Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Virtual Target Practice
Trey Smith
In a recently released report about the Sandy Hook school shooting of last December, one of the revelations is that the shooter (Adam Lanza) possessed a video game called School Shooting. As reported by the Guardian, the game features "a character controlled by the player who enters a school and shoots students."
I am sure that some people will point to this particular game as being a cause of the tragedy. Other people will broaden the scope to say that all violent video games are part of the problem and, consequently, should be banned. Still others will point out that millions of people play violent video games and yet they don't commit heinous acts, so the problem obviously isn't the games themselves.
Where do I stand on the issue? Sort of in the middle.
I do think violent video games are part of the problem, but that doesn't mean that I believe they should be singled out. Violence permeates our society. Our federal government has a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. This perspective has trickled down to local police forces. Even ordinary citizens -- like George Zimmerman -- wrap themselves in the shoot first mantra.
Most of the top box office draws in the film industry employ varying degrees of violence to sell tickets. The same is true for television programs. Heck, a good deal of the most popular music these days is filled with violent themes. When you add in the amount of violence showcased in a great deal of the "hallowed" religious tracts from the Abrahamic religions, the whole thing ends up tied neatly with a bow!
Yes, a video game entitled School Shooting is vulgar, but so too are the violent themes that seem to worm their way into every nook, cranny and crevice of our lives. Banning one tiny element won't make that much difference at all.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Shenzi II
Scott Bradley
Though he is said to have written 42 essays, only 7 fragments of Shenzi's work have survived. The greatest part of these, on 6 bamboo strips from the Warring States Period, are inaccessible to the non-Chinese speaker. A treatment of these fragments is to be found in one doctrinal thesis (The Shen Dao Fragments; Paul Thompson) but is only available at an extravagant price. What remains for this author, therefore, is what we have in the Tianxia (33rd) chapter of the Zhuangzi. This chapter critiques many of the philosophers of the Warring States Period, including Shenzi.
The author of this chapter clearly seems (to me) to have been a syncretist of decidedly Confucian persuasion. A.C. Graham includes it in his Syncretist School of chapters. Liu Xiaogan, who also sees this and other chapters as syncretist but prefers a more contemporaneous designation, includes it in his Huang-Lao School (Chapters 11B-16, 33). He believes this school of thought to have been part of a larger Zhuangzi School, but to have significantly diverged from him in its efforts to integrate Confucianism and Legalism with 'Daoism'. Daoism, as we currently think of it, he goes on to say, has its beginnings in Huang-Lao. I would add that his other two divisions of the School of Zhuangzi, the Transmitter School (those closest to Zhuangzi's thought) (Chapters 17-27, 32) and the Anarchist School (those most removed from his thought) (Chapters 8-11A, 28, 29, 31) also diverge toward what became religious Daoism. [The 30th Chapter, "Discoursing on Swords", is considered by nearly all scholars to be completely spurious and unworthy of inclusion in the Zhuangzi.]
My reading of the Tianxia chapter sees the author as more Confucian than Daoist; he does not even presume to critique Confucianism, but rather suggests it as the true, all-encompassing dao by which to critique all the others, including the proto-Daoists Shenzi and Zhuangzi. All other philosophies are the product of "nook and cranny scholars" who got some of the true dao, but not all. His analysis of Shenzi's thought is thus necessarily skewed.
This is not to say, however, that he does not appreciate many aspects of Shenzi's dao. In fact, what he does affirm in Shenzi, and indeed most all the other daos he critiques (Huizi and his fellow rhetoricians are alone in being unaffirmable), would probably make a true Confucian squirm. His Confucianism is in fact syncretistic and unorthodox.
The next post should hopefully begin to actually examine what Tianxia had to say about Shenzi.
You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Shenzi I
Scott Bradley
As previously stated, Chad Hansen ("A Tao of Tao in Chuang-Tzu"; Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu) makes a great deal of what he understands to be Shenzi's (Shen Dao) "absolute mysticism" as a means of contrast with Zhuangzi's abandonment of all "absolutism". In other words, he understands Shenzi to have asserted the existence of a metaphysical Dao, the context of which informs our life-engagement, whereas Zhuangzi made no such assertion, but was completely skeptical of any such metaphysics, and instead suggested there are as many daos as there are people to hold/walk them. If his reading of Shenzi is correct, then I agree whole-heartedly with this conclusion. However, I am not so sure that this interpretation of Shenzi is entirely correct, or if it is true that he believed in a metaphysical Dao, that that should be understood as forming the foundation for his philosophy generally. In any case, I have long found the presentation of Shenzi's so-called 'proto-Daoism' (and 'proto-Legalism') in the Tianxia (33rd) chapter of the Zhuangzi quite thought-provoking, and Hansen's use of him has renewed that interest.
A few biographical facts about Shenzi are in order, but first it seems important to say that what makes his thought particularly interesting to me is that it is a philosophy of life. He asks and answers the question, how best to live. This is the norm for classical Chinese philosophy, but is frequently not the case today where philosophical inquiry seems to exist for its own sake, as a self-fulfilling intellectual exercise (Knowledge for knowledge's sake). Thus, we might discuss Shenzi in a 'scholarly' manner without reference to how it informs our living, but this is not what this inquiry is about. My interest is in whether he has something to add to or can shed further light upon that way of being in the world advocated by Zhuangzi. And it is this way I am endeavoring to better understand for the purpose of growing and living my own philosophy of life.
