Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo

War Without Exits

2009-01-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Yet even as they celebrate freedom, Americans exempt the object of their veneration from critical examination. In our public discourse, freedom is not so much a word or even a value as an incantation, its very mention enough to stifle doubt and terminate all debate.

...

[Reinhold Niebuhr] entertained few illusions about the nature of man, the possibilities of politics or the pliability of history. Global economic crisis, total war, genocide, totalitarianism, and nuclear arsenals capable of destroying civilization itself -- he viewed all of these with an unblinking eye that allowed no room for hypocrisy, hokum or self-deception. Realism and humility formed the core of his worldview, each infused with a deeply felt Christian sensibility.

Realism in this sense implies an obligation to see the world as it actually is, not as we might like it to be. The enemy of realism is hubris, which in Niebuhr's day, and in our own, finds expression in an outsized confidence in the efficacy of American power as an instrument to reshape the global order.

Humility imposes an obligation of a different sort. It summons Americans to see themselves without blinders. The enemy of humility is sanctimony, which gives rise to the convictions that American values and beliefs are universal and that the nation itself serves providentially assigned purposes. This conviction finds expression in a determination to remake the world in what we imagine to be America's image.

In our own day, realism and humility have proven in short supply. What Niebuhr wrote after World War II proved truer still in the aftermath of the Cold War: Good fortune and a position of apparent preeminence placed the United States "under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation". Americans have given themselves over to those temptations. Hubris and sanctimony have become the paramount expressions of American statecraft.

Page 7, The Limits of Power by Andrew J. Bacevich

2008-04-17T16:00:00.001-07:00

"I feel lifeless - more dead than alive."

- Depression Quiz on ask.com

From Karl Clark to Kyoto

2007-11-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

It holds more oil than Iraq's proven reserves of 112 billion barrels. It even holds more oil than Saudi Arabia's 250 billion barrels. In fact, Alberta's oil sands deposit contains between 1.75 and 2.5 trillion barrels of oil -- approximately 200 billion barrels of which are recoverable with current technology. That is enough oil to supply all of Canad's petroleum needs for the next 475 years. In fact that is enough proven reserves to supply all of North America's petroleum needs for the next forty-seven years -- without using a single drop of oil from another source. The volume of recoverable oil in the sands is so large that when technological advances prompted the Alberta Energy Utilities Board to include the oil sands as part of Canada's "proven reserves" in 2002, OPEC's share of world petroleum reserves dropped dramatically from 79 to 68 per cent.

Developing Alberta's Oil Sands by Paul Chastko

September 11, 2001

2007-11-19T20:09:00.000-08:00

In the picture on ABC News, the North Tower largely blocked their view of the plane hitting the South Tower. Still, they were able to see an enormous blast of smoke behind the North Tower and debris from the explosion falling to the ground below.

"We knew then it was terrorism," Cheney recalls.

p 331, Cheney by Stephen F. Hayes

THE STEPS - CLOSED

2007-11-19T20:03:00.000-08:00

Today, the fundamental divisions in American society are not regional or religious but ideological. Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito were not appointed because they were Catholic but because they are conservative. The base of the Republican Party -- from James Dobson and Jay Sekulow among the evangelicals to Ted Olson and Leonard Leo among the Federalists -- recognized that they could use their influence to shape the Court. They organized more, mobilized more, and cared more about the Court than their liberal counterparts. And when their candidate won the presidency, these conservatives demanded more -- a pair of justices who were precisely to their liking (and the ejection of one nominee, Harriet Miers, who was not). With admirable candor, and even greater passion, conservatives have invested in the Court to advance their goals for the country.

