557 years ago today, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and his somewhat well-behaved army entered the City of Constantinople, putting the final exclamation point on the slow decline of the Byzantine Empire and ending what might be fairly characterized as over 1500 years of Roman rule in the Eastern Mediterranean. While the Roman Empire had finalized its bifurcation into East and West in 395 C.E. upon the death of the Emperor Flavius Theodosius, the Byzantine Empire considered itself the inheritor of the political and cultural legacy of Rome and traced its lineage back to Augustus, officially conducting its business in both Latin and Greek. Upon the death of his father Theodosius, Flavius Arcadius became the first true Emperor in the East, while his brother Honorius ruled in the West.
Byzantium had been constructed by the Romans during the reign of Septimius Severus around 200 C.E., but was little more than a Roman colony full of Greeks until Constantine the Great rebuilt it as a center of the Christian religion over 100 years later. Constantine would subsequently relocate his personal residence, and, therefore, effectively the seat of the Roman Empire, to Constantinople, which came to rival Rome in wealth and grandeur. Constantine is known as a saint to the Orthodox Christian church because of his role in establishing Christianity in the Empire, although one might suggest Jesus would have been somewhat uncomfortable with some of his policies, including having his own son and wife put to death for reasons which are still the subject of speculation. Constantine was preparing plans to invade the Persian Empire, in what would have been the first Christian crusade against nonbelievers, when he fell ill and died in 337.
For over 1200 years the Byzantines survived conflicts with the Huns, the Persians, the Islamic Empire and the Turks. While their fortunes waxed and waned, often in the extreme, Constantinople itself remained an impenetrable fortress and a center of commerce and culture. Ironically, the only time the city’s defenses were actually overcome was during the Fourth Crusade in 1203. The European Crusaders, being in hock to the Venetians for a princely sum, decided to sack Constantinople and haul away enough booty to pay their debts. They justified their actions by citing the lack of cooperation of the Byzantines with the crusade and the fact that the Orthodox Christians were suspect because they conducted services in Greek and didn’t acknowledge the authority of the Pope; although Venice’s trade rivalry with the Byzantines might have had something to do with it. Constantinople never fully recovered from this treachery and it was the first major domino in the cascade that led to May 29, 1453.
Mehmed II had been scheming to erase the last vestiges of European control in Asia since ascending to the Sultanate two years earlier. He had initiated an aggressive ship building program which resulted in an overwhelming naval advantage. The Byzantine Empire was a shell of its former self, with its territories having been reduced virtually to the walls of the city itself, and Turkish conquests in the Balkans had effectively isolated the Byzantines. Mehmed was only 21 when he assembled his 100,000 man army, 350 ship navy, and laid siege to the city. At the advice of his astrologers, Mehmed mounted his final assault at the most propitious moment, having battered the city’s walls to rubble with his new super-weapon, the cannon. The Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, is believed to have died defending the citadel, although his body was never recovered.
Mehmed and his army carried off pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down and sold around 60,000 men women and children into slavery, although rape, mutilation and murder were held to a minimum. In fact, Mehmed’s troops were considerably better behaved than the Christian crusaders who had visited a couple of centuries earlier. Mehmed claimed the title of Caesar and moved his capital to Constantinople, which was renamed Istanbul, although there is still some dispute as to what the name actually means. Istanbul was restored to its former grandeur under Ottoman rule and remains one of Asia’s great cities. Mehmed went on to raise a general ruckus in the Balkans, culminating with the siege of Belgrade in 1456. He died in 1481 at the age of 52, likely a victim of poisoning.
I find history generally fascinating, so just recounting the facts is interesting to me, but the facts often provoke further reflection. The United States, for example, has been around for about 234 years. It was almost 234 years from the sack of Constantinople by the Christian crusaders until its fall to the Turks, and there were 1200 years of political history preceding that. What will our political map look like in 1200 years? Many historians have suggested the fall of Constantinople helped spark the European Renaissance by forcing the center of European learning and culture to the West, along with 10’s of thousands of educated and talented Geeks seeking refuge from their Turkish conquerors. Like so many things in life that are considered to be disasters, the fall of Constantinople may have simply been a harsh step on the path to wherever humanity is bound, but I cannot help but wonder what Julius Caesar would have thought about his despotic successor, Constantine, rushing headlong to certain death in defense of a cause long since lost. There, amid the decaying imperial opulence of 15 centuries, in a city Caesar never envisioned under the cannonade of a religion he could not have imagined, the Roman trumpets were at last silenced. Perhaps, at their final moment, the residents of the Imperial Byzantine Palace were troubled by this bloodied, ethereal phantom of Caesar’s limitless ambition, echoing down their abandoned marble halls.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Atlas Shrugged, Sort Of
God bless the Republican voters of the great State of Kentucky. They threw off the oppressive yoke of the national Republican establishment and chose, dare I say, a maverick to oppose the Godless Democrats in the state’s Senatorial contest in November. They selected, by a significant margin, a 47 year-old ophthalmologist from Bowling Green, Rand Paul. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, his father, Ron Paul, was a recent candidate for President of the United States. Mr. Rand Paul has gained as of late some notoriety and much press attention by making certain statements about his positions on various national policy issues, including the President’s attitude towards British Petroleum in light of the current environmental situation in the Gulf of Mexico, and the wisdom or appropriateness of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some people suspect Mr. Paul’s positions could prove to be a bit extreme.
That this comes as any surprise to anyone is something of an irony, since Mr. Paul is on record with his thoughts on a number of issues which pretty clearly indicate his fundamental principles. Unlike many who seek elective office, I believe Mr. Paul actually is a principled man who truly believes what he says and is not just shape-shifting in order to get the job. While it is difficult, and perhaps unfair, to try and summarize the totality of a person’s beliefs in a few words, Mr. Paul is a certainly a fervent supporter of the free market and reduced government intervention is private life; unless you happen to want an abortion, want to marry someone of the same sex or want to conduct medical research on human embryos, of course, but I guess freedom must have its limits.