Shenzi (ca. 395-315 B.C.E.) is thought to have been a contributing scholar at the Jixia Academy in Qi, where philosophers of many stripes were invited to reside with the financial support of the government. His dates make him as an elder contemporary of Zhuangzi (ca. 369-286 B.C.E.) and thus his thought may very well have informed that of Zhuangzi, though they make no mention of each other.
Shenzi is considered both a precursor of both Daoism and Legalism. The latter believed human nature to be essentially 'evil' and thus necessitating the constraints of law (fa) with its rewards and punishments. What makes Shenzi a possible influence upon both these otherwise polar opposite points of view is his belief that nature is amoral. This was a break from Confucianism which understood 'Heaven' as a moral force which, if we could understand its principles, would guide us to the only best way to live. Mencius, possibly another member of the Jixia Academy, was the greatest advocate of this view, and consequentially declared human nature 'good'.
From here, we will take yet another look at Shenzi from the perspective of the Tianxia.
You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Dating the Laozi
Scott Bradley
In the Afterword to his Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters, Liu Xiaogan takes up the problem of dating the Laozi (Daodejing). Once again, he concludes, based on language and style, that the traditional view that it was written by an elder contemporary of Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.) is most likely. I find his arguments convincing (in the context of my own lack of expertise), but the question is far from entirely resolved. I would note also that Liu tends to prejudice traditional views and considers them best until proven otherwise. Personally, I do not share that trust.
For my part, after no analysis, I have suggested that the Laozi was written (or perhaps finally compiled and codified) after Zhuangzi wrote the Inner Chapters and before the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, which frequently quote it. Zhuangzi, however, does not quote it at all, even though he frequently makes use of the reputed author, Laozi (Lao Dan) in his stories. I have also suggested, though again without any real evidence, that Zhuangzi might have even made Laozi up as he did so many other characters. In any case, he is not loath to quote other philosophers — Confucius, Huizi, Gongsun Long, and Song Rongzi come to mind — so why would he not quote Laozi in whose mouth he puts so many of his own words? That he is aware of the writings of these and other philosophers, moreover, would suggest that if there were a Laozi at the time of his writing, he would have probably been familiar with it.
This is even more curious when we consider how Zhuangzi's writing has traditionally been seen as an elaboration and amplification of the Laozi. He is not much of a disciple who completely ignores the words of his master. But then, I do not think this view is correct; though they have much in common, Zhuangzi's philosophy is something else altogether, and though he certainly inherited much from others working on similar paths, his thought is in many ways unique. To my thinking, if one follows a path inspired by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, then the Laozi is only secondarily helpful, not the other way around.
One reason I am happy to break this supposed link between Zhuangzi and the Laozi is because the latter is largely thought to contain metaphysical statements which are then projected onto Zhuangzi. Hansen, in the previously discussed article dismissive of a Zhuangzian mysticism, makes oblique reference to this link as evidence of a traditional imposition of a mysticism full of metaphysical content. Whether the Laozi does or does not contain such statements I will not venture to say, but I will say that Zhuangzi does not.
You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Dating and Sorting the Zhuangzi
Scott Bradley
A great deal of effort has gone into dating and sorting out the various parts of the Zhuangzi. This can be an important exercise in as much as it helps us to better understand the book as a whole and how one part might inform our understanding of the others. We must also remember, however, that what we do understand of the philosophy contained therein is that there comes a point at which we must psychologically toss aside the fish-trap after catching the fish. Or, as Zhuangzi longingly pleads, "Who has forgotten words that I might have some words with him?" He would, in fact, have enjoyed the discussion about this book that bears his name, but he would not have missed its message which goes well beyond words.
This having been said, I will now sum up the conclusions reached by Liu Xiaogan in his important study Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters. For the most part I think we can say that his conclusions tend toward the traditional understanding of dates and authorship with the notable exception of his recognizing that there were in fact many authors. (Amazingly, it was not until rather late that commentators such as Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692) began to question the authorship of Zhuangzi for the entire book.) I won't relate his evidence for these conclusions except to say that they mostly deal with word usage, historical references (in and to the Zhuangzi), and style. None of his conclusions are definitive, but only strongly indicative of a tentative position.
The Inner Chapters (1-7) were written in the Mid-Warring States Period, which is to say during the time of Zhuangzi (ca. 369-286 B.C.E.) who can thus be assumed to be their author. These chapters evince a significant inner coherence that suggests their having been written by one hand. This also dismisses the idea, promoted by A. C. Graham, that they were "cobbled together" by an unknown editor or editors. (Liu also takes strong exception to Graham's assertion that they are "mutilated" and especially to his presumption to have added passages from other chapters to 'reconstruct' them.)
The Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters were all written at the end of the Warring States Period and before the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.E.). (Many scholars believe that some chapters were written in the early Han (206 B.C.E.-220 A.D.))
The actual compilation of the book (delivered to Guo Xiang (252-312) as 52 chapters and pared down to our present 33) took place shortly thereafter. The various titles were also assigned early on, many, especially those of the Inner Chapters, possibly at the time of the chapters having been written.
The authors of the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters were many, but were all what today we would call of Daoist persuasion. (This too differs from Graham who suggests 4 schools: Zhuangzi (“Daoist”), Primitivist, Yangist, and Syncretist.) Liu has 3 groups: Transmitters of Zhuangzi, Huang-Lao (a more social adaptation), and Anarchist.
You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
A Major Case of Oops!
