Of Net Neutrality

For those who don't understand why "net neutrality" is a critical issue, this editorial [NYT] explains the issue, and why a recent episode involving Verizon is a warning bell in the night for anyone who wants our electronically-mediated society to remain free and democratic.

Unless, of course, you trust your local cable/internet/telecommunications monopoly to make all your political decisions for you.

An announcement

S., over at ApartmentCarpet, has some happy news.

Calling Gomez Addams

World's Scariest Model Train Wrecks

Your tax dollars at work

Want to know where your tax dollars are going? Check out this 2005 "trophy video", from Aegis, a mercenary gang on the US payroll in Iraq. Fair warning: You'll see mercenaries, on your payroll and officially immune from all military and legal oversight, cruising along the highway casually machine-gunning cars and their occupants completely at random to the cheerful accompaniment of American rock music.

"Why do they hate us?" Oh, yes, I forgot. "Because they hate our freedoms," right?

It's almost as shocking that, despite following Iraq-related news fairly closely, I neverheard of this video until now. It appears that the Christian Science Monitor carried the story, but so far as I can tell it was the only US major media outlet to have considered video evidence of US mercenaries casually murdering Iraqi civilians at random to be newsworthy. A little digging in online databases reveals that UPI and the New York Times carried short squibs about it, but they were apparently inconspicuous enough that I didn't see them. (UPI NewsTrack (Nov 27, 2005); "Shots on Web Draw Inquiry." The New York Times (Dec 10, 2005): A10(L).)

But, hey, you're far more interested in some dimwitted, drug-addled Hollywood pop-tart's latest hair malfunction than in documentary proof that your nation is committing acts of random terrorism against civilians, aren't you? Ooh! Ooh! OJ Simpson!!! And.. and.. there's a cute woman missing somewhere! Look, we have her college yearbook photo! And a cute puppy-dog video! Look! Look!

You're a good American. You watch TV obediently. Are you doing your part in the everlasting, ever-expanding "War On Terra" by going shopping? And watching what you say?

Meanwhile, while the corporate media spew out a steady stream of distraction and disinformation, billions of your tax dollars are funding the development of murderous paramilitary mercenary gangs that answer to no one but their paycheck and blithely slaughter civilians whenever they feel like it. They're already been employed as substitutes for Iraq-assigned National Guardsmen in the aftermath of Katrina, and further deployments to the United States are planned. Meanwhile the Bush administration keeps the military and the National Guard, which are at least nominally sworn to respect the Constitution and the rule of law, tied up in a distant overseas quagmire. (As noted in the New York Times, Bush is demanding a larger 2008 budget for his ongoing adventure in Iraq than in any previous year. So much for any talk about troop withdrawals, as favored by the majority of the population in our purported democracy.)

Naomi Wolf has a theory about this. But of course it would an irresponsible conspiracy theorizing to propose that there could be any connection between these events. Nah, that sort of thing never happens. La la la.

UPDATE: a summary of the federal tax dollars shoveled out to Blackwater USA during the Bush Administration can be found here.

God Hates the World (He Hates You!)

A musical message from Fred Phelps' congregation, via YouTube.

This would be simply stupid and comical if it weren't recognizably just an amplified form of the literal worship of hatred and sadism that has hijacked segments of most major religions. As Harold Bloom memorably put it in The American Religion, reading the words of certain fundamentalist religions makes you realize that their authors and adherents should never be left unattended with small children or helpless animals.

For a corrective, one might consider actually reading the Bible, rather than just waving it about like a mute leather-bound idol (to steal another memorable image from Bloom).

Silly rabbit. Civil liberties are for Republicans!

From the New York Times:
Larry Craig's Great Adventure: Suddenly, he's a civil libertarian

... After his arrest, Mr. Craig was called hypocritical for his longstanding opposition to gay rights in Congress. His legal defense, though, presents a different inconsistency. He joins a long list of conservatives who believe in a fair legal system only for themselves.....

The American Civil Liberties Union has come to Mr. Craig’s defense. It says the law he was convicted under — criminalizing “offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct” that tends to “alarm, anger or disturb others” — is unconstitutionally vague, and makes a lot of perfectly harmless speech illegal. It’s right. If boisterous conduct that disturbs others is a crime in Minnesota, the state must be planning mass arrests of the speakers at the 2008 Republican National Convention, which is being held in Minneapolis-St. Paul....

Mr. Craig is hardly alone in deciding that he likes defendants’ rights after he became a defendant. Among law-and-order conservatives, it’s the norm. Oliver North got his Iran-contra convictions thrown out, with the A.C.L.U.’s help, on a relative technicality. This year, an official of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, James Tobin, got his conviction for jamming Democratic Party lines in New Hampshire on Election Day reversed on a fine point about what his “purpose” was....

Just another variety of the IOKIYAR syndrome.

Train runs through Bangkok market

This is bizarre. Or bazaar. At any rate, it puts a whole new intepretation on the phrase "urban mixed use".

(Note: link is to www.ifilm.com with embedded video clip.)

The care and feeding of Congress

This is hilarious, if more than a little depressing.

Update re. Blackwater USA massacre of civilians

The Independent, a UK newspaper, reports more details of the massacre, which US new outlets are apparently refusing to cover. The death toll is now apparently 28 and expected to rise further. Discussion rational and otherwise here.

Blackwater USA, of course, claims that they are blameless. A video of the incident reportedly says otherwise. But who are you going to believe? Right-wing militarist/theocrat Erik Prince and his corporate mercenaries, or your lying eyes?

Your tax dollars at work. "Why Do They Hate Us?"

No comment really necessary on this one

"God" responds to legislator's lawsuit (CNN)

The return fax number should have been no surprise. Any well-schooled Christian can tell you that God resides in the Body of Christ.

It is somewhat odd that the photograph of the legislator who filed the lawsuit appears to have a halo around his head.

All your ISBNs are belong to us

Ah, those Ivy League schools. They're so advanced. So far out in front of the rest of society, in research, in science, in intellectual resources.

And, it appears, in wildly ambitious interpretations of intellectual property. The Harvard Crimson reports that the campus co-op bookstore expels students who take notes and compare prices on textbooks. The bookstore claims that the ISBNs of the books on the shelves are its intellectual property.

Discussion, paranoid and otherwise, at Slashdot. I can't wait until car dealers follow suit and decide that the specifications of the cars on their lots are "intellectual property", and that their customers therefore are not allowed to take notes and compare prices at other dealerships.

Uh-oh.

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright (Telegraph.co.uk)

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East....

China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales (Telegraph.co.uk)

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress....

Yet another scam to be wary of?

Beware of e-mail scam offering to rescue friends.

... This new scam has seen bogus e-mails claiming that a common friend is attending a conference in Africa on "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education". Then the person - whose e-mail account has been hacked - is portrayed as being stranded in Africa after forgetting in a taxi a "little bag" that contained "money, passport, documents and other valuables".

Friends who write back to the hijacked account are replied to and told to send the $3,500 urgently....

Run away from the scary brown people!

That's exactly what the Republican party seems to be doing, as evidenced by the reported refusal of all the major presidential candidates to appear at an upcoming nationally televised debate focusing on "minority issues".

No matter what one thinks of "racial politics", this seems like a bad strategy for a political party that wishes to remain relevant in a nation where the number of Hispanic, Asian, Indian, native-American, and African or African-American people in the population is increasing. Quoth Jack Kemp, the party's 1996 vice-presidential candidate: “What are we going to do, meet in a country club in the suburbs one day?”

Addendum: Discussion at DailyKos.

WWGD: What Would Greenspan Do?

