No Worry Unless You Have Something To Hide

Jul26

(I have nothing novel to say here; even allowing for the technology, no state in antiquity, even Egypt under their god-king, experienced this level of surveillance. I just need to vent on this subject.)

President Obama’s assault on the First and Fourth Amendments is in full swing. (The Second is completely safe.) It was bad enough to learn what our government was doing – in our name – under the Bush administration, but Obama’s security apparatus and his actions to protect it are staggering. We may no longer have renditions and blatant torture (force-feeding and prolonged periods of solitary confinement may qualify), but a Democratic and supposedly progressive President is actually laying the foundations of a police state, and Congress is helping, having found a bipartisan cause.

The public had long been aware, if unconcerned, of the constitutionally and morally questionable things the CIA has been doing, especially in conjunction with our seemingly endless wars, but inasmuch as the operations generally affect only other countries, the American public is mostly unconcerned. The recently revealed surveillance programs of the NSA, however, do affect Americans, and while most of our citizens have probably never heard of the Fourth Amendment, they do understand when they are being spied on. And so do our closest allies, even if their spooks and governments are enthusiastically cooperating with ours.

Amerikanische Reichssicherheitsdienst

The situation has become even more threatening – and surreal – with the revelation of the Insider Threat Program, something right out of Stalinist Russia. By this directive federal employees and contractors are legally bound to watch for and report “high-risk persons or behavior” among their fellow workers, and failure to do so could result in penalties, including criminal charges. And any leaks concerning the program and its operation will be treated as espionage, even if the leak reveals illegal behavior. The only thing missing to complete the journey back to Moscow in the 1930s is any reference to “counterrevolutionaries, Trotskyites and wreckers.” Will this vigilance be rewarded with medals? Perhaps “Hero of America” or “Order of Washington”?

But wait, there’s more! In the name of security the government will also violate the First Amendment! That’s two Amendments for the price of one administration! No government has been friendly to leakers, not because of the typically stated reason of security but since the leak usually reveals the government has been doing something questionable, like monitoring all private communications. Under the Great Engineer of American Security, however, leakers are now being prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, even though they are not passing information to a foreign government, which I mistakenly thought was part of the basic definition of espionage.
Unless of course the news media is considered a foreign entity, which is certainly the view of every autocrat, even the elected ones, like Recep Erdoğan of Turkey, who is close to setting records for jailing journalists. The traditional method for punishing journalists, like Judith Miller of Valeria Plame fame, is to demand the names of their sources and then jail them for contempt when they will not reveal them. In the case of John Risen, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was threatened with contempt if he did not testify against a former CIA source, a federal appeals court has just ruled that he was not covered by the First Amendment. This means that potentially every reporter is facing jail if he does not reveal sources.

And now there is a new twist: the journalist receiving the leaked information can also be charged with committing a crime, the exact nature of which the administration has not made clear. Journalist Glenn Greenwald was recently threatened with such a charge. Does this mean if you find a pile of classified documents on the ground, read them and talk to your friends about them, you are eligible for criminal prosecution? On the other hand, the government can spy on you all it wants apparently. For years the government has been monitoring Risen’s phone calls and emails, not in pursuit of a terrorist but to discover his sources. So, the security agencies can acquire taps on innocent civilians for the fairly specious reason that someone is revealing things to them.

The public opposes the NSA PRISM program by a 2 to 1 margin, but a recent effort to halt it was defeated in Congress, the amendment to the Defense bill being the subject of intense lobbying by the President (the liberal guy), the spooks and the contractors who make stuff for the spooks. Those who support the NSA of course talk about damaging our security, suggesting they know better than the average American, which has some basis in truth since we can find out virtually nothing about the program – or that it even existed until Snowden popped up. “Trust us” is not very convincing, coming from people who have regularly lied to the public.

The biggest joke of all is the fact that Obama touts his administration as the most transparent ever, when in fact it is actually one of the most opaque in history. The secrecy mania is out of control. In fiscal year 2011 more than 92 million documents were classified at a cost of more than $11 billion; the full numbers are unknown because at some agencies classification and its cost are classified. Are these all secrets that could harm the country if revealed? That is hard to believe. Classification covers mistakes, malfeasance, outright criminality and violations of the Constitution and civil rights, and very important, it enhances the status of the bureaucrat doing the classification.

And all this behavior for what? Because without such massive surveillance and secrecy one or two terrorists might blow up some people? Is this a sufficient reason to assault our own Constitution and freedom, especially when innocents are being killed in far greater numbers because of our love affair with the gun and inclination to solve problems with violence? Surveying the increased and constitutionally dubious powers of the government and its security apparatus and the concomitant free fall of America’s image in the world, I can only conclude that the 9/11 terrorist have won.

Stuff from Way Back #18: Socrates, O.J., Casey and George

Jul18

(If you enjoy the stuff on Socrates, try the whole picture: Dare to Struggle. The history and Society of the Greeks by Richard M. Berthold.)

George Zimmerman has just been acquitted of murder or manslaughter in his killing of Trayvon Martin, and an outraged public is demanding the federal government try him again on a civil rights charge. (This mechanism was certainly valuable in circumventing blatantly racist courts in the South, but it still smacks of double jeopardy.) The outrage results from the widespread feeling that despite the not guilty verdict Zimmerman committed some crime, inasmuch as a young man doing nothing wrong and minding his own business was shot, regardless of whether he started the fight. The assertion is that this outcome is wrong and unjust, a failure of our system of justice. The same was said regarding the acquittal of Casey Anthony, who many believe did in fact kill her child, and the grandest example is of course O.J. Simpson, who was acquitted despite being obviously guilty.

Dead guy

Vigilante

These outcomes may be considered wrong or unfair, but they are not at all unjust. In these instances the prosecution may be said to have failed, but the system did not. The reason is that justice has nothing to do with fairness, as most people believe. The simple fact is that justice is rooted in the law, not in any vague notions of what is right or fair. The law must be universal, applying to everyone in the society, and it must be relatively precise and well defined. It is produced and established by political mechanisms acceptable by all, at least in a free society, and being a citizen is an implicit acceptance of any law so produced, even if one disagrees with it.

