Nouri Lumendifi's encounter with prejudice

This remarkable high school kid of Middle Eastern extraction has been blogging a year and a half and doing a great job. I'm not sure, but I think his family may have come from Algeria or elsewhere in the Maghreb. Yesterday's post is a study in maturity and constraint in the face of what can only be described as mind-numbing ignorance on the part of a few of his classmates. As a fifth generation American citizen I used to be embarrassed by such behavior, but I have come to realize that their stripe of prejudice is a transnational quality found all over the world. Fortunately Nouri, like so many immigrants from all over the world before him, has learned to stick up for himself. This part of his post reads like a scene from a movie...

...I was chased home multiple times during 7th grade, for about two or three weeks after 9/11 as black and caucasian peers chased after me throwing rocks and bricks and shouted racial slurs (Ay-rab, "Afghan niggaaar," sandmonkey, desert bunny, Hadji, Usama, etc.) at me. I was beaten pretty badly on several occasions, often to the point where I was bleeding or had bruses or black eyes. The last time I did this I stood up for myself, as no other people would help me (not school administrators, not peers, not anyone). I confronted one kid in particular, Aaron, who took great pleasure in calling me "Afghan niggaaaar" and telling me to "go back to the desert". I engaged him in hand to hand combat. He punched me, I punched him, kicked him and eventually got him on the ground. I pulled him over to a telephone pole with many staples on it from different fliers and advertisements from over the years on it. As his posse watched I smacked his head into the telephone pole, and moved it up and down so that he was cut by the staples. I then walked off. They had no idea as to what to do and just sort of stood there. I was never physically assaulted in such a manner again, though I was still called names.

I am reminded of Al Capone's line that you can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. In a more recent encounter his response is slightly less dramatic, and the sting of being the object of racist attitudes is still apparent. A dedication to non-violence holds me to another standard, but there is nothing in my system forbidding satisfaction if a non-pacifist takes a more forceful course in his own defense.

Last week I was also physically attacked by a group of four guys, none of whom I know or have seen before. These guys asked for my wallet, I said no, they pushed me, and said "Eye-racki, give up the oil money," I again said no. More slurs, "Fuckin' Ay-rab, go home." I told them I am going home if they would just step to the side. "Ay-rab doesn't know his place," I then shouted a profanity at them in Berber. I am not an Arab! They punched me. So I took a cheap shot and knocked one of the bastards in the nads and made off. I kept my wallet, by the way. Don't think I'm some kind of super fighter either; I'm skinny, damn near weightless and don't really know how to fight. I just know how to preserve, and I don't like fighting. I firmly believe the saying that "The ink of the scholar is worth more than the blood of the martyr".

This kid has class.
He's right, too, about the ink of the scholar...
Link here to my first post about Nouri.
Now go read his post from yesterday.

Economists write to the president regarding immigrants

My take on the immigration question is shaped by thirty years as a manager in the food business. I understand from experience the connection between wages and prices, and how a lack of available staff diminishes what passes for service these days. The public, always looking for value, demands champagne service at beer prices. The only way keep moving the bar up is to employ an ever-changing, ever-improving, willing and able staff that can meet those expectations. The population of people for whom good service is a long-term career is very small. Long-term service people are few and far between. Our kids ain't gonna do it any more. They are too busy playing with their toys and talking endlessly with one another on cell phones. Adult immigrants are the best (and already available) alternative. That word adult is important.

Here is a letter by Alex Tabarrok, who with Tyler Cowen blogs at Marginal Revolution. These men are among the best practicioners of the dismal science working today. Here is a fairly dispassionate look at the immigration issue from the standpoint of economics. I like what it says very much.

Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:

People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.

Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally. The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.
Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.

Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.

We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid..

America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

*** *** ***

*** ***

***

If you didn't get it the first time, then read it again.
And keep reading it until it sinks in.
The economic arguments against deporting people are far, far more compelling than any legal arguments in favor of doing so. There is an old saying among lawyers that if your client is innocent, you should argue the facts. But if your client is guilty, then argue the law. In this case, the facts carry more weight than the law.

Turtles All the Way Down

The post title is lifted from a wonderful story variously attributed to Stephen Hawking and others. There are a number of versions, but they all illustrate the same point. An interesting excursion into cyberspace is a Google search using that phrase.


A well known scientist has just finished a public lecture on cosmology, describing how the Earth orbits the Sun, the Moon orbits the Earth, and even the sun itself orbits around the galactic center along with billions of other stars which constitute our galaxy. At the end of the lecture an old woman in the back stands up and says, "What you've told us is rubbish! I happen to know the world is a flat plate resting on the back of four gigantic elephants!"
"And what do the elephants stand on?" says the scientist, thinking to foil her.
She crows back, "Why, on the back of an even larger turtle, of course!"
"And what does the turtle stand on?" he continues, sure he has her now.
"On the back of another turtle!"
"And what does that turtle stand on?" asks the scientist, now growing exasperated.
"It's no use, young man," the old woman replies brightly, "it's turtles all the way down!"

Thanks to The Speculist for the reminder.

John McCain at Liberty U.

Senator John McCain stood yesterday beside the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Christian conservative leader he denounced as ''evil" six years ago, and spoke of regret, reconciliation, and the danger of going too far in a political argument.

That was last Saturday. More as the LINK to the Boston Globe article.

Here is the text of the speech he gave, which I suppose can be characterized as "reaching out" and "regret." I wasn't there to discern any tears that may have stained his cheek. But working just from the text and knowing it is being delivered by a sitting U.S. Senator looking at the White House makes me want to ask for the salt shaker.

It’s funny, now, how less self-assured I feel late in life than I did when I lived in perpetual springtime. Some of my critics allege that age hasn’t entirely cost me the conceits of my youth. All I can say to them is, they should have known me then, when I was brave and true and better looking than I am at present. But as the great poet, Yeats, wrote, “All that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.” I have lost some of the attributes that were the object of a young man’s vanity. But there have been compensations, which I have come to hold dear.

We have our disagreements, we Americans. We contend regularly and enthusiastically over many questions: over the size and purposes of our government; over the social responsibilities we accept in accord with the dictates of our conscience and our faithfulness to the God we pray to; over our role in the world and how to defend our security interests and values in places where they are threatened. These are important questions; worth arguing about. We should contend over them with one another. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis, especially in times of crisis, we fight among ourselves for the things we believe in. It is not just our right, but our civic and moral obligation.

He concludes with a story about someone whose beliefs and opinions put them on opposite sides back in the days of the Vietnam War. Later they became friends.

I had a friend once, who, a long time ago, in the passions and resentments of a tumultuous era in our history, I might have considered my enemy. He had come once to the capitol of the country that held me prisoner, that deprived me and my dearest friends of our most basic rights, and that murdered some of us. He came to that place to denounce our country’s involvement in the war that had led us there. His speech was broadcast into our cells. I thought it a grievous wrong then, and I still do.

A few years later, he had moved temporarily to a kibbutz in Israel. He was there during the Yom Kippur War, when he witnessed the support America provided our beleaguered ally. He saw the huge cargo planes bearing the insignia of the United States Air Force rushing emergency supplies into that country. And he had an epiphany. He had believed America had made a tragic mistake by going to Vietnam, and he still did. He had seen what he believed were his country’s faults, and he still saw them. But he realized he had let his criticism temporarily blind him to his country’s generosity and the goodness that most Americans possess, and he regretted his failing deeply. When he returned to his country he became prominent in Democratic Party politics, and helped elect Bill Clinton President of the United States. He still criticized his government when he thought it wrong, but he never again lost sight of all that unites us.

We met some years later. He approached me and asked to apologize for the mistake he believed he had made as a young man. Many years had passed since then, and I bore little animosity for anyone because of what they had done or not done during the Vietnam War. It was an easy thing to accept such a decent act, and we moved beyond our old grievance.