Apparently he wouldn't vote Republican. At least not for the current crop of R's.

Robert Jordan

His demise is not exactly a surprise, since he announced in March of 2006 that he had been diagnosed with a deadly illness. Still, both he and his fans would certainly have hoped for more time to finish his epic "Wheel of Time" series. (Thanks to Fiend, who is much more in tune with the news of the day than I usually am, for initially mentioning it to me.)

Especially for Carlos

... since he's looking for a place to live somewhere out in the burning deserts of the Southwest. How 'bout Arcosanti?

Exactly as planned

There seems to be mass confusion about how Blackwater USA mercenaries, on the payroll of the US government, ended up shooting several Iraqi civilians in Baghdad recently. Eyewitnesses unconnected to Blackwater state that the mercenaries were not provoked. Or, possibly, that they panicked in response to a distant explosion. Or maybe they got cranky because of rush hour traffic. The official report states they were responding to small arms fire. Blackwater claims that in any case, the mercenaries' killing of eight civilians was lawful, and that they are immune from any and all legal consequences.

And you know what? They may be right.

Ain't it wonderful having a privately-owned and operated mercenary army that doesn't have to follow either US law, Iraqi law, or international law?

Blackwater USA is also aggressively seeking contracts to provide "homeland security" in the United States as well. And of course they're in line to cash in on the ever-profitable War On Drugs. Won't that be fun?

Especially for Pablo

Vampire Population Ecology: a statistical analysis of the vampire population dynamics of Sunnyvale, California.

Perhaps it's Kryptonite

From The Guardian: Peru meteorite crash 'causes mystery illness'

Some good news

The blogger known as Riverbend reports that she and her family have escaped the war-torn wreckage of her native country and taken refuge in a less-chaotic country.

Casualties

Two of the US soldiers who wrote this editorial describing their experiences on the ground in Iraq and criticizing the war are reported killed. A third of the group was recently reported injured. Stories here, here, here.

It's tough being a soldier. A real soldier, that is, as opposed to a chickenhawk.

Logic, Republican style

From today's front-page editorial at www.redstate.org, a refreshingly honest call-to-brutality by one pseudonymous "Frank J.", who has somehow neglected to sign up for the war that he so eagerly demands that *other* people fight for his satisfaction:

When someone tells you we should bring the troops back, ask him who does he think will then kill the terrorists. When he inevitably gives you a dumb answer, punch him in the face....

Republican "logic": bully and physically attack anyone who deigns to disagree with Der Fuhrer, just like Nazis always do when confronted by the unacceptable presence of free men who think for themselves. Devoid of facts and logic, Republicans now have nothing but explicit brownshirt threats to fall back on. But, like the cowardly author of this call-to-thuggishness, only in the safety of a mob of like-minded bullies, in a "safe space" like RedState where dissent from the party line is banned.

Disgusting. And no, I'm not going to give him a link.

Piechart

"Pacified", over at squarestate.net, makes a point graphically:

"The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom (NY Times)

Go on, tell me again how capitalism and communism are opposites.

Administrative ignorance, part whatevereth

From the Times of London:

Biblical error costs Church £½m
An historic collection of religious books whose sale for £36,000 was approved last year by a Church of England diocese has been sold on by a book dealer for more than £500,000....

“Those on the management committee had no idea of the value of the material they were dealing with. The decision was made in principle that the pre1800 collection be disposed of simply because in the past ten years no one had inquired about any book in it at all. Therefore, the library management committee felt that the space was being taken up in a way that was not productive....

In all fairness, though, this is preferable to the clueless managers simply tossing them in the rubbish skip. (That's British for "dumpster".) At least they made some effort to keep the books in existence, if not necessarily available to the world at large.

News noted

Updates to some railroad-related news I've blathered about.

The Texas State Railroad, saved from drowning, has been contracted out to a private operator.

The mighty Canadian Pacific merges its way into the Powder River Basin coalfield by taking over the persistent little Dakota Minnesota & Eastern, which had gotten regulatory permission to extend its South Dakota trackage into the Powder River Basin but up till now couldn't come up with the capital to do so. CP also acquires a route into Kansas City as part of the bargain. (Map of combined systems here.) UP and BNSF are predictably unhappy with the prospect of a third competitor horning in on their very profitable coal traffic. They're reportedly planning to sue to stop the merger, thereby diverting a substantial amount of all three railroads' revenues into the pockets of lawyers for the foreseeable future.

Of publishers and rejection letters

The diary of Anne Frank:

The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.”

Animal Farm:

“impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.”

Just two of the enlightening comments dredged out of the rejection letters of the Alfred E. Knopf publishing company, as described here in the New York Times. It's worth noting that Knopf has generally been regarded as one of the more intellectually enlightened publishing houses.

Madeleine L'Engle

Gone at age 89. PW has a very brief obit.

A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and her other popular and award-winning books continue on. At least until the next library-weeding project.

Random linkyness

StarTrek and Simpsons musical mashup on YouTube. (From the Stilyagi list.)

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the ever-interesting Writer Formerly Known as Thomas H. Benton pulls back the curtain on the eternally-recurring propaganda that this, that, or another profession is expecting an imminent "labor shortage".

Am I wrong to think the annual labor shortage claims do the work of business in creating a surplus army of the unemployed who can drive down wages in fields in which they might otherwise be rising? It seems that during a labor shortage rising wages result in downsizing, offshoring, and other forms of restructuring. As the newly trained workers arrive in droves a few years later, most of the high-wage workers can be dismissed, and the newcomers can be made part-timers with no benefits until the cycle begins again....

Also from the Chronicle, a discussion of the ethics of selling those review copies and "complimentary desk copies" with which publishers deluge academics in the hopes that the latter will assign their books as textbooks, thus forcing dozens or hundreds of impoverished students to buy them at the publisher's exorbitant retail prices.

Fantasy and sf writer Jeff Vandermeer opines about Margaret Atwood's remote book-signing device. I'm tempted to say that any writer who, like Ms. Atwood, is capable of creating, using and popularizing such a device clearly has an aptitude for science fiction. But of course Ms. Atwood's novels about future societies, genetic engineering, etc., are famously Not Science Fiction.

Speaking of genre fiction and its enemies, Ursula K. Leguin's short essay On Serious Literature (aka Return of the Genre-Zombie) should be required reading for anyone involved in writing, editing, buying or selling fiction in any form. (Tagline : "It rose from its shallow grave to haunt the critics!")

Belated poetry Thursday

Yesterday's selection for Apartment Carpet's Poetry Thursday reminded me of another poem that deconstructs the tradional sonnet:

Sonnet Reversed

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June.
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (besides George, who drank):
The eldest Jane, who married Mr Bell,
William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

A Tale of Two Auctions, or, The $500,000 Bottle of Beer.

Auction Number One can be found here. It sold for $304 dollars. The buyer then turned around, did more research, wrote a nearly dissertation-length description of the item and its historical significance, and offered it up in Autcion Number Two, with no reserve. The final sale price: a cool half-million.

What is this improbably pricy item? An old bottle of beer. But not just any old bottle of beer. To begin with, it's reportedly the world's oldest known intact, sealed bottle of beer. Still not impressed? How 'bout the fact that it's part of a special, freeze-resistant batch of beer that was brewed to order for a mid-19th century arctic expedition, and that its provenance and history are exhaustively detailed in a hand-written, 100-year-old note attached to the bottle? (Note: In the absence of any contrary revelations, I am presuming the authenticity of the bottle, because I presume that anyone willing to buy or sell an object for $500,000 is going to have it examined in minute detail by well-qualified experts.)