Mr. Paul believes that campaign finance reform is “censorship” and that the cure to the corrosive effects of money in the national electoral process is to reduce the power and influence of the Federal Government such that corporations will not find it beneficial to expend money to sway public opinion. Mr. Rand apparently believes that most government regulation, such as regulation of oil companies or doctors, is an infringement of individual rights and is counterproductive from a practical perspective, unless it regulates abortions, of course. Mr. Paul also believes that private businesses should be able to choose to whom they provide goods or services and that if you run, for example, a restaurant, and you don’t want to serve people of African descent, then more power to you. It’s a business decision and you will either profit by it or not.
Mr. Paul is one of those people, sometimes known as “Constitutionalists”, who think the United States Constitution is intended solely to define the operational parameters of the Federal Government, not to define the general climate of public affairs, and that pretty much all the wisdom of governance that is possible to be divined is already in there. They are sort of like Biblical literalists in that they believe that the Constitution was more or less formed whole and perfect by the divine pantheon of monolithic and nearly flawless Founding Fathers, not to mention it being completely transparent and universally understandable. These people tend to discount the possibility that societies evolve politically or morally or that economic freedom could be context sensitive or that the fundamental flaws in human nature will manifest themselves more prominently when not mitigated by the structure of civilization.
Rand Paul has indentified himself with the “Tea Party”, a rather amorphous group of malcontents who seem to have resentment of taxation and a fondness for caricatures of Barrack Obama as their unifying themes. They are basically mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, but other than keeping the guns they already have, acquiring more, and opposing “socialism”, they don’t seem to have much of a platform. Like many of us, they know what they don’t like, but they don’t have a clear concept of what the “correct” situation would be. Rand Paul tells them that the problem is mostly too much government, unless you want an abortion (repetition for emphasis), and that if we just get the government out of the way the capitalist utopia will manifest itself and freedom will be preserved for a thousand generations.
The problem with all this is that life is ninety-percent maintenance. Weeds will choke the garden of liberty if they are not persistently removed. Monopolies will form and free competition will be eliminated. Corporations will gain power and will use their economic might to influence the government to their benefit. Wealth will accrue in the hands of the few and be held as matter of heredity, not individual effort and skill. The poor and the ignorant will be forced to fight the wars of political convenience and economic advantage while the wealthy sip Perrier and cluck about how dreadful it all is. Conversely, the poor and the ignorant will be manipulated from time to time by populist demagogues to rise up and overthrow their Capitalist oppressors and each revolution will go too far and damage the engines of economic progress and material security. The madness of the mob will supplant reason and tyranny will reign; just watch the History Channel if you doubt my representations.
In the considered opinion of this humble Wormhole Repairman, Rand Paul and people like him are just as intellectually flawed as Karl Marx and the thousand other social philosophers who have summed up the secrets to success in a few sentences. They don’t understand that social perfection is a dream and that principles are a guide to action, not an articulation of known facts. So let me sum up the secrets to success in a few sentences. Life is complex. Balance is the rule of nature. There are no perfect solutions for the shortcomings of the human race. Self-governance and true human liberty are recent experiments which defy the established pattern of human history and have not yet been even nearly perfected. The United States Constitution, while a work of near genius, is a human creation, not a supernatural occurrence. The intellectual and moral progress of humanity did not cease in the 18th Century. Individual freedom without social responsibility is a fantasy perpetuated by the same frauds who sell get rich quick schemes and colon cleanses on cable channels at 3:00 in the morning. Economic freedom is not a natural counter to selfishness, chaos by choice is not morally superior to equitably enforced order, the profit motive will not restore the environment of the Gulf Coast, and, most notably, in 50 years when good old-fashioned Kentucky white people are decidedly in the minority and can’t get served at the downtown lunch counter, people like Mr. Paul will probably think differently.
We hold these truths to be self evident; we do not hold them to be without some difficulty in practical implementation. We strive to form a “more” perfect union, not a perfect union, knowing that perfection is the province only of God and delusional human minds. We’re up on the tightrope, one side’s ice and one is fire, but it is not a circus game; it is all that we hope for ourselves and our children and the generations of humans to come. The extremists of left and right may tell us that jumping off on one side or the other is the solution to all our problems, but for me, ladies and gentlemen, the lunch counter will remain open to all and Mr. Paul can take his “freedom is the freedom to deny freedom” rhetoric and throw it on the scrapheap of history along with all that other deceptively comfortable nonsense that we continue to use to justify our listening to the selfish devils that never stop whispering.
That this comes as any surprise to anyone is something of an irony, since Mr. Paul is on record with his thoughts on a number of issues which pretty clearly indicate his fundamental principles. Unlike many who seek elective office, I believe Mr. Paul actually is a principled man who truly believes what he says and is not just shape-shifting in order to get the job. While it is difficult, and perhaps unfair, to try and summarize the totality of a person’s beliefs in a few words, Mr. Paul is a certainly a fervent supporter of the free market and reduced government intervention is private life; unless you happen to want an abortion, want to marry someone of the same sex or want to conduct medical research on human embryos, of course, but I guess freedom must have its limits.
Mr. Paul believes that campaign finance reform is “censorship” and that the cure to the corrosive effects of money in the national electoral process is to reduce the power and influence of the Federal Government such that corporations will not find it beneficial to expend money to sway public opinion. Mr. Rand apparently believes that most government regulation, such as regulation of oil companies or doctors, is an infringement of individual rights and is counterproductive from a practical perspective, unless it regulates abortions, of course. Mr. Paul also believes that private businesses should be able to choose to whom they provide goods or services and that if you run, for example, a restaurant, and you don’t want to serve people of African descent, then more power to you. It’s a business decision and you will either profit by it or not.
Mr. Paul is one of those people, sometimes known as “Constitutionalists”, who think the United States Constitution is intended solely to define the operational parameters of the Federal Government, not to define the general climate of public affairs, and that pretty much all the wisdom of governance that is possible to be divined is already in there. They are sort of like Biblical literalists in that they believe that the Constitution was more or less formed whole and perfect by the divine pantheon of monolithic and nearly flawless Founding Fathers, not to mention it being completely transparent and universally understandable. These people tend to discount the possibility that societies evolve politically or morally or that economic freedom could be context sensitive or that the fundamental flaws in human nature will manifest themselves more prominently when not mitigated by the structure of civilization.
