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Nationalism

"All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency.

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side ...

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

-- George Orwell

(H/T Lisa Simeone)

Abusing our utilitarianism: Bait-and-switch, and beating the drums of war

This morning, while reading the various and ongoing will-we-or-won't-we discussions about America and Iran, I thought about the dynamic now and the dynamic of 2002-early 2003 and was struck by their similarity. If it weren't so outrageous, it would be rather funny, really: Fool us once, shame on you; fool us again, shame on...you and the New York Times. And, to be fair, shame on every single newspaper, network, blog, and radio program who aids in the spreading of baldfaced lies that promulgate the casus belli--the case for war. War that leaves hundreds of thousands of human beings--Americans and foreigners alike--dead and wounded; war that propels our national debt further into the stratosphere and plunges our national reputation deeper into the bowels of Hell.

They're doing it again, by the way. Robert Naiman has a post at Truthout entitled Judy Miller Alert! The New York Times Is Lying About Iran's Nuclear Program. An excerpt:

It's deja vu all over again. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is trying to trick America into another catastrophic war with a Middle Eastern country on behalf of the Likud Party's colonial ambitions, and The New York Times is lying about allegations that said country is developing "weapons of mass destruction."

In an article attributed to Steven Erlanger on January 4 ("Europe Takes Bold Step Toward a Ban on Iranian Oil"), this paragraph appeared:

The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign. [my emphasis]

The claim that there is "a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective" is a lie.

As Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick Pexton noted on December 9:

But the IAEA report does not say Iran has a bomb, nor does it say it is building one, only that its multiyear effort pursuing nuclear technology is sophisticated and broad enough that it could be consistent with building a bomb.

Indeed, if you try now to find the offending paragraph on The New York Times web site, you can't. They took it down. But there is no note, like there is supposed to be, acknowledging that they changed the article, and that there was something wrong with it before. Sneaky, huh?

But you can still find the original here.

Indeed, at this writing, if you go to The New York Times web site and search on the phrase "military objective," the article pops right up. But if you open the article, the text is gone. But again, there is no explanatory note saying that they changed the text.

This is not an isolated example in the Times' reporting. The very same day - January 4 - The New York Times published anotherarticle, attributed to Clifford Krauss ("Oil Price Would Skyrocket if Iran Closed the Strait of Hormuz "), that contained the following paragraph:

Various Iranian officials in recent weeks have said they would blockade the strait, which is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, if the United States and Europe imposed a tight oil embargo on their country in an effort to thwart its development of nuclear weapons [my emphasis].

At this writing, that text is still on The New York Times web site.

I have thought a great deal about our lamentable national gullibility, about how easily we fell, and continue to fall, for for these nefariously concocted casus belli, these distortions and lies and manufactured-out-of-whole-cloth threats that invariably lead to yet another epic conflict, to the draining of blood and treasure--ours and "theirs"--alike. And while I am fully aware that a certain contingency of Americans love a good war--especially if said war fulfills a need for vengeance on the part of the embattled and embittered--I also know that a much larger percentage of Americans would prefer having their tax dollars go toward American interests; would prefer that the minds and bodies of their children remain healthy and whole.

So why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep going along with it?

This had long baffled me. And then I read about a study, carried out by psychologists at Michigan State University, and I had a rather unpleasant epiphany. Read this, and then I'll tell you why I think we keep going along with it (and by "we", I mean, enough Americans so as to provide the White House and Congress the moral and electoral support for their warmongering) (emphasis mine):

At Michigan State University, subjects were placed in a virtual world setting of a railroad switch with the assignment of either pulling a joystick that would send a boxcar careening into a single hiker or choose to do nothing and watch as the same box car kills five hikers.

Out of 147 participants, 130 rerouted the boxcar into the path of the single hiker while 14 did nothing and three changed their minds at the last minute and decided to allow the five hikers to die.

Study researcher Carlos David Navarrete, an MSU evolutionary psychologist, said, "What we found is that the rule of 'Thou shalt not kill' can be overcome by considerations of the greater good."

The majority of the subjects, then, responded in ways that can be described as taking a Utilitarian approach--in short, they believe that the best course of action is the one which results in the greatest amount of good, or brings about the most happiness for the largest number of people. Those of us who took an ethics class or two in college might remember John Stuart Mill as one of the Patron Philosophers of Utilitarianism. Some of us have even quoted Mill from time to time--certainly we've carried the smooth and weather-seasoned stones that are his noble ideas around in our pockets; when faced with ethical quandaries, we've run our fingers over their cool permanence and been reassured.

But consider this: knowing that a significant majority of Americans fall into the "considerations for the greater good" camp--are Utilitarian, in this respect--all that anyone wishing to rally their support (support, in this case, for invading a sovereign nation) would need to do is frame his proposal in such a way--lying, if need be--that it meshes nicely with their desire to serve the greater good.

More aptly put: The psychologists in charge (the U.S. government, via propaganda in the national media) tell the volunteers (the American people) there are five hikers on the track who will be killed if they do nothing (there are nuclear weapons being developed by Iraq, and now Iran, and all kinds of death and epic destruction will occur it they're ever deployed; yellowcake plus metal tubes equals mushroom cloud!); however, they--the volunteers (the American people, its elected leaders, and its media)--can bring about a better outcome by operating the switch (supporting the invasion of Iraq, or Iran) and killing just the one hiker on the other track (destroying select targets and perhaps a town or two by raining some shock-and-awe down on them, and allowing our brave troops to serve their country by getting themselves wounded or killed, but we're only going after military targets and weapons factories--not civilians or anything like that--and there won't be that many wounded or killed. And anyway, we'll be out of there soon, probably within a Friedman Unit.)