Certain web-commentators have mocked the first seller for not getting the full value of his find. But I'll speak up in his defense. I don't know how he acquired it, but it seems likely he got it cheap. Possibly he inherited it (in which case one can't help but wish that the heirs of Mr. Bolster, who wrote the charmingly erudite note that accompanies the bottle, had profited more from their ancestor's good taste.) Or perhaps he picked it up cheap at an auction, fleamarket, or estate sale where no one else recognized its value, in which case the heirs who let it slip through their fingers have only themselves to blame!. But in any case, if the first seller hadn't realized that the bottle had some historical significance, for all we know it might have ended up in a dumpster. He knew it was worth something, even if he didn't know exactly what it was worth. And without that recognition, a unique artifact might have been entirely lost.

On the other hand, if he was selling it on commission for somebody else, he has some 'splainin' to do.

Priorities

While the American news media go into paroxyms of ecstatic glee over this week's Republican sex scandal and the shocking (shocking!) news that a Hollywood celebrity is self-destructive, the BBC reports that the Bush Administration continues to ramp up the saber-rattling war rhetoric toward Iran.

"I have authorised our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities," he said.

The BBC's Justin Webb, in Washington, says this looks like a conscious effort by the White House to elevate the tension between Washington and Tehran to a new level.

Such an effort might be designed to avoid the need for armed conflict or might equally be an effort to bring that conflict about, our correspondent says.

To the Bush Administration, disastrous wars in the Middle East are just like peanuts. Betcha can't eat just one. (And besides, they're so profitable! Especially when it's so easy to offload the costs onto somebody else.)

Recent reads

Shrub, by Molly Ivins. If more people had paid attention to Ms. Ivin's wryly-funny-but-dead-serious dismemberment of George W. Bush's erratic track record before the 2000 election, we might not have ended up in the mess we're in. She is sorely missed, but Jim Hightower, Bill Moyers, and other carry on in their own styles.

Friday Bad-News Dump

From the Associated Press, by way of that notorious vehicle for liberal political propaganda, Forbes magazine, comes this account of harassment, intimidation, imprisonment and torture of American military personnel.... by the U.S. military.

Their crime? Trying to report and stop the black-market sale of US-supplied weapons to the Iraqi insurgents, who then use them to kill US troops. That's right. The US military, at the behest of the Bush Administration, is imprisoning and torturing US military personnel in order to protect Al Qaeda's black-market weapons sources.

Cui bono? Who benefits from pumping up the level of violence in Iraq, so that a stable government cannot be formed in the absence of the mailed fist of US troops? And who recieves the lucrative payoffs, not to mention the $8.8 billion in US funds that has inexplicably disappeared into someone's pockets en route to the so-called Iraq reconstruction effort?

Further discussion, along with further information about the utter corruption of the Bush Administration's war racket, available here and, no doubt, elsewhere.

Belated Poetry Thursday

An old friend posted a discussion about outlining fiction to her weblog last week, prompting thoughts of Robert Graves' immortal poem:

The Devil's Advice to Story-Tellers

Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,
Keep probability—some say—in view.
But my advice to story-tellers is:
Weigh out no gross of probabilities,
Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of
Known instances of virtue, crime or love.
To forge a picture that will pass for true,
Do conscientiously what liars do—
Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid
The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:
Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps
That may shake down into a world perhaps;
People this world, by chance created so,
With random persons whom you do not know—
The teashop sort, or travelers in a train
Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;
Let the erratic course they steer surprise
Their own and your own and your readers' eyes;
Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair)
Motive and end and moral in the air;
Nice contradiction between fact and fact
Will make the whole read human and exact.

--Robert Graves, Collected Poems, 1975

Secrets of the British Library

After reading this article, I'm prepared to believe that the British Library might really have giant secret vaults like the ones shown in Read Or Die.

And what kind of classification scheme assigns items to the "Cupboard" collection?

A temporary victory?

An update on the BP/Lake Michigan situation.

Recent viewings

The Cold Equations (1996). This television adaptation of Tom Godwin's well-known and controversial short story is competently produced on a low budget. Unfortunately, the scriptwriter has overlaid Godwin's starkly simple plot with a framing story about a court-martial, a pennypinching corporate government, and labor issues. This has the unfortunate effect of reducing Godwin's short story, which in its original form is as terse and compact as a diamond, into a kind of extended flashback sequence supporting the scriptwriter's story.

The problem is understandable. The short story, strictly adapted, would barely stretch to make an hour-long television show. In fact, IMDB and Wikipedia indicate that the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone did just that. Perhaps the makers of this extended version would have been well advised to let the Twilight Zone version of the story be the final and definitive audio-visual adaptation. Unfortunately, neither Netflix nor any local library deign to acknowledge the third season of the 1985-1988 revival of The Twilight Zone, so the question will remain forever a mystery to me.

Recent reads

Son of Man, by Robert Silverberg. I actually only skimmed this one after the first few pages, in which the hero, without any obvious explanation, suddenly wakes up in some kind of future world inhabited by utopian, pansexual, polymorphously shapeshifting descendants of humanity and begins exploring all its weird possibilities. It's far off the mark of SilverBob's best work, in my judgement. But then again I've never been a fan of most of the trippy so-called "New Wave" of science fiction that came out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In throwing off the the rational rules of hard SF as well as the restrictions of realistic or historically-inspired fiction, it seems to me that it leaves the reader with no objective reference point from which to understand the story. At its best, it could be invigoratingly experimental, but at its worst, much of the "New Wave" simply collapsed into purely subjective authorial self-indulgence.

Sailing to Byzantium, another story by Silverberg which addresses a similar theme, strikes me as a far superior work. Perhaps this is because the far-future humanoids in that story, by re-creating historical settings for their decadence, also give the reader a more congenial frame of reference.

Recent viewings in brief

The Saint (1997). Val Kilmer and Elisabeth Shue are attractive and appealing actors in this adaptation of the 1960s television series and the long-running series of books by Leslie Charteris. Unfortunately, that can't save the movie from being slow-moving and ultimately uninvolving. It goes something like this: Dickensian prequel to explain and excuse the hero's behavior. Cold fusion mumbo-jumbo, talktalktalk, pretty people tumbling into bed, more cold fusion mumbo-jumbo, talktalktalk, ugly people shooting at the pretty people. Deathtraps. Exploding cars. Startling last-minute revelations. Meh.

Jason and the Argonauts (2000). Ugh. Pretty people and pretty scenery, but I stopped watching it when it became clear that not only was the acting inept, the actors had not even been coached to pronounce the name of the goddess Hera consistently, let alone correctly. You say Heh-ra, I say Hay-ra, let's turn the movie off.

Local govt. in Florida blocks $10 million payoff to Republican campaign contributor

An update to a situation I mentioned a few months ago.

Are bears carnivorous?

It appears the art of satirical commentary is still known to ursine collegians in central Texas.

Humans vs. computers

Huzzah for Netflix and their radical idea of having real live human beings in the United States answer their customer-service phones. Hopefully this will help counter the unpleasant effects of Blockbuster's belated but hefty entry into their market.

The end of an era

The Poe Toaster is no longer a mystery.

I still don't know who beat me to W.C. Brann's grave on the 100th anniversary of his death and decorated it with white flowers before I could offer his restless shade a small toast and a 100-proof libation, though.

Sometimes things are not what they seem

Customers in an Australian bookstore noticed a man who came into the store and started acting strangely, taking books off the shelf and scribbling in them. Obviously a vandal! Or possibly just a poor fellow whose mind was missing a few staybolts.

Or maybe not....