We worked together in an organization dedicated to promoting human rights in the country where he and I had once come for different reasons. I came to admire him for his generosity, his passion for his ideals, for the largeness of his heart, and I realized he had not been my enemy, but my countryman . . . my countryman . . . and later my friend. His friendship honored me. We disagreed over much. Our politics were often opposed, and we argued those disagreements. But we worked together for our shared ideals. We were not always in the right, but we weren’t always in the wrong either, and we defended our beliefs as we had each been given the wisdom to defend them.

David remained my countryman and my friend, until the day of his death, at the age of forty-seven, when he left a loving wife and three beautiful children, and legions of friends behind him. His country was a better place for his service to her, and I had become a better man for my friendship with him. God bless him.

One of the group at Harry's Place, a progressive blog, says...

One of the many differences between McCain and President Bush is that it's virtually impossible to imagine Bush speaking in such terms.

None of this means McCain is going to get my support or my vote in 2008. Especially on social and economic issues, he's wrong far more often than he's right. If he is the Republican nominee (far from a given), I would be likely to support almost any Democrat who ran against him. But he would be a more decent and honorable opponent than Bush has ever been.

The comments thread is far less forgiving. All that is lacking is eggs, tomatoes and cat-calls.
Further down the thread there are more civil comments. Sadly, the most rational comments are from a Marxist site. I am weary of both extremes of the political spectrum who have all the answers and who would fashion everyone else to fit their particular mold. Maybe that's why I am attracted to what McCain said. Something about the image of John McCain addressing that particular group of students makes me think of Daniel in the lion's den. Or a fox in a henhouse. I haven't decided.

Andrew Sullivan has a snip from The Economist regarding the speech.

What Mr McCain's trip to Liberty University is really about is a subtle but substantial change in the balance of power and ideology in the Republican Party. Mr McCain is neither a wilful maverick nor a liberal who somehow found himself in the wrong place. He is a different kind of Republican...[representing] a challenge to many Republican power-brokers, particularly tax-cutters and lobbyists. That is why Mr McCain provokes such a furious debate within the party. But his particular range of ideas probably presents the Republicans' best chance of winning a third presidential election in a row.

Sullivan's take:

I dislike some of McCain's big government impulses; but he cannot conceivably be worse than Bush on that score. His impulse to meedle [needle?] , and even to bully, his opponents is not pretty either. But if the GOP passes him by, they will, I think, come to regret it. And so will America.

Poor Mr. Bush. Sullivan is a putative Conservative Republican. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Anti-war video

I have linked to Salam Adil's blog before. His finger is on the pulse of the Iraqi blogs.
He isn't in favor of this war and neither am I.
Today he links to an anti-war video.
If you think you might be offended by seeing images of the victims of war, then skip it.
I have seen most of the images before and they are by no means among the worst. But taken together in this montage they may be the saddest.

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he's been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

Libertarian essay

I wish Libertarians were not so doctrinaire because I really like a lot of what they say.
This is a great read.

So much of what the government does for us reminds me of the movie, "Cool Hand Luke." I think especially of the scene where the warden of the prison, called "the Captain," explains to Luke why he is going to once again be locked up in the sweat box "for your own good."

"Cap’n," Luke replies, "I wish you’d stop bein’ so damn good to me!"

Now the Bush regime is doing all this snooping and spying on us for our "own good." It is protecting us from the terrorists, as we all know. And since there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since 9-11-’01, whatever the government has been doing to protect us since 9-11 must be working, right?

Thank you, Mr. Reynolds

I see the situation in Egypt finally hit the insta-radar. Thank you, sir. The more spotlights the better.

Regarding Da Speech

Wow.
Like.....WOW!
It looks like the whole daggone blogworld tried to "live blog" that speech. What were they expecting, anyway? Surprises?
My webcam link to Mount St. Helens is more exciting, for goodness sake. Poor guy. His glass is not just half empty, it's about sixty percent empty. And he has to tackle an issue bigger than social security, the budget deficit and the sorry state of healthcare insurance combined. And he's gotta do it quick. Before mid-term elections. This is one time nobody wants to be in his shoes. I wonder if that old phrase about a square peg in a round hole was about a Compassionate Conservative in an Oval Office?

I didn't watch. There were enough spoilers that it wasn't necessary. Besides, my Mom is visiting from the retirement community where she lives and endless stories about her childhood are more pertinent than what was on teevee. So I'm about half a day and a dozen links late pointing to the Anchoress for a good summary of reactions to the speech. I have waited patiently for a long time to link this site again. She (and Buster) are among my daily reads, and blogging is more fun when you can link to places you read with regularity.

She's been on a political tear for a long stretch and recently decided to take a break. You know, like when you read something about morbid obesity and decide to slow down on junk food for a few days. Right. She'll be back in the saddle soon, I'm sure, and I'll have to read, tighten my lips and move to the next site. My politic is perilously close to anarchy and hers is, well, too intense. This morning, though, she has backed far enough away from the bleachers to hear the roar of the crowd which is becoming more an issue than the game itself. Soccer game riots come to mind.

She came across a despicable piece of prose by one of the president's detractors and was taken aback...

If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

How do you like that? Is that what you want speaking for you? Sadly, I’ve read similar sentiments on conservative forums all day. That’s where this unhinged, over-emotional rage-train is headed, folks....

That's a terrific line. "...unhinged, over-emotional rage-train." Wish I had said that.
She also points to the common link between that extreme of the political right with another piece of moral bankruptcy from the political left: eugenics.

Just yesterday I was twisting a few Libertarian tails because their athiesm-based stripe of politics (see Ayn Rand) is either blind to the company it keeps or at some level imagines that it can lie down with dogs and not get fleas. I have always felt that pushed to the ropes the American right (see previous post defining neocons) is just a capable of that ugly extreme as any other nest of extremists. Been reading too much David Neiwert, I guess.

My out of date, old-fashioned Liberalism deriving from religious roots has never been fashionable, but it's the best I can come up with. I feel adrift. But I am reassured when I see other Christians whom I regard highly apt to squirm in their Conservative environments when those around them show their teeth. Too bad there isn't anything called a Religious Middle.

"Neocon" defined

Checking Nur's blogroll I came across a blog by Victorino de la Vega y Alcantara, Middle East Memo. The latest post defines neocons. I just love it when I find snark dressed up so nice. Like I have nothing else to read, it has been added to the list for the time being.

Neo-conservatives are not only “Kantians with cruise missiles” as an old-school conservative historian once said, or “Socratic thugs” or “pro-Israeli Trotskyite turncoats”, even though there is a certain degree of truth to each of these characterizations- based on the alleged influence of Neo-Platonic “Straussian” philosophy on the Neocon movement.
[etc, etc...]
Once they had decided to leave the liberal camp (around the late 1960s’), most “neoconservatives” had to choose which part of the non-liberal political spectrum they would inhabit: they had ample choice within existing varieties of American centrist and conservative schools of thoughts…

Tellingly, most of these former leftwing activists chose the ultra-nationalist far right.

Delicious.
I'll have a little more, thanks.

BBC: "We apologise to viewers for any confusion."

A bit of video is making the rounds. It would be a shame if either of my readers didn't catch it.

A computer expert has described his astonishment at seeing the BBC's 24-hour news channel interview a taxi driver - in the mistaken belief it was him.
Guy Kewney - a white, bearded technology expert - was astonished to see himself appear on screen as a black man with an apparent French accent.

Lesson of the story: If your job is interviewing it is a good idea to establish the identity of the guest.

Egypt -- Authorities being ugly

Something important is happening in Egypt. There was a historic election there last year which was the Egyptian version of a populist surge that we like to think of as democracy. Long-established power centers find such movements threatening, especially when corruption and brute force are on the side of the government and those qualities are being attacked by outside elements appealing to righteous indignation and getting a lot of popular support as a result. (Have we witnessed anything like that in our country? I think so. More polished perhaps, but not too different.)

In January the government showed its tarnished underside with a harsh display of mean treatment of Sudanese immigrants.