The entire argument for utilitarianism, I am compelled to point out, hinges on the veracity of the conditions described. In order for people to be willing to pull the railroad switch and deliberately kill the single hiker, they must be certain that all the other conditions exist, and exist exactly as described. They must be certain the train really will kill the five hikers on the track if they do nothing. They must be certain that five hikers are even there in the first place. They must further be certain that their actions will only kill a singled hiker, too: if it is determined that the single hiker has suddenly morphed into more of them, or that the train, upon smacking into that hiker, will derail, roll down the mountainside, and take out a school full of children, say, I submit the majority of the volunteers--if not all of them--would be largely opposed to pulling that switch at all.

Truth is the first casualty of war, said Aeschylus.

The smoke-filled casus belli for attacking Iran continues to swell before our eyes, suffocating poor Truth yet again. But there is still time: time to drag the victim out into the air and sunlight; time to call out the liars in the press and the liars in Washington.

TransCanada Whistleblower: Keystone XL unsafe, will have catastrophic oil spills

Cf.

In a bold and timely op-ed, Mike Klink, a civil engineer--and inspector with TransCanda during earlier phases of the Keystone project before his constant pointing-out of dangerous shortcuts, cheap materials and shoddy workmanship, and mind-blowingly poor siting choices got him fired--blows the whistle.

Actually, "whistle-blowing" seems like such a diminutive phrase to describe what he's doing. To my mind, it's more like grabbing a spare LRAD cannon from one of the violent, authoritarian thugs riot policemen at the latest stop-the-XL demonstration in Washington DC, packing it to the brim with weapons-grade truth, and firing it at the sleepy public.

If this doesn't get Americans' attention and make them scream at their government, night and day and all week long, and not stop until the President drives a final stake into the tarry heart of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, nothing will. To wit:

Despite its boosters' advertising, this project is not about jobs or energy security. It is about money. And whenever my former employer Bechtel, working on behalf of TransCanada, had to choose between safety and saving money, they chose to save money.

As an inspector, my job was to monitor the construction of the first Keystone pipeline. I oversaw construction at the pump stations that have been such a problem on that line, which has already spilled more than a dozen times. I am coming forward because my kids encouraged me to tell the truth about what was done and covered up.

When I last raised concerns about corners being cut, I lost my job — but people along the Keystone XL pathway have a lot more to lose if this project moves forward with the same shoddy work.

What did I see? Cheap foreign steel that cracked when workers tried to weld it, foundations for pump stations that you would never consider using in your own home, fudged safety tests, Bechtel staffers explaining away leaks during pressure tests as "not too bad," shortcuts on the steel and rebar that are essential for safe pipeline operation and siting of facilities on completely inappropriate spots like wetlands.

Go and read the whole thing. Then call or e-mail President Obama, as well as your senators and representatives, and get busy with the Twitter and Facebook buttons directly below this post. There isn't much time, and if President Obama's actions to date are anything to go by, his next thumbs-up for a wealthy, powerful interest--with an attendant thumbs-down to our dying hope for a sane energy policy and green future--is likely a foregone conclusion. In fact, I don't doubt that he'd have already signed it if it weren't for all those aforementioned pesky protesters, with their rag-tag signs about pending environmental disasters and their reams and reams of scientific evidence.

untitled debate 10/3/12

Onward to 2012: "We're all in this together, kid!"

Very well, I'll say it: Terry Gilliam's Brazil is simply my favorite movie of all time. I'll often say things like "Brazil is in my top five favorite films", just to give myself a little wiggle room, because I also adore Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. And a number of other cinematic masterpieces by a number of other brilliant, visionary men and women. Okay, so maybe there are more than five on my list of favorite movies--let's say ten.

Still: Brazil. Good Lord, what an amazing and crystalline metaphor it is, from start to finish; what a chillingly prescient story; what a visually stunning, emotionally affective, and politically damning work of art.

Every time I watch this film, I come away with more to think about. Have you ever seen an actual terrorist?

I absolutely love the scene in the above clip, as it gives face and form (with no small amount of dark humor) to my hope for the coming months and years: that we can join together--and tackle and overcome in ways that are truly fitting and just--the monster that is any society so riven with fear and controlled by bureaucracy, its very fibers and ducts and veins and brains threaten to deliver it to its own doom.

So perhaps I am a dreamer. But I'm not, as Lennon said, the only one.

Never give in, never give in, never give in. Me, I'm not giving in to this fascistic shit, and I'm not going down without a fight. Are you? Didn't think so.

Long may we fight, and dream, together.

The TSA's little child pornography and predator problem: A Twisted, Sick Abomination

You don't have to be a parent to feel utterly nauseated upon reading stories like this one, the details of which were just posted at The Smoking Gun (charges--two counts of felony child porn--were filed last month in a Maryland circuit court):

As cops raided his Maryland home, a Transportation Security Administration screener confessed to downloading child pornography, acknowledged that it was “not right in a legal and moral sense,” and stated that he has a “problem.”

The admissions by Scott Wilson, 41, came as Baltimore investigators recently searched his home after an undercover agent downloaded child porn from his computer via a file sharing program.

And you don't have to be a Nervous Nellie to make the logical leap to asking the obvious questions:

Is this a serious systemic problem, and are these government employees--who are tasked with screening American travelers by looking at their nude images, physically groping their sex organs, or both--themselves being screened?

Or could this simply be a case where, as in any large organization, one or two bad apples will turn up, and sometimes they'll display an ultra-high degree of rot?