Ideas of right and wrong, that is, one’s understanding of morality, are manifestly not universal, either in interpretation or circumstance. Most humans derive or at least associate their ethics with a deity, and the few that do not accept a god figure it out for themselves, influenced by the circumstances of their lives. Consequently, beyond the basic moral tenets seemingly hard-wired in the human brain (do not murder, do not sleep with your sister, etc.) ideas of right and wrong are going to vary greatly, even among adherents of the same religious tradition. The mechanisms here – god or individual conscience – are not accepted by everyone in the society, and moral conclusions are thus not valid for all and no basis for regulating society.

And so public behavior is regulated by an entirely – at least theoretically – secular and morally neutral apparatus, the justice system. You may feel free to believe that our civil rights come from god (they actually derive from the people; that is what constitutionalism is), but the protection and regulation of those rights has no more to do with deity than it does with magic. The law does not determine what is right or fair; it determines what is legal and acceptable behavior. We hope that our laws reflect our ideas about morality and fairness, but the bottom line is that what is just is not necessarily also what is fair.

The grandest expression of this fundamental aspect of constitutional society, an idea foreign to most people, is the trial and death of Socrates (469-399 BC). He was not executed, as many think, by an Athenian society suddenly become intolerant of free speech, but because of his commitment, even unto death, to justice as he (correctly) understood it. The charges brought against him in 399 were impiety and corruption of the youth, both valid under Athenian law, but the real reasons behind his indictment were political.

Wiseass

Athens’ defeat by Sparta in 404 led to a year and a half of despotic oligarchic rule, the Thirty Tyrants, and in the nervous climate of the restored democracy Socrates suffered from his negative public image – no one likes a wiseass gadfly – and earlier association with such notorious anti-democrats as Critias and Alcibiades. A general amnesty prevented Socrates’ enemies from leveling overt political charges, and instead they sought to drive him into exile by raising these other accusations, taking advantage of a growing popular irritation with criticism of traditional religious ideas. Already in the sixth century the new rationalists had begun assaulting the traditional religion, which because of its extreme anthropomorphism was an easy target; the all too human gods plainly did silly things, and many of the rituals of the civic religion were absurd when viewed objectively. In the fifth century the sophists, the first political/social scientists, continued the attack, and by the second half of the century they had discovered atheism, though it is nowhere directly expressed.

It was difficult, if not impossible, to refute these criticisms, especially with regard to the anthropomorphism, and the frustration of the traditionalists led to growing aggravation and public trials for asebeia, impiety. Traditionally, asebeia had involved overt acts of sacrilege, such as violating sanctuaries or profaning the mysteries, but in fifth century Athens the definition expanded to include less demonstrable offences, such as introducing new gods and not believing in the gods of the city, the charges leveled against Socrates. These accusations do not appear to be true, but Socrates was in many ways a very annoying person, and many were more than ready to accept these distortions of his real beliefs.

To the apparent surprise of his enemies, Socrates did not flee, but stood trial and was convicted by a only a narrow margin of votes (out of 501), demonstrating that in this instance at least the Athenians were not given to a lynch mob mentality. The Athenian court did not have judges, and in a broad category of cases the prosecution, which consisted of the citizens who brought the charges, was entitled to propose a penalty, to which the defense would reply with a counter-penalty, leaving it to the jury to choose in a sort of post-conviction plea bargaining. The prosecution asked for death, expecting the defense to propose a stiff fine (the Greeks did not normally imprison people), which the jury would select as the punishment. But ever the wiseass, Socrates proposed that he pay a ridiculously small fine and receive free board from the state for the rest of his life in order that he could continue enlightening and annoying his fellow Athenians. The jury was not amused with the suggestion of making a mockery of the system and chose death (still by a close margin), but every opportunity was given Socrates to escape into exile, since death was clearly an inappropriately drastic punishment for the crimes for which he was convicted. He insisted, however, that the execution be carried out and drank the poison.

Why? Because unfair though the condemnation might be, Socrates had been tried and convicted justly, that is, according to the laws of Athens, and such was his commitment to the law that he refused to violate it even under such extreme circumstances. Socrates was making, about as dramatically as one can, this essential point about the nature of justice: it is rooted in the law, not the public’s notions of right and wrong. Socrates might be generally accused of a certain intellectual dishonesty in that he used his considerable powers of argument to demonstrate only conclusions compatible with his view of things, but his death is surely one of the noblest examples in history of dying for ones principles.

The acquittals of loathsome characters like Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson are of course unfair and disgusting, but they are just. They were accused, tried and judged according to the law, and their trials involved no illegalities or misbehavior. It is sad that no one legally bears the responsibility for the death of Trayvon Martin, and it is disturbing that George Zimmerman’s vigilantism has been validated in the eyes of many. But his acquittal was manifestly not a travesty of justice. It in fact demonstrated that the justice system works, determining guilt or innocence of the basis of the law, not public opinion or someone’s definition of right and wrong.

The real criminals

Stuff from Way Back #17: The Beloved Land

Jul11

Egypt used to be a much happier place, even while under an authoritarian government that makes Mubarak and Morsi look like progressive leaders. This was of course when the world was young, very young. Egyptian civilization formally begins c. 3100 BC with the 1^st Dynasty and the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, which means Egypt came in second to Sumer (far southern Iraq) in the “Birth of Civilization” sweep stakes. Ironically, though both were river valley civilizations that had emerged because of generally similar factors, because of their very different local environments they were completely different in their attitudes and understanding of the universe.

Menes (Narmer), the first Pharaoh, unites Egypt

The Nile valley, which essentially defined ancient Egypt, was a grand place to live. The river, with its incredibly regular ebb and flood that rejuvenated the soil every year, produced a large and extremely dependable food supply. The security of the land was for thirteen hundred years guaranteed by physical barriers – the Mediterranean to the north, Sinai and deserts to the east, the river cataracts and difficult terrain to the south and desert wastes to the west. There was virtually no weather, and excepting the rhythms of day and night, the rotating stars and the rise and fall of the Nile, the land was unchanging. It was the Beloved Land.

