For all other topics…
Let’s keep the political philosophy to the previous open thread, or move it to Le Speakeasy (I have opened a thread here
Back to Main
January 9, 2005
Non-Marx Open Thread
Comments
“On orders from the royal Commandant’s office here, the Erfurt public is warned, on pain of ‘appropriate police punishment’ and ‘immediate arrest’, against the distribution or bill-posting of materials printed outside the town which cast suspicion on government measures or launch malicious attacks against them and thereby have the effect of alienating the minds of the population from the existing constitutional government, or which tend to Provoke animosity against specific classes of the population and, consequently, unrest and friction in our town.
Erfurt, February 5, 1849
The Municipal Administration, Police Department.”
cited in The Censorship by Friedrich and me
I suppose I deserved that.
Karl Marx, you have the right to remain silent. anything you say may be used against you, etc….
Speaking of which, I always remember a point that Milan Kundera made in one of his books: lying is not a sin, it is not in the 10 commandments. Kundera’s take on that was that in order to tell you not to lie, one had to ask you to reply to a question – and he noted that god, wisely, had not made a commendment to answer questions. The right to remain silent is implicit in the bible.
Silence, keeping our thoughts to ourselves, is our ultimate freedom. Of course, it also makes us lonely, but that is another issue…
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 9 2005 9:39 utc | 2
Of course that´s why they sent Negroponte:
‘The Salvador Option’ – The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq
Following that [Salvador] model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called “snatch” operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.
…
One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”
Pentagon sources emphasize there has been decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.
Amn interesting report on cocaine and the War on Drugs in The Observer/Guardian The white stuff – Celebrated documentary-maker Angus Macqueen spent 18 months on the cocaine trail across Latin America from the dirt-poor valleys of Peru to the shanty towns of Rio. Here he recalls the journey that revolutionised his views and explains why he believes ‘the dandruff of the Andes’ should be sold in Boots
The hilarious thing about that MSNBC article, b, is that the so-called “new policy” is exactly the same one carried out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.: Kill and capture insurgent leaders, terrorists, and their active facilitators. (“Assassination”? ‘Fraid not.) What did the authors think we were gonna do? Invite the bad guys to lunch?
“This isn’t about winning hearts and minds,” said the general.
It IS, however, about reaching out and touching someone.
Assad may yet get a nice fruit basket from the State Dept.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 9 2005 14:03 utc | 7
It will be one of the biggest parties in American history, but half of the country will be left out. With a price tag of up to $50 million, President George W Bush’s inauguration in 11 days’ time will be an unashamed celebration of Red America’s victory over Blue America in last November’s election.
It is going to be the most expensive, most security-obsessed event in the history of Washington DC. An army of 10,000 police, secret service officers and FBI agents will patrol the capital for four days of massive celebrations that some critics have derided as reminiscent of the lavish shindigs thrown by Louis XIV, France’s extravagant Sun King.
More than 150,000 people, nearly all Republicans whose tickets are a reward for election work, will pack the Mall to hear Bush take his oath of office on 20 January. There will be nine official balls, countless unofficial ones, parades and a concert hosted by Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara.
Amid the official pageantry will be many huge parties laid on by companies wishing to win favour with Washington’s power players. Anyone who is anyone in Republican circles will be in town. Many Democrats will be leaving. With so many big names in one place, security measures will include road blocks, anti-aircraft guns guarding the skies and sniper teams patrolling the rooftops.
…
Posted by: Fran | Jan 9 2005 15:40 utc | 8
Jérôme (@ 4:39 AM): if we allow that our passions have (too much to say–and this, for me is the very meaning of “passion”–then, as creatures of passion, we are always somewhat silent, hence not fully truthful. A canonical instance of this would be Christ’s outcry on the cross, Eloi, eloi, lama sabachtani, given to us in an original tongue because it can’t be translated–cannot, indeed, be translated into that first “original” tongue, because it has to say less than it means, or more than it means, and only hints at the full lucidity of an insight that it’s powerless to impart. Now if Christ on the cross is mute in the midst of his passionate outcry, how can anyone else be other than mute in the midst of his or her passionate mutterings? (If I say that I truly don’t know whether this post is passionate, I speak in a kind of silence, and can’t do otherwise when trying to tell the truth–always a passionate exercise).
Posted by: alabama | Jan 9 2005 16:51 utc | 9
dancing we demolished all ladders you had laid on ground in configuration that closely resembled a cross from a distance but we were never that far away. no we were always closer than was good fo our health so we turned that construction into a collection of splinters. we sold them as sacrements every saturday
in a market until you came with the water.
scattering sheets of paper over lake i sent out boats to gather them in an order only you could understand. only then could i allow you to read the pages as i wrote them. yes only then. that would be appropriate.
still steel
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 9 2005 17:08 utc | 10
The US militarization:
NYT: Two Military – Themed Channels Unveiled
Ten-hut! When the Military Channel reports for duty Monday at 2000 hours, it will be a boon for armchair generals and fans of corporate warfare, too.
The debut comes only five days after another network, the Military History Channel, began operating. Both are targeting much the same audience with a similar programming mix, and are bankrolled by two of the cable TV industry’s biggest and most successful players.
Let the battle begin.
The Military Channel is a repositioning of the aviation-centered Discovery Wings channel, which is already seen in about 35 million homes. It’s the 14th domestic channel operated by Discovery Communications Inc., including TLC and the Discovery Network.
The Military History Channel is a spinoff of the History Channel, the sixth U.S. network started by AETN, and was offered to cable and satellite systems starting Wednesday.
…
“These are the programs that have really captured military history documentary viewers over the years, the same viewers who said they want to see more of them,” he said.
Those viewers tend to be male, often older. Viewership of Discovery Wings averages about 70 percent male with an average age in the 40s. So operators of the Military Channel have their sights set on some younger viewers.
To find them, it has packed the schedule with gadget-centered programming, including a series of specials devoted to the greatest technological achievements in military history.
Day-in-the-life programs on a Marine tank battalion as it pushed into Baghdad and Marine Corps reservists in Afghanistan are also in the works. A four-hour miniseries follows the Navy’s flight group, the Blue Angels.
As fauxreal said: Oedipal Hogwash
fwiw- Alabama, any words on the prediction that Negropointe was a part of the “kinder gentler” neo-con alliance with the news that death squads are in the offering for Iraqis?