Recent reads

Bizenghast, Vol. 1 and 2, by Alice LeGrow. This rather frilly little piece of Goth-manga first attracted my attention because of its title, which sounds like an allusion to the towering literary edifice of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, and the attractively surreal cover art.

The storyline is okay. Dinah, an orphaned girl with a fondness for elaborate dresses replete with a mixture of Victorian and modern ornamentation, is troubled by dreams of ghosts which bring on "fits" of near-insanity. She lives with her aunt in a dilapidated former asylum and home for "troubled children" in the mysterious New England town of Bizenghast. Occasional news clippings inserted into the story suggest that Bizenghast is the locus of many weird happenings. Most notably, its local records indicate far more deaths than its cemetaries account for. Dinah's best and, apparently, only friend is a teenage boy, Vincent, who seems to live a curiously unsupervised life.

While exploring in the woods near town, Dinah and Vincent find a strange structure and graveyard. For reasons not clearly understood by me, it seems that Dinah is been drafted, somewhat unwillingly, into becoming the human agent assigned to help troubled spirits trapped in this Mausoleum find their way -- willingly or unwillingly -- to their final fate.

There's a good deal of visual creativity on display here, not only in the arrestingly odd creatures that Our Heroes meet in fulfilling their tasks, but in the perpetually-changing clothes and hairstyles of the two principals. Indeed, it sometimes seems that displaying these is the whole point of the exercise. The tasks assigned to the principals, and the rules governing the Mausoleum and their interactions with it, seem to be, in typical anime/manga style, rather contrived intellectual constructs that exist mainly to give the characters something to do while looking attractive.

Fortunately, most of the plot contrivances are worked out in clever or humorous ways, and the artwork, and, yes, even the costume designs, are consistently appealing. An appendix to the second volume confirms that the author is, indeed, a cosplayer and an accomplished seamstress whose graphic art and seamstress work frequently cross-fertilize each other. Her webpage at DeviantArt contains examples of both, as well as a clue that the Gormenghastly allusion in her title is no coincidence. (It troubles me only slightly that some of the artwork on offer is rather cute-ishly morbid, and that certain commenters on Wikipedia have dubbed her main female character's style of clothing as "Gothic Lolita", or Loli-Goth for short.)

Libel tourism and free speech

There's an interesting situation brewing over in the UK at the august offices of stodgy old Cambridge University Press.

The rest of the story, from YahooNews. (Other news stories.)

And the drumbeat goes on

As part of its continuing drumbeat for more war in the Middle East, the Bush Administration reportedly plans to designate Iran's so-called Revolutionary Guard, a significant part of its official, uniformed army, as a "terrorist organization". Intelligent minds over at DailyKos wonder whether, given the Bush Administration's track record of asserting unlimited "unitary executive" power over anything labelled "terrorist", this might be a prelude to launching Dick Cheney's longed-for invasion of Iran without seeking a Congressional declaration of war, as demanded by the Constitution, or even the kind of limp-wristed abdication of war-making authority that it bleated out in response to the Administration's 2003 demand to invade Iraq as a "response" to an attack masterminded by a Saudi Arabian radical holed up in Afghanistan.

One need not be a fan of the bigoted and obnoxious government of Iran to see this as troubling and potentially disastrous. Unfortunately, the Democratic leaders of the Congress, elected by the people on a wave of anti-war feeling, have foolishly abdicated their constitutional authority over this strutting popinjay of a Presidency and gone on vacation, trusting the Bush administration to behave itself in their absence. This is something like trusting a hyperactive toddler to look after himself for a few weeks in a warehouse full of nitroglycerine.

All your colors are belong to us, part III

About a year ago I noted that universities were claiming to "own" certain color combinations and seeking to prohibit non-licenced retailers from producing clothing or other products in those colors.

Now it seems that Scotts Miracle-Gro Inc., a $2.2 billion giant that dominates its market, has asserted ownership of the colors green and yellow. They're suing Terracycle, a relatively miniscule producer of organic fertilizer derived from earthworm excrement. The suit also seeks to prohibit TerraCycle from stating that its products are superior to "leading synthetic fertilizers" in various ways.

Is this a developing legal trend, or are corporate claims to "own" colors, per se, an established part of the legal world?

Recent reads

The Rise of the Counter-Establishment : from conservative ideology fo political power, by Sidney Blumenthal. In this 1986 book, political analyst Blumenthal argues that the post-Goldwater conservative movement defines itself, not, like most historical conservative political parties, as the defender of an existing status quo, but as a persecuted, outsider movement which exists in order to oppose a perceived "liberal" establishment.

This may seem self-evident to a good many political observers, but even so it remains a useful frame for understanding the dynamics of politics today. Unfortunately, the conservative movement has remained stuck in this attitude of defensive counter-establishmentatianism, even after gaining political ascendancy in all three branches of the government. The same old defensive self-definition as persecuted victim can be seen in a good many present-day antics of the conservative "counter-establishment", most notably Fox News' absurdly hyperbolic screeching about such things as a nonexistent "war on Christmas".

Blumenthal analyzes in detail how the conservatives of the 1970s and 1980s went about creating a counter-establishment movement. Think tanks and networking organizations like the American Enterprise Institute figure prominently in his account, and indeed they have continued to be significant parts of conservative politics since the book appeared.

Republicans, as the chosen standard-bearers for the conservative movement, have been successful at using the counter-establishment frame to motivate voters and gain political power. Unfortunately, as this insightful article from The Economist points out, their movement has proven less competent at wielding the power of the political establishment effectively than at railing against it from the position of a self-defined outsider.

Conservatives advocate "another 9/11"

From the editorial page of the Philadelphia Daily News:

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

If another terrorist attack does take place, remember who advocated it. Remember who egged it on, and helpfully suggested specific targets. Remember who proudly proclaimed -- again -- that their political faction benefits from the slaughter of American citizens, and that government should "let it be" in order to quell the "chattering of chipmunks"... i.e., the working of democratic government.

Cui bono, indeed.

(Link found via ThinkProgress and Eschaton)

Killing for Jesus

More[DailyKos] on the ludicrous "Left Behind" videogame. Which is now, in a masterstroke of middle-Eastern diplomacy, apparently being distributed to our troops in Iraq for their entertainment and edification. With helpful accompanying written material in English and Arabic, no less.

From The Nation:

With the endorsement of the Defense Department, OSU is mailing "Freedom Packages" to soldiers serving in Iraq. These are not your grandfather's care packages, however. Besides pairs of white socks and boxes of baby wipes (included at the apparent suggestion of Iran-Contra felon Oliver North, according to OSU) OSU's care packages contain the controversial Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game. The game is inspired by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' bestselling pulp fiction series about a blood-soaked Battle of Armageddon pitting born-again Christians against anybody who does not adhere to their particular theology. In LaHaye's and Jenkins' books, the non-believers are ultimately condemned to "everlasting punishment" while the evangelicals are "raptured" up to heaven.

The Left Behind videogame is a real-time strategy game that makes players commanders of a virtual evangelical army in a post-apocalyptic landscape that looks strikingly like New York City after 9/11. With tanks, helicopters and a fearsome arsenal of automatic weapons at their disposal, Left Behind players wage a violent war against United Nations-like peacekeepers who, according to LaHaye's interpretation of Revelation, represent the armies of the Antichrist. Each time a Left Behind player kills a UN soldier, their virtual character exclaims, "Praise the Lord!" To win the game, players must kill or convert all the non-believers left behind after the rapture. They also have the option of reversing roles and commanding the forces of the Antichrist....