The result of this environment was perhaps the most positive view of the world ever entertained by a society. The universe was inherently good and just, a status guaranteed by the gods of the Two Lands. Indeed, the harmony and order of the land was further secured by the presence of heaven on earth in the form of the Pharaoh, the continually reincarnated Horus. The head of state was quite literally a god, and the state itself was a part of nature. Life was so good that except for the god-king the afterlife was seen simply as a continuation of the one on earth. Heaven and earth were so tightly bound that they were seen as a whole, and the peasant working his fields shared an essence common to both his animals and the gods.

And this never changed. There were only three inescapable, non-periodic changes in the Egyptian universe: creation and the birth and death of an individual; all other non-reoccurring change was either so trivial or so slow that it could be ignored. The exact Egyptian understanding of birth is unclear, but it could be minimized as a natural extension of the mother. Death was tougher since there was a quite obvious change when the individual died, but this was explained as a sort of shift rather than an absolute change. The essence of the person simply shifted to the afterlife, where in a world identical to the one he had left he would carry on with his business, be it farming, trading, building, administering or whatever. That bodies buried in the desert fringe naturally mummified instead of rotting helped support this belief.

Creation was thus left as the one non-periodic change of any significance. Consequently, as the universe was at the moment of creation, so it would be for all time. And unlike the creation myths of the Asian and Aegean societies the Egyptian account involved no struggle. It began, as in the Sumero-Babylonia system, with a watery chaos (these are hydraulic societies, after all), but the world was created peacefully, Ptah (or Atum) spitting out or ejaculating the first gods, who then continued the process through sexual reproduction. In the universal mythic thought of the pre-Greek world these deities, though envisioned in human form, were actually manifestations of the natural phenomena with which they were associated, and thus the world was created.

By way of contrast, the Sumero-Babylonian account of creation involved struggle, as Enlil (or Marduk) battled and defeated Tiamat, the personification of chaos, and thus established the ordered world. But unlike the permanent Egyptian cosmos the Sumero-Babylonian world required constant attention, lest it collapse back into chaos. The difference was the environment. The Tigris and Euphrates were wild rivers, which could flood or dry up the fields, and there were violent storms and periodic droughts. The Sumerian city-states were constantly at war with one another, and barbarians from the Syrian deserts and Zagros mountains plundered the land. Life was very uncertain, and disaster, natural and human, constantly threatened. The afterlife consisted of a grim underworld, to which everyone went. Pessimism reigned in the lands of the two rivers.

The negative result of the secure and unchanging life of Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt (c. 3100-1800 BC) was an unchanging culture. Because of the focus on the eternal, the canons of Egyptian art and to a lesser degree literature were frozen at the beginning of her history, and a statue of the Pharaoh from the early second millennium is virtually identical to one from the late first millennium. From the 1^st Dynasty to the 18^th Egypt essentially produced nothing new. Creativity and progress require a certain level of struggle and tension, and Egypt was simply too content.

Thutmose III, creator of the empire

When her splendid isolation came to end with the Hyksos invasion and domination of the delta c. 1800 BC, Egypt was ill-equipped to deal with the sudden intrusion and rule of non-Egyptians and the arrival of new ideas. The collapse and troubles of the First Intermediate Period (c. 2200-2050 BC) were an internal affair and could be accommodated by the traditional culture, while the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1800-1550 BC), initiated by the arrival of the Hyksos could not. The kings of the 18^th Dynasty drove out the invaders and restored a united Egypt, but it would never be the same. The experience of the Hyksos seriously injured the self-confidence and optimism of the older days.

And Egypt was allowed no rest, as the impulse that drove out the Hyksos carried her into Syria-Palestine, where she stayed (New Kingdom or Empire c. 1550-1085 BC) and began a long struggle with the Hittite Empire in Anatolia. New ideas and peoples poured into the Two Lands, preventing any return to the old ways and attitudes. Tending to its Asian empire, the New Kingdom was too involved in the world, too nervous for eternity. The god-king, leading the armies north, was no longer the distant majestic figure of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but more human – and ephemeral. The increasingly weak kings of the 20^th Dynasty fell more and more under the growing power of the Temple of Amon-Re, as Egypt began the slide into impotence and ultimately foreign domination. In the wisdom literature of the New Kingdom: silence and submission emerge as the leading virtues of the wise man. Insecurity and outright fear enter Egyptian religion, and the once virtually automatic passage into the next world becomes a trial. A good heart is no longer enough; the deceased must be armed with special prayers and magic, like the Book of the Dead, to overcome the new obstacles.

Ramses today

Ramses II, PR genius of the New Kingdom

By the beginning of the first millennium Egypt had disintegrated into a collection of independent principalities, and in the seventh century the Assyrians, the “wolf in the fold,” captured the Beloved Land. The ancient culture of the society lived on, but under a succession of imperial rulers: the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. The three thousand year old religious beliefs could survive in the polytheist societies of Egypt’s conquerors, but in late antiquity Christianity began to seriously erode them, at least in the urban areas. The final extinction of ancient Egypt, however, did not come until the seventh century AD, when the Arabs arrived with their particularly nasty version of the No Fun God and created modern Egypt.

Until the arrival of serious tourism Muslim Egypt has had very little regard for its glorious past, stripping away the finer stone of the ancient monuments to build mosques, as the Christians were doing in Europe. The last two centuries have seen a rebirth of interest in the Beloved Land, but even now extremists want to destroy the remaining art in the name of their primitive aniconic god. All things considered, better to live under the Temple of Amon-Re than the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian Demos Speaks (and Louder Than Ours)

Jul4

Is it or is it not a military coup in Egypt? This semantic game is, predictably, being played out among the talking heads, and hardly surprising, the answer depends a great deal upon the political convictions of the speaker. Yes, the military has entered the political arena and ousted the sitting government, which is certainly coup-like. On the other hand, although the military is looking after its own interest, it is nevertheless responding to an unprecedented demonstration of discontent with an increasingly unresponsive and autocratic government. So, call it a military coup, but one with incredibly broad popular support.

Of course, governments, even those that could not stomach Morsi and his Muslem Brotherhood, are bemoaning the fact that the Egyptian army has removed a legitimate, freely elected, if obnoxious, administration. Naturally, this has less to do with any deep commitment to constitutional process than with the simple fact that governments like other governments far better than people in the streets. Recall the consternation in Washington when the Wall came down: we understood the behavior of that nasty DDR government and could deal with it, but people pouring in to the streets demanding freedom? Where will that end? And military dictatorships are the best, because they tend to be more stable and consistent in their policies.