Trey Smith
A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.
The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.
Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
~ from US Nearly Detonated Atomic Bomb Over North Carolina -- Secret Document by Ed Pilkington ~
Setting aside the issue of so-called nuclear safety for a moment, if this bomb had indeed detonated, what do you think the American public -- those who were still alive -- would have been told at the time? Remember that this would have occurred at the height of the Cold War, only 1.5 years ahead of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While no one can know for sure what would have been declared, my guess is that President Kennedy would have gone on TV to announce that we had been attacked by Russia and that American nuclear warheads were on the way to Russia as he spoke. Because of an inopportune accident of mammoth proportions, the world as we know it today would not exist. No, it would be a giant nuclear wasteland!
This is why nuclear weapons -- just like chemical and biological ones -- should be outlawed and ANY nation that processes them should destroy them safely at breakneck speed. While conventional weaponry is bad enough, one inadvertent oops involving a nuclear warhead could alter life on this planet for everyone, not just the hapless victims of where the munition exploded. Since most governments are reluctant to admit their own mistakes, the enemy -- whoever that happens to be at the time -- would get blamed and this one accident most likely would set off a chain reaction that humanity would never recover from.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Accepting the Unacceptable
Trey Smith
Whether in the realms of sports, entertainment, business, politics or everyday life, many aging civil rights leaders bemoan the fact that today's black Americans have forgotten the long struggle of their forefathers and foremothers as they struggled for equal rights under the law. Because they didn't face the stark brutality of fire hoses, police dogs, batons, bombings, lynchings and burning crosses, many of today's blacks take for granted the sacrifice of those who came before them.
Henry Porter makes much the same point in regards to the British reaction to the many revelations of the ubiquitous spying programs on both sides of the pond.
At a wedding last week, I was sitting next to a novelist who was writing about the cold war, so I told her the story of how the Secret Intelligence Service thanked all its agents in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a moving story from another age and I know it to be true.
As Germany approached unification, Her Majesty's government authorised payments of – I believe – 30,000 DM (£10,200) to all the agents who had risked life and liberty to help MI6. A team of intelligence officers was deployed to track down former agents, or their families, and present the cheque with the government's gratitude. It was a long and emotional job, for the young officers heard many agonising stories about loss, sacrifice and years spent in prison.
At length, there was one individual left on the list. He arrived at MI6's office on the main thoroughfare of Unter den Linden, in the old East Berlin, but instead of taking the money, he rushed out back on to the street, pursued by one of the spies with the cheque. He rejected it for a second time, gesturing frantically towards the Brandenburg Gate. Didn't the British government understand that he'd done it all so that his children could walk through the gate as free citizens?
This captures a lot about the times that formed my political beliefs, as well as the miracle of the 1989 liberation. During the cold war, we valued freedom and privacy because we compared our lives to the tyrannical conditions in the Communist bloc. Whatever the faults of western societies, we knew we were better than those societies and we knew that we were right .
The story has been playing in my mind recently, because all summer I have been puzzling over the lack of reaction in Britain to the Snowden revelations about US and UK communications surveillance, a lack that at some moments has seemed even more remarkable than the revelations themselves. Today, apparently, we are at ease with a system of near total intrusion that would have horrified every adult Briton 25 years ago. Back then, western spies acknowledged the importance of freedom by honouring the survivors of those networks; now, they spy on their own people.
By and large, the US reaction has been a lot more muted than I expected. I truly thought that many Americans would be become unglued and that these revelations might lead to a WTO in Seattle or an Occupy Movement kind of reaction. Sadly, few organizations have taken up the cause. More people are demonstrating in the nation's capitol today against missile strikes in Syria (a noble cause) than against a government that is trying to outlaw privacy.
One of things that used to make Americans feel proud of this nation was our emphasis on liberty. We fought a revolution against the English crown and, when we won, we crafted the US Constitution that, among other things, contained a Bill of Rights. While these rights always have been imperfectly applied, American citizens, by and large, enjoyed the right to privacy. Though the US Constitution has not been altered in this regard, that right has been jettisoned from the document by the Executive Branch and neither the legislative nor judicial branches have served as much of a roadblock.
When I was a schoolchild in the 60s, one of things heralded as a major difference between the US and USSR (or Communist China) was that, unlike my Russian counterparts, I didn't have to worry about the KGB infiltrating society and watching my every move. I was free to be me and, unless I was engaged in nefarious illegal activities, I had not a thing to worry about. I could be a socialite, business leader, academician or even a dissident and no one would be culling through my communications or rifling through my personal affects.
That stuff only happened in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, despots or demagogs. That only happened in Communist, Nazi or Fascist nations. I was blessed to live in the United States of America, the titular home of the brave and the free.
My Goodness. How times have changed!
Friday, September 6, 2013
Severely Wounded, But Not Crippled
Trey Smith
In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the attic of an old house in London. Britain’s subservient Government Communications Headquarters, its version of the NSA, is paid off and the contraption is flown to Fort Meade, Maryland, where it’s put back in working order. Alexander then revs it up and heads not into the future like Wells to see how our world ends, but into the past to offer a warning to Americans about what’s to come.
He arrives in Washington on October 23, 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a day after President Kennedy has addressed the American people on national television to tell them that this planet might not be theirs -- or anyone else’s -- for long. ("We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced.") Greeted with amazement by the Washington elite, Alexander, too, goes on television and informs the same public that, in 2013, the major enemy of the United States will no longer be the Soviet Union, but an outfit called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that the headquarters of our country’s preeminent foe will be found somewhere in the rural backlands of... Yemen.
