Our subversive weapon against the tactic of terrorism, which requires intelligence to fight, is the rule of law. Theirs is the tyranny of the mind, ours is the tyranny of reason. We follow the law to leverage the better instincts of less-indoctrinated associates and relatives, by showing lawful due process, no matter the severity of the crime. What father would turn his jihadi son in to the authorities, if he was convinced his son would be tortured in American black sites?

By treating terrorists as ruthlessly with the law and law enforcement, as they ruthlessly indoctrinate young minds to become fervent weapons in a religious war, we will isolate and stigmatize them socially within their own communities to such a degree, that they can be marginalized to a lunatic fringe, no matter the background culture of a jihadi cell-member. But that requires information from any and all parties associated with that individual over a lifetime. If we expect to get into the mind of a potential jihadi-terrorist through those closest to him or her, it won’t be done if those closest to them think their son or daughter will be abused in a dark cell at a secret location. We need to understand the psychology of the enemy within the context of THEIR culture, not ours, in order to better profile security threats and the law enforcement (including judicial sentencing) response to those threats.

We need to demonstrate for all to see, that the consequences are predictable, reasonable, and (preferably) non-lethal. Non-lethality is particularly important in our current efforts against Muslim jihadis, which are often clan-based, and lend themselves to retributative, or revenge, responses that can motivate families and clans for generations after a perceived injustice has occurred. If we’re really serious about increasing national security and reducing the threat of international terror by EEH’s (Embedded Explosive Human), we have to get serious about being non-ideological, and culturally un-biased not only in our threat assessment, but in the punishment meted out to those caught and convicted of jihadi terror. Breaking this cycle of revenge-justice early, by using life-sentences instead of death sentences for terrorism convictions of certain faiths and cultures, would have long-term security benefits. Therefore a life sentence should be the severest form of punishment for crimes of jihadi terror.

Obama and Gates (Sec Def) have already announced major cuts in defense spending for Cold War weapons systems. Totally exciting. Historical. An attempt by the public to grab control of government away from the military-industrial-congressional complex which spends over 50% of the total US budget, and has dominated budgetary priorities since the end of 1945. This is gonna be titanically fascinating to watch! My guess is they are going to answer right-wing charges of economic dislocation by getting defense contractors together with a newly-focused automobile industry. Crisis as the handmaiden of opportunity. Yes we can. Smart government. Focused action.

And if they can swing that, I find this to be a remarkable statement by a US president:
[excerpt from Obama In Prague, 4-5-09]

“The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one….

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable…

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. ”

Interesting Politico blog-entry on European trip:

Obama The Rationalist

[I found this essay recently-actually, its a response, written in May of 2007, to something written by a Rick L along with a number of commentators on an original topic. I can’t remember who, what, or where I stumbled across the topic I end up writing about, but reading my response nearly two years later, I find it continues to be a fine summation of my thinking on comparative religious and anthropological issues–tl, 3-15-09]

To Rick L…you make some interesting points, finally suggesting that perhaps the fact that Jesus is equated with God is at the root of the confusion between the idea of an omnipotent being and evolution. In fact, history tells us about the beginnings of that doctrinal dispute in early Christianity, that finally was ‘decided’ in favor of the Holy Trinity (I guess two theistic equalities weren’t enough, we settled on three).

But there’s another angle that I take issue with, and that is with a method of your argument. You write “what we are actually arguing is the role of Christ, since without Eden, Jesus’ death was not really for our salvation”.

For the sake of argument (and a fairly reasonable one at that) lets assume Jesus was at very least a historical figure, not requiring an act faith to believe he walked, taught, and lived. However, assuming Eden was an actual place, and Adam and Eve historical figures, populating that place is much more an act of faith. It is not unreasonable to think of it (and them) as metaphor; a time and place before Man became self-conscious, when he was at one with the animal kingdom, with Adam and Eve symbolizing an emergant consciousness leading to morality, ethics, and finally, religion.

To argue that the meaning of the death of a historical figure, Jesus, is invalidated because he can no longer atone for the original sin described in a metaphor, I find unnecessarily patronizing of Jesus’ message. Jesus’ message is far more powerful than its dependency on whether Eden, Adam, and Eve actually existed or are metaphor. I am personally not a follower of organized religion, or a ‘believer’ in Biblical prophecy, preferring to look at the Bible as epic myth with much to tell us about ourselves. But looking at Jesus as a philosopher, his message is transcendant. The absolution of ’sin’ by following the teachings of Jesus does not require, in my view, a corresponding faith in the allegedly historical nature of the place and people of the ‘original’ sin.