The “deep concern” over dumping the legitimately elected government of Morsi rings a bit hollow, especially where the US is concerned. We refuse to recognize Hamas in Gaza, and they were legitimately elected. When the Algerian military suspended elections in 1992 because the Islamic Front was winning in the early rounds, we had no problem supporting the new dictatorship. In 1973 we actually aided in the overthrow of the freely elected President, Salvador Allende. How about the legitimately elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh? We engineered a coup against him in 1953 and installed the not so freely elected Shah. Certainly the US would like to see military rule in Egypt, so long as they provide stability and do not mess with Israel.

Distrust of the common people protesting in the streets inevitably evokes the label of “mob rule,” which suggests violence and illegality and behavior distasteful to civilized democratic folk. But one might suggest that democracy is simply polite and orderly mob rule. Aristotle in fact distinguished between “democracy,” rule of the demos or people, and “ochlocracy,” rule of the ochlos or mob, yet the distinction was not based on the venue – the streets or the assembly hall – or the political mechanism – throwing rocks or voting – but on the aim of the group. If the citizens in the sovereign assembly carried on in the best long term interests of the society, they constituted a democracy; if they sought only short term benefit for themselves, they were instead an ochlocracy. According to Aristotle, then, what we have in Washington is mob rule.

Allowing Morsi to finish out his term and then be turned out of office by the voters strikes me as risky business. Like his colleague in Turkey, Prime Minster Recep Erdoğan, Morsi betrayed his deep lack of understanding of democratic rule by assuming that once elected by a majority one can do anything one wants and ignore and punish opposition forces. His increasingly autocratic behavior and blatant favoring of one minority group does not immediately suggest a peaceful and democratic change of power when his term ended. More likely would be elections rigged by a Muslem Brotherhood now in secure control of the mechanisms of government.

In a state such as Egypt with virtually no practice in democratic rule deposing a plainly incompetent and nefarious ruler by mass demonstrations and the help of the military might be considered a democratic act of a more rough and ready nature. After all, how free are our elections? We have two entrenched parties, who enjoy almost complete control over who runs for office, and given that elections are essentially an exercise in mass marketing rather than political debate, these contests are easily manipulated by the economic powers in the society. Absent term limits, an elected official can pretty much hold his office for life because of the incumbent’s access to the big money and the results of two centuries of gerrymandering of districts. And let us not forget the ignorance and passivity of the American electorate. What has happened in Egypt appears in many ways far more democratic than what goes on here according to the rules.

I praise the Egyptian people for not putting up with the governmental crap that we routinely do.

Incidentally, Hitler was legitimately elected.

(The title is classified.)

Jun20

We are now beginning to see the staggering extent to which the Patriot Act has undermined our Constitution and privacy, thanks to the actions of a man who is being labeled a traitor by politicians and a hero, if a self-righteous one, by more sensible people. The broad and ambiguous powers granted the FBI are enough of a cause for concern, and now we learn the NSA has been conducting secret surveillance of apparently everyone on the planet who has access to a telephone, computer or credit card. That would include Americans, whom the NSA is of course not empowered to spy on, but we cannot afford to be obsessive about details when it comes to national security. Besides, the FBI, which is in fact commissioned to pry into our lives, is too busy with its own vastly expanded powers.

Is this process of collecting and analyzing astronomical amounts of data at all effective in combating terrorism? Perhaps, but an independent estimation is impossible when virtually everything – including the very existence of the program – is classified, and the public knows only what the government deigns to release. “Trust us, your elected officials,” says the President. Trust Congress, which seems to be generally in the dark itself and in any case is focused on politics? Trust the military, which has a long and rich history of lying to the people? Trust the spooks, whose whole existence is deception? Keep in mind that the Man, Director of Intelligence James Clapper, when asked before a Congressional committee if data on Americans was being collected, said no, deliberately lying to the body that is supposed to be providing oversight.

Head of the NSA

Perhaps the saddest thing in all this is that fully half the American population accepts this massive invasion of the Fourth Amendment. This is hardly a surprise. Judging from the apparent abandon and relish with which people, especially younger people, place personal and revealing information and photos on social media platforms, it would appear that many Americans have little interest in the Fourth Amendment. Of course, most Americans would not be able to identify the Fourth Amendment, but most do have a sense that the Constitution guarantees privacy. Besides, what is a little snooping if it prevents terror attacks? Further, many are taken by the assurance – second only to national security as a reason for undermining civil liberties – that you have nothing to worry about if you are doing nothing wrong. Well, at least until the government has some reason to find wrongdoing.

That the odds of being injured by a terrorist are infinitesimal compared to being shot or by a gun or hit by a drunk driver is seemingly unimportant. For some obscure reason killing a couple of people with a bomb and a cause is a threat to national security, while gunning down a dozen people in the streets of Chicago is just crime. And the mere mention of national security means the Constitution is likely to be assaulted. I am constantly amazed that the same people who constantly remind us that men died to preserve the freedoms we exercise, especially when we criticize the government and military, are among the first to accept limitations on those freedoms whenever the cry of national security is raised.

But even more annoying than the surveillance programs and the sanctimonious defense of the same is the stupefying and frequently ludicrous application of secrecy. Is there nothing done by our government that is not classified? Of course, left to itself the government, in all its manifestations, would classify everything; it is the easiest way to cover mistakes, avoid blame and embarrassment and do illegal things. The spooks obviously feel better when the public knows nothing, but generals and politicians can also operate more freely and feel superior and important when they know stuff the public is unaware of.

The constant refrain is that revealing pretty much anything about our security apparatus damages national security, though exactly how is inevitably left vague. We are told, for example, that the outing of NSA’s PRISM program has caused “serious and irreversible damage to this nation.” What, now all of a sudden the terrorists realize it is dangerous to use cell phones and credit cards? Those plotting acts against America could hardly be that stupid; the stupid guys get to blow themselves up in Kabul. Except among the stupid in the US, of whom there seem to be many (one even sits on the Intelligence Committee – Michele Bachmann), such outlandish claims only further undermine the already almost non-existent credibility of the government on these issues. Incidentally, that same person, General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, also claimed the revelation undermined our relations to our allies, a rare burst of truth from such a source.