In public at least, Roberts himself purports to have a different view of the Court than his conservative sponsors. "Judges are like umpires," he said at his confirmation hearing. "Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them." Elsewhere, Roberts has often said, "Judges are not politicians." None of this is true. Supreme Court justices are nothing at all like baseball umpires. It is folly to pretend that the awesome work of interpreting the Constitution, and thus defining the rights and obligations of American citizenship, is akin to performing the rote, almost mindless task of calling balls and strikes. When it comes to the core of the Court's work, determining the contemporary meaning of the Constitution, it is ideology, not craft or skill, that controls the outcome of cases. As Richard A. Posner, the great conservative judge and law professor, has written, "It is rarely possible to say with a straight face of a Supreme Court constitutional decision that it was decided correctly or incorrectly." Constitutional cases, Posner wrote, "can be decided only on the basis of a political judgment, and a political judgment cannot be called right or wrong by reference to legal norms."

p 338, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

Our Executive Doesn't

2007-11-19T19:57:00.000-08:00

After American and Cuban forces evicted the Spanish from Cuba in 1898, the United States military remained on forty-five square miles along the southern coast of the island. The American presence became official with a treaty signed by the two nations in 1903, eventually setting an annual rent at $4,085. To this day, the American government offers payment to the Cuban government every year, but during the nearly five decades that Fidel Castro has been in power, his government has accepted it only once.

p229, The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin

What You Do Not Know

2007-10-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk been reasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. If such a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had locked bulletproof doors, and the attack would not have taken place, period. Something else might have taken place. What? I don't know.

Isn't it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen?
What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know (that New York is an easy terrorist target, for instance) may become inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it. It may be odd that, in such a strategic game, what you know can be truly inconsequential.

This extends to all businesses. Think about the "secret recipe" to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious, then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic. The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restauranteurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea. The same applies to the shoe and the book businesses - or any kind of entrepreneurship. The same applies to scientific theories - nobody has interest in listening to trivialities. The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.

Consider the Pacific tsunami of December 2004. Had it been expected, it would not have caused the damage it did - the areas affected would have been less populated, an early warning system would have been put in place. What you know cannot really hurt you.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Keith Olbermann - Special Comment: Rudy Guiliani

2007-07-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

"Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!" - R. Guiliani

There is no room for this. This is terrorism, dressed up, as counter-terrorist. It is not warning, but bullying, substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country's survival and the freedom of its people. No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans' flat-footedness of September 11, 2001; none has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming ambition; none is willing to say 'I accuse' rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor. And if it is somehow insufficient - if it is somehow morally, spiritually and politically wrong to screech as Mr. Guiliani has screeched - there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Guiliani's argument that Republicans equal life, Democrats equal death.

Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but last fall, the electorate called them on it - as, doubtless, they would call you on it, Mr. Guiliani. Repeat: Go beyond Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006. Call attention to the casualties on your watch and your long, waking years of slumber between the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Become the candidate who runs on the 'vote for me or die' platform. Do a Joe McCarthy. Do a Lyndon Johnson. Do a Robespierre. Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that terror is not just a matter of casualties. It is just as certainly a matter of the promulgation of fear. Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival, and you do Osama bin Laden's work for him. And we, Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between, we, Americans, are sick to death of you and the other terror mongers trying to frighten us into submission - into the surrender of our rights and our reason - and is a betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight, and clarified, and amplified. They are just as current now as they were when first he spoke them seventy-four years ago. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power, and for their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."

Values

2007-07-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn't enough. After all, talk is cheap; like any value, empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organizer back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighborhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy and money. Those are the true tests of what we value, I'd tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.

By these standards at least, it sometimes appears that Americans today value nothing so much as being rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. We say we value the we legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.

And yet a part of us knows better. We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives,w e have betrayed them more often than we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values are our inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize that they are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned inside out by intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durable and surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We can make claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words.

To do otherwise would be to relinquish our best selves.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

Dependence

2007-06-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

1

The master foresees, says Aristotle; the slave works accordingly. Thus there is a common interest uniting master and slave. Slavery is natural; slavery is normal. After all, it is out of the association formed by men with those two, women and slaves, that the first household was formed. (By the way, nature has distinguished between female and slave; they have different functions). In either event, men are naturally fitted to rule them both. Should affection exist among the various parties, that may be advantageous, but slaves (and women, I infer) exist to be used; affection therefore equates to guarding the tool against rust.
But what I see as the exploitative instillation of dependence, Aristotle presents as interdependence. The slave belongs to the master, he says, just as the foot belongs to the body.
If what I originally interpreted as the exploitative instillation of false consciousness in Sunee's situation might actually be adaptive or even humane, how can I be sure that slavery in Aristotle's epoch was wrong? I turn this question over on my tongue, and decide that I do not care to taste it.

