10 questions the media can’t answer. But then, maybe there just isn’t a point in answering the first question anymore, if “a top US military official this week stated that finding [Osama bin Laden] is not even one of the top priorities of the U.S. war on terrorism“.
Politics
Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.
Ollie North
If memory serves, Ollie North used to amuse himself by drawing up various scenarios for martial law — and if the thought of that doesn’t set off a screaming gibbering fit of paranoia in at least some small part of your brain, then we might as well just toss in the towel right now, just forget all this nonsense about the rule of law and representative democracy and just go ahead and coronate King George Junior the Second as our Supreme Leader and Beloved Enlightened Commander and be done with it.
More political cartoon uproar
Back on Sep. 12th I mentioned a couple political cartoons that I thought were interesting for their different takes on the attacks of the day before. Since then there have been the occasional political cartoons appearing here and there that have raised a bit of commmotion for one reason or another.
Today, Fark pointed to a Yahoo! news story about an editorial cartoon that ran in a New Hampshire newspaper that has prompted a denouncement by no less than the White House.
The cartoon depicts President Bush’s budget plan as an airplane veering towards two buildings labeled “Social” and “Security”. Not surprisingly, this has led to a fairly large uproar, to the point that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer issued his denouncement to reporters. The furor continues to go, also, as evidenced by this Fark discussion (which, to it’s credit, has stayed surprisingly civil through most of it). The editor of the newspaper that ran the cartoon has since apoligised, saying that to run it was a mistake.
This may be my biggest problem with the situation so far. According to the Yahoo! article, the same day the cartoon ran, the paper ran an editorial taking Bush to task for deficiencies in the current budget plan — an over-emphasis on the crusade against terrorism, while cutting benefits to people here in the U.S. who need it. The editor obviously had to see the cartoon prior to publishing and approve it, and I find it hard to believe that he didn’t realize that there would be an uproar once it was printed. I’d be far more impressed with the editor if he had stuck to his guns — he obviously felt the cartoon was worth printing at the time of submission, and to have him back down now is somewhat distressing.
I certainly realize that many people will feel that the cartoon is in bad taste and may disagree with either its message or the manner in which the cartoonist chose to depict it. However, political commentary is often meant to shock, provoke commentary and debate, and make people think — and I for one think the cartoonist did an excellent job on all levels.
I’m not sure if I want to ramble on much more about this at the moment. Suffice to say that not only do I not diasgree with the sentiments expressed in the cartoon, I’m rather impressed that the cartoonist felt strongly enough to express himself this way, and I’m saddened that the editor has felt the need to react as he has. If he’d found a way to apologize for any perceived (though I’m sure not intended) disrespect towards the victims without feeling he had to brand the decision to run the cartoon as “a mistake,” I’d have been more okay with that. Ah, well — at least it got people talking, and (at least in most cases), thinking. That should be the point, right?
Go Dub-yuh!
Found this in the discussion thread after this post on Wil Wheaton’s site:
Updated Texas Rankings Under G. W. Bush:
1st in Children without Health Insurance %
1st in Toxic Air Releases
1st in Smog Days (Houston)
1st in poorest counties(3)
3rd in Hunger %
5th in Highest Teen Birth Rate
41st in Breast Cancer Screenings
45th in Mothers Receiving Pre-Natal Care
46th in Public Libraries and Branches
46th in High School Completion Rate
46th in Water Resources Protection
47th in Delivery of Social Services
48th in Literacy
48th in Per Capita Funding for Public Health
48th in Best Place to Raise Children (29th before Bush) *
48th in Spending for Parks and Recreation
48th in Spending for the Arts
49th in Spending for the Environment
50th in Women with Health Insurance
50th in Teachers’ Salaries plus Benefits
- Children’s Rights Council. Only one accredited child-care center exists for every 2,637 children. A fourth of children still are not immunized by age 2.
— Texas Freedom Network
Interesting and disturbing
Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that. It has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? — because you’re not!’ If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,’ you say, ‘I respect that.’