Why is the very budget of the NSA secret? What can our enemies conclude from knowing exactly how much money is poured into the agency, when simply knowing that is a very large amount is enough to make a terrorist wary? The only sensible reason is to hide the coast and extent of the NSA’s activities from the American public, which is exactly what is happening. And for political reasons the government is now revealing little bits of information regarding the NSA’s programs. Well, if this stuff can be declassified now without hurting our security, why was it classified in the first place?

This can get very silly. James Clapper lied to Congress because he would have violated the laws binding him to secrecy had he replied truthfully. Rep. Peter King, a poster child for ignorance, further explained that the Committee had placed the Director in an “untenable” position by asking him the question at all, even though Clapper was advised ahead of the hearing that he would be asked this. Sen. Ron Wyden, who asked the question, later stated that he knew Clapper was lying but could not say so without violating his own security clearance agreements. Clapper later explained that faced with the problem he answered “no” as the “most truthful, or least untruthful” reply. He might just as well used the expression “truthiness.” He lied, plain and simple, and his explanation only makes him look either disingenuous or stupid – or perhaps both.

But the whole business is in fact very serious for us, the people. The Patriot Act is of course a public document, but apparently exactly how the government interprets its clauses is different from what one might suppose from reading the law. Naturally, that interpretation is secret, presumably because any terrorist can read the law and thus undermine its effectiveness by understanding its provisions. Or because the government is abusing even the broad unconstitutional powers granted by the Act.

And the most nefarious and ultimately destructive part of this compilation of police state laws is the provision for the establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is to provide the “oversight” promised by the politicians. Of course, the court is secret. It is staffed by judges appointed by the Chief Justice for seven year terms, and this should comfort us inasmuch as the Supreme Court is the defender of the Constitution, which, however, many scholars believe has already been violated by the Patriot Act itself. There is no defense; the Justice Department makes its case for a warrant, and the judge decides, apparently positively in the vast majority of instances. The arguments, the targets, the outcome and the information acquired are all secret.

No one is actually being tried before this court, although the decision to grant a warrant to the FBI might be considered the first step in a judicial process that could culminate in an individual’s arrest or death. Nevertheless, it is a secret court, an institution traditionally associated with oppressive governments. Like blowing up American citizens with a Hellfire missile (after a secret judgment in the White House), this court rests on a very slippery slope and establishes an incredibly dangerous precedent. The next step is a secret court to try American citizens because the evidence used by the prosecution must be kept secret in the interests of national security, a development already emerging is the trials of foreign nationals and resident aliens. The Patriot Act is transforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation into an actual Geheime Staatspolizei.

Head of the FBI

I see little hope. The technology of spying has become so sophisticated, especially in connection with the information and communications structures, that resistance seems futile. Not only has it become easier for the security services to spy and keep their operations secret, but the new electronic technologies are just too damn useful to the government, particularly regarding domestic concerns, and a generally ignorant Congress will continue to legalize activity ultimately destructive to a democratic society. The Constitution is of course protected by the Supreme Court, but some of their recent decisions do not fill me with hope. Besides, I am guessing that most of this stuff is also kept secret from the Justices.

One final thing: is Michele Bachmann actually entrusted with secrets?

War without End, Amen

Jun7

Chancellor Obama

On September 21, 2001 Congress passed the Authorization to Use Military Force act, the legislation that essentially allowed the President and military to wage war on “terrorism” anywhere, anytime and seemingly forever. In an impressive imitation of the German parliament under Hitler Congress, after virtually no debate, approved the act with an almost unanimous vote; apart from a few abstentions there was only a single nay cast in both houses. That no vote was cast by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Cal), who is now sponsoring a bill, HR 198, that would repeal the AUMF.

The Patriot Act, another demonstration of incredible political cowardice, is of course much more pernicious domestically, with its constitutionally dubious provisions for dramatically enhancing the powers of the country’s security apparatus while undermining civil liberties. The Patriot Act (always be suspicious of legislation with the word “patriot” in the title) immediately reminded me of the Enabling Act of 1933, which essentially allowed Hitler to henceforth govern by decree: both were justified by “threats” to national security (9/11, the burning of the Reichstag) and both increased the power of the state and undermined the democratic constitution. And since no government will voluntarily surrender power the life of the Patriot Act, like the Enabling Act, has been constantly extended, most recently by that defender of freedom, Barack Obama, whom we now know is collecting information on Americans on a scale unmatched by any dictatorship in history.

In some ways the AUMF is the foreign affairs counterpart to the Patriot Act. It dramatically increases the power and scope of the executive, military and CIA in waging war overseas and obviously allows the transgression of international covenants we are pledged to defend, once again in the name of national security, the favorite excuse of every authoritarian state. Even better than the Patriot Act, the AUMF has no sunset clause, presumably because the war against terror will last so long as there is even a single individual contemplating violence against the United State, which is to say, forever.

President Obama, who was apparently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize simply for replacing George Bush, is now using the AUMF to “wage war,” i.e., assassinate people, to an extent the Bush administration could only dream of. Obama thus joins such notables as Henry Kissinger, Menachim Begin and Yasser Arafat in the contest to see which Nobel Peace laureate has the most blood on his hands. And his administration has just made it clear, at least in White House language, that the war is likely to continue for another ten or twenty years. We could be going for a record here.

Lee’s bill is doomed to failure, because the forces perpetuating the forever war are simply too strong for Congress to resist, not that it takes that much to cow our noble leaders. Unlike the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is not economic pressures that play a major role, since drone warfare is relatively cheap, and for Haliburton, Blackwater Mercs, Amalgamated Latrine Diggers, et al. there is in this case little “money to be made, supplying the army with the tools of the trade.” Instead, the forces behind the forever war are institutional: the Presidency, federal security and intelligence agencies and the military.