...What's more, OSU's "Freedom Packages" include a copy of evangelical pastor Jonathan McDowell's More Than A Carpenter -- a book advertised as "one of the most powerful evangelism tools worldwide" -- that is double-published in Arabic. Considering that only a handful of American troops speak Arabic, the book is ostensibly intended for proselytizing efforts among Iraqi civilians.

I wonder how successful that'll be, when accompanied by a videogame about slaughtering non-"Christians" with machine guns?

Pretty successful, perhaps, if your goal is convince Muslims that the United States is, in fact, the Great Satan and their only choice is to kill or be killed.

Toxic sludge? Bring it on!

The Bush EPA approves of BP's plan to dump toxic sludge in Lake Michigan. No doubt the Bush appointees who ruled on the matter will be suitably rewarded with lucrative corporate positions and stock options sometime in the near future.

Or perhaps it's not that simple. This is, after all, the same Bush EPA that informed us in 2002 that toxic sludge is good for fish. So perhaps this is part of a benevolent effort to help the fish by giving them more of that delicious toxic sludge.

Still... every time Your Humble Correspondent has visited Lake Michigan, he's seen multiple dead fish floating in the water. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, Bush's approval rating among non-incorporated persons continues to plummet. I wonder why.

Bill Moyers & Co. on impeachment

A must-watch video for any patriotic American. Transcript of the whole program included.

A different approach to electric cars

Sell the car, rent the battery, says a company called Think.

Trivial but amusing:

The Victorian computer monitor.

Recent reads

The Founding Finaglers : AND OTHER SCOUNDRELS : in a Fascinating History of Corruption in America from Jamestown to Teapot Dome, by Nathan Miller.

An enlightening if somewhat depressing survey of various ways in which many of the much-admired explorers, settlers, military heroes and statesmen of U.S. history have sought to enrich or advantage themselves in ethically dubious ways. It was somewhat surprising to see the name of George Washington, that stalwart of incorruptibility, listed among the smugglers and embezzlers of the prerevolutionary British colonies and the early American republic. As it turns out, all that Miller really has on Washington is that he may have been a trifle too assertive in trying to cash in on some western land grants. This pales into insignificance beside the massive swindles of the Yazoo land-grant scandal, the criminally callous profiteering of the Civil War period, the open government-for-sale corruption of the 1870s, the Machiavellian financial manipulations of railroad financiers, and the firmly entrenched systematic graft of the big-city political machines like Tammany Hall. Miller provides detailed narratives of all these and more, with footnotes to document the source of each accusation.

I couldn't help but notice that the scale of the corruption seems to expand relentlessly throughout the chronological course of the book. It would seem that improved communications, by enabling entities with political and economic power to act more efficiently and on a larger scale, have simply expanded the opportunities for crooks to take advantage of the rest of the human race. In an epilogue, Miller addresses the Watergate scandal, which was fresh in the public consciousness when the book appeared in 1976.

Watergate cracked the crust of public complacency that had grown over the issue of corruption, yet it was a complete break with old-style shenanigans. For one thing, the traditional motivations of political skulduggery were missing.... Loyalty to the President, rather than personal enrichment, was the lodestar of the men involved in corrupting the electoral process. Unhampered by constitutional limitations and untroubled by moral constraints, they believed that what was good for Richard Nixon was good for the nation. John Ehrlichman best summed up their views when he said : "The President is the government."

Watergate also legitimized paranoia....

Yet the ground that produced Watergate had been plowed and planted long before the rubber-gloved White house plumbers were caught in the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The affair was the logical consequence of what Arthur Schlesinger has dubbed "the imperial presidency". He contends that over the past thirty-five years or so [in 1976], since Franklin Roosevelt's time, the Presidency has usurped control over the making of foreign policy at the expense of Congress, the judiciary, the press, and public opinion, which had previously exercised some restraing on the successive occupants of the White House. The belief was that only the President could deal effectively with crisis -- no matter what the crisis. Not unexpectedly, Presidential claims of infallibility in the making of war and peace were carried over into the domestic sector. What Nixon did, according to Schlesinger, was to carry the imperial Presidency to its ultimate end -- "a revolutionary challenge to the separation of powers."

From this flowed the "enemies list", the use of the [CIA], the [FBI] and the [IRS] for illegal purposes, the intimidation fo the press and the invocation of national security and the police state to cloak criminal actions. In the end it wouldn't even play in Peoria. As Richard Nixon was hustled out of the Oval Office, his hand-picked successor attempted to exorcise Nixon's baleful spirit from American public life and to imply that Watergate was a momentary aberration by earnestly proclaiming that "our long national nightmare is over."

But is it?

Tony Hoagland's poems

... in the current issue of Poetry magazine have caught my attention. (Sample available here.) Any of you Texas types know anything about him?

Lost Dumas novel resurfaces

Fans of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other tales of gallantry and adventure, take note:

Pegasus to release lost Dumas novel

I guess I missed this story when it first broke in France in 2005. That's one of the perils of being functionally monolingual, I suppose.

The website of the French Publishers' Agency supplies further information, including the fact that it's actualy the final volume of a trilogy, the titles of the previous books in the trilogy, and the fact that this is not, in fact, the first publication of the story. It was apparently first published in serial form serialized in a magazine, and then presumably "lost" when it was not republished in book form and the scattered copies of the magazine became difficult to find. It's a common problem in the world of pulp fiction. Fortunately Dumas and his fans are fortunate to have scholars and publishers who are willing to exhume such works and give them another shot at life.

Another contender for worst pulp novelist of all time

... as described by The Stranger, which bills itself somewhat oddly as "Seattle's only newspaper".

The Worst Pulp Novelist Ever : Remembering Leo Guild, by Paul Collins.

Leo vs. Harry S. Keeler? The mind boggles. If they had ever collaborated, the universe would no doubt have promptly imploded into the resulting superdense black hole of ineptitude.

Recent viewings

Evil Dead : The Musical. Yes, the original Evil Dead series of movies was campy and silly. They were, effectively, parodies of horror movies masquerading as horror movies. Given this fact, what else can one do but make an all-singing, all-dancing musical production out of them?

I didn't think I was going to get Fiend to go see this, but somehow, against all odds (not to mention reason), I managed to prevail.

The production adds to Sam Raimi's parody of horror movie cliches a parody of the conventions of stage musicals: the underwhelming physical props, the movements artificially constrained to the tiny confines of the stage, the projected lighting effects, etc. I found a few scenes rather offputtingly sadistic even as broad parody, but on the whole it was stupid, goofy, fun. Despite Fiend's reservations I'm quite certain I detected a smile during the over-the-top Grand-Guignol finale, in which jutjawed housewares employee Ash and his trusty shotgun and chainsaw take on a small mob of dancing, singing, demons inhabiting the bodies of his former friends. Horrific blood-spurting chaos ensues.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the Splatter Zone is exactly what you think it is. We walked out of the theater in the company of two giggling girls wearing substantial quantities of stage blood in addition to the clothing they had worn to the theater. They received some strange looks from passers-by at crosswalks, but I presume the local cops have been conditioned to ignore alarmed 911 calls about bloodspattered people leaving this particular theater.

Recent reads

Listen, Moon!, by Leonard Cline. Cline's second novel, after God Head, is a relatively light and fluffy comic novel about a somewhat stuffy, recently widowed professor of classics who discovers that life does, after all, extend beyond the borders of his library and his school. A runaway debutante, an eccentric philanthropist, a rakish newspaper reporter, a beauteous housekeeper, and a copy of Treasure Island all figure into the tale. Not to mention a secondhand fishing schooner, moonshiners, a bullying preacher, a romantic-minded Southern judge, a dilapidated small town jail, and the Ku Klux Klan. Also, a cannon and a gaudy assortment of piratical costumes. And a treasure map.