Old wine. Now vinegar in the wounds of new skins. Someone order a round of chianti with fava beans for Bush’s inaugural dinner.
fffffffftttt.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 9 2005 20:06 utc | 12
i am reminded that the eytmological roots of ‘passion’ exist in suffering (patoir) & as we are taught on all scholarship of the tragoidia
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 9 2005 20:12 utc | 13
”
Ainsi, paradoxalement, cette conception, en tant qu’elle fait de la passion une détermination de la raison pratique, fonde la théorie hégélienne de la passion comme objectivation de l’esprit subjectif pratique, au niveau de la psychologie. L’on aboutit alors à cet éloge célèbre de la passion : « Rien de grand n’a jamais été accompli, ni ne saurait s’accomplir sans passion. » Car le rôle contradictoire de la volonté une fois mis en lumière par les apories de la doctrine kantienne, le sujet comprend le caractère « incontournable » s’attachant à la naturalisation de sa volonté. Bien plus, il saisit la nécessité d’assumer ce dessaisissement qui, dans le cas de la passion, s’opère au profit d’un objet unique. L’unicité formelle de sa détermination élève alors la passion à la dimension du sublime, pour la soustraire à toute considération d’ordre moral : point n’est besoin d’apprécier la valeur de ce qui se trouve justifié par sa seule réalité ! Toute détermination est passion, négation du sujet abstraitement libre, mais négation positive, puisque négation de ce même sujet dans son mouvement vers le concret. Le développement de la passion paraît alors, pour reprendre ce terme de Hegel, « ruse » stratégique de la raison, œuvrant dans l’histoire.
© Encyclopædia Universalis 2004, tous droits réservés
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 9 2005 20:38 utc | 15
fauxreal, according to b’s post @ 7:02 AM, the initiative in question comes from the Pentagon. Pat, @ 9:03 AM, quotes a general in support of her own point that this initiative isn’t a new one (leaving her own reference to “a fruit basket from the State Department” somewhat up in the air). As for the Ambassador to Baghdad, I’ve recently learned two things: first, that he took the job on the condition that he’d have a veto over the presence of any government civilians in Iraq–a condition that’s enabled him to purge Baghdad of neo-cons (which would seem to argue that he’s not himself a neo-con); second, that the Pentagon has the power to abscond with funds that he might have dedicated to such civilian operations as land reform (and this would seem to argue that he doesn’t have power over the military, even when he keeps the Pentagon’s civilians out of Iraq). A third thing to bear in mind, and already mentioned by b, is that the man’s name is “Negroponte”. Somewhat to my shame, I also occasionally mispell people’s proper names, almost always because the people in question don’t matter to me as much as I’d like to claim.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 9 2005 23:13 utc | 16
only the words “a general” were meant to be in italics. These tags are tricky things….
Posted by: alabama | Jan 9 2005 23:14 utc | 17
Alabama, I tried to remember how to spell his name…tried it both ways more than once, even, before going with the one you see.
and, yes, he doesn’t matter to me. I’m sure he matters to many other people, though, and for that reason he matters.
Busch doesn’t matter to me either. Or Chainey. Or Goonzales. except, of course, they do.
But back to Negroponte…do you think he’s not aligned with the Pentagon? Do you think he’d still hold his position, after the recent purges, if he didn’t genuflect before His Highandmighty Tightassedness, el Presidente for-the-life-of-me-I-don’t-know-why Porgy Puddin’n Pie?
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 9 2005 23:46 utc | 18
Markus Wolf hired by HSA????? Sufferin’ Jaysus, I hope this is just a wild rumour…
fauxreal, this discussion goes back a good nine or ten months, to the days when we were trying to think about the conflicts within the Bush administration. That there are conflicts, and that they matter, is something of an article of faith with me, because I believe (but can never prove) that decisions about conflicts in one sphere arise from decisions about conflicts in another. I doubt that Negroponte genuflects before the President, if only because skilled bureaucrats like Negroponte seem to enjoy more leeway than clumsy loyalists like John Bolton. And I think the “Pentagon” is anything but a monolith with which a person can be coherently aligned: let’s wait till we hear from Pat as to whether the military in that quarter will stage a coup against the civilians.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 10 2005 0:24 utc | 20
De- Alex Jones is a bit fringe, isn’t he? Sadly, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility, though, that this information is true. Do you know if the other guy, the former Soviet, has been hired? If this info is true, I can’t wait to see the far right go nuts and turn on the Bushies.
I suppose the old nazis the spooks recruited after WW2 are too old now to fill the bill…but such an arrangement would seem to confirm that totalitarianism is its own creature, whether it veers left or right on its path.
how ironic we were just discussing Lenin flying off, via helicopter, to the west…
If this is true…blessed plastic Jeebus on a dashboard, get me out of here.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 10 2005 1:12 utc | 21
@Faux, AJones dangles over the edge, and at least for me has no credibility, but Al Martin is well-connected & he’s the source…
Posted by: jj | Jan 10 2005 8:44 utc | 22
Anyone not pullin up the rolls of flab to gaze at their navel n worry about why ‘boomer’ has changed from a sign of cool to a pejorative, may pause long enough to ask: Why are Thailand and Sri Lanka getting NGO Aid Agencies when Aceh is getting the marines and Australian Army? Ostensibly alla these blokes (and Blokettes no doubt) with guns are providing medical services but the WHO has just turned back a hospital ship saying that medical services are unneccessary. Fresh water is what’s required. Can it be some way related to the fact that Aceh has a huge oilfield off it’s coast and the locals who have been fighting for independance since the Dutch gave em to Indonesia and who were once called communist guerillas until about 1992 are now “Muslim terrorists”?
We like it quiet (ish) down here in the South and altho Aceh may be a little North (less’n 5 degrees) its part of our balliwick and since no-one down here elected a born again turnip head we would appreciate it if you could tell aforesaid turniphead to move his arguement back up another 20 degrees.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2005 13:29 utc | 23
big-ass crocodile photo on the front page of am costa rica today (monday). on page four there is an article about the current political situation in nicaragua after another fsln victory yesterday, this time gaining the presidency of the national assembly.
Posted by: b real | Jan 10 2005 15:30 utc | 24
Has anyone got any good suggestions for books on modern French history/politics? As part of my project to reduce the number of things I have absolutely no damn clue about, and in preparation for my upcoming trip to the city, I’ve just finished Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris, and I could do with something to fill in the gap from 1968 to the present day.