Governments are the ultimate beneficiaries of wars, assuming they win them. Threats to national security, particularly those that are seen as internal to the country, have always been a grand justification for the state, especially the executive, to accumulate more power, and the security threat is most obvious and useful when the country is actually at war, whether or not the enemy is seriously a threat. The beauty of the forever war, of course, is that is in fact forever. Crises need not be invented, because inasmuch as the country is always in a state of war, it is also always in the midst of a politically useful crisis. Further, not only can we not lose the war on terror but it also does not need to be won, so long as terrorists (or reasonable facsimiles) are being blown up. Even a failure, such as a successful serious terror attack in the country, provides a platform for seeking more authority and more leeway in the exercise of that authority. It’s a politician’s dream come true.

The Executive branch clearly benefits, certainly in its relationship to the Congress. The President of the United States now has more power, both in domestic and foreign affairs, than he has ever had, even, I would suggest, during the Second World War. Governments do not willingly surrender power. Much of the power accumulated during the war against Germany and Japan was retained by the Presidency, and more was added by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a fine example of war – or shadow war – playing into the hands of the executive and military. Some of that authority was rescinded by the War Powers Act, but not all, and the measure in fact enshrines the idea that the President can commit the country to war without getting anyone’s approval by granting an exception: in case of “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

Presidential authority and the mechanisms for exercising that authority clearly skyrocketed after 9/11, leading to two costly wars that really did not involve the American public. Barack Obama has now dramatically underscored the point that all governments crave power; the putative liberal and one time critic of the Bush administration’s abuses has preserved all those emergency powers, which are now being used on a whole new scale. The obsession with secrecy and leaks, which has resulted in an administration even more opaque than the previous one, obviously has a lot to do with preventing the public from realizing just how extensive and questionable the government’s activities are.

New digs for CIA spooks

The forever war is a bonanza for the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and whatever other security and intelligence groups that are mucking about the country. Since the war against terrorism has a domestic component our secret police, the FBI, has an unending excuse for enhanced activities, even those of constitutional questionable nature, and a basis for demanding more money. Nobody, probably not even members of Congress, really knows exactly what the mandate and powers of the NSA are since this set of spooks makes the CIA look positively transparent, but clearly it is involved in domestic affairs, whether legally or illegally, who knows? Intelligence agencies always do well in times of war, and we can expect the NSA to see increases in its funding, though we will not see them, since the agency’s budget is also secret.

The big winner in the forever war is the CIA (probably; who knows what the NSA is doing?), inasmuch as it is directly involved in foreign affairs and external threats to the US. Such agencies inevitably grow larger in times of war, and in this regard the forever war is perfect, since it is against shadowy individuals scattered around the planet. Consequently, the CIA becomes more important and plays a bigger role than the military, and the organization that was formally prohibited from assassination in 1975 now does so openly and with heavy weapons. Why drone warfare and serious weaponry was put in the hands of an intelligence agency, particularly one with a history of incompetence and law-breaking, rather than the military is not at all clear. Perhaps because they were considered better at secrecy and deception than the military.

While the forever war is essentially in the hands of its competitors, the military still benefits, since a war is a war, even one in which traditional armed forces have only a limited role. Any war means budget increases for the Pentagon and provides them squealing points should any traitorous politician suggest their budget be cut. Besides, the forever war is everywhere, which means more military personnel planted around the world. And those aircraft carriers will be real handy for launching drones.

NSA. Try to get in there.

None of these people have any serious reason to see the war on terror end; it is simply too good for business. And it will not end, since it is unlikely there will ever come a moment when nobody is interested in killing Americans, especially since every drone strike, every violation of others’ national sovereignty is creating more jihadists. So, the war on terror can even be good for terrorists.

The only real losers are the American people and their Constitution.

Dressing smartly, Hamas Style

May30

Perusing my posts, one can hardly fail to notice my lack of enthusiasm for the modern state of Israel, the establishment of which I consider to have been immoral and an utterly stupid recipe for endless strife in the region. This does not, however, mean I approve of everything the Palestinians do, although a people can be excused a lot when one part of their country is being appropriated by their neighbor and the other is turned into a vast prison camp. And something I certainly cannot approve of are the actions of Hamas.

Hamas was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and in 2006 won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Parliament, probably because of their social welfare work and the failings of Fatah. This resulted in conflict between the two parties and Hamas control of Gaza in 2007. Hamas’ electoral success is not recognized by the United States, which supports free elections only so long as they are not won by groups it does not approve of. Hamas has been labeled a terrorist group, though it is hard to see why blowing up a bus is any more of a terrorist act than dropping cluster bombs in densely populated areas.

As one who understands, without condoning, Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians (the military are legitimate targets), the odd ineffectual Hamas rocket launched towards Israel does not concern me, apart from the fact that it ultimately brings horrific reprisals from Israel. What is unacceptable is Hamas’ imposition of their extremist version of Islam on the inhabitants of Gaza, which is especially offensive given the generally secular nature of Palestinian society. As usual, this imposition takes the form of endless prohibitions, virtually none of them supported by the Koran. As if life in Gaza were not miserable enough.

Much of the silliness stems from the misogyny inherent in all the Abrahamic religions and taken to incredible extremes by Islam. Since none of these supposedly religiously-inspired mandates are found in the Koran, we must assume they are dreamed up by Hamas theocrats, perhaps to demonstrate the innate superiority (and ignorance) of Muslim males.

That schools will be segregated by gender for students older than nine and men will never be permitted to teach females is a hardly surprising dictum for radical Islam, but it is an extreme measure for Palestinians, who have traditionally rejected this sort of nonsense. Less common is the recent prohibition against women riding on the backs of motorcycles. The Hamas authorities claim it is a safety measure (which no one else does), but they also state that it is intended to protect “community values,” which values are apparently determined by Hamas, since these Hamas “values” are not a facet of traditional Palestinian society. The “safety” explanation was subsequently shown to be bogus when women were subsequently banned from riding motorcycles at all. Hamas has also decided that women running a marathon is “un-Islamic” no matter how they are dressed, and women were prohibited from smoking the widely popular water pipes because it “destroyed marriages” and “sullied” the image of Palestine. This last was, I believe, subsequently retracted. And if you are a man in Gaza, don’t bother becoming a beautician: men cannot cut women’s hair.