Yes, Yemen, a place most Americans, then and now, would be challenged to find on a world map. I guarantee you one thing: had such an announcement actually been made that day, most Americans would undoubtedly have dropped to their knees and thanked God for His blessings on the American nation. Though even then a nonbeliever, I would undoubtedly have been among them. After all, the 18-year-old Tom Engelhardt, on hearing Kennedy’s address, genuinely feared that he and the few pathetic dreams of a future he had been able to conjure up were toast.
Had Alexander added that, in the face of AQAP and similar minor jihadist enemies scattered in the back lands of parts of the planet, the U.S. had built up its military, intelligence, and surveillance powers beyond anything ever conceived of in the Cold War or possibly in the history of the planet, Americans of that time would undoubtedly have considered him delusional and committed him to an asylum.
Such, however, is our world more than two decades after Eastern Europe was liberated, the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War definitively ended, and the Soviet Union disappeared.
~ from And Then There Was One by Tom Engelhardt ~
It amazes me that, no matter how frequently we're told that al-Qaeda has been seriously wounded, it continues to be such a supposedly feared enemy. It is like the cat with nine lives. No matter how many higher ups we neutralize, the threat never diminishes.
Think about the number of reports within the last decade. We took out the head -- one bin Laden -- and several operational commanders and yet the War on Terror hasn't skipped a beat. This represents a weird paradox for the US Commander-in-Chief (Bush or Obama). To prove that our military might is needed and capable, the president must announce successes in our continuous war against the Axis of Evil. He must show that we are wounding our supposed adversary. But he can't tell us that we've crippled them...because if al-Qaeda was said to be crippled, then the rationale for our continued militarization and increased mass surveillance would be greatly lessened.
Accordingly, he must straddle the line between saying that we are winning this war, BUT the war itself is far from over. Yes, we hold the upper hand, but our hand must remain on the throttle, lest we lose our superior position.
So, we continue to build the largest military and mass surveillance system the world has ever known in order to combat ragtag outfits skulking around in caves and other out of the way locales. It seems a bit surreal, doesn't it?
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Many Decades Later
Trey Smith
There are lots of "kooks" out there who refuse to accept the government's version of what took place on 9/11. Some say it was an inside job. Others contend that the US didn't act on intelligence it had in hand. Some say the towers that came down were the result of controlled demolitions, not airplanes flying into buildings. Some assert that a missile, not an aircraft, hit the Pentagon.
(Personally, I don't know what to believe. I don't accept the government's version, but I don't ascribe to a particular conspiracy theory.)
Whenever people doubt the veracity of the official story, countless others dismiss their theories or questions with a simple declaration: If what a given conspiracy theorist says is true, don't you think the truth would have leaked out by now? It is because the official version has stood up to the test of time that we should accept it as fact.
But here is the problem with that simplistic rationale: The true nature of events often does not come out for years...or decades. We often learn that the official storyline was a well-manufactured lie. Take, for example, the revelation concerning the CIA and Iran that came out 2 weeks ago.
Sixty years after the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a declassified CIA document acknowledges that the agency was involved in the 1953 coup.
The independent National Security Archive research institute, which published the document Monday, says the declassification is believed to mark the CIA's first formal acknowledgment of its involvement.
The documents, declassified in 2011 and given to George Washington University research group under the Freedom of Information Act, come from the CIA's internal history of Iran from the mid-1970s and paint a detailed picture of how the CIA worked to oust Mossadegh.
In a key line pointed out by Malcom Byrne, the editor who worked through the documents, the CIA spells out its involvement in the coup. "The military coup that overthrew Mossadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," the document says, using a variation of the spelling of Mossadegh's name.
While this might be the CIA's first formal nod, the U.S. role has long been known.
President Barack Obama acknowledged the United States' involvement in the coup during a 2009 speech in Cairo.
"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," the president said.
In 2000, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke of the intervention, and in the same year, the New York Times published what it said was a leaked 1954 CIA-written account of the overthrow.
Even if we take 2000 as the year that the truth of this matter was first revealed, that still is 47 years after the fact! That is 47 years in which conspiracy theorists were labeled as kooks. It is 47 years of people being told that, if the conspiracy theorists were correct, why hasn't the truth leaked out?
If we apply this formula to 9/11, then we really won't know what happened until 2048 (when I would be, if still alive, 91 years old).
Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you that this or that conspiracy theorist is a certifiable kook. That kook may turn out to be right...30 or so years down the road.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
And Here We Are Again
Trey Smith
Remember when the US attacked Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)...only they didn't really have them? UN inspectors simply couldn't find what US leaders declared was, at the time, incontrovertible evidence. It came out later that these same US leaders knew that Iraq didn't possess WMDs; it was just a manufactured excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.
Today, the US is beating similar war drums again. This time around we're being told that there is strong evidence that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons against their own people. As it currently stands, there is no incontrovertible proof a) there was a chemical attack in Syria and b) who might be responsible for it, if it did occur.
Yesterday, UN inspectors attempted to visit the sites of the supposed occurrence of chemical weapons usage. They visited the first site, but could not visit the others because they came under heavy sniper fire.