2

All the same, I will not come out against patriarchal Middle Eastern families. Therefore, what right do I have to reject the proposition that authority might theoretically be absolute, personalized and benevolent? Certainly an evil institution can be mitigated or even rendered benign by a sufficiently virtuous master. The Roman father had the right of life and death over his children. We do not thereby deduce that all Roman fathers were evil, or even that the Roman system was necessarily evil.

3

On the other hand, we ourselves, spoiled, emancipated children, might not wish to be children in ancient Rome.

4

How can poverty not entail dependence? Self-reliance is a luxury of the rich. (Thoreau, you'll recall, defined himself as rich.) A poor person is someone who cannot be sure of gaining or holding the resources to meet his necessities. Therefore, he is unfree, in peril of humiliation and servitude, and certainly dependent on circumstance if not necessarily on any fellow human being.
Montaigne refers to the common run of men today, stupid, base, servile, unstable and continually tossed about by the tempest of the diverse passions that drive them to and fro; depending entirely on others. Doesn't this include most of us? It certainly includes the poor.
In Columbia a street vendor told me: Police took my merchandise, although they gave me a receipt for it. I have to sleep in the street. There's no place for me to stay.
Can the guerrillas help you?
Nobody helps nobody today. The guerrillas took everything from my family.
In one sense this man was less dependent than I. He existed without a home and now lacked even his former modest capital -- yet he declined to die! Wasn't that a triumph of self-reliance? I for my part have my house; but, as Thoreau remarked, my house also has me. Sometimes I wonder how to pay next month's mortgage.
This being duly noted, the fact remains that this Colombian was a tightrope-walker and I a comfortable spectator. He had put on a good show by not falling yet. What would happen when he got tired? His self-reliance temporarily sustained him on the rope. In and of itself, it showed him no way to dance to safety.

Poor People by William T. Vollman

Resurgam

2007-05-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect, and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed my beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look; but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so well become me; because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

cheers, darlin

2007-05-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

nothing unusual nothing strange / close to nothing at all / the same old scenario the same old rain / and there's no explosions here / then something unusual something strange / comes from nothing at all / i saw a spaceship fly by your window / did you see it disappear? / amie come sit on my wall & read me the story of 'O' / tell it like you still believe that the end of the century / brings a change for you and me / nothing unusual nothing's changed / just a little older that's all / you know when you've found it there's something i've learned / 'cause you feel it when they take it away hey hey / then something unusual something strange / comes from nothing at all / but i'm not a miracle and you're not a saint / just another soldier on a road to nowhere / amie come sit on my wall & read me a story of old / tell it like you still believe that the end of the century / brings a change for you and me / amie come sit on my wall & read me the story of o / tell it like you still believe that the end of the century / brings a change for you and me

Amie , Damien Rice

Chicago

2007-05-17T20:44:00.001-07:00

The room was suddenly blanketed in darkness, and the girls fell quiet. Then the lights rose, a dim blue now, and seven black women appeared on the stage dressed in flowing skirts and scarves, their bodies frozen in awkward contortions. One of them, a big woman dressed in brown, began to cry out:

...half-notes scattered
without rhythm / no tune
distraught laughter fallin'
over a black girl's shoulder
it's funny / it's hysterical
the melody-less-ness of her dance
don't tell a soul
she's dancing on beer cans and shingles ...

As she spoke, the other women slowly came to life, a chorus of many shades and shapes, mahogany and cream, round and slender, young and not so young, stretching their limbs across the stage.

somebody / anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself
to know you
but sing her rhythms
carin' / struggle / hard times
sing her song of life ...