Allow me to settle that for you right now (and I apologize that the truth of the matter is so disturbing): There are far more than a few "bad apples" floating around the TSA barrel. Even as we, the traveling public, are expected to allow strangers to aggressively touch us--and, until recently, our babies and children--on any and every body part (and many parents report being barked at to "stand back", or move to a different location, while this happens), we are clearly not being afforded the kind of protection from child molesters, rapists, and other sexual predators that one would expect. Certainly one would not expect an organization whose job it is to "keep us safe" to be hiring child porn enthusiasts, child molesters, and child rapists.

In Boston:

Andrew W. Cheever, 33, appeared before on a complaint charging him with possession of child pornography. Last December, State Police executed a state search warrant of Cheever's former residence in Lowell. The initial search identified approximately 2,000 images of child pornography and several uniform items bearing the TSA logo.

In Spring Creek, Idaho:

The Elko County Sheriff’s Office was notified in July of possible sexual contact between David Ralph Anderson, 61, and a girl younger than 14.

According to Elko Justice Court records, the victim told investigators that on seven to 10 occasions between 2010 and this year, Anderson allegedly taught the victim about various sexual acts and had sexual contact in the form of touching each other’s genitals. [...] Anderson, who is a TSA employee according to Elko County Jail records, is being held on $250,000 bail.

In Orlando:

Suspects include then-Transportation Security Administration agent Paul David Rains, 62, of Orlando, who no longer works for the agency.

He and the other suspects face charges ranging from child pornography and sex battery to lewd and lascivious assault and sexual performance by a child.

In Philadelphia:

A passenger screener at Philadelphia International Airport is facing charges that he distributed more than 100 images of child pornography via Facebook, records show.

Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.

In Nashville:

A TSA agent has been arrested in Rutherford County on charges of statutory rape.

Clifton Lyles was arrested by U.S. Marshals Tuesday night, following a grand jury indictment.

In Londonderry, New Hampshire:

A TSA employee who worked at Manchester Boston Regional Airport has been arrested on five counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault, according to police.

Police arrested Dwayne Valerio, 44, at his 192 Rockingham Road home on Friday, March 18, according to Lt. Robert Michaud. Police released few details on what led to his arrest, citing the alleged victim's age.

"The victim is a juvenile," he said.

Again in Orlando:

A TSA agent has been arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a minor after police say he tried to keep a girl as a sex slave. Police arrested 57-year-old Charles Bennett of Winter Garden on Friday. A 15-year-old girl was the one who reported him to police.

According to reports from the Orange County Sheriff's Office and the Orange County Jail, the 15-year-old victim confided in her caregivers that Bennett had touched her inappropriately three years ago when she was 12. She says he also asked the young girl to be his "sex slave," an accusation investigators say Bennett admitted to in a written statement to police.

And again in Boston:

A Transportation Security Administration worker at Logan International Airport is accused of assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

Sean Shanahan, 45, of Winthrop is being held on $50,000 cash bail following his arraignment in East Boston District Court. He is charged with statutory rape, enticement of a child and indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or older.

-----

And these are just the 2011 incidents! It must be further noted: the vast majority of sex crimes--like enticement, molestation, and rape--are not reported (for example, only about one in six incidents of rape are reported). This is due to a complicated array of cultural and legal factors that includes misplaced shame (where victims, especially young ones, blame themselves), fear of having to relive a horrific incident in a courtroom setting, fear of retribution, fear of the perpetrator himself, and more. Thus, we can fairly conclude that there were even more such crimes committed by TSA employees than those in the hardly-brief list above.

For its part, the TSA repeatedly claims to have thoroughly screened all applicants:

"TSA cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation, however, we can assure travelers every TSA employee is subject to a significant background check, including criminal history, before they are offered a job. Unfortunately, these checks do not predict future behavior. This individual is not working at the airport at the present time."

Translation: Hey, these guys don't work for us any more--what are you worried about? Don't blame us! We aren't fortune-tellers and you can't expect us to be able to tell if someone is going to commit a crime in the future...oh, wait...

(H/T Bill Fisher for the 2011 links)

Steve Martin's Christmas Wish

I couldn't resist posting this classic SNL Christmas clip. I first experienced Steve Martin's unique wit when I attended a concert of his at the University of Florida, waaaaay back in the day (late 1970's). It was during his arrow-on-the-head period. I remember his hilarious "my cat is a criminal" bit, wherein he confessed to buying cat-cuffs to keep his feline from shoplifting. (You had to be there.)

This SNL spot may or may not be the first of a few classic Christmas clips I post; it all depends on the traffic out there this afternoon!

Anyway, allow me to take this opportunity to wish my readers a truly fabulous holiday. Let's all wish for PEACE in the New Year.

With love and thanks for your friendship,

Deborah
XXXXX

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Homeland Security guy...

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA, and other agencies working within the Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) model, want to implement mobile mind-reading units everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean not just at airports (emphasis mine):

The FAST program has now completed its first round of field tests on the public. According to DHS, one of the program’s primary goals is to bring security to “open” areas–such as Metro, Amtrak and mass transit systems other than aviation–where threats could go undetected. The Mobile Module, according to DHS, “could be used at security checkpoints such as border crossings or at large public events such as sporting events or conventions.”

In the field tests, DHS tested the Mobile Module in at least one location in the Northeast. “It is not an airport,” Verrico told Nature magazine, “but it is a large venue that is a suitable substitute for an operational setting.” Whether these subjects knew they were participating in a FAST study is unclear.