A military coup at the Pentagon: If Iraq-related woes could be attributed exclusively or primarily to political appointees at the Pentagon, we would be seeing a series of high-level rotations and replacements attributable to something other than burn-out and frustration. I don’t think anyone at the Pentagon is under any illusions as to responsibility for the current predicament; there’s plenty to go around. Changing civilian leadership would get you marginal results, not all of them positive. The real problems at DoD are institutional, organizational, doctrinal, and pre-date OIF by more than a decade at least. The military, too, has a lot to account for.
It was General Casey who said, “This isn’t about winning hearts and minds. We’re not going to do that here in Iraq.” I read it in an Economist article linked by Bernhard last week, not in the Newsweek article on “The Salvador Option.” I threw it in my post because I think it’s as good an indication as any that an operational change has been in the offing for months. The near prospect of failure has a way of focusing the mind, and the minds thus focused are not to be found primarily in Iraq, but back here. I take Gen. Casey’s comment -and the appearance of the Newsweek story – as a reflection of change set in motion back in autumn.
Some serious problems are beyond serious correction, and not under our control or even susceptible to our influence. (Not whitewashing poor decion-making or fobbing off responsibility; it’s just a fact.) Like I said, if the first six months of this year look bad – and I’d like to know what the real expectations are at this point – then it’s safe to assume that the decision will be made to cut our losses and call it a stunning success. There’s only so much that can be done, after all, and only so many resources to do it with.
I do know that being on the defensive puts everyone in a foul mood, and what I sense is a mood far less foul than that of six months ago.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 10 2005 17:13 utc | 26
Victory is near!
Ukraine Orders Troops Removed From Iraq
Posted by: Fran | Jan 10 2005 17:47 utc | 28
“The word in Washington is that the call for cuts is a ploy to solicit strong objections from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has been a champion of making the military leaner, meaner and faster. His plan, however, has run into trouble in Iraq where more, not fewer troops, desperately are needed to control the country.”
Posted by: beq | Jan 10 2005 18:01 utc | 29
Here is a little piece quoting Frist’s position (new bill) which defines political opposition as a mental disease. We treat you with pills if you don’t agree with us folks. By law.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=2673
This guy is a medical doctor. Geez if I were a doctor I sure wouldn’t want him in my club.
Posted by: rapt | Jan 10 2005 18:12 utc | 30
colman
over in the gulag of the marx thread we offer bibliographic counsel for a small price
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 10 2005 18:13 utc | 31
Gee Fran,
Do you think that Bush’s unabashed support for Kuchma’s opponent has anything to do with the decision to pull Ukrainian troops out of Iraq?
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 10 2005 18:52 utc | 35
serioussly colman
books in english or french or both – in english the beevor book not so bad, tony judt also
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 10 2005 18:59 utc | 36
Pretty good review of books/films about War on Terrr.
I thought The Power of Nightmares was excellent. It can be found via bittorrent, I’m sure.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 10 2005 19:11 utc | 38
Dan,
I am not sure, but think I actually read today, that the Kuchma opponent had as one of his themes the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Unfortunately, I am not able to find the link again. So I am not sure what to make of this.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 10 2005 19:12 utc | 39
@slothrop – the media lens alerts on the program power of nightmares might be of interest. part one part two
Posted by: b real | Jan 10 2005 19:31 utc | 40
R’giap: either is fine – I’ll file the French ones for after August though. I have a thesis to re-write, and refreshing my French enough to read serious books will have to wait.
colman
i think the judt is called past imperfect
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 10 2005 19:43 utc | 42
From what you say @ 12:13 PM, Pat, I infer that the neo-con and likudite agendas were circulating in the Pentagon well before the arrival of Wolfowitz and Co. Was this actually the case? If so, I find myself woefully underinformed, and would welcome further enlightenment–or a few pointers toward the researching of the thing.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 10 2005 19:48 utc | 43
b real
Certainly true (from Part Two):
But the manufactured ‘threat’ of international terrorism is a fiction that distracts from a far more important truth: that Western governments are by far the most powerful and, in terms of numbers killed, most deadly agents of terrorism. This unpalatable truth was not even acknowledged by Curtis. Indeed it is hard to imagine that such a genuinely heretical and honest point could ever be made in a major BBC series.
Definitely worth seeing. Like I said, the 3-hour series is available via bittorrent.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 10 2005 20:02 utc | 44
Interesting what is going on. Found the information, I have been looking for on a BBC link. I am not informed enough, as to the topics boths sides have been runing on, but it seems both are not very keen about staying in Iraq.
Ukraine announces Iraq pull-out
Ukraine’s outgoing President Leonid Kuchma has ordered a withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq.
He said his government should draw up plans to withdraw the 1,600-strong contingent in the first half of 2005.
The decision follows an incident in which eight Ukrainian and one Kazakh servicemen were killed while defusing a bomb in Iraq.
…
The withdrawal issue has been high on the agenda of the opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who won the bitterly contested presidential election and is now preparing for his swearing-in.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 10 2005 20:02 utc | 45
Fran,
I’d like to give a word of caution about calling Yuschenko a US lackey.
Not so long ago, he was actually see as the more pro-Russian candidate. When in power (and that’s not so long ago, Putin was there already), he had let Russian companies invest in Ukraine and take over Ukrainian companies. His generally more liberal stance was favored by Russians and disliked by Ukrainina oligarchs. Yanukovitch, on the other side, was not especially pro-Russian – he was pro-oligarch, at least pro- the Donetsk fraction of them. He was understandable by the Russians and predictable (they have loads of these in the procinces), but not especially friendly.
Kuchma was broadly the same, i.e. “old-school” sovietocrat, nominally pro-Russian, but mostly pro-his pals, who are in direct competition with the Russians in business.
It’s likely that the West’s open preference for Yuschenko (and dislike for Yanukovich, as heir apparent to the discredited Kuchma) led Putin to see a conspiracy and to side openly with what suddenly appeared to be the lesser “evil”. Frankly, prior to Russia’s interference, nobody much in the West cared much about Ukraine. Its not as bad as Belarus, it has a somewhat lively democracy, it’s a transit route for Russian gas ti Europe and thus pops up once in a while in strategic conversation, but it was mostly a useful – and quiet – buffer between Russia and the EU.
