tossed off airplanes, etc. The lists are full of mistakes but since nobody knows who really compiled them, there's nobody to talk to about correcting them--same as in the fifties. The difference is that everything is computerized and the lists are all over the place. And this is just the beginning...

It's supposed to be for the war on terrorism but just how sincere that is could be seen on Bill Moyers' "Now" (in a report by San Francisco's KQED)that blew the whistle on John Ashcroft for contorting the law in contradiction to his own Justice Department so he could meet the demands of the National Rifle Association. While proposing that virtually all personal information of all citizens be open to scrutiny by Homeland Security, he steadfastly denies the FBI access to current federal records on gun purchases. To fight the war on terrorism, apparently the FBI needs to know what books you take out of the library, but not who is illegally buying hundreds of assault weapons at gun shows.

So I don't dissent from Theron on the Bushie Republicans and their radical fundamentalist reactionary agenda. However I would like to offer some rays of hope on the Democrats.

The day after the election, Richard Gephardt fell on his sword and resigned as the House Democratic leader. It's the best thing that could have happened, next to Tom Daschle also resigning as Senate leader. These guys aren't dishonorable men, but their leadership has led down a dishonorable path. Gephardt's move signals that the Democrats have recognized their strategy's failure.

The House Democrats then elected Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Both before and after her election, she said that Democrats have to state their positions more clearly, especially their differences with the Republicans. When news surfaced that Hilary Rodham Clinton was likely to be asked to join the Senate leadership, she said pretty much the same thing. This is as close as politicians will get to saying that the era of big cowardice is over.

We'll see. But if there is any immediate hope in the Democratic party, it's Nancy Pelosi. Born in Baltimore and representing a San Francisco district, she can sound uncannily like Bobby Kennedy in her inflections as well as her words. She's already gotten under the skin of Republican commentators, which is a very good sign. She was tagged as a "latte liberal," which consolidates insults to liberals, Californians and baby boomers, via the fashionable slander by the likes of David Brooks. Maybe it insults Italians as well.

Responding to her election, right-thinking columnist George Wills was aghast at the Democrats' stubbornly embracing their core values which, according to him, were repudiated at the polls by right-thinking Americans. Wills seems to feel that standing up for the non-super-rich,for social justice, against reactionary fundamentalist economics, and against indiscriminate killing of helpless people to enrich oil men and tighten their control of our erstwhile liberties, is all in rather bad taste.

Democrats have apparently chosen instead to see the lesson of the election as caused not by incomplete capitulation but by too much of nothing. They're probably correct--they lost a lot of close elections, and the war fever/patriotism p.r. campaign that substituted for a political campaign may have made the difference. In any case, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Be who you are.

The Democrats have to state clearly and eloquently what's wrong with the Bushie foreign policy and economic fundamentalism in terms of harm to the country as a whole, and to the majority of its citizens. They must state clearly and eloquently how their policies express their core values: the way things ought to be.

The Democrats must do all this while focusing on the future. Yes, the future looks about as grim as Theron indicated, even taking into account election night depression. But it's not set in stone. The other night on "Now"---after a discussion describing a present that sounded a lot like "the future" that our brother Morgan depicted in a novel he wrote in the early 1980s---Bill Moyers asked Harper's editor Lewis Lapham whether he was optimistic about the future. "Sure," Lapham said, "because you never know. You never know."

The future is that which has not happened yet, therefore it is the open sea of possibility. There are two principal attitudes it is possible to take about the future: fear or hope.

The Republican reactionary agenda is about the past. It is about fear. Fear is a great motivator, but it isn't very smart. Hope requires consciousness, if is anything more than denial masked in cheerfulness. Years ago Arthur Schlesinger called liberalism the politics of hope.

Yes, hope requires a vision, and hope for our future requires a new and complex vision. But hope is also political, and of the moment.

"People don't eat in the long term," said Harry Hopkins, FDR's most valuable aide. "They eat every day." Hope is first of all about the future as a succession of present moments. Without working towards decency in the present, hope had no meaning in the political world. And hope is all about meaning, or it doesn't exist, it doesn't motivate, it doesn't produce the pause to evaluate, to overcome fear.

A better today fosters a better tomorrow, although a better tomorrow requires more: it requires dreams and hard work, persistence and imagination. It requires dedication to a larger agenda, while respecting the needs of participants in the present.

Hope is directed to the future, but it animates the present. I don't call myself an optimist or a pessimist. The mind may see the enormity of our present self-destructiveness, and disengage. The heart might despair, or it might flutter anyway in the joy of living that is pretty stubborn as a survival tool. But pessimism of the mind and optimism of the heart meet in the soul. The soul is the essence of being human. The only human attitude to take to the future is hope. So I am hopeful.

Hope and fear mix in the soul, and we do the best we can. But hope is a low persistent flame that flares up now and then, like a mother's smile. Fear can too easily become a roaring fire that consumes everything. We must bring hope back into the public and the political worlds of discourse and decision, and fan those flames.