It starts somewhat slowly, but by the time the principal characters set sail down the inlets of Chesapeake Bay in their secondhand schooner with the avowed purpose of becoming twentieth-century pirates, it's become a delightful farce. The romantic pairings don't necessarily work out predictably -- Cline is too clearsightedly pragmatic for that -- but believably.

My desultory research on Cline, and correspondence from one or two wiser heads than my own, indicate that he worked for a time in Baltimore under the aegis of H.L. Mencken. Certainly a degree of familiarity with the environs of that city is evident here, as is, perhaps, a trace of Mencken's sharpfanged wit added to Cline's own evident love of myth and the influence that it has on human lives. It doesn't have the powerful, unified dramatic punch of his first novel, but like the backwaters of the Chesapeake, it eddies and wanders about in an affably amusing fashion.

Recent reads

The Stone Cage, by Nicholas Stuart Gray. A short, entertaining play based on the fairy-tale story of Rapunzel. It's cleverly sardonic take on the story is somewhat reminiscent of the Rapunzel plotline of Stephen Sondheim's 1986 musical play Into the Woods, and I can't help but wonder whether Sondheim was inspired or influenced by it.

I have no idea how it ended up in my interlibrary loan queue, but I'm glad it did.

It's official....

George W. Bush is God!

(At least according to these folks.)

Omerta

The Bush Crime Syndicate, speaking through its consiglieri, has delivered the message: their footsoldiers are under orders to observe the Mafia code of omerta, the silence about criminal actions that shields gang bosses from legal consequences.

Republicans are fond of braying that the only people who object to all-encompassing government surveillance are those with "something to hide." Their own logic now proves that the Bush administration has something to hide, else why would they be so determined to, well, hide things?

And will the Congress's Constitutional obligations be acted upon, or ignored?

Your tax dollars at work

The Other War: Iraq vets bear witness (from The Nation)

A college friend sent me this article by e'mail. It's hard reading, but necessary reading for any US citizen who chooses not to be wilfully, deliberately ignorant of what our military is doing in our name and with our tax money, both to our troops and to the civilians who have the bad fortune to live in a country that Dick Cheney and the rest of the Project for the New American Century were determined to invade and conquer at a hefty profit to themselves, on one pretext or another, no matter what the facts.

Of course, I can hear the protestations from the Bush supporters now. Why, it's the Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy! (Booga booga booga!) They refuse to report the Great Good News that we just know is really happening in Iraq! The Media hates America! Terr-ists! Terr-ists! Yada yada!

The Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy, in this case, is rather oddly composed of combat veterans who have served their country under fire, and seen the reality of the Iraq occupation first hand at point-blank range. Rather unlike the draft-avoiding Republican types who continue to yammer for more war, perpetual war, ever-expanding war... so long as it's fought by somebody else, in somebody else's hometown, while they sit safe at home on the couch watching Fox News, chomping on potato chips and belching out gaseous jokes about "sand niggers" and blustering that the US should "nuke" any country that gives it any lip.

It's hard for this one-time self-described conservative to imagine that the situations described in the article can in, the long run, be anything other than the biggest aid to recruitment that the Islamist jihadis could possibly have. Consider the following question carefully. If a foreign army were occupying the US, and the events described in the Nation article were happening to your neighbors and friends and relatives in Dallas, or Kansas City, or Detroit, whose side would you be on?

And does that make you a "patriot", or a "terrorist"? Or just a normal human being?

A DoJ attorney speaks

John S. Koppel, a civil appellate attorney with the Department of Justice since 1981, writes in the Denver Post about the Department of Justice as it exists under the Bush Administration:

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."...

There's more at the source, and, of course, discussion both civil and otherwise at DailyKos.

Get Out of Jail Free!


"Go ahead, Congress; go ahead, prosecutors and courts," says Bush. "I can let my cronies, the perjurers and the traitors, out the back door of the jail as fast as you can bring 'em in the front. Whatcha gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?"

Oddly enough, the authors of the U.S. Constitution contemplated exactly this situation. And they prescribed a response, which David Swanson describes here.

George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."

James Madison (1751-1836), the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

A kind of poetic justice?

Well, considering the likely quality of the writing, it might better be described as prosaic justice. From the Boston Globe:

The family of Ron Goldman has purchased the rights to O.J. Simpson's canceled book, "If I Did It," from a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee in a settlement reached Monday. The book rights will be held in the name of Ron Goldman LLC, Goldman family attorney David Cook said. Goldman and Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, were slain in 1994. The former football star has maintained his innocence. He was acquitted of murder, but Goldman's family won a civil wrongful death case against him totaling more than $33 million. "Ron Goldman LLC will own Simpson's name, likeness, signature and story and will hawk it to satisfy this terrible judgment," Cook said. "Justice has arrived in Miami." The Goldmans own the copyright, media rights, and movie rights. They also acquired Simpson's name, likeness, life story, and right of publicity in connection with the book, according to court documents. The Goldmans want to rename the book "Confessions of a Double Murderer" and plan to shop it around, Cook said. (AP) [emphasis added]

Recent viewings

Wall Street (1985). A well-made morality tale about the moral seduction of a young man, complete with archetypical mentor figures that would make Joseph Campbell and George Lucas scratch their heads and say "that character seems familiar...."

It seems that I am only now catching up with the pop culture of the 1980s, which I studiously avoided when it was new.

The stars are moving toward a fateful alignment

Texans or Oregonians who seek to propitiate the Great Old Ones, take note:

The HPL Film Festival

At the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, TX, on August 19-20, and the Hollywood Theater in Portland, OR, on October 5-6-7.

News noted

The LA Times profiles the science fiction special collection at the University of California at Riverside. The article documents also the hostility that both public libraries and academia have toward any literature of ideas that anybody actually reads.

Dissent 101. The trials and tribulations of unauthorized student publications on campus. (Article by Anna Clark, first published in Bitch; republished in UtneReader.)

Dysfunctional academic job searches, as described in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

This photo, featured on the current issue of UtneReader, is perhaps the most revealing photo of its subjects I've ever seen. As Knoxview commenter "JaHu" states, "Bush looks like he's ready for the drawdown at the Okay Coral. I don't know if the two pistols on each side will help him though! One is liable to shoot an innocent bystander and the other may misfire." As for me, I'd add only that the fellow on the left looks for all the world like he's auditioning for a role as a live-action Monty Burns.

So you're the president. What happens if the elected Congress, the Constitutionally-authorized legislative or law-making branch of the government, passes a law you don't feel like following? Under the Bush doctrine of the Unitary Executive, you just ignore it. [New York Times] Because you're the Decider [CNN]. The Commander-Guy [Thinkprogress.org]. The dictator [Youtube].

Blake's 7 is back!

... sort of.

Now if only the BBC would get off its butt and finally release it on North American-formatted DVD.

Recent reads

Naomi's Room, by Jonathan Aycliffe. This book was highly recommended on the Fiction-L discussion list recently, so I requested a copy by interlibrary loan.

I can't say I'm disappointed, although I don't feel particularly inclined to lavish the same praise on it that the Fiction-L'ers did. It's a well written, taut and effective chiller, a quick and compelling story of a parent, an abducted child, and a house full of disturbing mysteries that will no doubt keep many readers up all night. But I've been inoculated, I think, against one of the key features of the plot by seeing it in a few too many books that I've read lately.

Steam Trek!

Groundbreaking pop-culture science fiction, as it might have been filmed circa 1918.

Guess the rifle and the rusty machete are good for something, after all.