Now it’s turned into a battlefield, it forces the EU to think about what it can to help (which, with the constitutional and Turkey debates, is just another hopeless headache) and it puts them in a collision course with Russia, which i think they are getting tired of (Russia being bad enough in generating controversy in Brussels on its own).
Did Yuschenko get Western support? Yes, certainly. Is he a Western stooge? No. Should the West be happy that he’s in power. Yes, but not for the reasons you think (I think he’s going to be genuinely good for democracy there, I’m not so sure his policies are going to be pro-West)
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 10 2005 20:21 utc | 46
Interesting take, Jerome. It conflicts somewhat with articles I’ve read in Asia Times and posted at Counter Punch (can’t find links). Both those publications see the support for Yuschenko as an effort by both the EU and the US to isolate Russia, a not-much-discussed cornerstone of BushCo policy – one that has put military bases in 9 of the 15 former Soviet Republics since 2001 – that will gain momentum under Russian “expert” Rice at State. AT maintained that the US “victory” in the Ukraine was due to EU support and would not have occurred if the EU hadn’t also participated in backing Yuschenko. The CP articles basically indicated that Kuchma joined the “coalition” in a failed effort to curry favor with BushCo. Yuschenko actually called for Ukrainian withdrawal from Iraq but BushCo supported him anyway. Why? The “coalition” was used to provide propaganda cover to justify the US going in to Iraq and no longer served any purpose since these other troops weren’t actually doing any fighting. Not needing the coalition fig leaf any longer, Bush felt free to pursue the goal of isolating Russia by backing Yuschenko. Kuchma took a political risk to support Bush in Iraq since over 70% of the population opposed the move and Bush screwed him anyway. Both AT and CP articles indicated that Yuschenko will move the Ukraine closer to the EU, which will weaken Russia; the AT author believes that most of the geopolitical gain will go to the EU, with the US gaining only marginally by weakening rival Russias, while Russia will be forced to move closer to China.
You seem to see things differently. Any critique on the above summaries?
Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 10 2005 22:06 utc | 47
Another something else again: Canadian professor develops plastic that more efficiently converts solar energy
TORONTO (CP) – Researchers at the University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that’s five times more efficient at turning the sun’s power into electrical energy than current methods.
(snip)
Sargent and other researchers combined specially-designed minute particles called quantum dots, three to four nanometres across, with a polymer to make a plastic that can detect energy in the infrared.
(snip)
“In fact, there’s enough power from the sun hitting the Earth every day to supply all the world’s needs for energy 10,000 times over,” Sargent said in a phone interview Sunday from Boston.
(snip)
Sargent said the new plastic composite is, in layman’s terms, a layer of film that “catches” solar energy. He said the film can be applied to any device, much like paint is coated on a wall.
(snip)
The film can convert up to 30 per cent of the sun’s power into usable, electrical energy. Today’s best plastic solar cells capture only about six per cent.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 10 2005 22:06 utc | 48
That is excellent news Jerome. I shall have to read more about it. A 5-X increase in solar recovery is an earth-shattering event.
Posted by: rapt | Jan 10 2005 22:28 utc | 49
@jerome yes I noticed that new plastic film tech! 30 percent — pretty encouraging, provided that it doesn’t require some kind of horribly toxic and/or rare unobtainium to manufacture. I sure hope this is not another “thermal depoly” type scam. could do with a bit of hopeful news for a change.
At least the inventor has a real track record… real refereed papers, real creds. that’s a good start 🙂
De – the symbol for the “unobtainium” is UN, right?!
But surely you cannot be happy that, presto, our current wicked way of life becomes sustainable?!
(Sorry for the snark – and sorry if I do not reply, I’m off to bed to recharge my batteries – the human body is strange with sunlight that way…)
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 10 2005 23:07 utc | 52
@alabama
The ground-laying for regime change in Iraq had been done in two previous presidential administrations. It was a result of the Gulf War having never ended. There was no serious intention of letting it end without regime change, which was official US policy. (Madeleine Albright was quite clear that the sanctions would not be lifted and the no-fly-zones would not be terminated as long as Saddam was in power.) I’m inclined to say that absent serious reexamination of that policy, that next step (of deliberate regime removal) was all but guaranteed to be undertaken sooner or later. In any case, it was a war we’d been planning and training for, for years. I remember being surprised that anyone was surprised by it.
Do you recall that the greatest friction between civilian and military leaders, going back to early 2003, was a result of differences regarding HOW Operation Iraqi Freedom was going to be done rather than THAT it was going to be done? That lack of significant discord over the suitability of the end sought, rather than the means and resources employed, says a lot about the prior, general acceptance of this war. That acceptance didn’t materialize suddenly, out of nowhere. It had existed for some time.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 10 2005 23:26 utc | 53
@alabama
Leaving aside the burning issue of the (moral and strategic) appropriateness of this war, mistakes have been made, errors have been perpetuated, that cannot be attributed to the present civilian leadership at the Pentagon and cannot be remedied by its removal. If every serious liability, if every grave deficiency and resounding mistake in the conduct of this war, led back to a mere handful of people, that handful of people would have been cashiered. The fact of the matter is that the armed forces suffered increasingly abominable military leadership through the Nineties and that’s the leadership it came into this century with. Improvements have materialized, but oh so late.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 11 2005 0:01 utc | 54
It seems strange to me Pat that you can with a straight face argue that our invasion of Iraq was inevitable, and that the Pentagon civilians (we do know who they are) would have been “cashiered” IF they were soley responsible for these many errors. They were responsible and they were not cashiered.
Perhaps it is true that the invasion was inevitable, but only through secretive unsupportable planning by criminals, not from, as you suggest, outdated and/or mismanaged military structure. Improvements have not materialised – mass murder has materialised.
If you are trying to say the the USA is in too deep to pull out now I will vehemently disagree. It is clear as day to me and many others that the (illegal) Iraq invasion was planned for many years before the fact, secretly, criminally, and that our current gang of neocons has no plans to pull out ever.
I am surprised that you can support this gang; you have only to take one issue: ammunition made of depleted uranium sickens and kills our soldiers along with the Iraqi people. How can that ongoing program be called a mistake? It must be intentional as they are still pouring tons of the shit into the warzone in spite of the fact that it kills and maims combatants for life.
What say ye soldier?
Posted by: rapt | Jan 11 2005 0:51 utc | 55
the (illegal) Iraq invasion was planned for many years before the fact yup, starting with the old Don Enrico Kissinger in the 70’s. one of the longest-planned heists in recent history…
Re:Madelene Albright and previous Administrations.