A society that thrives on fear forgets the future. Fear burns up the present. The Democrats must once again become the party of the future. "The New Frontier," JFK said in accepting the party nomination in the summer of 1960, " is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges." It is that philosophy, not necessarily that program, that Democrats must revive.

The American Party System Made Easy: Theron's Election Night Report
by Theron Dash


The voters---all 30% or so of them---have spoken, and now we will get the gloating. Republicans are very good at it. Their money and their ideas---which amount to the same thing---have won the day, with considerable help from Democrats, the corporate media, and the people who will live to regret the consequences of this election, even if they never quite connect those dots. They voted patriotism but what they will very likely get is oppression, war and Depression. They are already getting arrogance.

The Republican party is the party of arrogance. It is the party of mean-spirited arrogance with a happy face. No Democrat can whine as loud or become vicious past the point of psychosis like Republicans, though by now apparently nobody remembers how these folks eventually scared them during the Clinton years. Just as they don't remember the results of Republican arrogance when in power, like all the scary craziness Reagan and Nixon instituted.

Now the Republicans have been given a huge shot of perceived power, so you can expect very scary things for the foreseeable future. Like war, body bags and dead babies, plus more tax cuts for the wealthy while the rest of the country goes under. There's nothing and nobody to stop them now. They've gotten away with the incredible arrogance of the corporate foreign policy establishment represented in this administration. There's nothing to hold them back now. But their arrogance won't stop with mere war. They will pursue a domestic agenda that will materially impoverish what remains of the middle class, and they will ignore environmental crises as long as the snow machines at Aspen are unaffected.

With this perceived power freshly minted, they are already reinforcing the expression of their arrogance as the only acceptable language of political discourse. We will hear nothing but the wonderful things tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization will bring, as if there had never been a federal budget deficit caused by these policies of Republican Reagan, and as if the economy weren't now crashing and consumer confidence with it. Hey, even Newt Gingrich was rehabilitated for TV in time for the late election night news.

We will hear how paying taxes is a horrible burden, but going broke paying for health care, retirement and all the formerly public utilities and services privatized by the likes of Enron, while people work harder for less or else can't find work at all-well, that's good, that's free enterprise. That's arrogance.

And in this election, by and large the Democratic party turns out to be the party of cowardice. Most of its Senate candidates backed the Bush war and the Bush tax giveaway to the arrogant wealthy. Some apparently did so because they thought they had to, in order to win. So instead of standing up for principle and risking the consequences, they were cowards and still lost. The American people were cheated out of the debate they deserved and very probably wanted.

The party of arrogance versus the party of cowardice is not much of a choice. The Green Party in America is the party of self-righteousness and denial, and is no choice either.

There are a dwindling number, but still some decent members of Congress and the Senate, and reasonably good governors, but no national leaders so far to counter Republican arrogance and Democratic cowardice. There are two possibilities---other than dumb luck or divine intervention---for the near future. The first is the beginning of renewal through political turmoil, outside the electoral system, putting pressure on the parties. That unfortunately is most likely to occur because of horrendous war or economic Depression, or both simultaneously (and thanks to technology, it is more than just possible to have both at the same time.)

The second is to continue present trends, which on an historical timeline will look like the fitful, slow decline of America. This was probably just as invisible to most people in other declining civilizations as it is to most people in ours.

American democracy, once the envy of the world, is failing. It's somewhere between a plutocracy and a kakistocracy. The big money, the low turnout, and now the outcome of this election. The policies of the Bush administration don't match up very well with the real world of the twenty-first century. American ingenuity and efficiency, once the envy of the world, is stuck in obsolete ideologies.

When Senator Paul Wellstone died, many media reports called him a "60's liberal." This is the extent of how successful Republican ideology has been in taking over the terms of the debate. Wellstone's critique was based on principles he derived in part from Robert Kennedy for instance (and those who called themselves liberals in the 60s didn't consider RFK to be one of them), but which was clearly responsive and relevant to contemporary contexts, especially in terms of corporate power. Wellstone was indeed one of the last officials in Washington who reinvigorated this tradition and was energized and guided by those principles and passions. But that he could be so easily stereotyped as quaintly out of step, when in truth it is the Republican ideology that is in a state of rigor mortis and bears no relation to reality, characterizes the current perversity of public discourse.


America is not only behind the times, it is behind most of Europe in dealing with civic, social and environmental realities. If America didn't have the world's largest nuclear arsenal and most advanced weaponry, other nations wouldn't be wasting so much time listening to what our leaders say.

Arrogance, cowardice, viciousness and oppression, the suppression of criticism and creativity through federal, corporate and self-censorship, and as a thoroughly predictable byproduct of greed, envy and lies. Did I mention arrogance and cowardice? That's what's we have, and much more is coming. As well as lots and lots of noise.

Remember these words. You might not see or hear them again.