EPIC claims that DHS documents reveal efforts to “collect, process, or retain information on” members of the public who likely did not give their consent. “We do think this is a program with great privacy risks,” says John Verdi, director of EPIC’s Open Government Project. Back in 2008, the DHS conducted a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), but when FAST moved into its public testing phase, Verdi says, “Our requests have revealed that the agency did not perform a PIA. In our view that is against the federal law.”

"...Large public events such as sporting events or conventions.”

Never mind the Fourth Amendment.

Never mind the fact that some people, i.e. sociopaths (the very people who can commit violent crimes like terrorism without experiencing guilt beforehand or remorse afterwards), don't always present with psychological indicators--with physical or biochemical "tells"--when they deceive, thus rendering these expensive, intrusive, James-Bond-wannabe mind-reading units as good as useless.

Let's be clear-eyed here: this is about three things, and three things alone.

(1) Money. Not for you or me, silly. Money for the security contractor(s) who are selling these ridiculous apparatuses to the DHS (and as flush with tax dollars as that agency is, they are an attractive mark) and, of course, money for the campaign coffers of the various politicians enabling this unconstitutional rubbish. Oh, and for any stray former government official who has the new job title of "consultant".

(2) Fearmongering, because when people are afraid, they will more likely believe what the authorities tell them, and they will (apparently) put up with almost anything.

(3) Conditioning. Fifteen years ago, if you'd told me that law-abiding Americans wanting to fly somewhere in their own country would in the near future be lining up like cattle at the slaughter; taking off their shoes; allowing themselves to be irradiated while someone viewed their unclothed bodies on a screen; allowing themselves to be aggressively groped--and their children to be touched, by someone who is not a parent or doctor, on the parts of their bodies they are otherwise taught are private and personal--I'd have said you were making things up.

It may have taken a little time, but the DHS and TSA have succeeded in conditioning most of the traveling public. They've largely got the media on their side, too--"It's just to keep us safe!"--and they've been slowing ramping up the intrusiveness in the past couple of years, happily allotting billions of our tax dollars to buy all these whiz-bang machines and enrich their well-connected manufacturers, reacting with horror--and even lawsuits--when the occasional civil libertarian cries out after having a stranger grope and penetrate her at the airport: "How dare you call our agents rapists! Even though they raped you!"

(And only Pravda--yes, that Pravda--would publish her account.)

It needs to be repeated, and often: The TSA has not thwarted a SINGLE terrorism attempt. Not a one. The attempts were thwarted by good investigative work on the ground, long before anyone with terrorism in mind got near an airport, and alert, motivated passengers.

Whither our civil liberties?

Also at TSA News

To those who muse about "Spreading Democracy", revisited (Kim Jong-il version)

During an acute famine in the 1990's, starving North Korean refugees--often accompanied by human traffickers--attempted to cross the Tumen River into China; death by freezing was commonplace

And who, while decrying the dictatorial splinter in the collective cornea of yet another palm-tree-lined nation* doing us no harm, all the while ignoring the beam lodged in their own myopic eye; and who, to this day, and despite mounting evidence to the contrary, tell the citizenry that promoting freedom is what they've been doing all this time, even as the blood and treasure belonging to their own people continue to spill unabated while those occupied but not yet dead face an uncertain (but certainly violent) present and future; and who persist, inexplicably and without remorse or fear of reproof, in sanctioning further curtailment of that selfsame freedom with the suspension of habeas corpus and with every presidentially-approved, unconstitutional wiretap and illegal invasion of citizens' privacy, I offer the words of another notable Latin American:

THE DICTATORS

By Pablo Neruda

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence.

[* Upon learning that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il had died, my thoughts returned to Pablo Neruda's poem, to its vital and crystalline truths and how they live on. I had a similar reaction to the one shared above when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008. Plus ça change...]

Sunday Frank: Zappa in Czechoslovakia with Václav Havel, 1990

This is some wonderful footage of Frank Zappa in 1990, when he visited the late Václav Havel in then- Czechoslovakia shortly after it became autonomous. This is Part Three of Four in the collection posted on YouTube (thank you, reldditmot). (Here are the others, which are very much worth watching: Part One, Part Two, Part Four.) It's an interview Zappa did with Czech press, covering various political topics, including what Zappa saw as a sort of institutional stupidity that had taken hold in the States over the past decade or so.

This stupidity condition, Zappa said, has largely been imposed on the citizenry by popular culture and religion, then aided and abetted in its contagion by a leadership with its own nefarious reasons for keeping everything and everyone dumbed-down.

Do watch it. Zappa was, undeniably, a curmudgeon. His opinions can rub liberals the wrong way (I certainly don't agree with everything he ever said, but then, about whom can any of us say that?). But as you'll see, he was right about the consequences of not funding education properly; of allowing the shortages of teachers, especially in critical subjects, to continue; of spreading teachers too thinly and having them teach subjects other than the ones they've trained in. (Zappa points to geography as one overlooked, underfunded subject, and expresses his dismay that many American kids can't identify their own country, much less foreign ones, on a world map). And he points to a dangerous problem--one that has only worsened in the years since--namely, the control of textbooks and their content. Textbooks should of course contain only facts, but instead acquire an overtly theist framing--and thus bias--due to their having to pass muster with Christianist censors (and be edited accordingly) before the public school system can buy and use them.

And finally, oh dear, was Frank Zappa not scarily prescient about what happens when a national complacency pandemic takes hold--usually during strong economies--and people are comfortable and not paying attention to the the goings-on within government, meanwhile politicians begin stealing and pulling tricks that benefit a tiny minority?

RIP Václav Havel
RIP Frank Zappa

How to travel with your rights intact (or, How much time have you got?)