Rand Paul has indentified himself with the “Tea Party”, a rather amorphous group of malcontents who seem to have resentment of taxation and a fondness for caricatures of Barrack Obama as their unifying themes. They are basically mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, but other than keeping the guns they already have, acquiring more, and opposing “socialism”, they don’t seem to have much of a platform. Like many of us, they know what they don’t like, but they don’t have a clear concept of what the “correct” situation would be. Rand Paul tells them that the problem is mostly too much government, unless you want an abortion (repetition for emphasis), and that if we just get the government out of the way the capitalist utopia will manifest itself and freedom will be preserved for a thousand generations.
The problem with all this is that life is ninety-percent maintenance. Weeds will choke the garden of liberty if they are not persistently removed. Monopolies will form and free competition will be eliminated. Corporations will gain power and will use their economic might to influence the government to their benefit. Wealth will accrue in the hands of the few and be held as matter of heredity, not individual effort and skill. The poor and the ignorant will be forced to fight the wars of political convenience and economic advantage while the wealthy sip Perrier and cluck about how dreadful it all is. Conversely, the poor and the ignorant will be manipulated from time to time by populist demagogues to rise up and overthrow their Capitalist oppressors and each revolution will go too far and damage the engines of economic progress and material security. The madness of the mob will supplant reason and tyranny will reign; just watch the History Channel if you doubt my representations.
In the considered opinion of this humble Wormhole Repairman, Rand Paul and people like him are just as intellectually flawed as Karl Marx and the thousand other social philosophers who have summed up the secrets to success in a few sentences. They don’t understand that social perfection is a dream and that principles are a guide to action, not an articulation of known facts. So let me sum up the secrets to success in a few sentences. Life is complex. Balance is the rule of nature. There are no perfect solutions for the shortcomings of the human race. Self-governance and true human liberty are recent experiments which defy the established pattern of human history and have not yet been even nearly perfected. The United States Constitution, while a work of near genius, is a human creation, not a supernatural occurrence. The intellectual and moral progress of humanity did not cease in the 18th Century. Individual freedom without social responsibility is a fantasy perpetuated by the same frauds who sell get rich quick schemes and colon cleanses on cable channels at 3:00 in the morning. Economic freedom is not a natural counter to selfishness, chaos by choice is not morally superior to equitably enforced order, the profit motive will not restore the environment of the Gulf Coast, and, most notably, in 50 years when good old-fashioned Kentucky white people are decidedly in the minority and can’t get served at the downtown lunch counter, people like Mr. Paul will probably think differently.
We hold these truths to be self evident; we do not hold them to be without some difficulty in practical implementation. We strive to form a “more” perfect union, not a perfect union, knowing that perfection is the province only of God and delusional human minds. We’re up on the tightrope, one side’s ice and one is fire, but it is not a circus game; it is all that we hope for ourselves and our children and the generations of humans to come. The extremists of left and right may tell us that jumping off on one side or the other is the solution to all our problems, but for me, ladies and gentlemen, the lunch counter will remain open to all and Mr. Paul can take his “freedom is the freedom to deny freedom” rhetoric and throw it on the scrapheap of history along with all that other deceptively comfortable nonsense that we continue to use to justify our listening to the selfish devils that never stop whispering.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Deep Kimchi
So, let's forget about politics for a while. The world is going to hell, but the world has been going to hell for about 250,000 years. The first election following the emergence of Cro Magnon Man was a cynical affair; with Og impugning Toktok's hunting skills and general hygiene, and Toktok suggesting Og was infertile. It has been going steadily downhill ever since. Anyway, I like horror movies. Come to think of it, Sarah Palin would be great in a slasher flick as a comely but impurely experienced vixen who is chased, partially disrobed and has her larynx cut out and stuffed up her ass by a deranged Southern Baptist preacher on the rampage about halfway through the movie, but I'm getting way ahead of myself. I like Korean horror movies especially.
It must take a lot to scare a Korean. Koreans put cabbage in a pot and bury it and then dig it up and eat it. This could seem like a variation on the resurrection/transubstantiation theme to the uninitiated, or even some sort of a vegan zombie thing, but it is probably just one of those odd twists of fate where someone did something unusual once and everybody else picked up on it, even though it has the aroma of a septic tank and the consistency of phlegm. Nonetheless, they soldier on, as they do with all aspects of like. The Korean peninsula is sort of like a military base with cities in it. Virtually every square mile is covered with artillery and tank traps and is honeycombed with tunnels, both for burying cabbage and sneaking around unseen. There are more soldiers per capita in both halves of Korea than there were at Appomattox Court House in April, 1865.
The Koreans have been mistreated quite often in their history, most recently rather harshly by the Japanese during World War II, and then there was all that Korean War stuff and then a fragile, armed peace complete with kidnappings and axe murders and one of the world's biggest fruit-cake dictators with long-range missiles and (perhaps) nuclear weapons. However, Kim Jong-il does like action movies and breathtakingly attractive women, so he is perhaps not completely crazy. The point is, when Koreans want the shit scared out of them, all they have to do is read the newspaper or try and drive a car in Seoul or, in the North, breathe. When they go to the movies to be scared, they are not interested in any slow-paced, mounting psychological tension, no matter how excruciatingly wonderful it may be; they want a full-on freaky blood-puking fright-fest, which will either make you drop your skittles on the floor or at least not want to eat them.
It should be noted that no one should listen to me with respect to the quality of a movie, since my tastes in cinema are clearly out of step with the majority of civilized humans. Most those movies on Netflix that you have never heard of and which have an average viewer rating of one star are just delightful to me, and the less reverence, political correctness and emotional stability, the better. So, Korean horror movies, eh? "Oldboy" is a great movie, although some may not consider it a true horror movie because it lacks any element of the supernatural, but it is like Franz Kafka wrote the screenplay for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The violence is astoundingly brutal, but not at all gratuitous in the context of the plot. "The Host" is a cleverly disguised political satire concealed in a Godzilla theme which gives tremendous insight into the Americanization of South Korean society and proves that Industrial Light and Magic is not the only game in town. "R-Point" is a spooky and violent war-time ghost story which educates the average ignorant citizen about the role of Korean troops in the Vietnam War. It is an exploration of the power of guilt to distort reality and the unseen burden of the weight of history that bears down on us all.