Now, why would they come under sniper fire? There are two very plausible explanations. First, the sniper fire could have come from elements of the Syrian government forces because they wanted to prevent the UN inspectors from discovering that chemical weapons had, indeed, been used. But there is another scenario that is just as likely: The sniper fire came from rebel forces because they want to prevent UN inspectors from discovering that there is no evidence of a chemical attack.
Look, I have no idea which scenario is the correct one, but I lean toward the latter. I lean this way simply because we know that US leaders have a propensity for using trumped up rationale to enter into war. When the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor back in 1898 from unknown causes, this event was used as justification to commence the Spanish-American War. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident? A very distorted description of it was utilized as a pretense to escalate the use of American forces in Vietnam. And then, of course, we have the more recent example of Iraq.
It just seems to me that the US has an itchy trigger finger! With the "war" in Afghanistan supposedly winding down, the military-industrial complex needs a new target. The best way to justify our humungous defense budget is to be engaged in a war...somewhere. Since, lately, war means attacking Muslims, Syria will do!
And there is another reason a "war" in Syria is so needed right now. The US brass needs to find something to divert attention away from the NSA scandal. A war would certainly do the trick!!
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Has Joe Come Back From the Great Beyond?
Trey Smith
Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama. The effect of the charge on a person's life – being viewed as a traitor, being shunned by family and friends, incurring massive legal bills – is all a part of the plan to force the whistleblower into personal ruin, to weaken him to the point where he will plead guilty to just about anything to make the case go away. I know. The three espionage charges against me made me one of "the Obama Seven".
In early 2012, I was arrested and charged with three counts of espionage and one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). (I was only the second person in US history to be charged with violating the IIPA, a law that was written to be used against rogues like Philip Agee.)
Two of my espionage charges were the result of a conversation I had with a New York Times reporter about torture. I gave him no classified information – only the business card of a former CIA colleague who had never been undercover. The other espionage charge was for giving the same unclassified business card to a reporter for ABC News. All three espionage charges were eventually dropped.
So, why charge me in the first place?
It was my punishment for blowing the whistle on the CIA's torture program and for confirming to the press, despite government protestations to the contrary, that the US government was, indeed, in the business of torture.
~ from Obama's Abuse of the Espionage Act Is Modern-Day McCarthyism by John Kiriakou ~
In talking to people age 40 and younger, I'm often amazed that few of them know much of anything about former President Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Heck, many of them are unaware that, in fact, Nixon served as US President! This has led me to wonder about the state of the teaching of history in schools. If we, as a nation, don't understand our shared history, we are bound to repeat it.
Though I was not alive during the vast majority of the Red Scare of the 1950s -- I was born in 1957 -- I have studied a lot about the period known as McCarthyism. If you are unfamiliar with this period, here's a brief introduction from Wikipedia.
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.
During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment.
Sadly, I think Kiriakou's charge is right on target. The President, members of his administration and key supporters are treating whistleblowers the same way McCarthy treated "suspected" communists. They certainly are trying to ruin the lives of anyone who makes them look bad and by "look bad" I mean anyone who exposes their reckless and potentially criminal actions.
And let's be clear. Neither Kiriakou, Manning or Snowden was involved in the act of espionage. They weren't spying for a foreign government and they certainly didn't do what they did for money. No, they acted out of conscience -- something that supposedly is protected by law. But none of this matters to those who hold the reigns of power. The political elite want to do whatever they want to do and they don't want the rest of us to know about it!
Anyone who has the temerity to stand up against them will pay dearly, even if it means twisting the Espionage Act into a pretzel.
Monday, July 29, 2013
Attempting to Rewrite History
Trey Smith
While the 10-part 2013/1984 miniseries is now in the rear view mirror, it is not like I plan never to make reference to Orwell again! I have spent the past few days ruminating about how the rhetoric from the NSA apologists during the brief debate about the Amash amendment in the US House last week reminded me of the chief function of Oceania's Ministry of Truth: Rewriting history.
The centerpiece for those who sought defeat of said amendment was that putting a halt to the NSA's indiscriminate vacuuming up of telephonic metadata -- particularly the data of millions of innocent Americans -- would leave the US open to another terrorist attack like 9/11. Without this valuable tool, they argued, we would once again become sitting ducks.
It sounds like a plausible argument...IF you neglect the facts concerning the months before the 2001 attack. As it turns out, both the FBI and CIA -- using intelligence methods already in place -- had tried to warn the Bush administration of the growing threat. Both agencies had picked up quite a bit of intelligence that indicated that an attack -- utilizing airplanes as weapons -- was in the offing, possibly within the borders of the US itself.
The problem was NOT that these spy agency were hamstrung because they lacked the necessary tools to figure out what was going on -- the problem was the lack of political will to act on the intelligence information already gathered! In other words, even though the program being debated in the US House last week [supposedly] did not exist at that time, our intelligence community still was close to being on top of the situation.
But these facts did not undergird the position of the naysayers, so they threw them aside. They sought to rewrite history so that it bolstered their political agenda. The mainstream media played its trusty role by amplifying this historical rewrite by not pointing out that the history involved pointed in the other direction.
In the coming weeks and months, the NSA apologists will utilize this historical rewrite again and again. In time, if we don't challenge them, history itself may become rewritten. If we allow them to lie long and loud enough, it won't matter what is true because most people will come to accept the falsehood as a historical fact and today's Ministry of Truth will have accomplished its main objective.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
It's Not So Bad
Trey Smith
In conversations with people in my local community, I have discerned a pattern. While most people look on the NSA's massive surveillance programs disfavorably, they concurrently conclude that it's not so bad. I have nothing to hide is a common refrain.
