current events

I wrote previously about the whacky conspiracy theories that the 9/11 inquiry, and the Bush administration in general, engender. I had another thought along these lines today.

With a budget of $3 million (compared to, what, $110 million spent on Whitewater?), it seems clear the Bush administration doesn’t want the inquiry to get ambitious. With Kissinger as the first appointee to lead the commission, it seemed all the clearer that Bush didn’t want to hear any unwelcome news.

Kissinger’s appointment became an issue largely because of an outcry from the blogosphere. This was reported in the traditional news media. Now we are seeing Kean, his replacement, generating some outcry in the blogosphere as well. Is it possible that the president is gaming the system?

The commission has an 18-month lifespan. Two months have already been shot. Could the administration effectively negate the commission by appointing a succession of controversial chairmen to it and exploiting the resulting outcry? Running down the clock? I know, crazy talk. I don’t quite believe it myself. But still…

Meanwhile, in related news, the Slacktivist has pointed to a brilliant, and disturbingly prescient passage in a satirical book about George I and Gulf War, Episode I.

A big part of the problem is that, since even before he took office, Bush has shown a contempt for the openness and accountability that allow a democracy to function. And why not? His entire life has been a finger in the eye of meritocracy. He has always traded on his name and gotten preferential backroom deals from backslapping buddies. Shoot, he didn’t even win the presidential race, exactly. So it’s no surprise he should be contemptuous. But his predilection for secrecy, old-boy networking, etc, apart from the damage it does to democracy, makes it impossible to resist seeing conspiracies.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden tells us it’s time to put on the tinfoil hat, connecting the dots between the new chairmain of the committee investigating 9/11 to Osama bin Laden.

In the wake of 9/11, The Onion observed that American life had turned into a bad Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It might actually be a bad Richard Donner movie.

[Later]: More on this story here.

We (as in “We the people”) have lost the Eldred v Ashcroft case before the Supreme Court. This fought the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of ’98, which was passed at Disney’s behest so that Mickey Mouse would not fall into the public domain.

I think the Economist is a great magazine, but man, when they’re wrong, they’re wrong

Or look at the looming war with Iraq. Mr Bush’s critics could not get it more wrong when they charge him with exploiting Iraq for domestic reasons; in fact, the easiest way to secure his popularity would have been to ignore Iraq and concentrate on al-Qaeda. If Mr Bush is right, and Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, then America risks huge casualties; if he is wrong, and Pandora’s box is empty, then he risks looking like a fool.

In no particular order: Bush risks looking like a fool every time he opens his mouth (whether to speak, or merely to eat a pretzel), so there’s nothing new there. I have written before that winning the war on al Qaeda is not a good way to make political points, since A) it wasn’t going very well, and B) success in this “war” is defined by an absence of news. It isn’t very impressive to report “no buildings blown up today.” In a war against Iraq, you can show clear results — which the military can completely stage-manage. Part of the problem here is that the “war on terror” is not a real war. If Iraq possesses WMDs, they still lack the delivery system to reach the USA, and so would have to use them on their own soil (which they’ve done before, admittedly). If they don’t, Bush will simply say they’re well hidden.

Burningbird writes about a series of public-service announcements (available for download):

All the ads are intended to ‘inform’ the American public about what will happen if we don’t continue to support the war on Terror. All horrifyingly demonstrating the reality of what is happening to this country because of the war on terror.

Ouch. One ad illustrates “freedom”: a shopping cart rolling through a grocery store aisle, with 10 kinds of bread, 50 kinds of breakfast cereal, etc. This is an unintended tribute to George Carlin’s observation that “freedom” in this country means we’ve got 37 different kinds of mustard, but no real political options. Another shows a guy asking for a banned book at a library and immediately being grabbed by the cops–too close to what’s already happening at libraries.

This article in the Washington Post details a startling bit of American history that I had been unaware of: during WW2, the U.S. government kidnapped Latin Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian descent and held them in detention centers, in some cases as late as 1949.

A cautionary tale for our times. I have no trouble imagining the current lot doing the same thing.

When I studied ethics in college, one of the big issues was the question of whether motives or actions were of greater importance. If I remember correctly, Kant said “both.”

The impending war with Iraq demonstrates that Kant was right. It may be the case that making war on Iraq is the right thing to do, if done for the right reasons. I am convinced that the USA’s reasons for a war are not the right ones.

What would be a good reason for war? That Saddam is a threat to American interests and to his own people. Both of these are true.