53%
53%
Thanks to Weezy for the link.

Land of delusion

Paul Krugman has the story on Republican candidate Mitt Romney's disconnection from reality, as evidenced by his nonsensical assertion that the war in Iraq was prompted by a refusal to allow weapons inspectors into the country. (Hans Blix, anyone? Show of hands?)

Now Krugman, being a media type, is disgusted by the way many news folks have ignored this display of geopolitical and historical ignorance in favor of obsessing over minor matters such as misremembering Ronald Reagan's birthday. (It's December 25th, isn't it? ) No doubt Krugman is equally disgusted with fellow New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's silly and fetishistic obsession with the price of John Edwards' haircuts.

But I'm worried about a more basic problem. I'm worried about the fact that no one -- NO ONE -- in the Republican party is willing to call their candidates out on this kind of wilful ignorance. Or, as it may be, deliberate lying to a political "base" of partisan supporters who actually believe the lies and simpleminded propaganda that they are fed on a daily basis.

When Ron Paul, the maverick Texas congressman and onetime Libertarian, made the common sense statement in a recent debate that decades of U.S. and British meddling in the politics of middle-eastern countries had created widespread animosity and thus created a situation ripe for exploitation by fanatical malcontents and terrorists, he was in essence shouted down by a mob. Rudy "9-11! 9-11! 9-11!" Giuliani, assuming the role of scolder-in-chief, denounced Paul for supposedly supporting terrorists. When commenters on RedState.com, a Republican political blog, argued that Paul was factually correct, they were summarily banned by the site's administrators.

Apparently the only myth acceptable to the Republican party is that middle eastern people are inherently evil because God made them that way so that His Warriors from the Righteous Republican Party would have someone to kill. Or, at any rate, to use as boogeymen to scare the voters into voting Republican.

We seem to have a rogue political party, with imperial pretensions and connections to private mercenary armies wholly unaccountable to the Constitution or the voting public, that stubbornly refuses to recognize any reality that inconveniently contradicts its own internal myths.

What, me worry? La. La. La.

The game plan

Tom Englehardt of www.tomsdispatch.com provides a clear and concise review of the Bush administration's plan for establishing a permanent American imperial presence in Iraq.

This is consistent with the Project for the New American Century's white papers of the 1990s demanding invasion and permanent military domination of the Middle East. You know, like the one in which Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al, stated that --

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor."

Business, Republican style

Blackwater, the corporate right-wing mercenary army to which draft-dodger Bush and his cronies have outsourced much of the Iraq war, is using the threat of a $10 million lawsuit to silence the families of the four mercenaries who were killed in Fallujah in 2004.

Because Blackwater is, like, patriotic and stuff. And supports the troops. Yadda yadda yadda.

Among their lawyers:

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

No doubt the close nexus between Bush cronies and the legal goon squad attacking the families of these slain mercenaries is just a happy coincidence. Just like it was a pure coincidence that Bush campaign lawyer Ben Ginsberg organized the "Swift Boat" smear campaign against veteran soldier John Kerry.

Torturing children

The Guardian reports that several international agencies, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, want to know what the U.S. has done with 39 detainees who have not been accounted for in Guantanamo Bay or anywhere else. Among them are the sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who were 7 and 9 years old when captured in 2002. Now I don't doubt that their father may be an enemy, a terrorist, a criminal, a murderer. But allow me to repeat: 7 and 9 years old.

The report also expresses concern over the fate of Yusuf al-Khalid and Abed al-Khalid, the sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were taken into custody, aged nine and seven, in September 2002, during an attempt to capture their father. A former detainee says that he saw them in March the following year, around the time their father was captured, in a secret prison where the guards tormented them with insects.

We are apparently now a country that imprisons and torments children.

How would the United States react, I wonder, if Barbara and Jenna Bush were held in captivity for five years, with credible evidence that they were being deliberately tormented in some fashion, and no official accounting for their whereabouts or welfare? (I'd suggest Chelsea Clinton as another example, but, sad to say, Republicans would probably favor torturing anyone with that hated surname. Or even line up for pay-per-view tickets. All in the name of "family values" and the God who is Love, naturally.)

"Why Do They Hate Us", indeed.

Oh, look

It's another great webcomic that I will probably never have time to read. Thanks to Weezy for the link.

Recent reads

Buried in the Bitter Waters : the hidden history of racial cleansing in America, by Elliot Jaspin. Jaspin, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal, noticed something strange when he started looking through historical census data while researching an outbreak of racist violence in Forsyth County, Georgia. The census data revealed, to his shock, that there were not just a few, or even a few dozen counties, but hundreds of counties, throughout the nation, in which the recorded black population practically vanished between one census and the next.

Once alerted to this anomaly, he followed up and found that in many such cases, newspaper articles, oral recollections and other sources showed that it was no mere coincidence. As he puts it, somewhat melodramatically but accurately, he had discovered America’s ethnic cleansings. Over and over again he found evidence of white mob violence, sometimes unofficially or even officially sanctioned by governing bodies, forcing blacks to flee for their lives from the town or the county in which they had lived. Jaspin documents, in exhaustive detail, episodes of similar racist mob violence in Texas, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas and Missouri.

Some whites attempted to defend their black neighbors, but more often the evidence unearthed by Jaspin shows a sorry record of brutality, hypocrisy and opportunistic theft of the property left behind. In Forsyth County, for example, county tax rolls show that after black landowners were driven out of the county by white mobs and Klansmen with the collaboration of local and state government, the farms and houses belonging to the former black residents were simply appropriated by white neighbors. Local newspapers and city governments proudly proclaimed themselves “100% white”, “free of mosquitoes and Negroes”, in the aftermath. And, as Jaspin documents, racist attitudes persist in many of the “purged” locales to this day.

Almost as dismaying, if not particularly surprising, is the degree to which local historians and newspapers, including Jaspin’s own employer, seem to have collaborated in a conspiracy of silence about such pogroms.

Now it may be too much of a stretch to say that every county in which a precipitous drop in black population occurred in the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century was necessarily host to such crimes. In some cases, significant numbers of blacks may have moved in or out of an area due to changing economic situations, such as the opening and closing of large industries that offered employment. And in some cases, lesser forms of discrimination, such as the refusal to permit black children to attend “white” schools combined with a refusal to supply schools that they could attend, may have accomplished similar results. But Jaspin proves conclusively that there was a pattern of such episodes across the country, and just as importantly, he documents that the local governments frequently supported or collaborated with the racist mobs.

This book serves a valuable purpose in documenting a pattern of systematic and criminal actions. It also provides a more logical basis for arguments in favor of reparations to blacks than any that I have heard before. It’s one thing to argue in the abstract that black people in the 19th century were generically victimized. It’s quite another to document the systematic theft and destruction of millions of dollars worth of land and other property with the collaboration of governmental entities whose duty it was to prevent such abuses. The descendants of those deprived of their legal property through such machinations have a defensible moral claim to compensation from the governments involved. And although individual perpetrators may be dead and gone beyond the reach of human justice, it is a legal characteristic of both governments and corporations that they continue, immortal and impersonal, from one generation to the next. The logistics, legalities, and politics of applying such claims may be very troublesome and impractical. It may even be impossible to document who is in fact descended from such property owners. But, whether or not it is practicable, the moral right and wrong are clear.

Recent reads

The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, by Robert Lewis Taylor. I first picked up a dirty, battered secondhand copy of this book after hearing it praised on the Fiction-L discussion list. For several years I hauled it around with me from one apartment to the next as one of those books that I “planned to read someday”. Last weekend, someday finally arrived. It was worth it.