If I recall correctly, US policy before Caesare Bush was to attempt to bring the Iraq regime down by nonmilitary means, and nothing much was done in this area during the Clinton administration.
Of course, I might have Aldzheimer’s in even thinking that this began with our current batch Republican Caesars.
Way to rewrite history, Pat.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 11 2005 1:24 utc | 57
rapt, @ 7:51 PM, I don’t see that Pat is supporting anyone. She speaks of an “increasingly abominable military leadership during the Nineties”. Strong words from a poster known for choosing her words with exactitude! They pique (if you’ll excuse the understatement) my curiosity. Just who was that abominable leadership? Why don’t I know about them? Or do I know about them by name, but as heroes of some public relations campaign? Pat’s circumspect post is a piece of history completely missing from the archives of my own imagining, and I’ll have to make space for this new information.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 1:41 utc | 58
@Alabama:
That was obviously Burt Lancaster, from Seven Days in May.
You all enjoy your historical revisionism, now.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 11 2005 2:03 utc | 59
FlashHarry – did you forget operation desert fox? or “coercive diplomacy”? or clinton bombing saddam under the pretense that the latter had attempted to assasinate the poster child for atrial fibrillation while he was in kuwait to check in on his carlyle investments? definately used military force in these episodes.
Posted by: b real | Jan 11 2005 4:14 utc | 60
mistakes have been made, errors have been perpetuated…
I just had a flashback to Reagan with that passive voice about murder for “democracy” in Central America.
Alabama- that complaint about the military in the nineties is standard fare in the conservative buffet of complaints about Clinton.
I’m surprised you haven’t heard that one before, since it’s the basis of innumerable right wing talking head moments and a best-selling book, Dereliction of Duty. Call it Swift Boating, The Prequel. I’m not sure if the book takes the Reich wing to task for wasting 70 million taxpayer dollars, or wasting the time and attention of the nation and the president to investigate a blow job, or trying to put lipstick on the Paula pig, or accusing Clinton of wagging the dog whenever he did resort to military action, but of course it’s purely “factual,” and Scaife et al were patriots for their smear campaign during a time when a president actual oversaw the thwarting of a major terrorist attack.
(Maybe one day we’ll learn that Monica was installed in The Watergate as a high-price hooker so that the republicans could have their own moment in the impeachment sun. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, esp. considering her pimpette Lucianne’s work as a mole in the McGovern campaign. but I’m merely speculating. However, as Silent Coup noted, The Watergate break-in was also about a prostitution sting.)
But I digress. Miller’s military is soooooo much better, as Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have demonstrated, than that nineties version.
I would not doubt that Saddam was a long-term target. However, to call the invasion inevitable…well, if one decision rather than another had been made in the past, we’d have heard that another invasion of Cuba was inevitable, even after the Bay of Pigs. But it wasn’t…or at least we’re not told that yet. If the U.S. had any sense, it would form a trading partnership with Castro and let Americans vacation there. Cuba would soon be our best buddy. But I digress…America has little sympathy for dictators unless they’re right wing and they kill lefties.
It seems fairly obvious that Cheney’s Energy Policy Task Force was involved in carving up the Iraqi oil fields for various interests, as Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club were able to glean somewhat. So, yes, with the current gang of crooks and thugs, the invasion was on the way.
that’s also why, it seems, Cheney was unable to have even one meeting to deal with the threat of terrorism before 9-11, and thus ignored the issue of Al Qaeda.
…and this is why Bush is sooo much better for national security and for fighting terrorism. Creating hell in Iraq and radicalizing more and more people in the middle east, not to mention giving Iran a stronger base in the region was excellent strategy. Congrats, BushCo! Congrats, Miller and Co!
These were all issues that were vetted in the in bed with mainstream media before the invasion of Iraq, so it’s a lie to say that no one in the military could have foreseen it…how many retired generals testified about just these things? I forget. Six, I think.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 11 2005 5:16 utc | 61
“The armed forces suffered increasingly abominable military leadership through the Nineties” (emphasis added). This, fauxreal (@ 12:16 AM), is the one and only point raised by Pat that really surprises me. It’s not about Swift Boats, or the Scaife enterprises, or Monica, Bill, Bush, or Cheney. Its about “the military leadership through the Nineties”. First question, therefore: who led the military through the Nineties? I’d be surprised if Pat were to mention Wesley Clarke, or General Shinseki, or General Shalekashvili (though these may indeed be the very guys she has in mind), and I rather expect her to name some folks I’ve never heard of, to be found at the time in assignments I’ve never thought of–like weapons procurement, training programs, or health benefits for the families of fighting men. But I don’t know this, so I’ll just have to wait and see.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 6:07 utc | 62
OT,
Old MoA rascal koreyel has posted a fine 3 second hypnotic video protrait of Bush — that sums it up.
//koreyel.blogspot.com/
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 11 2005 6:08 utc | 63
A very enlightening articleby Jared Diamond, which sums up what is quite close to common wisdom among the experts nowadays.
Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
For those who may think it’s just ranting about history passed long ago, keep that in mind the next time some greedy Monsanto guy states the (obviously fake and wrong) argument that genetically modified food is good for mankind because it allows to feed more people.
Posted by: CluelessJoe | Jan 11 2005 9:42 utc | 64
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any sillier…..
Mississippi libraries ban ‘Daily Show’ book
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 11 2005 10:19 utc | 65
CJ,
Did you catch that story about the handfull of aboriginal islanders, that reside on small islands between Sri Lanka and India, that somehow “sensed” the tidal wave, and all moved up-island before it hit (normally they would be shore bound fishing, etc)? Was in Seattle PI last week.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 11 2005 10:58 utc | 66
In re, Koreyel’s post: duhbya calls it “the one finger victory salute”
Once a fratboy, always a sophomoric fratboy.
Posted by: beq | Jan 11 2005 13:04 utc | 67
@FlashHarry
I did say that the groundwork for regime change had been laid by previous administrations, and that this was official – not de facto, certainly not hidden – USG policy. That a WAR was not undertaken by the Clinton White House to remove the regime is true and beside the point. The lack of significant opposition to the war among those military personnel who would end up overseeing it was due in no small measure to post-Gulf War policy accustomization and the long-wearing circumstances of that war’s ceasefire. The idea of regime change in Baghdad – by military means – was not new and startling by the time of Bush’s election in 2000. Is this really controversial? A significant portion of the public may have been horrified or incredulous at the thought, in early 2002, of getting rid of Saddam. The military leadership generally did not share that horror or incredulity.