I haven't followed Egyptian politics closely, but apparently a core of decency seems to have crystalized among the Egyptian judiciary that has given the "executive" branch some cause for alarm. In the last few weeks government authorities have not bothered to pretend anything other than heavy-handed, totalitarian control measures. A highly-regarded blogger and others have been tossed in jail, triggering international outrage from those who know them. Apparently Egyptian authorities haven't followed the sotries of what can happen when a bunch of bloggers get upset. This is not the first time they have had to cope with a "detained" blogger. Unintended consequences, to say the least, can result. This time the stakes seem to be higher. Elijah Zarwan is an Egyptian journalist living and writing from North America about the situation back home. His post yesterday provides a good overview and a rash of links. Anyone interested can learn a lot from this one source.

At this risk of burying the lede, let me start with the event at the center of today’s violence. Today in Cairo, two outspoken, senior judges refused to appear before an extraordinary disciplinary board convened to punish them for speaking out against vote-rigging and voter intimidation in last year’s elections because they could not bring their defense lawyers with them.

Outside, police violently dispersed demonstrations in their support, again. This time, police and “middle-aged men with walkie-talkies” (Issandr’s description) also beat journalists from Al-Jazeera, Reuters, and the Associated
Press. They also briefly detained an employee of the U.S. Embassy. Sandmonkey was blogging the day’s events in real-time. Issandr has a good account at Arabist and photographs on Flickr. A friend sent me an account with some analysis by email. (I wasn’t there. I’ve moved from idyllic Brooklyn to even-more-idyllic Prince Edward Island. Given the government’s increasingly bizarre behavior, am starting to wonder if I’ll be let back into Egypt. All bets are off.)

Don't miss the link to a report he received and posted earlier. Toward the end is a line that appeared in theGuardian that I have come across before...

In Egypt we don’t have any confidence in US policy because it is a contradictory policy that pays lip service to democracy while supporting dictatorships. We have confidence in the Egyptian people. We welcome support from any quarter, but we won’t rely on it. We will depend on ourselves in our campaign for reform and change.

After watching the way this farce of a state behaved today (and for the past five months) as well as the Americans utter silence, it is safe to say that the judges are reading the situation correctly. The American and the Egyptian governments should both be ashamed of themselves. If, for no other reason, than it has become abundantly and irrefutably clear that they view Egyptian democracy in exactly the same manner whether authorizing security forces to repress peaceful dissent or remaining silent in the wake of repression.

Pretty damning indictment, but I'm afraid it hits the nail on the head. Nothing new, by the way. Been doing it ever since I can recall.

Mark Lynch looks at the situation and comes away with pretty much the same conclusions. (Don't get distracted by a string of carping in the comments thread. The Lounsbury even got in a hit, but the discussion isn't germaine to the topic except for the sake of invective and name-calling.)

I'm just an old guy blogging, and I have been aware this grassroots movement for over half a year. I am wondering why so little attention is being paid to these events here. No feature stories in papers or magazines. Nothing out of Washington. Zip. Nada.

We beat the drums for democracy and freedom when it's to our advantage (or somebody in some position of prominence says it's to our advantage). But in general, most people care little and want to learn even less.

The Shaving Cream Racket

Okay, then.
I'm a convert. It started with that new multi-blade orange and grey thing called Quest or Surge or whatever...Here's the story...

I was out of the old twin-blades, thought I might go cheaper and got a dollar pack of the store brand and trashed the rest after getting almost killed by the first no-good piece of s***. So off I went to get the brand I had been using and when I got there they were GONE.
Crap.
The whole display had been screwed up by some marketing kid who thought it would be cool to jerk around the old guys who were the bedrock of their business by hiding their favorite products someplace ELSE in plain view. That happens to guys a lot, you know.

"Honey, where is the latest place we always keep (unfound item goes here)?"
"It's right here, Love"...pointing to a place about five degrees off to the right, in plain view.
"Thanks..."grumble, grumble, grumble...

My youngest child, a very wise female type, says it's because I don't have a vagina. That's how women can find stuff and men can't.
So I found a coupon right there on the display and bought what looked like a cell phone with a blade at the end designed by Tom Wolfe, and paid about ten bucks for it.

A lot has happened since then, but I have learned to use it, and sure enough it works great after the shower without any kind of lubricant.
This could run on for a long time, but I have to go to work.

Now go read this.
Thanks, Blogads.

Regarding Da Lettah

Everyone is all atwitter about the president of Iran writing to the president of the U.S.
Lots of words. Lots of ideas.
I can't add anything to the mix that will compete, so the reader is directed to my favorite comments thus far by Dr. Leon Hadar. I like the picture, too.

He advanced the notion a year and a half ago that the Nixon-goes-to-China scenario could be applied to Iran...

That a hawkish Cold Warrior president was creating the conditions for what amounted to a strategic alliance with a regime committed to a radical anti-American ideology had to do with calculations of balance of power and national interests. Americans were hoping to exploit the tensions between the elderly leaders of the Soviet Union and China in order to put pressure on Moscow to make concessions on nuclear arms control. Nixon expected that opening China would help improve America’s geostrategic position in the aftermath of Vietnam and create an environment that would permit a gradual extraction of U.S. troops from the Southeast Asia quagmire. The Chinese regarded the new relationship as part of a strategy to contain what they perceived as a growing threat from the Soviet Union.Similar geostrategic calculations should have helped to drive Americans and Iranians into re-evaluating their current relationship—or lack of one—in the aftermath of 9/11 and certainly following the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, both reformers and conservative elements in Tehran were proposing a restoration of relations between the countries. And there were some signs that Washington was flirting with the notion, with realists advocating a more pragmatic approach, ranging from step-by-step “selective engagement” on a few major policy issues to a “grand bargain” that would lead to the re-establishment of normal diplomatic and economic ties.

Of all the ideas I have read, this one looks the most promising to me. He goes on to examine some more current thoughts advanced by others, concluding with a scenario that has Germany providing diplomatic good offices for a U.S.-Iran détente that might lead to something other than yet another war. We have already seen that the boss has some problems with the vision thing, but perhaps with a diplomatic nudge or two coupled with some in-house realpolitik counsel he might go along with the idea. We can hope.

New Yorker article on Organic Foods

When my wife started with the organic thing I was puzzled. What kind of food is inorganic? Heck, I had chemistry in school. I thought everything derived from the whole family of hydrocarbons was by definition "organic" but boy was I wrong. Like so many other terms we use, the term organic has undergone a dramatic redefining. I think it has to do with post-modernism, but I'm not sure.

3Quarks points to Steven Shapin's PARADISE SOLD in the current New Yorker which surveys todays state of the organic art (science? faith?), specifically Whole Foods Market, the Home Depot of the organic foods crowd. (Wikipedia link here.) My own career in the food business makes me think this is an important trend, but I am left wondering how much of what we find is form and how much is substance There may be a trend to cooking in some counter-culture kind of way, but from what I observe the number of people who know how to cook is shrinking, not growing. I can report as a restaurant manager that the number of people who know how to read and interpret a recipe is dramatically down from twenty or thirty years ago. (In fact, the number of people who can even read seems down, despite the widespread use of the internet and text messages, but that's another story.)

I can also report that convenience foods have displaced more labor-intensive scratch-cooking products at the retail level, and the technology is very impressive that produces factory-made breads, entrees, pre-breaded vegetables ready for frying and baking, and a dazzling array of eye-popping desserts. But I digress. Back to the counter-culture. It's hard for me to envision the teeming millions whose avid attention to pop TV, iPods, cell phones and fast foods will ever be attracted to learning to use a kitchen knife, watching oven temperatures or gently pressing on a product to test if it has finished cooking, jelling or thawing -- processes that may have taken hours to produce.