Why is the USA so intent on war against Iraq? The reason given by the Bush administration is pretty much what I just wrote above. What are the real reasons?

My guess is that the Bush administration is using war on Iraq as a proxy or distraction for the war on terror (I’ve always objected to that term — it’s not a war any more than LBJ’s “war on poverty” or Nixon’s “war on cancer” were wars), which doesn’t seem to be offering any positive results. Indeed, success in a war on terror is defined by an absence of news: no structures blown up, no suicide bombers, etc. Hard to make the case that you’re doing a good job. Not as marketable as a good old-fashioned war.

Another analysis — which I don’t quite buy — is that it is being done at the behest of the Israel lobby. While I’m sure Israeli politicians will be delighted to see Iraq get a good smiting by the USA, I don’t get the impression that they had been agitating for it before the Bush administration made it a priority. And, although the Israel lobby probably does have disproportionate influence (especially given the unholy alliance between Israel and American fundamentalist Christians these days), I’m not convinced that it’s influential enough to push America into a war.

And there’s the old standby, oil. I’ve read reports that representatives of major oil interests from the USA, Britain, Russia, etc, have already met to decide on how they will carve up a postwar Iraq. This is plausible. And while a war will probably be hard on the economy overall, it will be great for certain sectors — obviously the military-industrial complex, but also oil, which will be much more expensive while the war is going on.

And I do believe that Saddam’s threat to American interests is on the list, but pretty low on it. It’s not a credible justification. He’s not significantly more of a threat now than he was before Bush started making all this noise about him.

So if we do go to war against Iraq, it will be mostly for the wrong reasons. This will lead to doing the wrong things, such as shortchanging higher priorities (like that war on terror) and prosecuting the war in a way that might not lead to the best outcome in terms of American security overall, but might be best in terms of oil interests. And almost inevitably, the rebuilding of postwar Iraq will be cursed by American short-termism and by American appeasement of Saudi Arabia. (Institute a real democracy? Don’t count on it.) And so on.

Well, now that he has apologized all over the place and lost his lofty perch, Trent Lott has essentially retracted his recent contrition for his veiled racist remarks, saying

There are people in Washington who have been trying to nail me for a long time,” Lott said in the AP report. “When you’re from Mississippi and you’re a conservative and you’re a Christian, there are a lot of people that don’t like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame.

Saying, in effect, “Sure I’m sorry — I’m sorry I was naive enough to walk into the trap laid by those mean old unspecified people who have it in for conservative Christian Mississipians.” So, to review, he still doesn’t think he said anything wrong (or expressed any indefensible ideas), he just thinks the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy finally nailed him. The cluephone is going to ring for a long time before he picks it up.

As an American, but not a deeply, blindly conservative one, I find it difficult to avoid being cynical and resigned. Despite a Bush administration that makes Nixon’s look like a Boy Scout jamboree, the average citizen seems indifferent to what’s going on in Washington. So my schadenfreude at finding this story is mixed with a feeling of futility.

First, we had the rat with the robotic brain. Now we have the robot with the rat brain. No word yet what Ratbert thinks about all this.

Esquire magazine recently published a four page letter (long, but worth reading) by John DiIulio, former head of faith-based initiatives for the President, describing the way the Bush White House is completely driven by political calculations, not by policy. He has since apologized, saying his word were “poorly chosen.” This apology has all the plausibility of Claude Rains being shocked–shocked!–to discover gambling, since the letter was so well written. And indeed, DiIulio subsequently offered a “clarification” of the apology, saying that good manners required it. In any case, the episode does show that the Bushies don’t like dissent in the ranks, and presumably had some lever they could use to pry this retraction out of DiIulio. I wonder what.

Tim O’Reilly, publisher of fine technical books with animals on the covers, dropped a mind-bomb a couple days ago on the subject of piracy and file-sharing. Some very well thought-out counter-arguments to typical Hollywood positions.

He does say one thing that doesn’t quite ring true:

The music and film industries like to suggest that file sharing networks will destroy their industries.

Those who make this argument completely fail to understand the nature of publishing. Publishing is not a role that will be undone by any new technology, since its existence is mandated by mathematics. Millions of buyers and millions of sellers cannot find one another without one or more middlemen who, like a kind of step-down transformer, segment the market into more manageable pieces. In fact, there is usually a rich ecology of middlemen. Publishers aggregate authors for retailers. Retailers aggregate customers for publishers. Wholesalers aggregate small publishers for retailers and small retailers for publishers. Specialty distributors find ways into non-standard channels.