Furthermore, and outside of my previous comment to Rick L, I was surprised that none of the other comments here [the now-unknown blog that this was posted to] referred to any non-theistic belief systems. They may be considered ‘morally relativistic’ or even ‘evil’ by today’s standards, but we just can’t ignore the fact that many - if not most - were equally crucial to building human civilizations that lasted hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Can such cultural complexity, as exhibited by Pharaohonic Egypt, or more extremely, the Central American Maya, simply be dismissed as irrelevant to the notion that we are perfectly capable as a species in finding spiritual guidance and social harmony with belief systems containing rituals we would consider brutal, if not horrific? Is it right to use our horror as an excuse to diminish their achievement? I think we are being morally relativistic ourselves by dismissing such civilizational accomplishments with a quick judgement based on what we today define as ‘revealed truth’.

In fact, it is only by studying non- or poly- theistic societies in comparison to ours, that we can truly appreciate not only the nature of current belief system(s), but the essence of our nature as human beings. Obviously, neither the Maya nor the Romans had all the answers, because they were not able to overcome inherent limitations and contradictions. They were unable to build sustainable societies. But some of them nevertheless achieved civilizations that have lasted far longer than ours. To paraphrase an adage: “We build on the shoulders of those who come before us…” I would add, ‘no matter our moral quibbles with their methods.’

I think Christopher Hitchens is making a fundamental point: to the extent that modern humanity is different from all those who came before, it is in removing the now-unnecessary flotsam and jetsam of historical or doctrinal particulars of religion to get at the essence - not just of the purpose of humanity and its constituent individuals - but also the means by which we seek to distinguish ourselves from the universe around us as an emergent property of matter. There is something miraculous in that, that doesn’t have to be explained by ‘a’ God. It may be momentarily convenient to do so, but it is not inherently necessary. Religion seeks organizing principles of a supernatural variety to explain the believer’s existence, and by extension, how to manage that (fleeting) existence in the context of our consciousness of things larger than ourselves. Yet we are increasingly becoming aware, thanks to our technologically-heightened sensibilities, that from simple beginnings, great complexity can arise.

In fact, resorting to supernatural explanations is not only becoming increasingly unnecessary, but is the heart of the dispute between religion and secularism. Faith, as such, is becoming unnecessary to explain material existance to anyone willing to make the effort to understand the principles involved. Principles that describe the affinity of certain atoms to others, creating mechanisms of energy storage and distribution, to the formation of organisms perpetuating themselves around such activities, to the symbiotic relationships between organisms that create ever-greater complexities, up to and including the brain and, in its apotheosis in Homo sapiens-sapiensis, its transcendant self-awareness.

It may be convenient to insist that such wonder cannot possibly be self-directed, but who (or what) are we to say that with our puny 100-year lifespans? Can we really conceive what is and isn’t possible for self-organizing physical processes to achieve in the timespans of billions and billions of years? And if an explanation by the faithful demands attention on its merits, how can alternative explanations by the faith-less not be equally demanding of attention - particularly when it is rigorous in its method and comprehensive in its scope? Do we deny science a voice simply because it is seen as faithless, or because it is factually wrong? And by ‘facts’, is it fair for the supernatural to pass judgement on the merely natural? Is it not a greater achievement to reason out natural methods to arrive at the same result the all-powerful supernatural methods would appear to? To deny science due consideration is, in essence, to deny reason itself. And if we’re going to be in the business of denying reason, then the faithful have an obligation to explain the whole of modern civilization that surrounds them, and that they happily utilize, while simultaneously denying the power of reason - the splitting of the atom, the exploration of the solar system, the invention of the integrated circuit based on an understanding of quantum mechanics.

When I read Jesus as a philosopher, what I take away from him is the beginnings of a moral order that transcends the natural order, not by denying it, but through understanding, accepting it and mankinds place in it, and finally, moving beyond it and out to the stars. Just as he broke with Judaic law to touch on the transcendant truths relevant to his time and era, he calls on us, along with other great moral philosophers, to consider what is transcendant about the human condition, its nature and its relationship with the great expanse beyond.