Whole Foods is only the most visible face of the newly confident organic industry. In February, Consumer Reports announced that sales of organic products had gone up twenty per cent a year during the past decade, reaching $15 billion in 2004—out of a total U.S. food system worth a trillion dollars—and that nearly two-thirds of American consumers bought organic foods last year, paying, on average, a fifty-per-cent premium over conventional foods. In March, Wal-Mart made the remarkable announcement that it would double its organic-grocery offerings immediately. Wal-Mart is betting that, if it follows its usual practice of squeezing suppliers and cutting prices ruthlessly, the taste for organic foods will continue to spread across the social landscape. “We don’t think you should have to have a lot of money to feed your family organic foods,” its C.E.O. said at the most recent annual general meeting.
[...]
Success is not necessarily a sin, of course, and, for many people, buying organic is a way of being environmentally sensitive. Earthbound notes that its farming techniques annually obviate the use of more than a quarter of a million pounds of toxic chemical pesticides and almost 8.5 million pounds of synthetic fertilizers, which saves 1.4 million gallons of the petroleum needed to produce those chemicals. Their tractors even use biodiesel fuel.

Yet the net benefit of all this to the planet is hard to assess. Michael Pollan, who thinks that we ought to take both a wider and a deeper view of the social, economic, and physical chains that deliver food to fork, cites a Cornell scientist’s estimate that growing, processing, and shipping one calorie’s worth of arugula to the East Coast costs fifty-seven calories of fossil fuel. The growing of the arugula is indeed organic, but almost everything else is late-capitalist business as usual. Earthbound’s compost is trucked in; the salad-green farms are models of West Coast monoculture, laser-levelled fields facilitating awesomely efficient mechanical harvesting; and the whole supply chain from California to Manhattan is only four per cent less gluttonous a
consumer of fossil fuel than that of a conventionally grown head of iceberg
lettuce—though Earthbound plants trees to offset some of its carbon footprint. “Organic,” then, isn’t necessarily “local,” and neither “organic” nor “local” is necessarily “sustainable.”

The article goes on to reflect on sustainability questions and the importance of feeding a starving world, but that's what makes the article appeal to the New Yorker crowd. It's like discussing the music of Hildegard von Bingen with someone trying to figure out a better way to use the internet to increase vote totals for his or her favorite American Idol contestant. Something of a disconnect in there someplace.

This is a good read, and I don't want to offend anyone on the orgainic bandwagon. But my instinct is to read it and keep moving. I am blessed to have a wife whose most recent kitchen adventures have led to a grinder from which she produces her own freshly-milled wheat flour which is made into bread loaves or pizza dough before it is two hours old. She read somewhere that nutrients begin to deteriorate even after a few hours of simple processing like grinding, so she hustles to do the cooking all at once from wheat kernels to finished loaf, feeding the yeast with nothing more than locally-harvested raw honey. None of that granulated sugar for her. I haven't figured out how any nutrient so fragile that it might perish at room temperature in a few hours can somehow withstand an hour of cooking in a 375-degree oven, but I'm not arguing. There is something about a hot slice of freshly-baked bread, just out of the oven, spread with real butter, that with a cold glass of milk is probably close to whatever they eat in heaven.

***

***

Unrelated postscript...
Ann Althouse also reads the New Yorker and found this gem.
I haven't been tempted to subscribe to a magazine for years, but I'm thinki...
Wait.
Why should I do that when I have 3Quarks and Althouse to pan for the gold?
That's why my blogroll is so out of control.
Have a good day.

Health Insurance Rant

The world's best healthcare system will implode in our lifetime. No one expected to witness the breakup of Ma Bell, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the transformattion of China into the world's biggest capitalist consumer. (Favorite line: It doesn't matter what color the cat is as long as it catches mice.) And so it should come as no surprise when we look around one morning and find that the whole damned infrastructure that we call healthcare wil be prostrate in a quivering heap, like a patient in a gurney bound for therapy, because what has been passing as insurance is, in fact, exactly the opposite: UNinsurance.

In the same way that "going public" is a sure way for a great company to lower its product quality or performance to merely okay or good, the notion of insurance is slowly but surely morphing into a community of incestuous connections all conspiring to squeeze the greatest profits possible from a shrinking population of healthy clients, while at the same time weaning off those who most need insurance by denying their claims for one reason or another.

When Hillary Clinton launched her ill-fated effort to nationalize health care about fifteen years ago the number of uninsured Americans was in the high twenty percentile. Last I heard the number is up to about forty percent and rising. And the reasons are as plain as the king's new clothes. I imagine that everyone reading this either has personal experience or knows someone who does with a nightmare story about health insurance.

Life insurance is another matter. Because the "insured" is either dead or alive, life insurance is the checkers board game of the industry. Health (hospitalization) insurance, on the other hand, is more like chess but without standing rules. Lacking a binding agreement, as with life insurance, health care arrangements are apt to shift wildly according to a vartiety of diseases, treatments and opinions.

But at the core of the problem is one simple reality. Insurance arrangements are not conceived to insure but to generate profits. The only way to maximize profits is to minimize payouts. And the best way to accomplish that is to collect premiums from as many healthy people as possible, shifting their care to another insurer if they start making claims or clipping them off in a quagmire of rules and restrictions.

I am experiencing a personal challenge involving health insurance, but I am not free to discuss the details. The gist of the problem is that neither the provider nor the insurer has any meaningful mechanism to serve as an advocate for the so-called insured. As long as I don't get sick or stick to the basics, everything is okay. But if I seek more specialized treatment options and don't know the ropes, I have full personal responsibility for all charges, not because they should not be covered, but because some technicality or another may not be done correctly. When there is a group officially referred to as a reconsideration committee is scheduled to convene weekly, that is an indicator that speaks for itself.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the "flow" of life...

Thank goodness for copy/paste! I think if I had to learn to key that name in every time I would be tempted to skip it altogether.
Thanks, too, for the Wikipedia entry and others for furnishing the pronunciation, chick-SENT-me-high-ee. I especially like this one: "Chicks send me high"!

Toward the end of Virginia Postrel's The Future and it's Enemies she refers to this man, this researcher, this fountain of aphorisms, as she advances her thesis that dynamists are assets and stasists are not in the constellation of the human community. At least that seems to be the gist of the book, although she never really says it that plainly. I have been plodding through this book at a leisurely pace for over a year.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is into research about work and what makes work better. The idea that attitude has a lot to do with results is at the core of his thinking, and from personal experience I have to agree. He talks a lot about play -- in the sense that work can be a kind of game -- which is the context of Virginia Postrel's observations.

My post about this man does not have any agenda this morning. Mainly I am still learning about him and his ideas. The Google search spit out about half a million referrences, so he isn't exactly small potatoes, but my first impression is that he plays a one note tune. Once you have heard it, it's okay to remember it, like the Birthday Song or an Aesop's fable, and move on with life.

But I do like the tune. I like it a lot. Those of us who have had to endure endless hours of mindless repetitive tasks (cleaning tables, washing dishes, cooking the same green beans and mashed potatoes day after day for years at a time, dealing with the same tiresome customer comments and employee disagreements...) had to figure out a long time ago that without a sense of play at work we might go crazy. It is reassuring to know that somebody in academia figured it out on his own.

This snip from a Fast Company article last year is instructive...

In a world teeming with authors lusting for the speaking circuit, Csikszentmihalyi is a refreshing oddity. Although business is clamoring for more and more of him, his relationship with the private sector remains ambivalent; he even recently organized a conference called "Alternatives to Materialism." Csikszentmihalyi says he never really thought about business until five years ago, when he was offered the post at Drucker. He accepted it in part because he liked his potential colleagues, and also because it was a quiet place with good weather for his wife's tortured sinuses. "I lived my life in an ivory tower, and business was to be held at an arm's length," he says, Birkenstocks poking out below his slacks and blazer. That may be because none of his research has established any link between happiness and the possession of lucre.

It may also be because there is a dark side to flow, says Csikszentmihalyi. It can come while pursuing destructive activities, such as addictions or crimes. He offers the contrasting examples of Mother Teresa and Napoleon Bonaparte to show how differently the flow state can affect the world. The same is true of business; it's easy to imagine Enron's Andrew Fastow in a rapturous flow state as he plotted his next scheme. [Emphasis added.]