Air travel in America--at any time of year--carries with it a certain amount of stress and worry no matter how well-prepared we are. During the holidays, however, airports are routinely more crowded and travelers more harried, with weather events causing flight delays and global events often leading to frequent changes in security procedures that are almost impossible to keep up with (and, to be sure, that are inconsistently applied, further adding to the confusion).

Those of us who do not wish to give up our civil liberties in order to get from Point A to Point B might face additional delays. The ACLU offers excellent guidelines for navigating airport security, but even they warn travelers that "opting out" of the notorious scanners, for example, will probably mean you'll have to wait for an appropriate agent to be located (or freed up) in order to perform the also-notorious "enhanced pat-down". And if you decline to answer a question during the so-called SPOT interview, you may well be selected for secondary screening. Meaning, more delay. From their website:

OPTION: Decline to answer

You can decline to answer questions or reply to each question politely with the simple words, “personal business.” However, if the TSA officer does not feel that you are answering his or her questions, they may select you for secondary screening.

Clearly, the vast majority of travelers are interested in getting to their destination (and out of that crowded, hectic airport!) as quickly and smoothly as possible. Thus, the TSA dangles the carrot of convenience over our heads: "Just go through the scanner; it's much quicker!" or else "If you refuse to answer more specifically, we'll have to send you through secondary screening, which is currently backed up and could take...oh, another forty-five minutes to an hour, at least".

Regardless of what your personal boundaries are when it comes to acceptable intrusions into your privacy, if you must travel by air, it makes sense to be as fully-informed about current security conditions as possible, and if you're flying with medical devices, medicine, or breast milk, to print out the TSA's own rules--you have the right to request that an office conduct a "visual inspection"--and carry them with you in case the agent you encounter doesn't appear to be terribly well-versed in them. (Although as observers will note, even doing just that--printing out the TSA's rules for medicines and milk, etc., and carrying a copy with you--will not always prevent your being unfairly detained and seriously delayed, as this unfortunate working mother discovered.)

TSA Newsblogger Sommer Gentry has an excellent post that further details what the TSA can and cannot do. She describes how she avoids the scanner machines in part by choosing her routes (and airports) carefully and provides a link to TSA Status, which is updated frequently (almost in real-time!) and lets travelers know which airports (and terminals) are using the scanners, and to what degree. She further reminds us that:

Every traveler has a right to refuse TSA searches

If the TSA tries to do something to you that you find offensive, you should say no. Although the TSA has threatened travelers with fines and tried to argue that walking away isn’t permitted, in practice the TSA has no power other than the power to deny you access to the boarding gates. The police do have the power to detain you, but that requires individualized suspicion, something that you do not exhibit merely by purchasing an airline ticket.

Since the TSA has steadfastly refused to describe exactly what anyone might be subjected to at a checkpoint, many travelers will find themselves pressured to bow to unpredictable and unreasonable demands. For instance, a handful of flyers report being physically strip searched in private rooms, and some women were coerced to bare their breasts to male screeners in a stairwell – would you comply?

Protecting yourself from invasive searches requires only willingness to abandon your travel plans and make new ones. United Airlines was wonderful and rebooked me for a later flight the same day from Reagan Airport, where there are no scanners in Terminal A. The United employee who helped me even agreed with my stance, telling me that he thought the scanners were “not decent. They shouldn’t do that to people, it’s just not decent.”

To my mind, the best (and perhaps most difficult-to-follow) security-related travel advice of all is this sentence: Protecting yourself from invasive searches requires only willingness to abandon your travel plans and make new ones.

Which means, research other flight options well beforehand, if possible, and plan your day accordingly. If you wish to avoid the scanners for privacy or health reasons (or both), build in plenty of extra time for the agency to locate that elusive special person to do the enhanced pat-down. If you're 100% opposed to being physically searched on certain parts of your body--and plenty of us are, for a number of reasons--understand that you may have to walk from that particular flight and take another one, perhaps from a different terminal or city, even.

As for me, I was thrilled to recently learn that Tampa has a lovely renovated and historic train station which is itself a "tourist destination"--where have I been?!--although I am not so thrilled to learn that the TSA has been conducting passenger searches and pat-downs, as part of the VIPR program, at Amtrak and bus stations too. And John Pistole is pressuring Congress to add 12 more VIPR units to the current 25 in 2012.

That's another post for another day.

Also at TSA News Blog.

The US government's unconscionable and unconstitutional brutality toward its own peaceful citizens

Police begin pepper-spraying the faces of peaceful student protesters at UC Davis; shortly thereafter, they beat them and held them down, forcing pepper spray down their throats.

Photo by Louise Macabitas

"I want to be very clear in calling upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters. The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere." —President Barack Obama

Oh yeah?

The United States will stand up for them everywhere?

What about right here at home, President Obama? What about refraining from violence against peaceful protesters RIGHT HERE IN AMERICA? Or is it easier to just turn the whole thing over to the jackboots in Homeland Security and let them coordinate these shocking, brutal crackdowns as you distance yourself from the Occupy movement lest you piss off your Wall Street donors?

Where is the leadership?

Not to go all Emoprog here, but really, What the fuck, President Obama?

WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP?

#ThisIsNotAmerica

Taking it to the belly of the beast: Occupy the Boardroom

This project--Occupy the Boardroom--is the newborn brainchild of friends, and it is brilliant, having truly taken off, and just in the past week. Even Jamie Dimon has received (and opened) his messages. Limitless greed and malfeasance on the part of Wall Street and the banks have devastated the lives of American families everywhere.