But Hamas is in fact capable of at least momentarily attending to affairs other than their campaign to return women to their seventh century status as chattel. With even less scriptural backing they are also attending to the proper image of the Islamic male. Hair with gel or worse, spikes, will be summarily shaved off by Hamas fashionistas. Longish hair will also be snipped, which seems odd considering the usual extremist demand that men not cut their beards. Banning tight or low-riding pants is perhaps understandable in the bizarre world of Islamic sartorial concerns, but why is god offended by trousers that are long enough to cover the ankles? Traditional Arab robes do that, and it must be asked: Did Mohammed ever see a man wearing pants?

In addition to these specifically Hamas ordinances in the name of god there are of course the expected hassles associated with this curious religion. Men are harassed if they are too uncovered at the beach, since presumably the bare Arab chest is just too much for the average woman to deal with. To be fair, much of Latin American society is also uncomfortable with such exposed manliness. In Gaza couples are stopped and required to prove they are in fact married, which might make you wonder how courting is undertaken at all. I suppose this fits nicely with the tradition of no courting whatsoever since ideally the marriage would be arranged. It all makes Sicily seem progressive.

Of course, all this strange and stifling behavior in the name of god would be entirely familiar to the ultra-orthodox haredi in Israel, who give the Taliban a run for their money when it comes to making the fair sex invisible, uneducated breeders and pretending the world is still in the first millennium BC. But then, what is Islam but a return to god as the nasty Lord of Hosts rather than the only sometimes nasty forgiving and smiling savior of Christianity?

Magic Fire and Empty Pockets

May23

John Wayne as Wagner

Wednesday was the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), easily one of the greatest composers ever to have picked up a pen. There appears to be no middle ground with Wagner; he is either despised or adored by serious music aficionados. I am in the adoration camp and believe that he was in fact the greatest composer ever, certainly of opera – or music drama as he calls it. I consider Der Ring des Nibelungen to be the supreme achievement of western music; for me the sweetest, most moving moment in all opera comes in Die Walküre, when Brünnhilde tells Sieglinde that she is carrying in her womb the greatest hero of all time, Siegfried, and his theme is heard for the first time. Chuck Berry is very cool, of course, but Wagner provides the aesthetic shiver.

While many of his theoretical writings on music, especially his ideas on Zukunftsmusik (“music of the future”), are a bit strange (Did he really believe sculptors and painters would be satisfied just producing props, sets and backdrops for opera?), there is no question that his operas do indeed mark a towering advance in music. Contrary to general practice, his carefully crafted librettos were written by himself, and there is consequently in the Ring and his mature operas an unprecedented intimacy between the words and the music surrounding them. What the characters are singing is for the first time – at least to this degree – utterly important, which is probably why the increasing use of supertitles in opera houses has stirred renewed interest in the composer.

Wagner also broke ground in the music of his later operas, pushing the traditional tonal systems to their limits and dramatically influencing the next generation of composers, such as Gustav Mahler. Ultimately, his work led to the often blatantly atonal “music” of twentieth century composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. His use of leitmotivs or musical themes certainly points the way to cinematic music.

Behind this incredibly beautiful music, however, is a miserable human being. Wagner was domineering, and his opinions (on just about everything) were rarely affected by counterarguments and were expressed whether desired or not. He shamelessly used his friends, constantly borrowing money that would never be repaid and squandering it on luxuries. One might say that after music debt was the second constant in his life. He essentially deserted his first wife, Minna Planer, and had a conspicuous affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of his greatest benefactors. He produced three children with Franz Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, while she was still married to his loyal conductor Hans von Bülow, who finally allowed a divorce so that Cosima might became Wagner’s bride. In short, he seemed to think the world owed him a living, and given the music he created, I think it did.

What Wagner is best known for, certainly among those who have no familiarity with his music, is his anti-Semitism, something that might have been forgotten amidst all the other anti-Semitism of the nineteenth century but for the fact that he actually wrote about it and especially because Adolf Hitler loved his music. A great deal of energy has been spent looking for the traces of anti-Semitism in his works, focusing on figures like Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger and the Mime and his colleagues in the Ring. There is no evidence whatsoever for this, and Wagner was so wrapped up in the dramas and characters he was presenting that it seems unlikely he would consciously model them after Jews. And if there is anti-Semitism lurking behind figures and ideas in his operas, it is so subtle and subjective that it certainly does not matter to those who love the music.

Though it is hardly a justification, Wagner’s anti-Semitism was very common among enlightened Europeans in the nineteenth century, and it lacked the crude characteristics of the grass roots hatred found in the rural areas. Wagner certainly did not advocate pogroms or separation and lived in the part of Europe where Jewish assimilation was most advanced. Since many of his friends were in fact Jewish, he could hardly support violence or other extreme measures against them. His campaign against the music of the Paris composer Giacomo Meyerbeer has more to do with Wagner’s initial envy of Meyerbeer’s success and what he perceived as unjust treatment by the popular composer than it did with Meyerbeer’s Jewishness. Wagner was plainly annoyed and frustrated by the popularity of Meyerbeer’s operas, which he considered inferior to his own vision and works. And there were many Jews in music, such as Gustav Mahler, who could easily ignore Wagner’s various shortcomings and see only the musical genius.

Wagner as the über-anti-Semite chiefly derives from two developments after his death. The first was the emergence of Haus Wahnfried, the Wagner residence in Bayreuth, as a notorious center of anti-Semitism, presided over by his widow, Cosima, until her death in 1930. She herself may not have been seriously anti-Semitic, but her establishment certainly attracted a number of unsavory characters, like the racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who married one of the Wagner daughters and took up residence in Bayreuth.

The second and far more important development was the association of Wagner with the Third Reich. Hitler was surely aware of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, but the attraction was the music, which would have held him spellbound even if the composer had never uttered an anti-Semitic word. Wagner’s obvious German nationalism and connection with Teutonic myth would have appealed to Hitler more than the anti-Semitism. The fact that there was virtually no one else in the Nazi hierarchy that had any desire to sit through a Wagnerian opera suggests a lack of identity between National Socialism and the music of the future.