When I try to imagine how a rapturous flow might affect the daily activities of a government bureaucrat, say someone behind a desk at the Veteran's Administration or the creative minds that craft medical billing requirements for the private sector, it makes me uncomfortable. If I allow myself to think of how that same euphoria might affect the Secretary of Defense, head of the CIA or others in positions of authority, it gets worse. When I think of how it might affect the president himself I am ready to turn the page and think about something else.

"For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat."

Too many heavy stories in the news. Too much gravitas.
Time to escape.

Since I have neither the money nor the time, the best way out is a well-done travelogue. Tom McMahon has just the ticket. I don't know where he finds stuff like this, but it's reason enough to keep him on my list of places to read.

Argentina On Two Steaks A Day

All you need to know about the quality of pasture in the pampas is that cows went feral in Argentina. You can still see them grazing pretty much anywhere there is a horizontal patch of grass, all now firmly back in the hand of man, but still with a happy grassy glint in their eye. This most docile, placid, and passive of large herbivores stepped off the boat, took one nibble at the pampas and made a run for it. It knew that it wanted to spend the rest of its life eating the pampas grass, without outside interference. And the settlers, once they caught some of the early escapees, began to feel the same way about the beef.

Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable. Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States. Since this is the way of life a cow was designed for, it is not necessary to pump the animal full of antibiotics. The meat is leaner, healthier and more flavorful than that of corn-fed cattle. It has fewer calories, contains less cholesterol, and tastes less mushy and waterlogged than American meat. And the cows spend their lives out grazing in the field, not locked into some small pen. You can taste the joy.

Okay, then.
Go get a cuppa. Sit back and enjoy the read.
This makes me want to save my money and update the picture in my passport.

"Daily" means Daily

Jonathan Adler at Eugene Volokh's blog points to a delightful piece of jurisprudence regarding the interpretation of the word daily as applied to an EPA interpretation of the Clean Water Act.

For years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has maintained that TMDLs need not establish daily discharge limits, even though TMDL stands for “total maximum daily load” (emphasis added). For some pollutants, the EPA approved TMDLs that set annual or seasonal, rather than daily, limits.

Responding to a suit seeking to limit polluters, an appeals court judge pointed out that the word daily as used in the regulation is not ambiguous.

Doctors making daily rounds would be of little use to their patients if they appeared seasonally or annually. And no one thinks of “[g]ive us this day our daily bread” as a prayer for sustenance on a seasonal or annual basis. Matthew 6:11 (King James).

The post and comments illustrate how very resourceful legal minds can become.
Once again I am greatful that my career has been spent dealing with lay people struggling with generic stupidity. If I had to operate in the nosebleed reaches of legal stupidity I would be forced to change vocations.

Lessons in depravity

[Update below...]

It's been a tough week for me. Two current stories remind me of the depth of human depravity and I am having a hard time getting past them. I don't really want to blog them, but I also don't want to let them go and forget about them. It's like driving in traffic past a really bad wreck -- obvious injuries and probably loss of life, lots of broken glass, crumpled up remains of two or three cars. You know that rubbernecking not only slows the traffic but also violates whatever privacy rights the victims might have. But you still want to look.

The first story reveals the savage details of the death of Atwar Bahjat, one of Iraq's high-profile journalists who had been reported "shot" or simply "killed" in February 22. Now, two and a half months later, the details are revealed to be much worse than the initial reports. The animals responsible not only took their time degrading, torturing and beheading her, they created a video racord as well which adds a dimention of unbelievable cruelty to her death that makes the event seem to be happening all over again.

It is not necessary to read this story unless you think it is important to establish that I am not exaggerating. Be warned that the content is worse than disturbing; here is that link.

The other story is from Johann Hari, reporting on conditions in the Congo. Andrew Sullivan brought the report to the attention of his readers yesterday in a post appropriately entitles The Rape of the Congo. The Hari report [Reader advisory: This one is also hard to read...] is A journey into the most savage war in the world. I can't begin to describe what he wrote. It is too disgusting. Read it for yourself, if you want. I did and I now think it was a mistake. Just when I think I have imagined the worst of all human behaviors, something more terrible comes along to remind me that it can always deteriorate further.

(I am reminded of the Rwanda genocide which resulted in the killing of eight hundred thousand people in the space of a hundred days. Most of the killing was done with machetes which were brought in via pick-up truck in preparation for the event. Accounts are truly unbelievable.)

The reason for this post is just to get it off my chest. I am well aware that ranting, pointing fingers and hand-wringing are nothing more than empty gestures. I don't know what to do other than pray, lifting up those whose wounds are so severe that they will carry them with them to their deaths. It is hard to remember that we are also instructed to pray for those who inflicted those wounds, but that is also a subject for hope, a prayer for constraint in the future, if not for eventual salvation. And finally, a prayer for inner rest, that those of us who are untouched by these tragedies, will be able to do something positive to minimize or avert events like these in the future. And that we not forget that if those of us who seek peace and reconcilliation give up, there may be no one taking our place.

Update:

The beheading story turns out to have been a hoax. Thanks to Fayrouz for doing the homework.
I suppose I feel a little less down, but the ugliness of what happened is no less tragic. Besides, the images circulating are not in fact a "hoax" but a video of the real thing. I recall seeing it, much to my disgust, over a year ago. The hoax was incorrectly identifying the victim as Atwar Bahjat.
I am not curious, incidentally, about the motivation for such a hoax. When dealing with evil, motivation is irrelevant.

Abbas, Hamas and Israeli Intel

A Hamas plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.

Read it again.

Read the whole article.

Let it sink in...

Try to keep the names and alliances straight in your mind and figure out why Israel would do such a thing.

Now go back to the time just after the Gaza election that put Hamas in charge as a party, but left Abbas the head of state. Recall how quickly the press jumped in to savage Jimmy Carter? But remember also that it was just that man himself who saw hope in the midst of an otherwise crazy state of affairs?

Nah. Nobody remembers. Nor cares. But I'm gonna repeat what I said at that time.

I would guess that the average American could not distinguish between Abbas and Hamas.

Nothing I say here will have any meaningful impact on the tidal wave of criticism that engulfs the man. But for sheer courage and sincerity I give him very high marks. At that fragile moment when Hamas pulled off the electoral shock of the decade, while everyone else was trying to catch their breath, Carter was in the midst of the event speaking out, giving it his best shot trying to make the best of a situation that caught the rest of the world by surprise.

And here we are two or three months later trying to figure out how to run our own intelligence (I still think there must be a better word...), whipping up a war with Iran halfway around the world, while Israel tosses a safety net in the direction of an official arch-enemy in sling-shot range, that has vowed to destroy them as a country and a people.

Madness.
Sheer madness.

Jean-François Bayart -- Dissuading Iran

An imminent French political scientist looks at Iran's place in the struggle for hegemony under way in that part of the world. His comments were published in Le Monde in February. [Prepare for an audio ad if you follow this link! And if you don't know French, skip it altogether.] If you like, Google will generate a translation, but if you want something more understandable, go to Nur Al-Cubicle, the gifted young woman who brought the piece to our attention to begin with. I watch her blog regularly to keep my finger on the pulse of international politics and am always impressed with the timeliness and insight of the content she blogs.

Europe is caught in the trap of a trick question to which it believes it has an answer: How to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Day after day, the voice of reason is fading. We are constructing a crisis whose consequences are incalculable, without having the slightest idea of how to manage it.