My question is: How can you be sure? How do you know what the surveillance state specifically is looking for? How do you know that something that today is constitutionally-protected activity might later be deemed not to be or, even worse, that the people snooping don't care if it's constitutionally-protected activity?
Remember Martin Luther King, Jr.? He was never considered to be a terrorist threat. It wasn't alleged that he had ever killed anyone, embezzled funds or bribed public officials. In fact, no one ever suspected that he was up to anything illegal at all (other than OVERT civil disobedience)! Despite this fact, the FBI secretly hounded him for nearly a decade, up until the very day of his assassination.
They bugged his home, his office, homes of his close associates and even many of the motel rooms he stayed in as he traveled around the country. They employed informants to try to get close to him and they spied on him in other ways too. While some of this spying was patently illegal, much of it had been signed off on by US Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
And why did the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- liberal Democrats both -- consider King such a threat? Because he made them look bad!! He made Kennedy look bad because of his work as the leading civil rights activist that showed the nation and the world the inhumane treatment of Negroes and how the Kennedy administration wasn't doing very much to stop it. He made the Johnson administration look bad by vociferously opposing the Vietnam War, something Johnson was escalating.
Most of King's activities were well within the parameters of his constitutional rights and the ones that weren't -- acts of civil disobedience -- were undertaken purposely to expose the unethical and immoral nature of the laws he readily broke.
While most of us will never show an nth degree of the courage that King did to speak out against the injustices in our world today, the important point of this brief lesson in history is that the rights bestowed upon us by the US Constitution offer little or no protection against current government snooping. Even though American citizens supposedly enjoy the rights of free speech and free assembly, if a government spook gets it in their head that we somehow pose some sort of threat to someone or something, those two rights simply will evaporate before our eyes.
If a future president is an avowed member of the Assembly of God Church, he/she may decide that any church to the left of the Southern Baptists poses a threat to this great nation and all the members of moderate or liberal churches will be suspect.
If a future president is a lifelong member of the NRA, he/she may decide that any person who advocates for reasonable gun control is some kind of commie and therefore poses a threat to national security.
If a future president is a puritanical prude, he/she may decide that pornography -- loosely defined -- is the scourge of the nation. And so this president will have no qualms at all in trying to discern which citizens have ever visited a porn website or looked at an image which contains a naked belly button.
If a future president is the former CEO of a major corporation, he/she may decide to go after anyone who has ever worked for a competing company, even the folks who mop the floors or work in the mail room.
And if a future president simply is paranoid, he/she may be looking at everybody because you never know where the next "threat" will come from.
This is the problem we face. With all of our communications and financial dealings slurped up and stored in government warehouses, anything we've ever said or done -- even the most innocuous stuff -- becomes available to be cherry-picked by one or more persons utilizing almost any criteria imaginable. Today's commonplace activities may be viewed with a suspicious eye tomorrow and, because it is done in secret, we may never know what hit us until we are picking ourselves up off of the floor.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Courage of Conviction
Trey Smith
Back in 2001, just after 9/11, Bill Maher got himself in quite a bit of hot water when he remarked on his television program, Politically Incorrect, that the fellows who flew planes into buildings were NOT cowards.
On Politically Incorrect's September 17 show, Maher's guest Dinesh D'Souza disputed Bush's label, saying the terrorists were warriors. Maher agreed, and according to a transcript replied "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly".
Maher wasn't defending the men who committed these acts; he was merely pointing out that it takes a lot of guts and fortitude for an individual to be willing to give up his life for a cause or philosophy he believes in.
I too believe that the men responsible for the carnage on 9/11 acted courageously. Though I neither agree with nor condone the beliefs that led them to that point and I mourn the innocent lives that they slaughtered as a result of their actions, I can still not brand them cowards.
Whether or not you agree with the actions of Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden (among others), these two young men showed a courage of conviction that few of us will ever match. For Snowden, in particular, he willingly gave up a comfortable middle class lifestyle because his conscience wouldn't allow him not to be the whistleblower that he has become. His actions have made him a marked man.
As you all should know by now, I do not view Edward Snowden as a traitor. In fact, the word that comes to my mind is patriot. Snowden saw wrongdoing on a massive scale and, unlike most of us, he refused to look the other way. He could have easily continued on with his cushy life -- like so many of his fellow NSA-contracted intelligence analysts. But his courage of conviction would not allow it.
Americans should think about his actions long and hard on a day like today. We celebrate our independence from the English crown because our forefathers (and foremothers) had the courage of conviction to fight for the birth of this new nation. They fought against tyranny and for democracy.
The way I see it, Edward Snowden has done the same thing.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
One If By Land, Two If By Sea
Trey Smith
I am sure that most of our American readers are familiar with Paul Revere's Midnight Ride. As the story goes, Revere was to inform the sexton of a church in the Concord, Massachusetts area as to whether British troops were coming by land or sea (actually, the Charles River). The sexton was then to shine one or two lanterns to alert the citizens in the neighboring town of Charlestown. Revere was then to ride through the countryside warning friendly colonists along the way.
I mention this historic tale in reference to something currently in the news. Democratic Senators Ron Wyden (OR) and Mark Udall (CO) are being hailed by some because they have tried to warn citizens for years that something wasn't kosher about the NSA's various surveillance programs.