On the more domestic side, "The Red Shoes" is a confusing but disturbing portrait of obsession which leaves you with a pleasantly itchy feeling of WTF just happened. "The Wig" is a classically creepy tale of possession and revenge which uses to excellent effect the Asian archetype of the female ghost with long, dark hair. "A Tale of Two Sisters" is a dark fairy-tale about a family in crisis and the harm keeping secrets can cause. It is genuinely dark and spooky, but moves too fast to be "creepy". You just have to hang on. I loved the movie "Cello", although most critics were lukewarm. You can keep quite a variety of things in a cello case, you know. "Hansel and Gretel" is visually stunning and deeply disturbing, as are all movies about children, especially the "Look Who's Talking" series. "Arang" is an excellent example of the police drama/ghost story combination that is so popular in Asian film. Don't watch it if you are squeamish.
I could go on, and often do, but suffice it to say that there are a plethora of wonderful Korean horror films out there and, if you like a good scare, do yourself a favor and check some out. Incidentally, I will be sending a copy of this blog to the Korean Film Board seeking reimbursement for the positive press. What is interesting about foreign horror films in general is that they have universal appeal, despite cultural representations that may be obscure or obtuse to the Western eye. When it comes to our fears of isolation, helplessness and death, we are definitely all one race and common fears probably imply common hopes as well. Art can help build bridges to understanding, even if it's the sort of art that builds bridges one festering corpse at a time.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
We're All Arizonans Now
My favorite former Alaskan Governor, Mrs. Sarah Palin, is at it again. I sometimes wonder if she is not a close relative of Michael Palin, since she has a talent for the comically absurd, but I suppose it is unlikely. I don’t know what the Alaskan equivalent of the Mayflower was, but if Mrs. Palin’s forbearers were on it, perhaps Alaska would be better off it had been a little less sea-worthy. Actually, I have mixed feelings about even discussing Mrs. Palin, since I have often criticized the American news media for giving her inordinate attention, out of all proportion to her relative significance or merit, but I am coming to understand that she represents something very real and very worrisome about a significant element of American society.
The most recent pearl of wisdom that Mrs. Palin threw in my swinish path was the statement made concerning the law recently passed in Arizona. When discussing the law requiring law enforcement to ascertain the immigration status of persons they have “official” contact with, Mrs. Palin suggested Americans want to know “Why haven't the police already been doing that?” It would probably be pointless to try and discuss the subtleties of Constitutional protections with Mrs. Palin and her supporters, and none of them will be reading this anyway, but those of us who are not part of the ignorance is bliss bandwagon should probably be a bit concerned that a significant number of people in this country feel that Constitutional protections should be casually ignored when “questionable” people are involved.
For the record, I do believe that the United States needs to be more effective in both bureaucratic regulation of immigration and physical control of our nation’s borders. You probably cannot call yourself a nation if you don’t have at least marginal control over people entering and leaving your sovereign territory and that is probably what we currently have, marginal control. There are a lot of reasons we would want to know who is coming and going across our borders, and law enforcement is only the most obvious of them. Immigration reform is a very complex issue, but I think the demand-siders are probably correct on this one; the best way to manage the issue is to enforce requirements to demonstrate eligibility to work in the U.S. and punish the employers who violate these regulations, whether they are lawn maintenance contractors or Wall Street corporations.
Mrs. Palin and her intellectual peers are not supportive of national employment documents, because that would force all citizens to produce documentation and submit to verification in violation of their privacy rights. The Arizona law, however, would only require that people identified by an individual police officer as being “questionable” would have to produce proof of their right to be in this country and, I can only surmise, since most of the people so identified will be of Hispanic extraction, the chances that an honest, god-fearing white person will be subjected to the indignity of this process is remote. Perhaps I am being unfair; I know that many “Tea Party” supporters and other adherents of nativist populism are expressing resentment about being labeled as “racists”, but I have a problem finding any other explanation for the inconsistency in their stated concerns about Constitutional rights. It appears that while all pigs are equal, some pigs may indeed be more equal than others.
Beyond being concerned that any person of voting age in the United States could be so ill-informed or lacking in intellectual discernment as to find Mrs. Palin a credible or sincere spokesman for anything but her own interests, I find it distressing that some significant segment of our population still feels that the problems this nation faces can be best addressed by abandoning our principles. Anyone who has endured my rantings previously knows that this is one of my consistent themes. In my view, every massive social disaster experienced since around 436 B.C. has mostly been the result of a society that felt it could do things the easy way when times got tough.
So let’s just harass Mexicans about their citizenship status; after all, they’re not like us; they don’t share our commitment to the rights of man. Hell, what if we do screw up and drag a legitimate resident off to the holding camp? Who cares? It won’t be you or me or anybody we know very well. God knows we’ve got millions of Americans lined up waiting for all those grass cutting jobs that will be made available. While we’re at it, maybe we can get some unemployed East German engineers to help us design the razor wire, scatter guns and minefields for our border management infrastructure. If that fails, we can all go to Idaho and wait it out in our fortified compounds and protect the flame of true liberty with the guns we so bravely prevented the government from depriving us of. Sarah probably won’t be there to enjoy paradise with us though; she’ll be in Aruba sipping pina coladas and spending all the money in her Swiss bank accounts that she made talking nonsense to our dumb asses.
The most recent pearl of wisdom that Mrs. Palin threw in my swinish path was the statement made concerning the law recently passed in Arizona. When discussing the law requiring law enforcement to ascertain the immigration status of persons they have “official” contact with, Mrs. Palin suggested Americans want to know “Why haven't the police already been doing that?” It would probably be pointless to try and discuss the subtleties of Constitutional protections with Mrs. Palin and her supporters, and none of them will be reading this anyway, but those of us who are not part of the ignorance is bliss bandwagon should probably be a bit concerned that a significant number of people in this country feel that Constitutional protections should be casually ignored when “questionable” people are involved.