Today, the single uncertainty is to know if Iran seeks to develop the capacity to fabricate nuclear weapons by remaining just under the “threshold”, as Japan has done. Or whether it intends to produce the bomb, like India and Japan. Or whether it intends to acquire the bomb secretly, as Israel has done. In any case, Western “hawks” perceive the threat of Islamic revolution for which Israel would be the first target. It is very unlikely. Iran has abandoned the myth of Islamic Revolution in all Muslim countries in order to promote its state interests. The idea that it would risk total destruction to defend an Arab cause is just crazy.
[...]
The antagonism between an Iran determined to acquire the atomic bomb and Western powers bent on denying them this right in virtue of the NTP, to which it is a signatory, appears to be ineluctable. It is certain that Iran is legally bound to its 1968 engagement. But politically the argument has its limits now that India and Pakistan enjoy a sort of special bonus awarded to non-signatories to the NPT and are courted by the United States and France in the area of nuclear cooperation. The West was the first to undermine the international treaty on which it insists. [Good point.]
[...]
The antagonism between an Iran determined to acquire the atomic bomb and Western powers bent on denying them this right in virtue of the NTP, to which it is a signatory, appears to be ineluctable. It is certain that Iran is legally bound to its 1968 engagement. But politically the argument has its limits now that India and Pakistan enjoy a sort of special bonus awarded to non-signatories to the NPT and are courted by the United States and France in the area of nuclear cooperation. The West was the first to undermine the international treaty on which it insists.

Even if Tehran has hidden a number of facts from the AIEA, Western “hawks” find themselves in a tarnished position to denounce it: their own lies on Iraq’s weapons and the consequences of the military action carried out in 2003 undermine the legitimacy of their call to a new pre-emptive war. Moreover, their bellicose posture evokes unease after the United States and France encouraged Iraqi aggression against Iran in 1980. Finally, it is paradoxical to forbid a country to acquire atomic weapons to guaranty its security while simultaneously refusing to sell it conventional arms.

If you aren't sitting in an office in Washington, looking over your shoulder at what is politically correct for the next U.S. election cycle, this becomes a very inciteful analysis. Readers are urged to read the whole thing.

A Glimpse of Iraq -- The Blog is now a Book

About a year ago I posted a story from Iraq that captured part of the dynamic of how hearts and minds were not being caught according to plan. That post began my most satisfying personal experience of blogging so far, a correspondence with an Iraqi man about the same age as I. And that connection has given me a connection with this terrible war that makes me want it to come to an end as soon as possible, for his sake and the sake of all who are involved.

Writing under the screen name of Abu Khaleel, he maintained a stable of blogs, one of which, A Glimpse of Iraq, has now been published in book form. Of course I have ordered my copy. I recommend that anyone interested in knowing Iraq, including the part that cannot be explained either by news reporters or milbloggers, should make this book part of what they read.

Time permitting, the reader is welcome to follow a few of my posts to learn about the author and me. There is no way for me to be unbiased in this matter as you will discover. But you will also find, upon closer reading, that my bias is well-founded. (Don't scan. If you don't have time to read and pay attention, skip the exercise and move on to something else. This will take a few minutes.)

After reading the link cited above, read the comment.

Look next at my post about his blog, ten days later.

Finally, read my Fathers Day post which published, with his permission, email exchanges between the two of us that speak for themselves.

The book, A Glimpse of Iraq, is available from Lulu, either for download or hard copy. I look forward to getting a copy and writing a sparkling review at the Lulu reference page. This gesture is not about money, incidentally, but healing. Buying a book is a pitiful gesture but for me, one person far away, it is the best I know to do.

Dennis the Peasant -- The Muslim Menace

Saturday morning fun read.

Despite the fact that Larry had had a tough go of it in life, and therefore was deserving of some sympathy and forbearance, his arrival was not met with alloyed joy. Larry made life somewhat more difficult to enjoy when he was around than when he was absent. Each of us knew today wasn’t going to be any different. He stood in the doorway, covered in sweat, gasping for breath. He appeared to be on the verge of panicking.

“Muslims...” he croaked between gasps.

Paranoid Larry was a pretty good sized man. He was just over six feet tall and was lean and muscular. And befitting his counter-culture past, he had a long, but neatly trimmed ponytail. He wore an incredibly ugly Hawaiian shirt. Larry was lean primarily because he went everywhere on his ten-speed bicycle. Before opening Paranoid Larry’s Land of Security, he’d been a professional musician, and was known as one of the greatest accordion players ever seen on the northeastern Ohio polka circuit.

“Moose limbs?” asked Clyde Woodrow in a bland tone. "Ain't no Moose in these parts."

“No. No. No,” replied Larry, as he began to gather himself, “Muslims.”

Larry paused for the significance of his pronouncement to sink in. When it became obvious that it wasn’t, he continued.

“Muslims have invaded Westerville!”

Move over Lileks and Keillor, there's a new kid in town.
Good stuff!

"Thinking meat"

One of my all-time favorite discoveries is a short but wonderful piece of dialogue by Terry Bisson from a science fiction story he wrote in 1991. I blogged it a year ago last March. It is a conversation between the robotic commander of an interplanetary expedition and his equally electronic leader, reporting with astonishment that the human inhabitants of Earth are "made out of meat"

I still find it great fun to read.
Via BlogsNow I see that it has been enshrined in a video making the charts at You Tube.
Frankly, I prefer the written dialogue with nothing but human imagination to bring it to life, but the video is also fun. Check it out.

Randy Brinson -- Chairman, Redeem the Vote

Dr. Brinson looks clean as a pin to me. And I like what I am reading, too, about his politics.

Dr Brinson is a licensed lay minister and board certified gastroenterologist. Dr Brinson holds a Bachelor of ScienceDegree from Valdosta State College and Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Georgia. He completed his internship and residency at the Univ of Florida College of Medicine and Gastroenterology fellowship at the MedicalCollege of Georgia. He served as staff gastroenterologist at Maxwell AFB, AL from 1987-89 andhas been in private practice in Montgomery since then. Over the past 10 years, he has served on the state board of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Board of Trustees for the University of Mobile, and served as health care advisor for former Governor Fob James of Alabama. He has been involved in christian music since 1999 bringing WAY-FM to Montgomery.

Dr Brinson is married to the former Pamela Bennett of Valdosta, GA for the past 24 years. They have 3 children, Christopher, a recent graduate of Samford University, recent White House intern for President Bush and law student at University of Alabama, and twin sons, Daniel and Philip, who are high school seniors.

Want some grist for weekend reading?
Read Amy Sullivan's article in Washington Monthly. Take it slow. Pay attention. The times they are a-changin'. I don't put a lot of pictures on my blog, but I want to remember this guy's face.

I never expected to live to see the implosion of the Soviet Union but I did.
Maybe I will live to see the scales falling from the eyes of some of my Christian brethren.

Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, regarding the guillotine

"At last he began to mount the steps; his legs were tied, so that he had to take very small steps. The priest, who seemed to be a wise man, had stopped talking now, and only held the cross for the wretched fellow to kiss. At the foot of the ladder he had been pale enough; but when he set foot on the scaffold at the top, his face suddenly became the colour of paper, positively like white notepaper. His legs must have become suddenly feeble and helpless, and he felt a choking in his throat--you know the sudden feeling one has in moments of terrible fear, when one does not lose one's wits, but is absolutely powerless to move? If some dreadful thing were suddenly to happen; if a house were just about to fall on one;--don't you know how one would long to sit down and shut one's eyes and wait, and wait? Well, when this terrible feeling came over him, the priest quickly pressed the cross to his lips, without a word--a little silver cross it was- and he kept on pressing it to the man's lips every second. And whenever the cross touched his lips, the eyes would open for a moment, and the legs moved once, and he kissed the cross greedily, hurriedly--just as though he were anxious to catch hold of something in case of its being useful to him afterwards, though he could hardly have had any connected religious thoughts at the time. And so up to the very block.

"How strange that criminals seldom swoon at such a moment! On the contrary, the brain is especially active, and works incessantly-- probably hard, hard, hard--like an engine at full pressure. I imagine that various thoughts must beat loud and fast through his head--all unfinished ones, and strange, funny thoughts, very likely!--like this, for instance: 'That man is looking at me, and he has a wart on his forehead! and the executioner has burst one of his buttons, and the lowest one is all rusty!' And meanwhile he notices and remembers everything. There is one point that cannot be forgotten, round which everything else dances and turns about; and because of this point he cannot faint, and this lasts until the very final quarter of a second, when the wretched neck is on the block and the victim listens and waits and KNOWS-- that's the point, he KNOWS that he is just NOW about to die, and listens for the rasp of the iron over his head. If I lay there, I should certainly listen for that grating sound, and hear it, too! There would probably be but the tenth part of an instant left to hear it in, but one would certainly hear it. And imagine, some people declare that when the head flies off it is CONSCIOUS of having flown off! Just imagine what a thing to realize! Fancy if consciousness were to last for even five seconds!"