The odd thing is, even as I am saying that, I am thinking ‘Is there an Orthodox Jew here who is going to be offended by the fact that I just said that?’ But I wouldn’t have thought ‘Maybe there’s somebody from the left wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view or the other in economics,’ when I was making the other points. I just think ‘Fine, we have different opinions.’ But, the moment I say something that has something to do with somebody’s (I’m going to stick my neck out here and say irrational) beliefs, then we all become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say ‘No, we don’t attack that; that’s an irrational belief but no, we respect it.’
Why should it be that it’s perfectly legitimate to support the Labor party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows — but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe…no, that’s holy? What does that mean? Why do we ring-fence that for any other reason other than that we’ve just got used to doing so? There’s no other reason at all, it’s just one of those things that crept into being and once that loop gets going it’s very, very powerful. So, we are used to not challenging religious ideas but it’s very interesting how much of a furor Richard creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you’re not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn’t be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn’t be.
— Douglas Adams
I found this quote from Douglas Adams (excerpted from an impromptu speech he gave in 1998), and — as is typical for Mr. Adams’ writing — liked it a lot. He was a highly intelligent man, and very gifted in his abilities to communicate both serious and whimsical notions.
However, the article that this quote was a lead-in for (Richard Dawkins on Sept. 11 Religious Terrorism) I found more than a little disturbing. Not because of the fact that Mr. Dawkins’ is a self-professed Atheist who seems to be doing what he can to spread what he believes to be the truth, but by the almost frighteningly vehement and almost venemous way he goes about it. I’ve never heard of Richard Dawkins before, but from this single article he seems to me to be what could best be described as an ‘Atheistic Fundamentalist,’ in that he is so convinced of the truth of his beliefs that he not only refuses to acknowledge other people’s right to hold their beliefs, but he actively attacks them (and in doing so, attacks all religion across the board). Is it really any better that he takes such an antagonistic attitude from an Atheistic standpoint rather than from a religious one?
I can’t say as how I think so. I need to go over the article a couple more times, then may come back with something else to say about it. We’ll see.
I still like the Douglas Adams quote, though.
(Day after) Thanksgiving, Part 1
(I’d mentioned earlier that I had two posts planned for Thanksgiving. I didn’t get around to putting them up Thanksgiving day, so they go up today, instead.)
A Thanksgiving Prayer
by William S. Burroughs
Pro-America
Pro-America does not mean pro-war. Or pro-Bush. Or anti-Afghanistan. Or pro-little-flags-on-SUV-antennas.
It means thinking independently and getting better informed and filtering your news very carefully and realizing that just because one version of the American aggro attitude is currently being ramrodded down society’s throat doesn’t mean you have to swallow.
— Mark Morford
Incidentally, this quote comes originally from this article at the SF Gate. It was then quoted at Killoggs, was then quoted at Underachievers, after which it was quoted by Wil Wheaton in his weblog, where I found it. And yes — the real Wil Wheaton. The Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation Wil Wheaton. Who just happens to be one of the coolest and funniest guys I’ve read stuff from in a long time. Set aside a few hours, and poke around his website — it’s well worth the time.
Okay, so I guess it’s a real warning
When I made my post yesterday just before leaving work about the bridge attack scare, I wasn’t yet very sure how seriously to take it. The time is ripe for scares and hoaxes, and since the only evidence I had at that point was a printed e-mail message, I was a little hesitant to take it at face value. However, judging by reports in this morning’s news (West’s Suspension Bridges Reportedly Terror Targets), I guess the alert is real enough. No new information has developed over the day, apparently — I guess we’ll just have to pay attention to the news tonight to see if anything happens.