For the record, I do believe that the United States needs to be more effective in both bureaucratic regulation of immigration and physical control of our nation’s borders. You probably cannot call yourself a nation if you don’t have at least marginal control over people entering and leaving your sovereign territory and that is probably what we currently have, marginal control. There are a lot of reasons we would want to know who is coming and going across our borders, and law enforcement is only the most obvious of them. Immigration reform is a very complex issue, but I think the demand-siders are probably correct on this one; the best way to manage the issue is to enforce requirements to demonstrate eligibility to work in the U.S. and punish the employers who violate these regulations, whether they are lawn maintenance contractors or Wall Street corporations.
Mrs. Palin and her intellectual peers are not supportive of national employment documents, because that would force all citizens to produce documentation and submit to verification in violation of their privacy rights. The Arizona law, however, would only require that people identified by an individual police officer as being “questionable” would have to produce proof of their right to be in this country and, I can only surmise, since most of the people so identified will be of Hispanic extraction, the chances that an honest, god-fearing white person will be subjected to the indignity of this process is remote. Perhaps I am being unfair; I know that many “Tea Party” supporters and other adherents of nativist populism are expressing resentment about being labeled as “racists”, but I have a problem finding any other explanation for the inconsistency in their stated concerns about Constitutional rights. It appears that while all pigs are equal, some pigs may indeed be more equal than others.
Beyond being concerned that any person of voting age in the United States could be so ill-informed or lacking in intellectual discernment as to find Mrs. Palin a credible or sincere spokesman for anything but her own interests, I find it distressing that some significant segment of our population still feels that the problems this nation faces can be best addressed by abandoning our principles. Anyone who has endured my rantings previously knows that this is one of my consistent themes. In my view, every massive social disaster experienced since around 436 B.C. has mostly been the result of a society that felt it could do things the easy way when times got tough.
So let’s just harass Mexicans about their citizenship status; after all, they’re not like us; they don’t share our commitment to the rights of man. Hell, what if we do screw up and drag a legitimate resident off to the holding camp? Who cares? It won’t be you or me or anybody we know very well. God knows we’ve got millions of Americans lined up waiting for all those grass cutting jobs that will be made available. While we’re at it, maybe we can get some unemployed East German engineers to help us design the razor wire, scatter guns and minefields for our border management infrastructure. If that fails, we can all go to Idaho and wait it out in our fortified compounds and protect the flame of true liberty with the guns we so bravely prevented the government from depriving us of. Sarah probably won’t be there to enjoy paradise with us though; she’ll be in Aruba sipping pina coladas and spending all the money in her Swiss bank accounts that she made talking nonsense to our dumb asses.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Britannia Est Insula
The Tories are back in charge in merry old England, sort of. The Conservative Party, as the Tories are officially named, had to stoop to forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in order to get a majority in the House of Commons. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons, and the Tories only won 306 of them, so they needed the 57 seats won by the Liberal Democrats to break the 325 mark. This coalition is more than just semantically odd; the Liberal Democrats are more liberal than the Labour Party, which was unceremoniously booted from Downing Street after a 13 year run, so partnering with the Conservative Party is sort of like Barney Frank and John Boehner going on a date.
I don't really know much about the politics of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, nobody in America does. To us, the UK is just a tidy theme park with pastures and fog. We tend to think of the UK as a beloved pet, loyal and obedient and there to comfort us when no one else understands. We often forget that everything, right or wrong, about this great nation of ours is a legacy handed down to us by the British, whether language, law, arrogance or chicken pot-pie. Even our bicameral legislature and fondness for shrubbery are British. We've had a long and often tempestuous relationship since George III lost his marbles and let the colonies slip away, but for the past century, we've been just about inseparable, in peace and in war.
I visited England once, for just a day. I was on my way from Islamabad, Pakistan to Atlanta, Georgia, a popular destination combination, and I had about 20 hours in London because of the el-cheapo British Airways ticket I bought. I took the train from Gatwick to Russell Square, where I spent the evening in a modest hotel with no air-conditioning. It was the first week of June, and the weather was, surprise, cool and overcast with a light drizzle. I had a pleasant meal and pint across the street from the hotel and, being from Macon, Georgia, thought to myself, "no wonder you blokes colonized half the world; you were trying to find some decent summer weather". I had spent three years in the U.S. Army in Europe many moons before, but never made it to the "islands", probably because the Chunnel hadn't been dug, and I'm easily distracted. Anyway, the people were charming, the food was bland, the weather sucked and the weight of history was enormous.
So Labour is out and the Tories are in, just the opposite of what we experienced in 2008, but, of course, the American Presidential system and the British Parliamentary system are two radically different approaches, which are ironically very similar. The House of Commons has all the real power in the UK, even though they have a Queen and the House of Lords. There are even probably a few queens in the House of Lords; in fact, the closet thing we have to the House of Lords is probably the Saturday night Drag-Queen revue at a place we all know about but pretend we don't. The Queen and the House of Lords are like the fuzzy hats the Grenadier Guards wear, they are symbolic representations of the glorious past which nobody but tourists can afford to give a rat's ass about anymore. Anyway, the prime Minister attempts to run the government with nothing but the confidence of his fellow MP's standing between him (or her) and unemployment, and he has to spend all day in the Parliament listening to catcalls. However, lest we laugh at the eccentricities of our North Atlantic cousins, in their Parliament, honest and substantive debate are only masquerading as chaotic insults and hooting, whereas in our Congress chaotic insults and hooting are masquerading as honest and substantive debate. As a nation of obsessive whiners, we still have, perhaps, a good deal to learn from our British friends; stiff upper lip and all that.
The moral of this story is that politics is all about timing. There are forces at work in the world which are as indifferent as they are irresistible. Not even the CIA can control the random events and unnoticed processes which jump out and yell "Boo!" at the worst of times. The economy took a dive and the Republicans were history. The Bush administration may have had something to do with the bad economy, but it was mostly things that had been brewing for some time, "structural" issues which lurked beneath even poor regulation and massive debt. The Euro slumps, so now Gordon Brown has time to go on The Graham Norton Show and take college classes with John Major and the Tories can try and preserve an unnatural and unstable coalition while still facing war, economic hardship, random violence and the gravitational wake of the collapsing America empire.