LINK to Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Idiot Part I: Chapter V

Zacarias Moussaoui "will die with a whimper."

The jury spoke twice. Once to find him guilty, and again to sentence him to life without parole instead of receiving the death penalty. Reactions are all over the map. One of the first things I heard on the radio this morning was a man who had lost his wife in WTC attack saying that he wanted revenge, that he was deply disappointed that Moussaoui had not received a death penalty. Peggy Noonan was also disappointed, saying I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.

But Judge Leonie Brinkema ended the case with grace and finality.

Brinkema firmly refused to be interrupted by the 37-year-old defendant as she disputed his claim that his life sentence meant America had lost and he had won.

"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," she said.

She went on: "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won."And she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again.

"Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," she said, "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper."

At that point, Moussaoui tried again to interrupt her, but she raised her voice and spoke over him.

"You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."

Brinkema sentenced Moussaoui to six life terms without the chance of parole.

Moussaoui is still a young man, and appears to be in good health. Barring unforeseen circumstances he may spend sixty or seventy years in a maximum security environment, twenty-three hours a day in isolation. During that time he will long to die again and again. He will have to be guarded against committing suicide. Being disallowed from dying before "your time" is a far more devastating sentence than dying right away, as swiftly and painlessly as we can arrange.

Everyone dies. Death is the reward for living.

Dying well, even for those who die young, is the reward for living well.
This man will neither live nor die well. And he will have no one to blame other than himself.

***

***

***

Here is a link to T.S.Eliot's The Hollow Men (1925). And this is the last stanza...

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Life is, indeed, very long.
Tom Smith at The Right Coast links to a description of the prison to which Moussaoui is being sent.

"You want me on that wall!"

Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, makes a few remarks about a national boundary border wall.

In addition to the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the construction of a "wall" along the El Paso, our Minuteman friend also demands that all U.S. citizens be required to have a passport and that this be the only valid, legal form of identification.

Before I sign on with this agenda, I would want to know a few more details. Like will the wall be equipped with catapults and cauldrons of boiling oil? Catapults would be cool. And when government officials demand to see my papers, will they do it in a cool East German accent? Or maybe Afrikaans?

A government passport checkpoint outside the 7-Eleven is, of course, far less intimidating than the prospect of having to walk by several prospective landscapers.

Passport checkpoints might slow down my commute, though, so here's a more efficient idea. This should also help our Minuteman friend sell his agenda with Tony Perkins' evangelical constituency: Instead of passports, we could use high-tech scanners to read a "citizen-chip" embedded in ... oh, I don't know ... the foreheads of all legal citizens. Anybody without "the mark" would be deported, catapulted back over the wall.

(Thanks to John Henke for post title inspiration.)

Fred Clark, The Slacktivist, on Gays and Bacon

So many words, so little time...
(Sigh)
Another Google search and I cane across another pearl, Fred Clark's much-quoted post from July, 2004, headed The Abominable Shellfish, sub-titled Why some Christians hate gays but love bacon.
Surely one of the treasures of all blog writing, commentary on Peter's vision of unclean foods in the book of Acts.

Peter is about to meet Cornelius. Cornelius is a gentile. Worse than that, he is a Roman. Worse than that, he is a Roman centurion. Cornelius is about as kosher as a bacon double cheeseburger.

But give Peter credit -- he understood the vision. "Don't call anything unclean that God has made clean." Don't call anyone unclean that God has made clean.

I thought about stealing the whole post, but this one is sure to be found somewhere in the caches. Some posts will vanish, but this one will endure. Go read.

David Podvin -- RAPE OF THE WORKING CLASS

It is a tribute to the political sophistication of the monied elite that employers can brazenly violate labor laws without incurring liberal wrath. In almost any context, a brutal assault on the working class would provoke vigilant opposition from progressives. However, the business community has learned the disarming effect of playing the race card, and now the mainstream media equates opposing illegal immigration with fostering ethnic bigotry. Business is reaping the windfall profits of camouflaging corporate predation as inclusiveness.

This Machiavellian construct represents a quantum public relations leap forward for the reprobates of Wall Street. Gone are the days when ham handed businesspeople justified gouging American workers by claiming that laborers were merely insignificant peons. As the story now goes, American workers must be gouged due to humanitarian regard for Third World migrants. It is the siren song that seduces the keepers of the multicultural flame.

I don't use terms like working class, exploitation and monied elite, but plenty of other people do. Because I spent my entire working life as one of those much-maligned "managers" of the business world, I have a more informed take on economics and social policy. Analysts advancing the notion of an altruistic world in which institutions have human qualities such as compassion, fairness or principles that trump profits are living in a world of fantasy. The world of business knows that anything that gets in the way of profits and competition is counterproductive. Noble ideas such as equality, fairness, compassion, and all the rest have can be put to the same risk-benefit metric as quality controls and worker productivity, and in the end a boundary can be established beyond which institutional interests will always trump individual concerns, no matter how desparate those concerns may be.

Every well-publicized example of corporate largesse is subsidized by a solid but well-hidden foundation of indifference to individual concerns that make possible another dramatic public-relations triumph.

Having got that off my chest, I now link to a thought-provoking essay pointing out how today's immigrant population has become a vital part of corporate profits. David Podkin is an articulate Progressive writer, working from Make Them Accoutable Dot Com, a site I just came across which strikes me as a Mother Jones wannabe with Kos tendencies. The problem I have with voices from the extremes is that they leave no room for discussion in their pronouncements. In a sincere attempt to counter a point they tend to smear the messenger so badly that the message is no longer the point. It isn't necessaary to call the president a "corporate concubine" to drive home the point that he favors business interests.

This piece is shot through with that kind of vitriol, but it makes an excellent overall point: business benefits from great numbers of immigrants. As a result, business leaders are conflicted about whether they really want to lose a large and growing population of potential workers who continue to feed their labor needs.

If those who want to "send them home" take a deep breath and think for a quiet moment, they might recall a lot of complaining about American jobs moving to other countries. What seems to be happening with immigration is that the people are coming to the jobs rather than the other way around. I might be missing something, but if those workers are willing and able to do the work, and are made part of the system, paying Social Security and income taxes, the result is far better for the economy than trying to aritificially put people into those same jobs that are either unwilling or unable to move across one or two states to be empoloyed.

Last I heard, the unemployment rate was officially less than five percent. Subtract undocumented workers, do some more math, and ask: Where do we find people to take these jobs? No matter what the rate of pay, the numbers just don't work.

Now add back the "higher wages" that replacement legal citizens will expect to earn, and see what happens. Ever heard of the connection between wages and prices? That is a sure formula for the return of runaway inflation.

Now put on your boots and other protective gear and go read. Buried in this essay are some valuable thoughts:

The argument made by corporate sophists is that there are some jobs Americans refuse to do. Left unsaid is that those jobs offer noncompetitive wages or provide insufferable working conditions or both. The problem is solved by requiring business to honor market forces and obey the law. The grape grower who refuses to pay the going rate should witness his crops rot in the field. The manufacturer who creates a treacherous workplace should be incarcerated. Absent accountability, employers have found that hiring illegal aliens provides carte blanche to circumvent labor standards.

There are many victims in the illegal immigration saga, foremost among them blue collar American workers who are besieged from all sides. The right wing disdainfully views them as mere fodder for the corporate juggernaut. The left wing empathizes with employees’ angst while sacrificing their interests at the altar of political correctness. Trapped in a thirty-five year trend of falling real wages, working class Americans are steadily losing ground. To make matters worse, whenever workers bemoan the pernicious effects of illegal immigration they are smeared as being nativist, as though demanding a fair wage in exchange for hard work somehow reveals malice.