What is the purpose of religion when a rock of sufficient mass can end all of human history in an instant? Can there be any legitimate argument for why religion shouldn’t be at the forefront of a new focus of human ingenuity and purpose following on that most basic of animal instincts: Survival? To the extent we heed Seneca’s famous nostrum about religion (’Religion for common folk is true, for the wise, false, and for rulers, useful’), instead of a Crusade against enemies of the Word, the Pope/Imam/Patriarch would call for a crusade against complacency and a complete loss of humanity along with any material evidence of its existence or ‘His Story’. To protect Him and our faith in Him, so religious authorities might say, we would protect ourselves as a species, a human tribe, and no longer simply as this particular Chosen people, or this particular chosen religious order. In concert with secular, and other religious authorities, the Holy See would set in motion an inter-faith dialog that might produce a codex, a document that would set the moral, ethical, and perhaps even doctrinal agenda necessary to raise the consciousness of all men and women of faith to see the purpose of requiring scholarship and sacrifice in the pursuit of mastering our traditional differences.

We must overcome ourselves by visualizing not just the possible, but the necessary things for our survival as a species. We need to discuss too, the moral and ethical obligations of that understanding within the context of a harsh and unforgiving interstellar environment. This in order to create a human community, on planet Earth, capable of mastering its immediate environment in the cosmos, in order to lead the Word that is humanity in all its faiths, if you will — a beacon of light in that cold dark night, and onto new pastures, challenges, and benefits. It would be the declaration of an epic journey, on a par with the books of Exodus and Kings, taking generations to complete.

If religion serves a purpose, as it aspires to, surely it must at its core be for survival. Just as the first crusades a thousand years ago were an exercise of faith translated into action, a new ‘crusade’ would focus all of Man’s ingenuity in engineering and science away from idle, controversial, or non-productive pursuits, and toward the preparation and planning of a sustainable future, here on Earth, but also thinking about beyond the Earth-Moon system. This inter-faith dialog and resulting codex would not be incompatible with current global financial trends and political realities. It would simply be an expression, endorsed by the Church and allied faiths, to encourage a spiritual priority that fosters cooperation among nations, faiths, and tribes. Cooperation for what? For the survival of all races and faiths on planet Earth. A religious codex for a United Nations, if you will.

We are not unlike, in our Earth-based system, those nomadic tribesmen in the wilderness, jungle, and savannah that was humanity’s past, who after a while might commune with the shaman, or priest, and come to realize that it was time the tribe must risk a known environment and move on to new foraging areas or else risk certain penury and eventually, death.

In our case, Plan A could be the attempt to save our world from ourselves by emphasizing the metaphysical through the practical means to accomplish such a task, not unlike the call to arms of past crusades. But there should also be a Plan B for the eventuality that we either: won’t succeed in our time as we face an extended period of social chaos and information loss - a new Dark Age, if you will - or that a natural event beyond our control could very well end the story of Mankind on Planet Earth. Either way, that journey to new horizons begins now, and it starts with acknowledgement and planning. More thoughts on this topic to come.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the interesection of law and entertainment as expressed in copyright and trademarking. It’s not the first time I’ve written on it here, but a recent comment by an aunt in Switzerland, where she paraphrased a quote - possibly by the composer Fortner - saying something like “the only way true composing can occur would be to destroy completely every music that came before” brought the issue to my mind again. The idea being on the one hand, that all existing works obstruct every trace of real creativity by an individual, and on the other, that there is no such thing as true creativity since we are all necessarily influenced by the world around us, and our experiences in it. And with respect to the widespread commercial ownership of what is essentially our visual and auditory environment that surrounds us on a daily basis, together with machine-enabled IT, this will likely have consequences on the nature of Art in the coming cyber-centuries unless this relationship between Private and Public ownership can be mediated at a more equitable level. <more…>

If the bailout of the car industry doesn’t finally kill the idea that ‘free markets are self-regulating’, where the public interest should have no (or as little as possible) say in the rules, regulation, and taxation of the business and financial environments they operate in, I don’t know what will. <more…>

