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Sunday, January 01, 2006
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One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.New York Times
F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show
December 20, 2005
They hate us because of our freedom -- our meat-eating, fur-wearing freedom.
(Via Whiskey Bar.)
8:13:41 PM 
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...to argue that the President not only has the right to bypass the warrant process when spying on American citizens, but also has the authority to disregard Supreme Court rulings he disagrees with.
Thank you, John Hinderaker, for being That Wingnut.
(Via Sadly, No!.)
8:12:24 PM
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The Klan in Iowa is going to conduct an anti-gay protest next month.
A Charles City man who said he's a member of the Ku Klux Klan is trying to organize a rally next month to protest attempts to legalize same-sex marriages in Iowa.
Douglas Sadler, 41, said his efforts are prompted by lawsuits filed earlier this month on behalf of six gay couples this month to alter the state’s marriage laws.
‘‘We don’t believe God’s law should be perverted any more than it already has been,’’ said Sadler, a Charles City resident and father of four. ‘‘The further we go away from God’s law, the further we get away from God.’’
. . .
Group officials said they will argue that the state constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses make it unlawful for the state to bar same-sex couples from marrying. They plan to take the case to the Iowa Supreme Court if necessary.
That’s exactly where Sadler plans to protest. He said his contingent from Cerro Gordo, Floyd and Mitchell counties will head to Des Moines sometime next month and spread their message.
‘‘We don’t believe they have the right to marry,’’ Sadler said. ‘‘In fact, we don’t think they have the right to exist.’’
Oh, it is not a surprise at all that they are allies of Radical Right Wing Christian Clerics like Dobson and Wildmon, is it? But look for some strong counter protests, because most Iowans will not put up with that kind of hate.
(Via All Spin Zone.)
8:00:51 PM
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What's Worse?
The First Number, or the Second?
from PR Newswire:
Read it and weep:
Twenty-two percent (22%) of adults believe that Saddam Hussein "helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11th." However, all of these beliefs and others have declined sharply since the questions were asked in February 2005. For example:
Those who think Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda have fallen from 64 to 41 percent.
Those who believe that Iraq was a serious threat to U.S. security are down from 61 to 48 percent.
Those who think Saddam Hussein helped plan 9/11 are down from 47 to 22 percent.
Those who think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction are down from 36 to 26 percent.
Those who think Iraqi hijackers attacked the United States on 9/11 have fallen from 44 to 24 percent.
tags: iraq war on terror saddam hussein al qaeda 9/11
graphic: The General
(Via AGITPROP: Version 3.0, Featuring Blogenfreude.)
7:59:50 PM
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Der Spiegel interviewed Daniel Dennett, author of Freedom Evolves and Darwin's Dangerous Idea, on the subject of intelligent design (and fundamentalist religions):
Dennett: [T]he idea of a creator that is more wonderful than the things he creates is, I think, a very deeply intuitive idea. It is exactly this idea that promoters of Intelligent Design speak to when they ask, 'did you ever see a building that didn't have a maker, did you ever see a painting that didn't have a painter.' That perfectly captures this deeply intuitive idea that you never get design for free.
SPIEGEL: An ancient theological argument...
Dennett: ... which Darwin completely impugns with his theory of natural selection. And he shows, hell no, not only can you get design from un-designed things, you can even get the evolution of designers from that un-design. You end up with authors and poets and artists and engineers and other designers of things, other creators -- very recent fruits of the tree of life. And it challenges people's sense that life has meaning . . . .
SPIEGEL: But still, something out of the ordinary happened when humans came along.
Dennett: Indeed. Humans discovered language -- an explosive acceleration of the powers of minds. Because now you can not just learn from your own experience, but you can learn vicariously from the experience of everybody else. From people that you never met. From ancestors long dead. And human culture itself becomes a profound evolutionary force. That is what gives us an epistemological horizon and which is far, far greater than that of any other species. We are the only species that knows who we are, that knows that we have evolved. Our songs, art, books and religious beliefs are all ultimately a product of evolutionary algorithms. Some find that thrilling, others depressing.
SPIEGEL: Nowhere does evolution become so apparent than in the DNA code. Nevertheless, those who believe in Intelligent Design find the DNA code less problematic than the ideas of Darwin. Why is that?
Dennett: I don't know, because it seems to me that the very best evidence we have for the truth of Darwin's theory is the evidence that arrives every day from bioinformatics, from understanding the DNA-coding. The critics of Darwinism just don't want to confront the fact that molecules, enzymes and proteins lead to thought. Yes, we have a soul, but it's made up of lots of tiny robots.
SPIEGEL: Don't you think it's possible to leave life to the biologists, but let religion take care of the soul?
Dennett: That's what Pope John Paul II was demanding when he issued his oft-quoted cyclical in which he said that evolution was a fact, but he went right on to say: except on the matter of the human soul. That might make some content, but it is just false. It would be just as false to say: Our bodies are made up of biological material, except, of course, the pancreas. The brain is no more wonder tissue than the lungs or the liver. It's just a tissue.