The year is 1850 (give or take a bit). Jaimie McPheeters is 14 years old, living a rather Tom-Sawyerish life in the river-trading town of Louisville, Kentucky, the child of what we would today call a dysfunctional family. His father is a physician, whose financial prospects and idealistically ebullient personality are blighted by a recurring fondness for whiskey and gambling, not to mention the failure of his disreputable customers to pay their bills. His mother disapproves. So do their creditors.

And so a grand scheme is hatched. To pay off the family’s bills and elude their creditors, Dr. Sardius McPheeters and his son Jaimie will emigrate to the great gold fields of California, become wealthy in that great bonanza and thereby redeem their family’s tattered fortunes.

Simple, huh?

Well, as one might suspect, it’s anything but simple. The trip to California turns into an epic adventure, all the more so because we see it through the eyes of a fourteen year old boy to whom a great many things, not just the unfamiliar landscape, are new and strange. Being an adventurous boy in the care of a lovable but careless father, he frequently gets separated from the latter and has to shift for himself. Along the way, Jaimie and his father encounter murderous thugs, stolid farmers, hopeful settlers, thieving scoundrels, and, sometimes, surprising nobility where they least expect it . They encounter human beings of every stripe, and it’s one of the novel’s strengths that no class or type of people is portrayed as being uniformly good or bad. Some Indians are shiftless, filthy, and sadistic; others are fiercely honorable. Some frontiersmen are rough-hewn examples of courage and competence; others are bullying buffoons. Some Mormons are genuinely trying to build the most perfect society they can; others are vicious hypocrites who prey upon “mere Gentiles”.

And, as Jaimie learns, girls are a whole new world of trouble.

Once reached, the West proves to be something less than than the promised El Dorado, forcing the McPheeters and their trailmates to look to other means of survival and prosperity. Many of the scams and deceptions perpetuated on the settlers, such as “salted” mines, extortionately overpriced provisions, etc., are documented parts of western history.

The narrative shifts occasionally from Jaimie’s commentary to entries from his father’s journals, highlighting not only the difference between their perspectives as youth and adult, but the differences in their personalities. Jaimie, plainspoken and colloquial, is naïve at first, but quickly learns to be skeptical about the human potential for deception and skullduggery. His father, full of flowery words and rhetoric, is gradually revealed to be, perhaps, too idealistic for his own good, too prone to lose sight of the main chance at hand while dreaming of a Utopian future.

Some surprising and improbable coincidences occur in the plot, but they are not, perhaps, so surprising if one considers all the characters involved to be part of the same cohort of emigrants making their way across the country in the same year, all heading toward the famous gold fields of California. And besides, documented western history is full of strange coincidences and improbable meetings. Who's to say that fiction can't do the same?

The book won a Pulitzer prize in 1959, so I’m not exactly the first to notice it. But it seems to have become difficult to find in some libraries lately, so I’ll put in a plug for it. If you enjoyed Mark Twain’s tales of Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, if you enjoy picaresque tales, if you enjoy realistic historical fiction with both grit and humor, check it out.

Recent reads

God Head, by Leonard Cline. This 1925 book and its author seem to be completely forgotten. I've searched every bookselling venue I know of, and can't find a single copy available for sale. I hope that someone reprints it one of these days, since it's an extraordinary book.

We first meet our protagonist and narrator, one Paulus Kempf, as he flees in terror from a vigilantes' raid on a union-organizing meeting in Ironwood, Michigan. Cline's prose is very unusual, almost like a ritual incantation or the driving rythym of medieval alliterative poetry:

Phantasmal night. Terrors and shapes pursued me, loomed suddenly before me, menaced me with upraised fists; stealthy footfalls I imagined cracklign in the brush on all sides of me. And across the black sky moved slow columns of ghastly bluish light, monstrous fingers they were that pointed along the hills and the roads and poked into every coign [sic] and hiding-place. They were searchlights set up at the various mines and on top the shafts, sweeping the highways in search of suspicious travelers ... sweeping the hills in search of me. Later I learned that barriers were strung across every road on all the Gogebic, and men armed with shotguns lay in wait behind them; that word had circulated I was seeking to escape and must be captured. What hue and fever wracked the range that night I did not know, but nevertheless surmised; and I pressed on ecstatic with fear beneath the screening trees. The darkness and the loneliness of the woods terrified me too, but not so much as did the thought of noose and gallows-fire and pouring of bullets behind me.

His nightmarish flight ends in peaceful refuge with a small Finnish family at their isolated farmstead on the shore of Lake Superior, deep among the trackless forests and rocky hills of the western upper peninsula. As he recuperates, Paulus slowly gets to know his rescuers. Karl, the towering man-mountain who carried him out of the woods, proves to be a steadfast, if somewhat stolid, sympathizer with his own political views. But Paulus himself is more sympathetically drawn to Karl's wife, Aino, an intelligent and spirited young woman of "lusty peasant beauty".

As he slowly recovers, she tells him the stories of the Kalevala, a cycle of mythic tales central to Finnish culture. At first he finds himself identifying with Kullervo, the tragic hero whose efforts, no matter how heroic or well-intentioned, always end in disaster. But then, as his attraction to Aino grows, she relates the tales of Lemminkainen, the amoral trickster who always wins, always escapes, always triumphs, though at terrible cost to everyone around him. And Paulus begins to adopt, more and more, the persona of just such a trickster.

I won't give away the ending of the book. Suffice to say that it's powerful, it's extraordinarily well written, and it's a superbly effective portrayal of the subtle power that myth can exercise over the human mind. One could debate whether Paulus is influenced by the tales of the Kalevala, by his own intellectual tendencies, or even that he is in some sense possessed by a supernatural agency. But the power of the book is beyond debate, and it does not deserve the near-oblivion to which our publishing industry and perpetual-copyright regime have consigned it.

Recent reads

Railroads of Colorado : your guide to Colorado's historic trains and railway sites, by Claude Watrowski. At first glance, this looks like one of those generic, cheaply produced coffee table books that feature lots of pretty pictures with vague and occasionally inaccurate text and captions.

However, on closer examination, it's more than that. The author -- a railroad enthusiast and videographer, according to the publisher's blurb on the book jacket -- briefly but accurately surveys the history of most of the legendary railroads of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. (The more profitable but less glamorous railroads of the flatter eastern half of the state are largely ignored.) All of the well-known Colorado mountain lines are addressed in short chapters: the famous Colorado Central with its spectacular Georgetown Loop; the picturesque but traffic-starved South Park line; the Rio Grande's mountain-vaulting lines to Cumbres and Silverton; the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific with its quixotic assault on the Front Range directly west of Denver; the scenic but perpetually-impoverished Rio Grande Southern; the impossibly convoluted railroads of the Cripple Creek mining district, and the standard-gauge Colorado Midland and its ludicrously difficult route through the sheer cliffs and brutal blizzards of Hagerman Pass. The author also briefly addresses lesser-known operations such as the quarry lines of the Crystal River valley and the mining shortlines of the Silverton area, as well as a couple of streetcar lines and small but popular tourist operations like the Pike's Peak cog railway. Two concluding chapters describe the Colorado Railroad Museum and the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, a preserved remnant of the state's narrow gauge network which was featured the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The descriptions are short but accurate, and do a good job of pointing out the most noteworthy features of each line. The photographic coverage will leave dedicated fans wanting more, but the photos present are a well-chosen mix of historical and contemporary images that serve to convey the distinctive style of each railroad described. Sidebar articles explain basic railroading concepts and present amusing anecdotes about the difficulties of mountain railroading.

It's a good basic introduction to a popular subject among railfans and modelers.