There’s talk this week about Wachovia (a medium-sized bank) failing. But its a big ‘if’ for Wachovia to fail. I can’t say it Won’t Happen, (and with the way things have been going these past months…?) but never count out the desire to avoid pain if at all possible. The more US assets are being bought by sovereign wealth funds, the more likely they’re calling the policy shots in Washington. That means unusually serious talks with China (what, we’re in bed with Socialist-commies??), a large chunk of OPEC (what, we’re in bed with terrorist-financiers??) and half of ASEAN (what, they not only took our jobs but they own our banks??). Its not only what kind of pain *we’re* willing to bear (or will be victims of) but what kind of hit they’re willing to take with us. Its significant that the published minutes of the Fed this week indicated a discussion to *raise* interest rates. That seems to indicate that some important people are beginning to think they’ve run out of options. <more…>

We are only ever going to be able to approximate God in the manipulation of nature. Its time to stop believing in the Perfectability Of Man, as expressed in the interminable moralizing of so many American politicians (usually of the ‘conservative’ stripe), and start believing in the management of his imperfections. Our species inhabits the center of a resource-management system whose purpose is sustaining a civil society with minimal needs generating maximum benefits. The material output of our society is piloted by the natural efficiencies of human instinct married to situational information. In effect this is the essence of capitalism, and it has to be managed to work properly. No oversight of markets is not a substitute for managing - through policy - the independent parts of a global economic whole. Neither are no markets a substitute for the redistributive tendencies of populist political movements. Restricting information stifles innovation, and that drives down quality and finally, production itself. Too much information reduces value which leads to collapsed markets. Therefore, rules-based systems, such as the managed capitalism of the West, are so far seen as those best suited to create a ‘balance of averages’, by divorcing markets to some degree from the vicissitudes of the political moment or, conversely, its reigning personality. Creating distance between markets and public institutions is necessary to prevent individuals (and their institutions) from having the power to overtly influence, or for that matter eliminate, markets. More to come on this topic.

As if the consequences of fundamentally flawed leadership at home and abroad weren’t enough for BCR (Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, and also standing in for that entire myopically moralistic cabal of foreign and domestic policy wonks that followed them into the bureaucracy) to have to handle, I perceive a dangerous collision of interests between the US and Iran in Iraq.

Up until now, the paradigm governing Iran’s attitude toward its neighbor Iraq, and its current occupying power, the US, was that Iran seeks stability on its borders. Its economy is suffering, people are concerned for their future, and the power struggle between the Khatami reformers, and the Ahmadinejad hard-liners was consuming the attentions of the leadership.

Recent elections in Iran suggest that, by hook or crook, the debate has been settled: the hardliners have rigged the system enough to guarantee majorities in parliament (aka the Majlis). Ahmadinejad and his governing party were able to thwart the democratic process with the assent of the Supreme Council (of Religious Leaders) in part by appealing to nationalist sentiment over the attempts by the UN (and the US) to restrict its uranium-enrichment program.

Meanwhile, in the US, citizens are beginning to agitate for some kind of resolution to the mess in Iraq, in order to reduce the American military presence there. The Americans, by their commitment in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, are now also vulnerable to a similarly jingoistic message that views Iran as a threat, by many of the hangers-on of the BCR-cabal still embedded in the Washington bureaucracy and supporting institutions. Where is this all headed? <more…>

A Gas Tax Holiday?

Either we’re for a free market, or we’re not. If we start carving out exceptions to a classic supply and demand issue, we are decidedly not for a free market economy.

Sure its painful, politicians and presidential candidates should say, ‘but this is the bill coming due for the bad policy-making of the past 20 years’ on many of our top priority issues facing the United States. The cost of energy being one of them.

If we start fooling around with the mechanism of supply and demand, and begin incentivizing a counter-productive consumer response to that mechanism with ideas like a consumer gas tax holiday, we will not only be complicit in a great hypocrisy of values, but we will demonstrate for all the world to see, that our pain at the gas pump is more important than all our rhetoric on green energy, and global warming, and quite possibly risk the future of mankind.

That’s about as selfish and irresponsible as you can get.