Yes, those are some "1-percenters" in the pic; they're yukking it up while actually drinking Champagne on a balcony over the Wall St. protests.

(I love a glass of good Champers as much as anyone, but I'll never be that, er, classy.)

Here, read just one true story. Then go read the rest and get truly pissed-off. You might even be moved to share your own tale with one of the many "pen pals" OTBR has listed. Or else just share the post itself. Courage!

Tax Breaks Aren't For Offshoring Jobs
From July 1, 2008 until May 18, 2010, I worked for JPMorgan Chase. I was hired through a temp service to do internal IT support over the phone. When hired I was told that if I kept my statistics (first call resolution, and call times) down that I would eventually be hired as an actual employee of Chase. Despite my statistics consistently being in the top 10 of all of the employees in my department, not just the other temps, after two years I was not only not hired, but I was laid off. However during that two years other temps with stats much worse than mine were hired. My reason for not being hired was never explained to me. It could have been the fact that I am in a wheelchair and Chase didn’t want a disabled woman bringing up their insurance rates, or perhaps it is because I am a lesbian and other than myself there was one other homosexual in the department who was actually an employee, but was also laid off at the same time as me.

The whole come work for us and we will eventually give you a great job with awesome benefits was just a scheme. In 2008 Chase received a State tax credit from Ohio and in return they were to create 1200 new jobs within the state. So what did they do? They hired a bunch of temporary employees, got their tax credit, and kept the temporary employees on staff long enough to not only not lose their tax credit, but to also set up their call center in the Philippines. Then two years later they laid off hundreds of people causing the state to lose more jobs than they had gained during that two year period. Other internal IT departments were outsourced to Mexico and the credit card fraud department was exported to India. Though you surely know all of this.

So through a loophole in the system your company caused more people in our state to be unemployed and still took taxpayer money to stuff your own pockets with under the guise of being a company creating more jobs.

-Name Withheld

An exemplar extraordinaire--please join me in saying Brava! Bravissima! for Lisa Simeone

Greetings from the warm wilds of Florida's Gulf coast, where exhausted mothers can stop talking (or writing) for weeks before someone notices, and of course all hell (and other great stories) will break loose in the meantime, and someone will eventually go, Er, anyone heard from D in a while?

I know, I know. I am a horrible blogger sometimes--my only excuse is that blogging must necessarily come after all the other concerns, and once those are addressed, I am often too wiped-out to scribble out as much as a grocery list (not that I do those, actually--I'm an incorrigible fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants person). So, personal matters, health matters, and a dire lack of energy on my part have occupied my life and consciousness even as real live human beings have occupied our imagination and city squares, demanding that our leaders pay attention to the vast majority of us--and our serious problems, which include (but are not limited to) the ongoing unemployment disaster, the foreclosure crisis, and the dramatically escalating costs of healthcare in the face of an insurance system that simply does not work.

I have of course been keeping up with the efforts of numerous friends who've participated in the Occupy Wall Street movement (and its many offshoots) and the October2011/Stop the Machine protests, particularly the work of friend and former Cogitamus co-blogger Lisa Simeone.

It will come as no surprise that I support Lisa's work and that I admire her. Tremendously. She has done what so few of us are able or willing to do: put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. Like me, Lisa was appalled at the Wikileaks revelations (re: Afghanistan brutalities) and disgusted at the unconstitutional treatment of PFC Bradley Manning, the soldier responsible for sending the government-embarrassing data to Wikileaks and who remains in prison, without formal charges, to this day.

Unlike me, all safe and comfy in my Florida home with my family and computer, Lisa marched at the White House and got arrested for her efforts.

She participated in the DC protests, keeping us up to date on the demonstrations and police activities alike.

Then, a horrible e-mail: Soundprint had fired her.

Simeone said she was fired Wednesday night by Moira Rankin, executive producer of “Soundprint,” a weekly documentary program that Simeone hosts. The program, independently produced, airs on NPR stations around the country.

“It was bewildering,” Simeone said. “She started by quoting all these reports from the Daily Caller, and I didn’t know even what that was. She said, ‘Are you involved with this organization [October 2011]? I said, ‘Yes, I was one of about 50 people who helped put this together.’ She said, ‘That’s a problem because I’m getting all these calls. I think you violated the NPR code of ethics.’”

“I said, ‘Can you explain how?’” Simeone went on. “Scott Simon writes Op-Eds. Cokie Roberts [is paid] tens of thousand of dollars in fees talking to business groups. Mara Liaason* goes on Fox TV to express her opinions. They all report on the issues — which I don’t do. I finally said, ‘Are you firing me?’ She said yes.”

But Lisa--a freelance radio host and writer, it should be noted, not an employee of NPR--was not buying it.

“I’ve never hid my views and my opinions have never leeched into what I do on NPR. People can listen to all my shows. When I was talking about ‘Tosca,’ I could have talked about the relevance today of Cavaradossi, the tenor who is a political prisoner and who is tortured. I didn’t mention it. It’s a show about opera, for God’s sake.”

There were talks. I wish I had been a fly on the wall. All I know is this: Lisa will continue hosting NPR's World of Opera.

And I hope to hell that a big cable channel will see her and hear her and offer her a plum position reporting on the arts, compensation to include unlimited use of the company's private jets.

Because Lisa--multilingual world traveler and connoisseur of beauty Lisa--has completely stopped flying in protest of the TSA's unconstitutional searches and seizures.

(Lisa, let me know if this comes to pass--I'll go with you to Paris or Palermo. Have vintage suits and old-school round hatboxes and hard-sided suitcases; will travel.)

And thanks also to Sir Charles for writing about this at the Cogblog.