The problem is thus; whatever your political disposition, and however fervently held it may be, most people can only remember the last 15 minutes and have no idea what kind of commitment and sustained effort it takes for a society to accomplish anything. Every time something goes wrong, we throw the political bums out and start with a new group of bums who want to undo everything the last group of bums accomplished; this is almost the dictionary definition of inefficiency. It would certainly make more sense for us the have a set of principles that were not based upon short-term convenience, fear, hunger, thirst, suspicion, parochial opportunism, the frantic and useless pabulum of the nightly news, or even hope. It would be better for all of us to know who we are, what we want, what is reasonably possible and the plan to get there. Then we could roll with the punches, take the good with the bad, forgive the inevitable human failure and quit swimming in a circle for the entertainment of the sharks. Good luck David Cameron, I hope you have a lot of skin on your teeth.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Change My Ass
Ok. Here I go again. Somehow I must be one of the few people in this country that just doesn’t get this “terrorist’s rights” issue. Today (or maybe yesterday) the Attorney General of the United States, the one appointed by President Change and confirmed by a overwhelmingly Democratic Senate, suggested that in cases of “suspected” terrorist activity, that it might be ok to limit “suspect’s” Miranda rights. We all know what Miranda rights are, but it is important to this rant of mine that we remember what they are supposed to accomplish.
In 1966, but a 5-4 vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled that statements made by criminal suspects to law enforcement personnel while in custody can only be used in evidence at any subsequent trial if it can be satisfactorily demonstrated that the suspect was advised that he had a right against self-incrimination and a right to consult with an attorney before making any statements to the police. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that “(no person) shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. The Sixth Amendment provides for the right to “Assistance of Counsel” in any criminal proceeding. Let’s be clear here. These are the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, not some Federal District Court ruling, and what good are rights if you don’t know you have them?
So our Attorney General, Mr. Eric H. Holder, now says that perhaps we should “modify” the “public safety exception” to allow for even less Constitutional protection for suspects when terrorist acts “may” be involved. The public-safety exception is a rather vague legal codicil to the requirement for Miranda warnings which allows law enforcement to delay the reading of such warnings in situations where there may be some immanent threat to public safety. In such cases, statements made to police prior to the reading of the Miranda warnings may still be admissible in court. The public-safety exception has been interpreted in various ways by different Federal Courts, but there is generally a clear burden on the State to demonstrate the existence of a threat adequately significant to warrant the waiver of established rights.
What exactly “modify” means in this context is unclear. Attorney General Holder has said that they would have to find a “Constitutional” method to provide greater flexibility for law enforcement in interrogating terror suspects, but there are no specifics being presented by the Obama Administration. Now I hate to be such a negative Nellie, but 18 month ago I was accusing Dick Cheney of treason over pretty much the same crap. I am certainly not going to be all warm and fuzzy about president Obama, from the mean streets of Chicago or not, screwing around with Constitutional protections for short-term political, or investigatory, convenience. I mean, where does this all go, back to waterboarding?
Here’s the reality. Freedom is a problem for law enforcement. Free people can come and go as they please and don’t have to answer any questions or let anybody take a look in their trunk. Constitutional rights are an obstacle to the swift arrest and prosecution of criminals. At least some majority of people who are arrested for stuff have actually broken some law, even if it not exactly the one they were arrested for. It would be way easier if the police could just walk in and take a look around whenever it suited their fancy and if they could keep you in the basement of Police Headquarters with no access to a lawyer while they interrogated you for hours on end. Way easier.
Please don’t anybody go getting all Jesse Helms on me; I’m not saying the police want to do this; I’m just making a common sense observation. Our Founding Fathers were suspicious of government and the use of government power to interfere in the lives of the citizens of a free nation. They deliberately made it difficult for the government to push you around. They even gave you the right to keep a gun to shoot at the forces of oppression if they ever returned to our shores, whether from without or within. As a free people we argue the merits of these concerns and the boundaries of these rights everyday.
In the darkness of the last days of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis fomented street violence and public chaos to justify repression of freedom as a necessity, and they politically put forward just the guy for the job. The history of every totalitarian state reads much the same. First there is anarchy and fear, and then Big Brother steps in with a plan to pacify the streets and identify the wrong-doers and trouble-makers. The tired, old “it can’t happen here” bullshit fails to take into consideration human nature and the history of societies under economic, military and political stress. We are only different from all other cultures that have preceded us in the fact that we have written down our principles clearly and specifically and have taken great pains to guard them as well as possible against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for almost 235 years now.
I understand that the threat of terrorism is real and that the consequences of successful terror attacks can be catastrophic. We have all seen what a handful of determined psychopaths can accomplish. I know that there are thousands of Americans still grieving today from events that might have been prevented if someone somewhere had just said “screw the Constitution, I’m going to find out what these suspects are up to.” The problem is that you can say that about most of the crime that occurs in the United States. There is not doubt that we would be far safer from the criminal element and random failures of character if we have a policeman on every corner and a camera in every bedroom, but that’s not how we roll. Taking rights away from people who may be American citizens, even if they have funny sounding names, based solely upon fear and suspicion, is the triumph of convenience over principle and the troubled sleep before the nightmare begins.
In 1966, but a 5-4 vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled that statements made by criminal suspects to law enforcement personnel while in custody can only be used in evidence at any subsequent trial if it can be satisfactorily demonstrated that the suspect was advised that he had a right against self-incrimination and a right to consult with an attorney before making any statements to the police. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that “(no person) shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”. The Sixth Amendment provides for the right to “Assistance of Counsel” in any criminal proceeding. Let’s be clear here. These are the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, not some Federal District Court ruling, and what good are rights if you don’t know you have them?
So our Attorney General, Mr. Eric H. Holder, now says that perhaps we should “modify” the “public safety exception” to allow for even less Constitutional protection for suspects when terrorist acts “may” be involved. The public-safety exception is a rather vague legal codicil to the requirement for Miranda warnings which allows law enforcement to delay the reading of such warnings in situations where there may be some immanent threat to public safety. In such cases, statements made to police prior to the reading of the Miranda warnings may still be admissible in court. The public-safety exception has been interpreted in various ways by different Federal Courts, but there is generally a clear burden on the State to demonstrate the existence of a threat adequately significant to warrant the waiver of established rights.