My favorite file-sharing site was Audio Galaxy. It has almost no files to share anymore, thanks to the MPAA, but it still does have the feature that made it better than, say, Napster: it apparently uses some kind of agent technology to present “other people who liked this also liked these” recommendations. This was great–I discovered some new music that way, music I simply wouldn’t have found otherwise. With a reasonably fast connection, it was like audible websurfing.

Audio Galaxy could be considered an aggregator, but I wouldn’t call it a publisher. In a world of unfettered P2P, people really could be self-publishers, and something like Audio Galaxy could thrive. And I wonder if some kind of completely decentralized “taste-sharing” mechanism could be worked out through something akin to FOAF (the “friend of a friend” vocabulary).

But unfettered P2P is a pipe dream. Hollywood wants complete control over the terms under which we enjoy their product (and you damn well better enjoy it if you know what’s good for you). Disney has copyright extended everytime the mouse is on the verge of entering the public domain, and a TV exec says that skipping commercials is theft (I wonder if simply watching a show where you are a member of the wrong demographic is also theft?). A bill has been introduced to Congress that would explicitly permit Hollywood to hack into your PC and poke around for pirated content (and indemnify them in case they, oh, accidentally trashed your hard drive in the process). And so on.

Hollywood also would probably like it if people like me, who are creating media outside the system, would stop competing with them (if you call this competition). But I can picture the bones of a science-fiction story along the the lines of Farenheit 451, where ownership of industry media has become so onerous that people create a complete samizdat network of old public-domain and homemade entertainments.

I’ve never been a major Stereolab fan, but it was sad to read this nonetheless. I can point to the exact spots of four fatal bike-vs-car accidents in my general neighborhood.

Good article on some of the criminals running the show these days.

Another way George II’s upcoming war really feels like a sequel to George I’s gulf war: I was in traffic today, behind a new SUV with a yellow-ribbon sticker that had the attached text “Support our troops.” This definitely wasn’t a leftover from the last gulf war–it just looked like it.

There’s a truly hilarious website out there, blackpeopleloveus.com. It satirizes a quiet and unintentional sort of racism sometimes found in white people.

Evidently, not everyone gets it. And some people who do get it feel that racism is too serious to make light of (violating my personal prime directive, “fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke”). The site has gotten enough public attention that it was featured on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Take a look at the ABC page discussing this–it doesn’t actually link to the site (though it does give the URL, so you could get there), and at the bottom, the page has a feedback form which starts off with “Now that you’ve heard about blackpeopleloveus.com, we would like to know what you think.” Note that they are subtly discouraging you from actually checking the site out for yourself, and encouraging you to treat the ABC writeup as the only source you need–to make decisions and offer feedback based on incomplete information when the source is right under your nose.

They just don’t get it.

A couple of recent news items about China have intrigued me. NPR reported that a stage adaptation of Animal Farm is showing in Beijing (audio link). And a Chinese national who has spent much of his life in America but recently returned to his hometown, Shanghai, reflects on how much things have changed there.

It seems amazing that Animal Farm could be showing in China. But the story makes clear that while the older generation found it moving and relevant, the younger generation just didn’t get it–perhaps because they were all busy sending text messages to their friends on their cellphones during the play. The story in the NY Times is even more astounding:

I listened to my 14-year-old cousin sing rap in Chinese about the fantasized martial arts, jiang hu. When I asked him about Chairman Mao, he gave me a blank stare, just like teenagers in Harlem had when I inquired about Malcolm X. “Who is Mao?” my cousin asked. “They might have mentioned him in school, but I didn’t pay attention.”

If nobody except for politicians care about politics, then everyone else will leave the politicians alone to do…whatever they want.

Is it possible that China’s political class has secured its future by making the citizens fat and happy, and pretending that it is irrelevant? Is it possible that the same thing has happened in the USA?

I’ve written before about the switch ad parodies. For those of you dissatisfied with the way things are going in the USA, here’s one of a different sort.

A couple days ago, a final decree was issued in the interminable Microsoft anti-trust suit. Microsoft got off with a slap on the wrist. Unsurprisingly, this boosted Microsoft’s stock. More surprisingly, the market rallied overall.

Microsoft lifted many other technology stocks with it today, including Cisco Systems, I.B.M., Intel and Dell Computer.

This baffles me. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, with predatory business policies. Investors appear to be operating under the principle that “what’s good for Microsoft is good for the market.” The opposite is the case. Although one company’s success need not be at the expense of another’s in general, Microsoft operates according to Gore Vidal’s maxim: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”