Finally, an early Christmas present for Tucker Carlson:



* Edited to properly report Liaason's name, which Salon had misspelled. -- DNT

Chris Hedges speaks at Occupy Wall Street

Writer and activist Chris Hedges has some powerful things to say about the forces and conditions that have led to the peaceful and many-days-long demonstration currently taking place in New York: Occupy Wall Street (peaceful on the part of protesters, that is; utterly and unforgivably violent on the part of the NYCPD, who are brutalizing and macing non-resisting people left and right, while shouting "Don't resist! I said, STOP RESISTING!" in an obvious attempt to cover their pathetic asses.)

Please watch and share. (And of course, watch the updated videos at Occupy Wall Street and share those, too.)

Book Review: Nassir Ghaemi's A First-Rate Madness is a first-rate read

As I have written about before, I am more than passingly familiar with the euphoria of creativity-filled up-cycles as well as the darkness of their unfortunate counterparts, those hideous depressive phases during which everything seems boring or bleak; tears and hopelessness are the order of the day; and even simple activities like picking out a shirt or brushing hair turn into loathsome, dreaded, and even inexecutable chores--forget actually doing anything productive. So it was with great interest that I dove into the literary results of Dr. Nassir Ghaemi's intriguing research and analysis, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.

Mental illness--well, I like to call it being Mentally Interesting, for which descriptor I will thank the writer (and fellow Mentally Interesting Person) Jerod Poore--is not quite the taboo subject it was a few decades ago; it is no longer a hush-hush domain to which mysteriously disappeared classmates are consigned ("Where did she go?" "I don't know, but I heard she had a nervous breakdown"); and--thank the Fates, along with relatively recent advances in neuroscience--it's no longer a complete mystery (although, it must be said, the human mind is inarguably the last great frontier, and modern medicine has only just begun to embark on its journey toward solving the biochemical and behavioral puzzles therein).

The core thesis of A First-Rate Madness: Rational, calm, balanced, agreeable, reasonable, conciliatory, and sane people are lovely to have around. Ahem. But when all Hell breaks loose, you want a leader who can stand at the edge of the abyss, confront the monster within, and stare that horned and tentacled bastard down. For this kind of nation-saving and history-making leadership, only a Mentally Interesting person will do, knowing as he or she does (like the back of the hand, in fact) the precise reach of said monster's limbs and the explicit scope of its awfulness.

At the outset, Ghaemi identifies the parallel nature of a clinician's diagnosis (of a mentally ill patient) and a historian's analysis. Both require a careful study of symptoms, of course, as well as an identification (if possible) of genetic components and an overview of indicated treatments--those sought, those avoided or not yet available, and those which succeeded (or failed).

Invoking the personal and fascinating stories of figures such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Mahatmas Gandhi, Ghaemi then points to the qualities--conspicuous in their abundance--that variously characterize those leaders who suffer with (and also, to be sure, exalt in) mental illness throughout the course of their lives, those being: Creativity, realism, empathy, and resilience.

In the case of General Sherman, for example, we are shown a leader who wholly transformed warfare from the faltering Napoleonic model of concentrated frontal assault to a bold and creative approach which took into account the economic and moral aspects of rebellion and thus enabled a totality of destruction that was at once brutal and wildly successful. But he was not, despite popular myth, a glorifier of war. Ghaemi explains:

Reconstructing the real Sherman, with his coercion as well as his complexity, means recognizing that he had manic-depressive illness. In fact, of all the leaders in this book, I would say that Sherman is the prototypical mentally ill leader. In different aspects of his bipolar disorder, he displayed many of the powers of mental illness to improve leadership: depressive realism, empathy for the South (before and after the war), resilience beyond measure, and unique military creativity. Yet until recently, no historian had carefully assessed whether Sherman himself suffered from deep, indeed sick emotions. This task was taken up by Michael Fellman, a gregarious American, self-exiled in Canada since the 1960s, where he is professor emeritus of history at Simon Fraser University. A specialist in the American Civil War, Fellman had been taught traditional history: trace the documents of who did what, who said what, and what happened; pull it together for the reader; and let it go. Such history seldom made well-grounded analyses about the abnormal mental states of the people it studied.

Having himself suffered a painful depression, Fellman realized that traditional history was mistaken because such conditions have an enormous impact on people--famous, infamous, and obscure. He became attuned to evidence of abnormal mental states among the Civil War figures he studied. Besides Lincoln's melancholy, Fellman discovered depressive tendencies in Robert E. Lee, and outright mental illness in General Sherman. What followed was a biography--researching and reporting facts based on primary sources--that a century after Sherman's own memoir unmasked the whole man: greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

Greater than we thought, in part because he was much sicker than we knew.

A First-Rate Madness is suffused throughout with this generosity of spirit, with bittersweet reflections and a profoundly humane sensibility. (In fact, while reading it, one might wonder if the author himself is also a Mentally Interesting human being, so impeccable and accurate are his observations of the afflicted.)

To wit: the layperson, upon reading about the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, might infer that pacifism and idealism were both central components of his character and dominant forces that controlled his worldview. Not so, asserts Ghaemi, who proceeds to construct a portrait far richer, and more textured and heartbreakingly real, than any study of Dr. King this writer has encountered to date (my emphasis):

The Martin Luther King of popular mythology is a cardboard icon, brought out once a year on a holiday, with little resemblance to the real historical man. The cardboard King was a pacifist idealist; he wanted everyone to make peace and hold hands. The real King was an aggressive, confrontational realist; he believed that all men were evil in part, including himself; he thought that violence was everywhere and unavoidable, including within himself. "Nonviolence" did not mean the absence of violence, but the control of violence so that it was directed inward rather than outward.