For the next hour, the women took turns telling their stories, singing their songs. They sang about lost time and discarded fantasies and what might have been. They sang of the men who loved them, betrayed them, raped them, embraced them; they sang of the hurt inside these men, hurt that was understood and sometimes forgiven. They showed each other their stretch marks and the calluses on their feet; they revealed their beauty in the lilt of their voice, the flutter of a hand, beauty waning, ascendant, elusive. They wept over the aborted children, the murdered children, the children they once were. And through all of their songs, violent, angry, sweet, unflinching, the women danced, each of them, double-dutch and rhumba and bump and solitary waltz; sweat-breaking, heart-breaking dances. They danced until they all seemed one spirit. At the end of the play, that spirit began to sing a single, simple verse:

I found god in myself
and I loved her / I loved her fiercely

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

A Banquet of Consequences

2007-05-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

Within only a few years, OPEC countries will have control over virtually all of the exportable surplus oil in the world (with the exception of Russia's petroleum, the production of which may reach a second peak in 2010, following an initial peak that precipitated the collapse of the USSR). The US -- whose global hegemony has seemed so complete for the past decade -- will suffer an increasing decline in global influence, which no amount of saber rattling or bombing of "terrorist" countries will be able to reverse. Awash in debt, dependent on imports, mired in corruption, its military increasingly overextended, the US is well into its imperial twilight years.

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies by Richard Heinberg

Thy will be done

2007-05-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, "If what he said is so good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"

But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.

I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

"The function of the artist," the Navajo answered, "is to provide what life does not."

2007-05-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

Amanda became pregnant during a fierce thunderstorm. "Was it the lightning or the lover?" she was sometimes heard to muse.

When her son was born with electrical eyes, people no longer thought her foolish.

Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins

Reflections of a forensic entomologist

2007-05-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

The welfare of children is seen by some as being a very modern, civilized concern of enlightened twentieth-century humanity. Again, let us look at history. In 1483, men wept in the streets of London when the Princes in the Tower were thought to have been murdered. In the wars between the Turks and the Byzantines in the Middle Ages, the Byzantines would sometimes place children at the head of their army in order to confuse the enemy, who would nont attack while the children were there. Whatever one might think of the ethics of such a tactic, it showed that both sides would not move to harm a child and that each was confident of the other side's aversion to doing so. Today, children in the Balkans are killed by snipers and murdered for political ends. When teh murders of children make headline news, people no longer weep in the streets.

But why do these things happen? Here we enter into territory that is even more subjective than the question of whether or not certain kinds of depravity are new, for much depends on one's moral viewpoint. I think that no-one will disagree that the very notion of morality is ebbing away, in the sense that there are few moral principles that can be said to be held by more or less everyone in Britain or, for that matter, in the West, generally. Moral relativism has undoubtedly fragmented society, making it much easier for people with extreme views to secure an audience.

Maggots, Murder and Men by Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu

I swear to God Janice Glabman will never laugh at me again

2007-05-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

I go off to college. I weigh 106 pounds. I come back from college three months later. I weigh 126 pounds. I was once thin and shapeless. Now I am fat and, ironically, equally shapeless. Nothing fits, except for my wool plaid Pendleton pleated skirt, which makes me look even fatter. It's tragic. My father takes one look at me as I get off the plane and says to my mother, "Well, maybe someone will marry her for her personality."

I go back to college. I stay fat. There's a machine in the dormitory cafeteria called The Cow, and when you press a nozzle, out comes the coldest, most delicious milk you've ever tasted. Also there are sticky buns and popovers and scones. I have never been exposed to such wonders. I love them. I have seconds. I have thirds. There's butter everywhere you look, and of course, that cold, delicious milk. We're not talking low-fat milk, my friends. This was so long ago no one even knew about low-fat milk.

Anyway, months pass. I come home for the summer. I'm as fat as ever. None of my clothes fit.
I already said that, and it's still true. And because it's summer, I can't even wear my wool plaid Pendleton pleated skirt. So I go over to my friend Janice Glabman's to borrow some clothes from her. Janice has always been overweight. I try on a pair of her pants. They're too small. They're way too small. I can't even zip them up. Janice laughs at me. These are Janice's exact words: "Ha ha ha ha ha." The next day I go on a diet. In six months my weight drops back to 106. I have been on a diet ever since.

I have not seen Janice in more than forty years, but if I do see her, I'm ready. I'm thin. Although I now weigh 126 pounds, the exact amount I weighed when I came home from college having become a butterball. I can't explain this.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

amazement

2007-04-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

In a world older and more complex than ours, they move more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of senses we have lost or never yet attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

Naturalist Henry Beston regarding Antarctic penguins, via National Geographic's Antarctica: The Last Continent