Whether or not anything happens, I’d say the terrorists are doing a damn good job at this point. Whether it’s airplanes, anthrax in the mail, or bridges blowing up, nobody really knows where to look next, what to expect, or who’s the next to be targeted — and everybody’s tense. At this point, I’m not sure that terrorists would even need to actually cause any more physical damage or deaths, at least for a while — just leak a threat every few weeks, vaguely worded but with just enough detail to put people on alert, and watch the United States collectively freak out. People get nervous, politicians panic, and sooner or later, we’ll become a totalitarian police state — we’ll just be doing it under the combined banners of ‘democracy’, ‘patriotism’, and ‘safety’.
The WTC/Pentagon attacks killed around 5,000 people. The paranoia after those attacks is killing everything the U.S. has puportedly stood for over the past 200 years. Yeah, I’d say the terrorists did — and are doing — a pretty good job.
Thirteen Days
I rented Thirteen Days (about the Cuban Missile Crisis) the other night, as I hadn’t seen it, and I was curious both about the film itself and about New Line‘s Infinifilm brand.
The movie was certainly quite decent (though Kevin Costner seemed to do his usual trick of being an inattentive babysitter for his accent, rather than actually adopting it), but what really struck me about it was the similarities to the current air of tension, fear, and paranoia sweeping the nation. While the setups for the two conflicts are different, the attitudes and feelings of many of the characters in the film were very familiar. In one of the (fascinating) historical background pieces, there were some ‘man on the street’ interviews with people at the time this all was going on — and just about anything that they said could easily have been said at any point within the past month. Average people worrying about their safety, whether or not it’s right to go to war, whether a conflict is justified — very eerie to hear sentiments I’ve heard, read, and spoken since September 11th coming from the mouths of people forty years back.
It also made me very curious about just what’s going on in the conference rooms of the White House these days. Considering the wide range of emotions and suggested courses of action during the Cuban Missile Crisis that only recently came to light (such as Kennedy’s secret tapes of the meetings, as discussed in the extra materials on the disc), it really makes me wonder how much is being debated — and how much is known — behind the scenes, that we’re not likely to find out for years, and possibly decades. I’m not one to try to raise paranoia or fears…the film just made me think a lot more than it probably would have had the events of September 11th not taken place. Until now (I’m 28, by the way, born in ’73), I hadn’t really had anything that could make me sympathise with the events portrayed — I could empathise to a certain extent, but I hadn’t had any experiences that really came that close to what was happening in 1962. Desert Shield/Storm affected me to a certain extent, but not like this — it was too distant…a war on TV. Now, for better or for worse, it’s all too easy for me to understand just what was going through peoples minds then — because it’s going through mine, now.
Neat, neat stuff. Not necessarily comfortable. But very worthwhile.
Kudos to The Onion
I just got a look at the most recent issue of The Onion, and I have to say that it’s very, very well done. If you’ve not read them before, The Onion is one of the more biting online humor sites — basically, they use a news-site format to skewer whatever is going on in the world.
This issue is their special issue regarding the terrorist attacks, and I really think that it’s an incredibly effective series of articles — using humor and irony to point out very serious, deep truths. Plus, it’s really funny — and it’s nice to see someone able and willing to take the initiative to look at some of the opportunities for intelligent humor in the wake of the tragedies. Sometimes, laughter really can be the best medicine — and The Onion is giving us just the right dose.
Some of my favorite quotes come from the article God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule:
“I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you’d get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important,” said God, called Yahweh and Allah respectively in the Judaic and Muslim traditions. “I guess I figured I’d left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?”
“To be honest, there’s some contradictory stuff in [the Bible], okay?” God said. “So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it — My bad. I did My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message over the millennia. Frankly, much of the material that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. I turn My head for a second and, suddenly, all this stuff about homosexuality gets into Leviticus, and everybody thinks it’s God’s will to kill gays. It absolutely drives Me up the wall.”
“I don’t care what faith you are, everybody’s been making this same mistake since the dawn of time,” God said. “The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don’t even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you’ve been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades.”
Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God’s shoulders began to shake, and He wept.
Anyway, go check it out. There’s quite a few different articles, and so far all of them I find well worth reading.