@alabama
Why are you surprised?
Confidence in military leaders at the level of division and above eroded steadily through the Nineties and by the end of the decade was dragging the depths. Those were (I want to say it’s impossible to overstate, but – ) really, really bad years. We didn’t suddenly get new leadership after Sept. 11 or in the ramp-up to OIF. There was no miracle injection of competence, foresight, flexibility, and ingenuity.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 11 2005 14:08 utc | 69
@alabama
“I rather expect her to name some folks I’ve never heard of, to be found at the time in assignments I’ve never thought of–like
weapons procurement,
training programs,
or health benefits for the families of fighting men.”
No, no, and no.
@fauxreal
“that complaint about the military in the nineties is standard fare in the conservative buffet of complaints about Clinton”
This particular issue had nothing to do with Clinton. It had (and has) everything to do with the military.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 11 2005 14:30 utc | 70
I supppose I ought to be surprised at my own surprise, Pat, but this ignorance has been honestly arrived at: I’m a steady reader of the NYT and the WSJ–my sources of information during the Nineties (no blogs in those days!)–and if they ever focused on an erosion of “confidence in military leaders at the level of division and above,” well, I simply missed the story. Who were those leaders? Jay Garner and Tommy Franks? But these are rock stars, and probably shouldn’t concern us here….There must be a literature on the subject–in the popular press, perhaps?–and I’d truly love to know what it said (and says).
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 15:04 utc | 71
@Pat:
Just a brief response. Since we have a civlian form of government, the civilians are responsible for making the policy decisions.
There was plenty of opposition to undertaking this war from the uniformed military–reflected by what some of their retired leadership was saying. James Jones, then commandant of the Marine Corps, for example, said about as much as a serving officer could have said.Zinni, Scowcroft, McPeak, and Swartzkof chimed in from the sidelines. On the British side, Lord Bramall, and General Sir Michael Rose spoke for the British military-Rose in an aricle for the Evening Standard titled “The Madness of War with Iraq” in early August 2002. The arguments were all made on strategic grounds.
Arguments regarding the strategic wisdom of an Iraq adventure continued up to the commencement of the war and were supplemented by the army staff at the Pentagon leaking like a sieve, to Tom Ricks of the Post, among others, in an effort to get sufficient troops and materiel to do the job.
Finally, while Rummy and Wolfie might have fallen somewhat under the sway of the Bomber Harris’ of the Air Force and Navy, it really makes little difference.
Bush, Rumsfeld etc. made the decision to do this war, and they own it.
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 11 2005 15:47 utc | 72
FlashHarry, Pat has in mind an erosion of the military leadership’s quality and morale that arose from the “long-wearing circumstances due to [Desert Storm’s] ceasefire”. Something particular happened: “confidence [among junior officers? among civilians?] in military leaders at the level of division and above eroded steadily through the Nineties”. Perhaps the military leaders knew, in their bones, that the US would have to “finish the job” of Desert Storm, and began wasting away as the clock ticked on and on, and no one got on with the job. I can believe all this, but have to hear it from other people, because my own life is a nothing more than a steady stream of unfinished business, and so I tend to suppose that others live the same.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 16:29 utc | 74
Leaving unanswered the question of whether military officers were getting intolerably dissonant signals from civilian leaders: “you must prepare to fight every day for the rest of your lives, and you’ll never see combat again”….Just the sort of thing that gives rise to police brutality, I should suppose.
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 16:37 utc | 75
Perhaps alabama. Some of those heroic US military types were very upset that their slaughter of a defenceless, retreating Iraqi army was stopped when they hadn’t quite incinerated everyone alive on the Kuwait-Safwan-Basra road and further afield. It must have been incredibly frustrating for those valiant warriors to have had to stop their martial exploits before their bloodlust was satiated. ‘Hunt the Iraqi’ using missiles against terrified individuals racing about the desert seeking cover behind rocks only to be blasted out of concealment while another hugely expensive missile was sent their way is a joy that only military minds can truly appreciate. Civilians have no inkling of the pleasure to be had from incinerating retreating men or bulldozing thousands more and burying them alive. From 1991 up to 2003 the finest minds in the U.S. armed forces have been just itching to perform such heroics again and you and any civilian wusses who think like you just don’t get how exhilarating and manly it all is. Next thing you’ll be saying that you don’t even like video shoot-’em-up games, the kind of pansy substitute that the U.S. army’s finest has had to make do with through all the miserable years of waiting until they could let rip and butcher a mismatched crowd of barely armed ragheads again. Even at that the sandniggers folded too quickly so the boys and girls have been reduced to getting their kicks slaughtering civilians instead. Man, what a rush it all is, how the adrenalin gets pumping when you’re given carte blanche to burn, bomb, waste, rip to pieces with chain guns, blast with TOW missiles and otherwise off in hard-on inducing ways tens of thousands of non-white men, women and children. You just don’t get it do you? Next thing you’ll be whining about the U.S. military’s right to electrocute, rape, sodomize, smother, half-drown, wholly drown, beat, thrash, pummel, pound, half-hang, whip, set dogs on, torture and humiliate helpless prisoners, men women AND children. Do you have any idea of how humiliating it is to be in the U.S. forces and sit for years with no combat medal? And killing raghead women and kids is combat, right? I’d like to see YOU have the balls to do it. The way you carry on here you’d think that there’s something unreasonable about ascribing almost reverential, deific status to an institution comprised mainly of jailbirds and psychopaths with a combined knowledge of global politics, cultures and diplomacy that could be written on the back of a serviette in a cheap greasy diner. What’s wrong with you people?
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 11 2005 17:46 utc | 76
Newly Appointed Asst. Secretary of Defense for SW Asia vows to “Finish the Job.”
Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 11 2005 17:58 utc | 77
When, therefore, William Perry was working on all those spy sattelites, he should have been organizing an archipelago of prisons and hospitals, funded by the NIMH and dedicated to the treatment of PTSD….Though I see no way this initiative could have been stitched into the complex fabric of President Clinton’s national health proposals, I have no doubt that the surviving citizens of Oklahoma City would warmly endorse the idea (they have a tenth anniversary in the works, if my calendar doesn’t lie).