In my book, neither warrants being called a hero. Their so-called "warnings" were always vague and never included anything specific. When faced with protecting classified secrets versus defending the US Constitution, both chose the former. Even though both men indicated that they believed the US Constitution was being violated, neither showed the courage nor fortitude to stand up tall to tell the American people what the hell was going on. No, such courage was shown by Edward Snowden, not them!
Since Wyden has taken the lead on this issue, I thought I would illustrate this situation by replacing Paul Revere with him. Thus, that historic event might have gone something like this.
When Ron Wyden received the secret information from operatives, he decided to change plans. He went to the church of the sexton and stood up in the bell tower and yelled over and over again, "Somebody is coming. Somebody is coming." After a while, he attracted the attention of some area townspeople who came to the church to ask him some questions.
Wyden: Somebody is coming! Somebody is coming!
Person #1: Are the British troops coming?
Wyden: I didn't say it was the British. All I said is "someone."
Person #2: Okay, so who IS this someone?
Wyden: I am not at liberty to divulge that information.
Person #2: What do you mean by that?
Wyden: I mean, I can't tell you.
Person #3: Can you at least tell us if it is friend or foe?
Wyden: It is one or the other.
Person #1: What good is it to know if "somebody is coming" if you won't tell us who it is?
Wyden: Look, I'd really like to tell you, but I just can't.
Person #4: Can't you give us a little hint?
Wyden: Hmm. I can tell you that the someone who is coming is not currently here. Satisfied?
Person #3: What kind of answer is that! Of course, the people who are coming aren't here. If they were already here, then they wouldn't be coming!
Person #1: Can you tell us why they are coming?
Wyden: Sorry, but I can't tell you that either.
Person #2: Great! Somebody -- whose identity we don't know -- is coming and we don't know why this unknown somebody is coming.
Wyden: True, but you do know that somebody IS coming.
Person #1: Is this coming imminent, like tomorrow, or is it more like a few days from now?
Wyden: It could be in a few hours...or it could be next month.
Person #3: Well, which is it?
Wyden: I'm not at liberty to say.
Person #4: Could you at least tell us if this somebody is coming by land or water?
Wyden: I think it's one or the other, but it could be both.
Person #5: Alright. Let me see if I have this straight. Some unknown person or persons who are not here now is/are coming. You won't tell us when this somebody is coming. You won't tell us why this somebody is coming and you won't tell us how this somebody is coming. All you will tell is that somebody is coming.
Wyden: Yes! You've got it. I just wanted to warn you all that somebody is coming, so you wouldn't be caught off guard.
The townspeople decided that Wyden had consumed too much ale. They dispersed and went back to their homes. When the British troops showed up the next day, everyone was caught off guard. The rebellious colonist leaders were put in the stockade and the rebellion never recovered. Many generations later -- in 2012 -- one of Wyden's descendants was elected to the House of Commons as a representative of the North American British Colonies.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Do Not Ask Questions
Trey Smith
Anytime there is a human-caused event that terrorizes or scandalizes a significant portion of a region or the entire country, the government investigates the situation and then releases its findings. As we have been taught to do since we were very young, most people accept the various government pronouncements without giving them a second thought. The few who do question the findings are labeled "kooky conspiracy theorists." Everybody "knows" the identities of the culprit[s] and the majority of the causes, so why do some nerdy individuals continue to ask questions?
When these "conspiracy nuts" continue to question the official explanation -- like say, for 9/11 -- I continually hear average people say, "Look, if there was any substance to their suppositions, don't you think the truth would have leaked out by now?" Of course, the fact that these suppositions remain suppositions proves to the average person that they are the worked of an unhinged mind. They hold to their position in the belief that the truth cannot be suppressed for long.
It sounds like a reasonable argument. We know in our everyday lives how difficult it is to keep a secret. One person tells a family member, colleague or friend something they don't want broadcast to the public at large. Though sworn to absolute secrecy, the person provided with the secret tells one of their close confidants. That person tells someone else and, before you know, the secret is out of the bag!
So, if the government or some company was involved in highly illegal and nefarious activities, the general thought is that the secret couldn't be kept a secret for very long. Someone would spill the beans and, in time, the truth would be made known to the public.
I used to accept this kind of thinking like most everyone else...until I moved to Pendleton, Oregon. Pendleton is downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Site and, through two regional environmental groups, I began to learn that this typical belief doesn't necessarily match up with the facts.
In 1949, the US government intentionally released radiated gases into the surrounding atmosphere as part of an experiment called The Green Run. Scientists wanted to study the effects of radiation on an unknowing public. They already knew how dangerous and toxic nuclear materials are, but they wanted to study the long-terms impacts.
Though hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of people were in on this secret, the world didn't learn of it for 37 years! In fact, as it turns out, The Green Run was just one of thousands of such experiments that had taken place over the course of 30 years. By 1993, it was discovered that our government had run various experiments on an unknowing public which included:
- Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s.
- Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalised teenagers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.
- Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.
- Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.
- Exposing the testicles of more than 100 prisoners to cancer-causing doses of radiation. This experimentation continued into the early 1970s.
- Exposing almost 200 cancer patients to high levels of radiation from cesium and cobalt. The AEC finally stopped this experiment in 1974.
- Administering radioactive material to psychiatric patients in San Francisco and to prisoners in San Quentin.
- Administering massive doses of full body radiation to cancer patients hospitalised at the General Hospital in Cincinnati, Baylor College in Houston, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, and the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, during the 1950s and 1960s. The experiment provided data to the military concerning how a nuclear attack might affect its troops.