John McCain implicitly endorsed torture today. Oh, he tried to hide behind the fig leaf of not wanting to ‘tie the hands’ of the CIA, but who is he kidding? He’s been tortured, for chrissakes! He has spent a political lifetime advocating more benign forms of interrogation. But John McCain has made his bargain with the Devil. He apparently will do anything to be president. I take it seriously when a man who has been tortured, endorses the potential for torture by our security and intelligence services. By implicitly allowing for coercive interrogation methods, in supporting President Bush’s veto on legislation requiring the CIA to limit itself only to techniques in the Army Field Manual of interrogation, John McCain, victim of five years of torture at the hands of the Viet Cong, ends up legitimizing torture. And since we purport to be the leaders of the free world, we legitimize torture for everyone else. And for what? So John McCain can be president? <more…>

Responding to the Economist article ‘Why They Should Stay’, 9/15/07 issue….The case made by the Economist (for staying in Iraq to prevent genocide) may cost the world its benevolently hegomonic power, America, only to replace it with a more dangerous, more unpredictable, less stable, global power struggle that could much more easily end in some form of even greater humanitarian disaster. The only question would be whether it would be in the form of a slide into instability, or a cataclysmically sudden political/military (or natural) event that upsets human civilization. <more…>

We’re losing control. The story of the early 21st century will be defined by the rise of gangsterism - not necessarily due to a lack of opportunity, as was the case 100 years ago when the Gilded Age elites insisted that they (and only they) knew what appropriate labor standards were necessary to maintain productivity - but due to a lack of fiscal and societal (as opposed to ’social’) accountability - together with an ethic of impunity by the powerful and the monied. An entire essay could be written on how the past 25 years of a corporate-congressional dance have brought us to this point. Suffice to say the consequences have cascaded out of the boardrooms and into our social norms and expectations. <more…>

While the pundits bang on about the president’s use of the word “certain” in his recent morning press conference on Iran’s involvement in insurgent attacks against coalition forces, I thought the presidents quote (4th paragraph) contained in this NYTimes article, was as fascinating in its own right:

“And I’d like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of the government. But my point is, what’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?”

Evidently, the President doesn’t care a whit about Iraqi casualties. After all, no matter who is doing it, whether affiliated with Iranian Quds or not, its not the Americans that are bearing the brunt of the dying. So bothering with distinctions of whether or not some faction of combatants is armed by the Iranian government misses the obvious point that the American government expects a government we refuse to speak to, to simply obey instructions. Or its simply the first card dropped on the table, that leads to an eventual American-Iranian confrontation. . <more…>

The received wisdom of campaign management says ‘you don’t acknowledge your opponent’. But to assume that includes not acknowledging an opponent’s argument, is a mistake. The first campaign manager that understands the distinction enough to make it an important part of opposing conservatives cannot lose. Using your opponent’s argument in your own, is the most effective way to create memorable distinctions in the minds of centrist, independent voters. Can we speak to the affect that modern campaign management has on getting and keeping voters - the electorate - informed?

First of all, we have to understand that the political campaigns we all love to hate are there for a reason. They exist the way they do because the US government is not in control of the venue that is the public’s best and - from the campaign’s perspective - most efficient source of daily information: television. <more…>

We can stipulate that the Iraq war was the most blatant (if not the first) exercise of some of the largest corporate interests in our nation, but devoid of any sense of the intellectual rigor that would normally go into such an undertaking, had it been a policy of a private company. But making full use of the public relations tools of the government (the public interest) to disguise a private interest methodology of securing energy supplies (as opposed to the legitimate public interest in adequate energy supplies) on behalf of a global superpower as a matter of public policy, makes it even more indefensible. Not because there are no alternatives to obtaining such supplies, but because the public’s right to know was compromised by getting them to believe a second lie to achieve the first lie. <more…>

The challenge of our time is corporate control of the means to establish (and maintain) identity and not merely the traditional mantra of ‘control over production’. Insomuch as the arts have always been a means to explore personal and social identity, ‘Art’ must now wake up and challenge the trojan horse of corporate control masquerading as ownership through trademark and copyright. We shouldn’t seek to overthrow the idea of copyright and trademark, but to limit the claims of such to functionally relevant venues. For instance, a producer of foodstuffs should be able to expect producers of other foodstuffs to be prevented from using unduly similar graphic and textual depictions in its advertising from being used. But reproducing that graphic or text for a non-foodstuff, yet still conceivably commercial, venue would not carry the same copyright or trademark protections. <more…>