Dennett: [Religions] all have to have features for prolonging their own identity -- and a lot of these are actually interestingly similar to what you find in biology, too.
SPIEGEL: Can you give an example?
Dennett: Many religions started before there was writing. How do you get high fidelity preservation of texts before you have texts? Group singing and recitation are efficient mechanisms for maintaining and spreading information. And then we have other features too, like you really want to make sure there are some parts of religion that are really incomprehensible.
SPIEGEL: Why?
Dennett: Because then people have to fall back on rote memorization. The very idea of the Eucharist is a lovely example: The idea that the bread is symbolic of the body of Christ, that the wine is symbolic of the blood of Christ, that's just not exciting enough. The idea needs to be made strictly incomprehensible: The bread is Christ's body and the wine is his blood. Only then will it hold your attention. Then it will win in competition against more boring ideas simply because you can't quite get your head around it. It's sort of like when you have a sore tooth and you can't keep your tongue off it. Every good Muslim is supposed to pray five times a day no matter what.
SPIEGEL: You see that too as an evolutionary strategy to keep the religion alive?
Dennett: It's very possible. The Israeli evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi argues that behaviors which are costly -- which are hard to imitate -- are those that can best be handed down because non-costly signals can and will be faked. This principle of costly behaviors is well established in biology and it is present in religion. It is important to make sacrifices. The costliness is a feature you tamper with at your peril. If the imams got together and decided to remove that feature they would be damaging one of the most powerful adaptations of Islam.
SPIEGEL: By using this type of argumentation, can you predict which religions will win out in the end?
Dennett: My colleagues Rodney Stark and Roger Finke have researched why some religions spread quickly and others don't. They're adapting supply side economics to this and saying that there's a sort of unlimited market for what religions can give but only if they're costly. So they have an explanation for why the very bland and liberal Protestant religions are losing members and why the most extreme, intense religions are gaining members . . . .
What's really scary is that a lot of them seem to think that the second coming is around the corner -- the idea that we're going to have Armageddon anyway so it doesn't make much difference. I find that to be socially irresponsible on the highest order. It's scary.
(Via King of Zembla.)
7:57:16 PM
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You find the most interesting little tidbits when googling:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”
And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.”
Some attitude for a president of the United States, huh?
Other choice Bush quotes that reflect his imperial attitude:
"There oughta be limits to freedom."
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
"It's not a dictatorship in Washington, but I tried to make it one in that instance." -- Chilling way to describe his executive order making faith-based groups eligible for federal subsidies, New Orleans, Louisiana, Jan. 15, 2004
"I'm the commander -- see, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." -- As quoted shortly following 9/11 in "Bush at War" by Bob Woodward, Washington, D.C., Nov. 19, 2002
Tags: Bush, Constitution, presidency
(Via No More Apples.)
6:27:40 PM
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After months of debate about the Bush administration's supposed support of torture through the "rendition" policy of sending captured terrorists to their nations of origin for questioning, it turns out that the policy did not start with the Bush administration...
(Via Captain's Quarters.)
Funny how these guys who said they were going to restore dignity to the White House after Clinton always use him as an example. "It's OK because Clinton did it," doesn't seem to be taking the moral high ground. Of course, the other thing they say is that "at least we're better than Saddam." talk about moral relativsm!
6:25:25 PM
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The story.
What Our Leader hath wrought (caution: graphic photos of the result of our outsourced interrogation work).
Karimov, Our Leader, His manservant Colin, and that old, curmudgeonly exterminator at DOD hanging out at the Memory Hole.
The Documents (mirrored)
Telegrams
Legal Advice to the British Foreign Office.
(Via Jesus' General.)
6:23:13 PM
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Ten Amazing Predictions for 2006
1. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom the Bush administration has failed to capture after all this time, and who was probably responsible for the July 7 bombings in the London subway and the bombings in the Sinai in Egypt, will strike at US allies again in 2006.
2. Saudi Arabia will use the $160 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen its military and security forces, and to spread its rigid Wahhabi form of Islam.
3. Iran's clerical elites will use the $36 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen their military and security forces, and to spread their radical Khomeinist form of Islam. The US, even if it takes some desperate step, will prove unable to shake the regime in 2006.
4. The Iraqi government, on which the US is placing its bet, will limp along with less than $19 billion a year in petroleum income because of sabotage and guerrilla war, along with long-neglected fields and dilapidated plants and equipment. Most of that money will be absorbed by the need for internal security, reconstruction and paying off past reparations and debts, as well as by large-scale corruption and embezzlement (billions of dollars went missing during the government of Iyad Allawi in 2004).
5. The Iraqi parliament will pass fundamentalist Muslim legislation. Sometime in 2006, a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians will call for the withdrawal of US troops. The Iraqi government will have warm relations with Iran, but strained relations with Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The guerrilla war will continue.
6. The Israeli-Palestinian struggle will continue in staccatto fashion, because the Israeli government remains expansionist and land-hungry. Because the Sharon government refused to negotiate with real live Palestinians over the Gaza withdrawal no framework for peace was erected. Israeli troops will go back into Gaza from time to time. Israel will settle thousands of colonists on Palestinian land in the west and will blame Palestinians as irrational and bigotted for objecting. The subtle forms of ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem will continue or accelerate. Fifteen percent of Palestinian children will continue to suffer from malnutrition, a result of the poverty that derives from having been put since 1967 in a large Israeli jail.
7. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization composed of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as members and India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan as observers, will follow up on its success in getting US troops out of Uzbekistan and on strengthening energy cooperation between Kazakhstan and China on the one hand, and Russia and Kazakhstan on the other, as well as security cooperation between Russia and Uzbekistan. The conjuncture of gas, petroleum, Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will keep the new Great Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United States all playing. The US hand is weak.
8. The US attempt to isolate Iran by putting boycotts on Chinese and other companies that deal with it will only prove effective for those companies that do a lot of business with the US. Moreover, it is easy enough for a company to hive off a de facto subsidiary to deal with Iran (ask Bechtel and Halliburton). And, rising powers like India that have relatively little trade with the US will tempted to choose energy from Iran over good diplomatic relations with the US.
9. New Orleans will for the most part not be rebuilt and will increasingly be eclipsed by Baton Rouge. Louisiana as a result will become a solid Red State. The Republican Party has no particular reason to rebuild a predominantly African-American city that reliably voted Democrat, just as its leader, George W. Bush, apparently had no particular reason to implement relief work there with any urgency or efficiency after the flood. Most of the $25 billion in reconstruction aid promised by the Federal government will never arrive.
10. The United States will continue to lose global political influence because its government is running large deficits and going ever deeper into debt. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower routinely used the threat of calling in loans from war-devastated Europe to get his way. He threatened UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden with loan cancellations if the latter did not get back out of the Suez in late 1956. He threatened DeGaulle with loan cancellations if the latter didn't get France out of rebellious Algeria before it went Communist. Nowadays the US is a massive debtor nation, and has lost that kind of leverage with all but the poorest and most beaten-down countries. The US nuclear arsenal is relatively useless because it cannot actually be used, and the US military is bogged down in Iraq. America remains a superpower for the third and fourth worlds, but is often a helpless, pitiful giant as far as places like Western Europe and China are concerned.
[Caveat emptor: The author, a historian, has a fair amount of expertise with the past, but knows nothing out of the ordinary about the future.]
(Via Informed Comment.)
4:18:28 PM
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The mayor of Lawrence Kansas has proclaimed International Dadaism Month. But in the spirit of the absurdist movement, celebration dates are spread throughout the year.
(Via NPR Programs: Weekend Edition - Saturday.)
4:00:07 PM
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How do we perceive time? How do we form and retrieve memories? Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, tells Linda Wertheimer how the French novelist might answer such philosophical questions.
(Via NPR Programs: Weekend Edition - Saturday.)
3:58:22 PM
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Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center visits Kyrgyzstan with a group of singing American cowboys. He sent an audio postcard from his trip.
(Via NPR Programs: Weekend Edition - Sunday.)
I watched The Blues Brothers on AMC last night, and listening to this bit this morning reminded me of the scene in that movie where they impersonate The Good Old Boys to get a gig in a country bar.
3:57:48 PM
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  Editor's note: If you go to NASA's main VSE page at the NASA.gov website (also linked to by all other major NASA websites) there is a link on the right hand side which leads to a collection of conceptual art which depict various exploration concepts. Just pick the first lunar category ("lunar activities") and click on a image at random. You get a long disclaimer within each image's caption which says "Note: NASA currently has no formal plans for a human expedition to Mars or the Moon. etc. etc."
This caveat is to be found on all exploration images in this gallery - and has been on these images for more than half a decade. I find it rather silly (and confusing) that NASA waves around all of these new architectures - complete with pretty pictures - within the aerospace community, yet the image galleries that members of the general public (and therefore the media) are directed to send exactly the opposite message i.e. that "NASA has no formal plans ...". Isn't there anyone at NASA who pays attention to the 'big picture' aspect of the messages NASA sends out. Oh wait - that is what NASA's Strategic Communications Office is supposed to be doing.
(Via NASA Watch.)
3:49:23 PM
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"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter." - Thomas Jefferson
"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth." - Thomas Jefferson
"Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together" - James Madison
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." - James Madison
"What influence in fact have Christian ecclesiastical establishments had on civil society? In many instances they have been upholding the thrones of political tyranny. In no instance have they been seen as the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty have found in the clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate liberty, does not need the clergy." - James Madison
"I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book [the Bible]." - Thomas Paine
"It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible." - Thomas Paine
"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity." - John Adams
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." - John Adams and George Washington
Note: I've added a few more quotes from Paine and Madison and expanded the second quote from Jefferson. Also, the last "quote" by Adams and Washington was actually written into the 1797 Treaty with Tripoli (Article 11) during George Washington's presidency and then later signed by President Adams with the following proviso:
"Now, be it known, that I, John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said treaty, do, by and within the consent of the Senate, accept, ratify and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof."
(Via Buridan's Ass.)
11:05:35 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 2/1/2006; 8:43:38 PM.
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