What exactly “modify” means in this context is unclear. Attorney General Holder has said that they would have to find a “Constitutional” method to provide greater flexibility for law enforcement in interrogating terror suspects, but there are no specifics being presented by the Obama Administration. Now I hate to be such a negative Nellie, but 18 month ago I was accusing Dick Cheney of treason over pretty much the same crap. I am certainly not going to be all warm and fuzzy about president Obama, from the mean streets of Chicago or not, screwing around with Constitutional protections for short-term political, or investigatory, convenience. I mean, where does this all go, back to waterboarding?
Here’s the reality. Freedom is a problem for law enforcement. Free people can come and go as they please and don’t have to answer any questions or let anybody take a look in their trunk. Constitutional rights are an obstacle to the swift arrest and prosecution of criminals. At least some majority of people who are arrested for stuff have actually broken some law, even if it not exactly the one they were arrested for. It would be way easier if the police could just walk in and take a look around whenever it suited their fancy and if they could keep you in the basement of Police Headquarters with no access to a lawyer while they interrogated you for hours on end. Way easier.
Please don’t anybody go getting all Jesse Helms on me; I’m not saying the police want to do this; I’m just making a common sense observation. Our Founding Fathers were suspicious of government and the use of government power to interfere in the lives of the citizens of a free nation. They deliberately made it difficult for the government to push you around. They even gave you the right to keep a gun to shoot at the forces of oppression if they ever returned to our shores, whether from without or within. As a free people we argue the merits of these concerns and the boundaries of these rights everyday.
In the darkness of the last days of the Weimar Republic, the Nazis fomented street violence and public chaos to justify repression of freedom as a necessity, and they politically put forward just the guy for the job. The history of every totalitarian state reads much the same. First there is anarchy and fear, and then Big Brother steps in with a plan to pacify the streets and identify the wrong-doers and trouble-makers. The tired, old “it can’t happen here” bullshit fails to take into consideration human nature and the history of societies under economic, military and political stress. We are only different from all other cultures that have preceded us in the fact that we have written down our principles clearly and specifically and have taken great pains to guard them as well as possible against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for almost 235 years now.
I understand that the threat of terrorism is real and that the consequences of successful terror attacks can be catastrophic. We have all seen what a handful of determined psychopaths can accomplish. I know that there are thousands of Americans still grieving today from events that might have been prevented if someone somewhere had just said “screw the Constitution, I’m going to find out what these suspects are up to.” The problem is that you can say that about most of the crime that occurs in the United States. There is not doubt that we would be far safer from the criminal element and random failures of character if we have a policeman on every corner and a camera in every bedroom, but that’s not how we roll. Taking rights away from people who may be American citizens, even if they have funny sounding names, based solely upon fear and suspicion, is the triumph of convenience over principle and the troubled sleep before the nightmare begins.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Pakistan is Threatening My Borders!
So here’s the deal with Pakistan. Weighing in at a healthy 175 million residents, it is the world’s sixth most populous country (according to the CIA World Fact Book). At roughly the size of California, it is pretty crowed by American standards and, like California, a significant part of the country is rugged and inaccessible by all but the most determined. There are about 10 different languages or dialects spoken by at least somebody in the country, if you include English, and 95 percent of the citizens are of the Islamic faith. Despite significant out-migration, Pakistan has a healthy population growth rate (1.55% annually) and a more healthy inflation rate that ranges from 5 to 20 percent, depending on the year in question. I could go on reciting facts, but that wouldn’t help go where I’m headed exactly. The point is, Pakistan is a real place with real flesh and blood people, 175 million of them. 175 million people means 175 million different perspectives and 175 million different plans and aspirations and 175 million different reactions to stuff that happens.
As a matter of full disclosure, I have been to Pakistan. I spent a lovely three weeks there 21 years ago trying not to expire from the late May heat. I was there getting married to a lovely Pakistani lady who had taken the ill-considered action of consenting to marry me. I am sure she has had many ambivalent feelings about this choice over the years, but that’s not the point of my rambling tome either. I'm telling you all this so that you can go ahead and dismiss my perspective as biased, if you see fit, but ask yourself this; would a guy actually take his wife’s side on anything that has anything to do with blowing stuff up?
So, whether you get your news from Fox or MSNBC or the Appleton Daily Standard, you are probably aware that our government has come to the conclusion that all those evil people that planned attacks on us that we let escape from Tora Bora (I’m just sayin’) have made it to safe haven the tribal areas of Pakistan. As the story goes, which I do not doubt, money and religious and political sympathy have bought Osama and his krewe of murderous douche-bags (the ones still alive, that is) a place to hide far from the maddening crowds. Of course we take exception to this, as we should, and have been looking for the dude and his buddies under every rock from Jalalabad to Peshawar. Whenever we think we have found one of them, we send a MQ-1 Predator to pop an AGM-114 “Hellfire” missile at the suspect location. The Hellfire carries a variety of warheads, but the ones used in Pakistan are probably mostly the 20 pound high explosive type. Herein lies the problem.
By most accounts the United States has launched what is approaching 100 Predator Drone attacks in Pakistan thus far. An indeterminate number of evil-doers have been obliterated and somewhere between 700 and 1000 innocent (i.e. non-target) civilians are estimated to have been killed. I have not seen estimates for the number wounded or the value of “collateral” property damage, but twenty pounds of high explosive can do a real number on mud brick structures. The Obama Administration has made these attacks its principle military strategy in fighting “Al Qaeda” in Pakistan and there does not appear to be any plan to reduce or cease such attacks in the near future.
Anyway, along comes this doofus, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen of Pakistani origin, who knows less about bomb-making than the average UGA fraternity boy, who also gets his ass caught and starts spilling the beans about his trips to Pakistan and all the fine friends he made over there and how they are all mad about the drone attacks. Suddenly, every paper bag in Manhattan is a Pakistani Taliban bomb and a nation that already has enough problems between radical Islamic insurgents and an unstable democracy and a big, powerful and generally unfriendly neighbor in India, now has to worry about the public relations disaster brought about by ONE guy.