Posted by: alabama | Jan 11 2005 18:06 utc | 78
The public tolerence for u.s. brutality is inexhaustible, so long as the enemy can be successively detached as a legal object worthy of protection. Gonzalez’s legal positivism is impressively resilient; no different from Nazi justifications of law: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Schmitt).
I’m mortified that nothing less than shocking defeat of the u.s. military can reverse the public legitimation-by-complacency of this moment of American exceptionalism.
This condemns much of what passes as opposition to the war as intellectually complicit in the defeat of u.s. “interests.”
No wonder Billmon’s in Zarathustra exile mode.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 11 2005 19:43 utc | 79
Keep in mind that in spite of some slight public deference in polite media society to the dominant “torture is bad” meme, the Right actually believes that we’ve been way too soft on the “terrorists”.
It didn’t take long for interrogators in the war on terror to realize that their part was not going according to script. Pentagon doctrine, honed over decades of cold-war planning, held that 95 percent of prisoners would break upon straightforward questioning. Interrogators in Afghanistan, and later in Cuba and Iraq, found just the opposite: virtually none of the terror detainees was giving up information — not in response to direct questioning, and not in response to army-approved psychological gambits for prisoners of war.
Perish the thought that “Pentagon doctrine” might be wrong, or that perhaps they had bunches of prisoners who didn’t know shit about anything. After all, only girlie-man countries practice presumption of innocence.
(Pat, I’ll be particularly interested in your take on this article)
(Apologies in advance if any formatting is screwed up – I can’t access the preview screen from work)
Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jan 12 2005 0:45 utc | 80
@ slothrop: I think “detached” is the operative word. Unless you have family in the military over there, it is still – o v e r t h e r e – not here. We are tolerant of anything that doesn’t interfere with our: soaps, talk shows, reality tv, insipid sitcoms, etc. etc. etc. OIF is just another video game.
Posted by: beq | Jan 12 2005 1:32 utc | 81
I have a family member who was in Iraq, and another who will be there soon. I feel the same way as I did before – that they will break themselves with their own actions, or the actions of their friends, or the horrors they experience – and I care more about them than anyone else involved. But I imagine it is when they kill some stranger that my nephew and niece really break themselves. So how can I support my military’s tactical goals, goals each of them has had to own?
To the administration that sends them over there for lies and profits, I cannot imagine that you could ever suffer enough for your treachery. Justice is impossible. I am a patriot simply because I love those close to me – and yet I cannot pray for victory because despite what the leaders say, US forces are not fighting for Iraqi or for American civilians, nor for either society. All I see is the administration destroying my country by first destroying Iraq and everywhere else they can worm my country’s warriors into.
This is Vietnam again because they have slathered everyone we love in shit again – and of course we are disgusting. But I guess there’s more than one way to get used to the stench. I guess that matters.
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 12 2005 2:36 utc | 82
Citizen
That post knocked me out. What times these are.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 12 2005 2:42 utc | 83
Citizen
What you say is true, and it will work on them for a long time, pts, survivors guilt, adrenalin addiction, remorse, or insufferable patriotism to cover it all up.
I recently checked out the website for my old VN unit and predictably, the commentary section was filled with kids (now grown) looking for anyone who knew their dad, inqueries about a relitives death, someone to vouch to the VA for PTS, on and on — after now, 35 years, it still goes on. I did find a few names I recognized, called them up, and sure enough they all were on some % disability for pts — and two of them wating 20 years before doing anything about it. For me, the senselessness of it all has been the most difficult part to bear. And for those powers that be, that would burden our youth with a task, in which they are woefully naive to the full and everlasting gravity of — I wish a special place in hell, preferably while they are still alive.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 12 2005 4:32 utc | 85
@alabama
“Pat has in mind an erosion of the military leadership’s quality and morale that arose from the ‘long-wearing circumstances due to [Desert Storm’s] ceasefire’.”
Pat has nothing of the sort in mind.
Erosion in the quality of military leadership was institutional, or endogenous.
Military member surveys – regularly commissioned by the services – during that decade recorded steadily decreasing morale and confidence in senior leadership. Maybe Google can help you with this. The Army Times, The Air Force Times, and both editions of The Stars and Stripes are more illuminating than the WSJ and the NYT. Everyday contact with actual servicemembers is also illuminating.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 12 2005 5:12 utc | 87
I’m grateful for the leads, Pat, and I’ll do my homework, but I sure don’t know quite what to make of “steadily decreasing confidence in a senior leadership” the erosion of whose quality was “institutional”. How, finally, does an institution (military or otherwise) erode the quality of its leadership? Did the officer corps grow so large and so redundant that the levels of command were no longer properly differentiated? Rumsfeld seems hell-bent on streamlining the size and shape of the divisions; would this be an attempt in part to bring some clarity to the reporting process? (A word or two on these questions would be helpful here)…..I really wish I knew some career officers with whom to discuss this. My wife’s godfather was a retired army general, but he died almost ten years ago…..
Posted by: alabama | Jan 12 2005 5:36 utc | 88
A still and silent ending! However, on positive side it took the WaPo only one month to report it.
Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Critical September Report to Be Final Word
Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.
Imagine that!
Posted by: Fran | Jan 12 2005 8:11 utc | 89
Steve Gillard is angry – an open letter to Ken Pollack – with strong words.
What weapons, there are no weapons
Dear Mr. Pollack,
It isn’t every day an armchair analyst can help send 1357 decent Americans and 100,000 decent and mostly innocent Iraqis to an early grave. I mean, it takes work to promote a policy of death so dilligently and so profitably.
So here’s a simple question: where the fuck are the weapons? You said they had them. They didn’t and a lot of people are dead. In imperial Japan, that would have required hara kiri. But in Washington, I guess that means a new book on Iran, so more Americans can die.
…
But that crappy book you wrote forsaw none of this. As you played armchair general and hoked up a profile of Saddam the insane, you didn’t see what was coming, what a good historian could have predicted. Why mutter something about Bush screwing up. You provided him the intellectual cover to screw up. You convinced the chattering classes to support this fiasco.
Now, with Landsthul filled with ruined kids and the lines clogged with heartsick parents, where have you been? Pimping a new book on Iran. Are you sending more people to die? Does that not bother you, as you make lofty pronouncements paid for with the blood of others? Or do they count at all, the maimed and the dead?