And there are many, many more such insights to be appreciated in this fine book, as well as a clear-eyed analysis of those leaders whose personalities might best be described as even-keeled, rational, or else well-balanced, but whose marks on history--if even they made any--are mostly pastel-hued and watery as opposed to fierce, glittering, bloody, or--invoking here the title of another enlightening book by a thoughtful psychologist (Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison)--touched by fire.

A written work may be described as truly successful, I think, when you find yourself quoting it in your head, even weeks and months after having read its final passages. Inasmuch as I have been doing just that--taking in the words and deeds of our current American leadership with new eyes, even--I'd say that A First-Rate Madness is an extraordinary accomplishment. And I highly recommend it.

-------------

Footnote:

Unlike numerous recently-published tomes, Dr. Ghaemi's book--refreshingly, and perhaps intentionally--steers clear of former half-term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, despite her erratic behavior, propensity to deceive, and general mental instability, all of which are topics of analysis you'd think would be irresistible to any academic psychiatrist, particularly one who's exploring the connection between mental illness and leadership. When I wondered aloud why this might be so, my son's quip provided the obvious answer:

"That's because she's not a leader, Mama."

UPDATE: be sure to check out Dr. Ghaemi's blog, Mood Swings.

It's hard to believe he was a Republican

“Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

- President Dwight Eisenhower (R)

Break for beauty: the amazing Alina Cojocaru dances Don Quixote with Johan Korborg

Meet Alina Cojocaru, a stunningly talented Romanian ballerina--now a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet of London--who in my humble opinion may well become the next Margot Fonteyn (and as you can imagine, I would never make such comparisons lightly). I'm not certain of the date of this performance; Cojocaru's Kirti (in Don Quixote) marked her debut ballet with the Kiev school in the mid-nineties, when she was a teen. She's now thirty and is engaged to her partner Johan Korborg, who, as you can see in this clip, is no slouch himself.

But as for Cojocaru...*sigh*...what beautiful lines and what absolutely incredible extension. I watched this three times, with a goosebumps bristling along my limbs and lump wedged in my throat. She's technically near-perfect but is by no means a flawless dancer, not yet: she travels a tiny bit while executing those whiplash fouettes, for one thing. And dancing Kirti requires more fire, at least to my romantic mind. Cojocaru will mature and develop subtleties like emotionality and musicality over time. In this performance, however, she is perhaps too calm and collected.

Nonetheless, I am sure Dame Margot would approve. I know I'll be watching.

Mutinous Memories

My Mum recently sent me the link to a 2005 article in Miami New Times about the heyday of a certain notorious nightclub in that city, where I lived as a teenager. It was called The Mutiny:

In its time there was nothing like the Mutiny Hotel and today it lives on in hindsight like the afterimage of a hallucination, bright but blurry. The Mississippi Delta is said to begin in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis; likewise the Mutiny in its day defined Miami's psychic boundaries. It was the nerve center of the city's exploding cocaine trade, a favorite hangout of globetrotting spies, and a desperately popular watering hole for Latin America's nouveau riche. It was meant to be elegant, and was, but early on it became infamous and edgy, and reveled in the reputation. Its most decadent highs were a carnival barker's advertisement for the Seventies, and its decline was an early object lesson in America's S&L crisis."I did a movie called life, with actors that were real people," says Burton Goldberg, former owner of the Mutiny. "We had dictators, secret police, drug people, bankers, the international trade, gunrunners, and celebrities: Rod Serling, Senator Kennedy, Cher, Hamilton Jordan, Jacqueline Onassis, George Bush. Mimes and magicians! Naked dancers in very fine taste, not prurient! Music! Chairs with enormous arms!

As it so happens, the Mutiny was where Yours Truly worked as a waitress for several months during a semester-long hiatus from my junior year at UF. A few years ago, I wrote about the experience here at Litbrit, as well for Ezra's eponymously-titled blog. At the time, I changed the names of the club--and certain patrons--to protect the not-so-innocent. But what the hell, the club itself is no more, and my choice of faux names--The Uprising--was a pretty transparent synonym for the club's real name, anyway.

If you like Scarface and spy novels--or perhaps just fancy a break from all the politics and sad, sad 9/11 stuff that's on the tube and in the 'Tubes this week--you might enjoy my little memoir/story about working and living it up Miami-style at the end of the Disco age. I invite you to read Sunshine, Cigar Boxes, and Semi-Automatics:

With Lena's help, I opened and poured bottle after bottle of Dom Pérignon; I served Ceasar salads and filets mignon and enormous Maine lobsters erupting crabmeat and brandied cream; and I brought several glasses of Johnny Walker Black on the rocks from the bar, where I'd already made friends with Sam, an art student at Florida International and a fellow Monty Python wonk.

"Alberto's here again, huh?" he said when I requested the third such cocktail. "Though pretty much everyone drinks this, you'll find. But it's Monday, and there aren't too many people who can put away this much Scotch on a weeknight." He drained the bottle and slipped its nozzle onto a new, full one. "You'll have fun here. You'll make good money."

So I had heard. But thus far, Lena and I had waited on exactly one party.

By three in the morning, though, I'd served a few other tables and opened another half-dozen bottles of Champagne. Alberto and his crew were beginning to look restless, but they hadn't asked for the check. I was certain it would be outrageous, well into the hundreds of dollars; Lena informed me that the two grand Alberto spent that night was nothing compared to some of his weekend expenditures, indeed, nothing compared to the bankrolls through which some of the club's other guests regularly burned. [Continued...]