Abetting Hitler’s love of Wagner was the composer’s daughter-in-law Winifred’s love of Adolf Hitler. Her husband, Siegfried, died the same year as his mother, and Winifred became the pro-Nazi mistress of Wahnfried, where Hitler would be a regular visitor. She would only go so far when it came to the master’s music – she refused to put swastikas on the shields of the Gibichungen in Die Götterdämmerung – but Hitler’s frequent presence at Bayreuth and the clear affection between him and the family – he was “Wolfie” – forever bound Wagner to the Reich.

And Wagner’s attitude to Hitler? He certainly would have applauded the ultra-nationalism and the final unification of all Germans, and one might guess he would find the pomp and incredible showmanship of the Nazi state very attractive. Humiliating the French would likely also appeal to him. But Wagner was a revolutionary, not just in his music but also in politics, at least in his youth, and he participated in the anti-monarchy revolts of 1848 and was forced into exile in Switzerland. Once successful he seems to have retreated to some degree from these sentiments, especially when a monarch, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, showered him with money, and the creation of the German Empire pleased him. Yet, it is hard to see Wagner enthusiastic about the absolute and particularly vulgar dictatorship established by Hitler, and for all his anti-Semitism I find it impossible to believe that the soul manifested in his music could abide the Final Solution.

But in the end – who cares? Were Wagner himself a mass murderer, the music would still be the music and that is all the matters. Modern Israel has had an unofficial ban on performing Wagner, which is simply silly. The messenger is not the message. And in any case Wagner is unwittingly performed: the traditional wedding march (“Here Comes the Bride”) comes from Lohengrin.

Finally, a little known connection between Wagner and America. The American Centennial Commission in 1876 commissioned Wagner to write a piece of music for the occasion, resulting in the obscure American Centennial March, clearly not one of the master’s great compositions. He himself said the best thing about the piece was the $5000 he was paid for it.

The University as Farm Club

May16

The good news: the highest paid public employee in each of the fifty states works for an academic institution. The bad news: not one of them really has anything to do with education. In Alaska, Montana, Vermont and Delaware the highest paid state employee is a university president, in Maine it a law school dean and in North and South Dakota, New York and Massachusetts it is a medical school dean. In every other state except Utah the highest paid public employee is a football or basketball coach (a hockey coach in New Hampshire). Only Utah has as its highest compensated employee someone who may actually be involved in education, but that figure is still emblematic: a plastic surgeon.

Clearly, a major purpose of the American university is to be a farm club for the NFL and the NBA, something that baffles non-Americans. And well it might, since supporting professional sports has absolutely nothing to do with the true mission of the university, and football and basketball programs suck up resources that might otherwise benefit education. In the year 2011-2012 only West Point showed a profit in athletics; all those revenues, especially from TV, never see the light of academic day but are simply pumped back into athletics. And it is still not enough, forcing universities to find more money, typically through so-called student fees, which are easier to increase than tuition. It has been calculated that 99 major schools each funneled an average of $5 million more into their athletic programs by employing student fees and “university subsidies.” And though unlikely, if all the money donated to the athletic programs of these institutions went instead to the real university, each would see an average increase in income of $12 million.

Of course any money saved would not automatically go to instruction, equipment, research, faculty or staff. All the evidence demonstrates much if not most of it would end up funding the central administrations, which are growing at a phenomenal rate, both in terms of numbers and compensation. Vice-presidents/associate provosts are being created for every conceivable administrative niche, many of them redundant and the vast majority of them having absolutely nothing to do with actual education.

My former employer, the University of New Mexico, lists 45 individuals under the headings “University Officers” and “University Administration,” to which may be added 15 Deans. There is an Executive VP of Administration, apparently because the administration is so large that it must itself be administered. There is a VP of Equity and Inclusion, a VP of Human Resources, an Assoc. VP of Student Development and a Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity, and if that does not cover students, add a VP for Student Affairs and a Dean of Students. What can all these people possibly do bedsides draw big salaries? And at UNM the Athletic Director is actually a VP, which in a way is a burst of
honesty. And remember, these numbers remain steady or actually increase at a time when faculty slots are going unfilled because of “budgetary constraints.”

All these people are compensated at a level generally far above that of the staff and faculty. The median salary of a public university president is now $440,000, having increased 4.7% in 2011-2012, a rate that outstrips inflation and the raises for faculty and staff (and American workers in general), which are frequently missing altogether. A study of 145 schools revealed absolutely no relationship between the quality of the institution and the pay of its president, but try telling that to boards of regents, who constantly claim a good (read “expensive”) president is essential for a good university.

The American university is becoming a joke. Yes, an excellent education is still available, at least in the sciences and engineering – and of course business – and especially at the graduate level. But while faculties are stagnant or even shrinking, administrations and athletic programs are growing and absorbing more and more resources, which means skyrocketing tuitions. Students and taxpayers get to pay for all these drones, and meanwhile the institution is making huge amounts of money off its unpaid “student” athletes, allowing for more administrative and athletic growth. Congratulations on acquiring both a degree and a couple hundred thousand in debt.

There is no reason to believe this will change. The boards of regents at public schools are typically political appointees, more concerned with image than substance and committed to “serving the people,” who of course essentially see the university as a sports venue and perhaps a job-filler. And the prime directive of any government, as the current President of the United States is demonstrating, is to defend and increase its power. Sure, the NFL and NBA could support all those football and basketball programs with their spare change, but why should they when students and taxpayers are doing it for them?

Finally, from personal experience: Mike Locksley, the recently fired football coach of UNM, who in two years won two games, made as much money in one year as I made in 31 years of teaching. He immediately found another job.

A Lost Poem by Lewis Carroll

May9

‘Twas DC, and the lobby guys

Did gyre and gimble in the halls;

Of course they know what money buys,

The favors, votes, and pols.

‘Beware the Congressmen, my son!

The nonsense speech, the bribes anon!

Beware the CIA, and shun

The frumious Pentagon!’

He took his veto sword in hand:

Long time the manxome jerks he sought –

So rested he by the White House tree,

And struggled for a thought.

And as he wondered who to blame,

The Congressmen, with pants on fire,

Along the street they whiffling came,

And all and each a liar!

One, two! One two! And through and through

The veto blade went snicker-snack!

He left them dead and took their bread

And went galumphing back.

And so were slain the Congressmen,

The people wept with joy and cheered:

‘O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

The scum need not be feared.’