YOu said there were weapons, there are none. In a just world, you should be haunted by that every night of the rest of your life.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 12 2005 16:18 utc | 90
The US casualty breakdown, from StrategyPage.com:
January 7, 2005: American casualties in Iraq have demonstrated some unusual patterns, at least compared to previous wars. For example, accidents account for 18 percent of the deaths. However, the number of accidental deaths has been steadily declining, from a peak of 31 in May, 2003. Ten percent of all deaths have been caused by vehicle accidents, and 71 percent of those were single vehicle accidents. Iraqi drivers are particularly aggressive, and traffic rules are rarely obeyed. Rollovers accounted for 54 percent of vehicle deaths. The poor condition of the roads was a major factor in 30 percent of the traffic accidents. Blast injuries (from roadside bombs and shells) was the major cause of 40 percent of all deaths, while bullets and shell fragments were the major cause for another 29 percent.
Four percent of deaths were caused by drowning. Central Iraq is a very wet place.
This was also the first war were the lowest ranking troops did not account for the largest share of the deaths. In Iraq, junior NCOs (ranks E-4 to E-6) accounted for 56 percent of deaths, while the lowest ranks (E-1 to E-3) accounted for 28 percent. Officers accounted for 11 percent of all deaths. This pattern reflects the demographics of the all-volunteer armed forces, which is an older force (average age of the dead was 26, and 43 percent were married.) The reservists, who comprise 22 percent of the dead, also tend to be older.
Posted by: Pat | Jan 12 2005 17:28 utc | 91
Movement in the Sibel Edmonds case, according to the Guardian. Looks as if she is ‘slowly’being vindicated.
Official: Evidence Supports FBI Complaints
WASHINGTON (AP) – The FBI never adequately investigated complaints by a fired contract linguist who alleged shoddy work and possible espionage inside the bureau’s translator program, even though evidence and witnesses supported her, the Justice Department’s senior oversight official said Friday.
The bureau’s response to complaints by former translator Sibel Edmonds was “significantly flawed,” Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a report that summarized a lengthy classified investigation into how the FBI handled the case. Fine said her claims “raised substantial questions and were supported by various pieces of evidence.”
Edmonds maintains she was fired in March 2002 after she complained to FBI managers about shoddy wiretap translations and told them an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised national security by blocking translations in some cases and notifying targets of FBI surveillance.
…
“The report substantiated the most serious of Sibel’s allegations and demonstrates that the FBI owes Sibel an apology and compensation for its unlawful firing of her rather than hiding behind its false cloak of national security,” said her lawyer, Mark Zaid.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 15 2005 7:29 utc | 92
When are Americans going to start screaming, I mean all of them.
Y o u ‘ r e i n v i t e d ?
Then everybody will get back on the buses for a trip to the National Mall, where they will spend most of the day in heavily guarded warming tents. Participants have been warned that they will not be allowed to leave the tents except to go to portable toilets accompanied by a security escort.
Other instructions given performers include a warning not to look directly at Bush while passing the presidential reviewing stand, not to look to either side and not to make any sudden movements.
“They want you to just look straight ahead,” said Danielle Adam, co-director of the Mid American Pompon All Star Team from Michigan, which also performed in the 2001 inaugural parade.
All I can think of when reading this is – Sieg Heil, Bush! Haven’t seen any instructions for the Hitler salut and goose steps yet! Sure hope (probably useless), the media will also report on the demonstrations.
Posted by: Fran | Jan 15 2005 9:18 utc | 93
From Jerome way upthread:
The film can convert up to 30 per cent of the sun’s power into usable, electrical energy.
That is good.
Today’s best plastic solar cells capture only about six per cent.
I think it is just above 20% today actually. As I hang some with solarcell-people I´m quite certain of it. But both this and the 30% I assume is still in the laboratory. Six percent might be in commercial use.
To DeAnanders hopes of an untoxic process, I would add a process that doesn´t require more energy than the cells can resonably produce during their lifespann. The sad thing about (as far as I know) all solar cells to date is that the energy required is higher than the energy produced.
Of course, as the article points out they are still quite useful, we get a availeble recharging option for the invested energy, that is wireless products we don´t have to plug in or change batteries in. But in the end, we are still stuck with water/nuclear/fossile (and occasionally wind or wave) power to make the solar cells, they are not a prime producer of useful energy. At least my sources says so.
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 15 2005 15:37 utc | 94
I would add a process that doesn´t require more energy than the cells can resonably produce during their lifespan yes, exactly ASKOD — most people do not realise that current solar technology is a net-loss game, i.e. during the lifetime of a solar panel it produces considerably less energy than went into making it (EROEI failure). even that much-touted “solution” the nuke plant only returns, if lucky, twice what you put into making it, and that’s not counting the energy and other costs of post-lifetime decommissioning and cleanup which might negate a pretty good chunk of the budget.
we can’t win and we can’t break even, unless we learn to live with much lower energy consumption all around. this is what makes me tear my hair when I read airy predictions (other thread, Genghis Khan’s post “Asians are coming to get you”) that the world economy will grow by 80 percent in the next 15 years. we’re already, by reputable estimates, sucking 20 percent more biotic and water resources out of the planet than it can regenerate on an annual basis. we can’t even keep doing what we’re doing, let alone “grow” by 20 percent.
Here is a modest, optimistic proposal for managing the inevitable end to human growth.
meanwhile, the Alps are melting — or at least their glaciers and “permanent” snowcap are melting. bizarrely, incredibly, the article focuses on the disappointment of alpinists — privileged people who climb for sport and fun — on the decay of their playground, when the role of glaciers and snowpack is essential in providing predictable river flows year round for drinking water and hydroelectric.
but that’s the current state of the media for you. if the oceans are dying, it only matters because recreational diving will be impacted. if the glaciers are melting, it only matters because recreational climbing will be impacted. the pernicious doctrine of substitutability — and dirt-cheap transport — has completely destroyed any sense of the real sources of essential things and how complete is our dependence on those sources.
I am not sure if solar panels take more energy than they generate, but it may well be so.
In general we should not discard something because it does so. Norway produces more energy from water power than it can use. The Sahara may produce one day more energy than any Beduin tribe there will ever use.
The “transport” of energy from places where it is available to places where it is to be used is always costing energy and it may be possible to make solar panels in the Sahara with energy easily and environmentaly save available there and to put these to use elsewhere. This could be a better way than to build electricity lines.
I just want to point out that the question is not that easy. Energy transportation is a BIG factor in any calculation of effectiveness.