- Exposing 29 patients, some with rheumatoid arthritis, to total body irradiation (100-300 rad dose) to obtain data for the military. This was conducted at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco.
Think about this for a moment or two. All of these various experiments were run over the course of several decades and the ONLY reason the public became aware of the truth is when two groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request and 19,000 pages of previously classified documents were released. Had these two organizations not filed the request, who knows if we would know about much of this information at all!
The upshot here is that thousands or tens of thousands of individuals were privy to this secret information and yet the truth did not come to light for decades. Consequently, it is not unreasonable at all to think that in the coming years we may find out that the "official" version of what transpired on 9/11 or concerning the Boston Marathon Bombings is far different than what we currently are being told. Some of those kooky conspiracy theorists may be a lot closer to the truth than we think!
If you are interested in reading some of the questions that are being asked in regard to the Boston Marathon Bombings, you should check out the website, WhoWhatWhy. They are asking the sorts of questions you won't find in the mainstream media.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
What They (Really, Really, Really) Intended All Along
Trey Smith
Step into my time machine. We are going back to those frenetic days of...late February 2013. Having supposedly made a deal with the devil during the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in 2011, it was time for Congress and the White House to face the music. Looming before them was this thing called the sequester, an almost across-the-board significant reduction in federal spending. Supposedly the sequester was like a doomsday machine -- one that neither political party would want to see deployed.
As this article from CBS news reported back then, "Everybody bought in, but nobody wants to claim ownership." Both political parties worked fervently to try to pin the blame for the sequester on the other. While the blame game took center stage, neither party made much of any effort to avoid the deadline and so the sequester went through as scheduled.
Since that time, no one has tried to reverse it. In fact, it is no longer an important issue in the beltway anymore. It is accepted by both parties as a given. This lack of interest should tell us something. It should tell us that the sequester is not something they genuinely wanted to avoid; it is what they really, really, really intended all along.
You see, they simply couldn't come out to say this. While politics predominantly is controlled by and for the elites, average American voters do play a key role. If the electorate becomes sufficiently upset, then the chance theoretically exists that they might throw their support to renegade candidates. That might mean that some members of the ruling junta could be voted out of office and replaced with enough individuals to muck up the system that patently favors the elites.
So, they had to create a spectacle. They had to create the illusion that neither party wanted the sequester and was forced into it by the recalcitrance of the other. The leaders of the [ostensible] two sides clamored up on their soapboxes to wage a war of rhetoric. They threw around their words like darts. They huffed and they puffed and eventually did nothing. And so, austerity came to America like a wolf in sheep's clothing. The American people got leveled by it before they even knew what hit them.
This gambit was a bit of a gamble, but the elites had already succeeded with a dry run experiment and so they were really confident that they could pull this off.
The experiment? Back during the mid-term elections after Obama's "stunning" victory, the GOP came up with a strategy to retake the House of Representatives. On the campaign trail, the number one issue of their candidates was jobs, jobs, jobs. Elect us, they said, and getting this nation back to work will be our number one priority. This tack worked. The GOP easily took back the House. Once back in the majority, the GOP advanced numerous issues, but the one issue they never got around to addressing was.......jobs. To this day, they have introduced NO legislation that directly addresses the employment crisis.
Of course, they blamed the Democrats for this "failure" and the Democrats blamed them. Both sides engaged in a war of words, but just as they would later do with the sequester, both sides accepted a lack of meaningful jobs legislation as a given. In no time at all, the issue disappeared from the radar screen.
I hope you are able to discern a pattern here. The sequester is not some train wreck that either the Democrats or Republicans truly tried to avoid. It was an elaborate masquerade that has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Now that they know that this strategy works, there will be more train wrecks on the horizon that they somehow won't be able to "avoid" either and they will keep engaging in this charade UNTIL the public awakens from its collective stupor!
Monday, April 8, 2013
Tom, Huck and Not Much Else
Trey Smith
During spring break recently, I ventured with my wife and daughters to Mark Twain’s childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The trip was great, and we all had a good time. There was one thing that rankled me, however: Twain’s political stances were scarcely visible in the place.
Twain was much more than the author of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” He was markedly progressive on the issues of his day. As he grew older, he became disillusioned with his government and turned more radical in his views. Partly as a result of this, said the owner of the bed and breakfast where we stayed, he wasn’t financially stable even in his final years.
None of this is reflected in the telling of his life at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum complex. The approach taken is highlighted by a central item in the display: The picket fence made famous in “Tom Sawyer.” There is little mention of his outspokenness. Sure, there is some talk of slavery in relation to “Huckleberry Finn,” a safe subject to bring up in this day and age. But that’s pretty much about it.
~ from How Mark Twain’s Politics are Obscured in His Museum by Amitabh Pal ~
It is only in the last few years that I have come to understand what a radical visionary Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain's real name) truly was! I certainly didn't learn of this in school. America has a way of sanitizing heroes to reflect contemporary establishment values.
The same thing has happened to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most people today recall him as a champion against racial segregation, but King was so much more than that. In his final years, King took the risk of speaking out against the Vietnam War -- before it was popular to do so -- and American imperialism. He also sharply criticized the aspects of capitalism which subjugate too many people into lives of poverty and suffering.
That King doesn't fit well into today's world. That king might stir the people to action. So, that King is buried very deep where few people will uncover it.
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