Now, I am not suggesting any sympathy for Mr. Shahzad, who may, or may not, be the biggest dumbass in Sing Sing for the next 40 years, but let’s take a look at it like this. What if some Mexican criminals, drug lords for example, escaped across the Mexican border into Brownsville, Texas and the Mexican government thought they had found out where they were hiding and launched a missile across the border which did, or did not, kill the escaped criminals, but which also blasted little Joey and Susie, the fine American children living next door, into a pile of goo. How much outcry from the American public would there be and how much pressure would there be on the President (Palin, maybe?) to retaliate? How long do you think that it would be before half of Mexico City was a smoldering ruin?
I am simply amazed at the indifferent arrogance of the average American when it comes to killing completely innocent people all over the world. People say “well, that’s war”, or “they shouldn’t be hiding the douche-bags”, but we are not at war with Pakistan, and I’d wager 98 percent of Americans have no idea who is in the house right next door right this minute. I don’t appreciate Mr. Shahzad’s attempt to imitate the wanton destruction of innocent life, but I do understand why somebody in Pakistan might not be too copasetic with aggressive U.S. actions which kill their family or neighbors who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, victims of “faulty intelligence”, poor aim, or the political sentiments of cousin Abdul.
I am probably as much a victim of nostalgic amnesia as anyone in this country; I have this persistent thought that America used to be better than this, that we were a kind and caring nation who wouldn’t blow up old ladies and children unless there were no alternative. I’m likely dreaming on that one and, in all fairness, we are probably still one of the most well-intentioned nations on the planet, but we are rapidly becoming one of the most incompetent, and power and incompetence make a dangerous combination. Our ignorance of, and indifference to, the thoughts, feelings and ideas of people who are different from us is appalling. Our certainty in our own moral superiority, unsupported by anything but jingoistic rhetoric, continues to isolate us from needed friends and creates enemies unnecessarily. Faisal Shahzad is clearly more American than Pakistani; he thinks complex problems can be solved by indiscriminate violence and he doesn’t have the slightest clue, what the hell he’s doing.
As a matter of full disclosure, I have been to Pakistan. I spent a lovely three weeks there 21 years ago trying not to expire from the late May heat. I was there getting married to a lovely Pakistani lady who had taken the ill-considered action of consenting to marry me. I am sure she has had many ambivalent feelings about this choice over the years, but that’s not the point of my rambling tome either. I'm telling you all this so that you can go ahead and dismiss my perspective as biased, if you see fit, but ask yourself this; would a guy actually take his wife’s side on anything that has anything to do with blowing stuff up?
So, whether you get your news from Fox or MSNBC or the Appleton Daily Standard, you are probably aware that our government has come to the conclusion that all those evil people that planned attacks on us that we let escape from Tora Bora (I’m just sayin’) have made it to safe haven the tribal areas of Pakistan. As the story goes, which I do not doubt, money and religious and political sympathy have bought Osama and his krewe of murderous douche-bags (the ones still alive, that is) a place to hide far from the maddening crowds. Of course we take exception to this, as we should, and have been looking for the dude and his buddies under every rock from Jalalabad to Peshawar. Whenever we think we have found one of them, we send a MQ-1 Predator to pop an AGM-114 “Hellfire” missile at the suspect location. The Hellfire carries a variety of warheads, but the ones used in Pakistan are probably mostly the 20 pound high explosive type. Herein lies the problem.
By most accounts the United States has launched what is approaching 100 Predator Drone attacks in Pakistan thus far. An indeterminate number of evil-doers have been obliterated and somewhere between 700 and 1000 innocent (i.e. non-target) civilians are estimated to have been killed. I have not seen estimates for the number wounded or the value of “collateral” property damage, but twenty pounds of high explosive can do a real number on mud brick structures. The Obama Administration has made these attacks its principle military strategy in fighting “Al Qaeda” in Pakistan and there does not appear to be any plan to reduce or cease such attacks in the near future.
Anyway, along comes this doofus, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen of Pakistani origin, who knows less about bomb-making than the average UGA fraternity boy, who also gets his ass caught and starts spilling the beans about his trips to Pakistan and all the fine friends he made over there and how they are all mad about the drone attacks. Suddenly, every paper bag in Manhattan is a Pakistani Taliban bomb and a nation that already has enough problems between radical Islamic insurgents and an unstable democracy and a big, powerful and generally unfriendly neighbor in India, now has to worry about the public relations disaster brought about by ONE guy.
Now, I am not suggesting any sympathy for Mr. Shahzad, who may, or may not, be the biggest dumbass in Sing Sing for the next 40 years, but let’s take a look at it like this. What if some Mexican criminals, drug lords for example, escaped across the Mexican border into Brownsville, Texas and the Mexican government thought they had found out where they were hiding and launched a missile across the border which did, or did not, kill the escaped criminals, but which also blasted little Joey and Susie, the fine American children living next door, into a pile of goo. How much outcry from the American public would there be and how much pressure would there be on the President (Palin, maybe?) to retaliate? How long do you think that it would be before half of Mexico City was a smoldering ruin?
I am simply amazed at the indifferent arrogance of the average American when it comes to killing completely innocent people all over the world. People say “well, that’s war”, or “they shouldn’t be hiding the douche-bags”, but we are not at war with Pakistan, and I’d wager 98 percent of Americans have no idea who is in the house right next door right this minute. I don’t appreciate Mr. Shahzad’s attempt to imitate the wanton destruction of innocent life, but I do understand why somebody in Pakistan might not be too copasetic with aggressive U.S. actions which kill their family or neighbors who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, victims of “faulty intelligence”, poor aim, or the political sentiments of cousin Abdul.
I am probably as much a victim of nostalgic amnesia as anyone in this country; I have this persistent thought that America used to be better than this, that we were a kind and caring nation who wouldn’t blow up old ladies and children unless there were no alternative. I’m likely dreaming on that one and, in all fairness, we are probably still one of the most well-intentioned nations on the planet, but we are rapidly becoming one of the most incompetent, and power and incompetence make a dangerous combination. Our ignorance of, and indifference to, the thoughts, feelings and ideas of people who are different from us is appalling. Our certainty in our own moral superiority, unsupported by anything but jingoistic rhetoric, continues to isolate us from needed friends and creates enemies unnecessarily. Faisal Shahzad is clearly more American than Pakistani; he thinks complex problems can be solved by indiscriminate violence and he doesn’t have the slightest clue, what the hell he’s doing.
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