Mexican migrants are also victims. Business lures them here so they can be cheated and used as scapegoats. Undocumented workers are often denied the pay they have earned, subjected to racial animus, housed in squalid conditions, and physically abused. When persecuted they have no recourse, which makes them the ideal employees. While the corporatists and their dupes promote illegal immigration as being some sort of civil rights struggle, they have never advocated a plan insuring that everyone who is working in America will be protected by law. The serial amnesties (of which McCain-Kennedy is the most recent) merely guarantee that corporations can perpetually victimize undocumented laborers.

The Democratic Party is another victim, albeit in a poetically just way. The party’s decline has coincided with its ongoing betrayal of the working class. Democrats began their excruciating electoral descent precisely at the moment they decided to embrace centrist economic policies, which is a euphemism for romancing the mercantile aristocracy. The erstwhile champions of the underdog should be assailing the corporate brigands who exploit workers. Holding management accountable is what a labor party does, but for decades the United States has been without a relevant labor party.

The winners in the illegal immigration struggle are major corporations and their favorite political acolytes. For robber barons the status quo provides an ideal scenario in which they bleed their employees while generating societal strife that can be demagogued by Republican politicians. The GOP cannot win when Americans vote based on economic self-interest, so it is essential that the electorate vote its resentments. By destroying this nation’s working class and benefiting politically from the fallout, Corporate America is achieving a tour de force of malevolence.

Meryl Yourish -- belated ¡ Happy Blogiversary !

In the explosion we call blogging there are so many good places to read that keeping up is impossible. And that statement is not exaggeration but fact. The only way to move around in this flood is to seek out waves, reading the links they bring, and saying to yourself from time to time, "Yeah, me too. Hey that's pretty good. I think I'll blog that." That's why they call it surfing.

It's been a while since I came across a Maryl Yourish link, but Allison Kaplan Sommer points out her fifth year post which is worth a few minutes to read and reflect upon. I'm a week late, but I don't want to let this one pass without note. As she mentions in her post, Meryl Yourish predates Glenn Reynolds. In this post she reflects on how she seems to have been pigeon-holed to the Right of the blogworld, despite her views as a feminist, still pro-choice, in favor of gay rights, for affirmative action, progressive taxation, and many, many other Democratic and left-side causes. The issue that puts her there is simply anti-semitism.

There are the kinds of anti-Semites who actively hate you, and tell you so, unasked, of course. The mere existence of my weblog is reason enough for them to spew their bile. There are the newest anti-Semites, the Muslim anti-Semites, who will go on and on about Israeli atrocities — or they would, if I let them. I have been deleting those comments fairly consistently; I don’t need to give them a soapbox that I pay for, and my readers don’t need to read their poison. I probably get less anti-Semitic hatemail and comments than some. I’ve noticed that what they really want is to yell at someone who won’t fight back, and as my regular readers have noticed, I really like a good scrap. And as far as I can tell, the average Jew-hater is not very bright. It’s a very uneven battle, generally.

As Shaw said, it is not honorable to fight a battle of wits with an unarmed man. And I like that line: I have been deleting those comments fairly consistently; I don’t need to give them a soapbox that I pay for, and my readers don’t need to read their poison. A lot of bloggers could benefit from that rule. I am all for tolerance, but suffering fools is way over the top.

(She is correct, of course, when she notes the anti-Semitism of the left. That politic, together with an anti-spiritual bias, is what has kept me in a kind of political purgatory all these years. Doctrinaire American leftists, which I carefully do not include with myself in the "Liberal" camp, seemed to be in bed with the Palestinian cause with Arafat as their patron saint. I think it has to do with a global politic derived from Socialist models which tend to overlook the perverted evils of Hitler's National "Socialism." Add that to the representation of Jews in global capitalism and you have a perfect whipping-boy in the shape of anti-Semitism.)

While I'm at it, I should also point to Sommers' moving notes about the observance of Memorial Day in Israel. The U.S. Memorial Day is coming soon, to be observed with patriotic tributes and solemn oratory, but leavened with festive parades, retail Sales, welcoming of this season's watermellon crop and marking the last chance to have public swimming pools up and running for the summer. Memorial Day in Israel is not the same.

On Memorial Day, no one is cool, cynical, skeptical or detached. Even the most rebellious kids with tattoos and piercings stand silent in respect for their fallen friends, neighbors, and relatives. It’s an all-encompassing experience like no other. And it shows that underneath the surface of fussing, fighting, and squabbling over politics, religion, race, and ethnicity that makes many people throw up their hands and call Israeli society hopelessly fractured, there is a strong solid core of unity and sense of shared fate that remains firm underneath it all.

***

[Don't you just love that little upside-down exclamation point in the headline? I just learned how to do that from the keyboard, and it seemed a good way to get in a lick for ¡Latinos! Which reminds me, my April 10 post is still getting more hits than any other.]

Darfur, once again

I see the matter of the Darfur genocide is once again in the spotlight. Apparently there are still a few people left for killing. My lonely references to that horrible situation date almost to the start of this blog. I put together a bitterly cynical post the following February (2005) as well, but since then I only get angry when I allow myself to remember the evil that has been evident there for all the world to see. Surely, I thought at the time, the Times piece would get some attention. Instead it has taken more than a year for a response to come about. I want to post something again now that the subject seems to be current, but I will have to wait until I am able to do so constructively. Anything I write now will not sound very good.

My suspicious inner man simply cannot believe that all at once a few high-profile politicos and entertainers woke up one morning in a fit of compassion and finally decided to do something about Darfur.

I don't know what ulterior motive there could be, but I have to get past the idea that one must exist before I can move on. Just as the line that "people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English" by the president was a transparent play for red-state votes, so too might a "let us do well in Africa" gesture play well to black voters in the mid-term elections. Attention to Darfur could also be a potent red herring to distract attention from the plight of millions of immigrants at home who don't seem to know their place. And what better way to drive a wedge between blacks and Latinos who in the present climate might stand on common ground. As you see, my attitude is not good about this.

Meantime, I just checked the links at the old post and they are still active. Anyone interested in Darfur can go there and read. And if you are moved to pray, send up a word for me to release the bad feelings this initiative has triggered in me. Such feelings are counter to my tagline.

A beautiful remembrance

Azra Raza at 3Quarks has pulled back the curtain a bit to reveal something of the substance behind the form at that extraordinary website. As the fourth anniversary of a great personal loss approaches she writes a tribute to Harvey David Preisler, her late husband. There is no guile, no implication of a connection between this post and the occasion of today's nationwide demonstrations focusing on immigrant issues. But as I read this piece I could not help measuring the power of its story against that backdrop.

Harvey loved football with a passion that was only matched by mine for poetry. He was exceedingly anti-social and worked actively to avoid company while I had a considerable social circle and was almost always surrounded by friends and extended family. If you saw the two of us going out to dinner, you would have been confused; I looked dressed for a dinner at the White House while Harvey could have been taking the trash out. We met in March 1977 and did not match in age (I was 24, he was 36), status (I was single and a fresh medical graduate waiting to start my Residency, he was married with three children and the Head of the Leukemia Service), or religion (I was a Shia Muslim, he came from an Orthodox Jewish family, and his grandfather was a Rabbi). Yet, we shared a core set of values that made us better friends than we had ever been with another soul.

As Americans we may be one of history's most remarkable experiments in cultural development. Memories of floods, wars, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take only two or three generations to fade, which is why populations continue to live under those threats, rarely moving to protect future generations against the same tragedies. Likewise, many Americans have forgotten that we are all derived of immigrant stock. The story if Azra and Harvey (or David, or whatever he was called by his friends) is in many ways the story of America. It illustrates, more than anything I can make up, why the time has come...no, the time has already passed, when millions of people in our midst who have been working and contributing to the general welfare should be recognized, accepted and officially made part of the melting pot we call the U.S.A.