The Wombat’s Blog

Salad Bowl or Savory Soup0

This is a big topic, but a couple of links have come together at the same time.

The November 18 issue of the Economist had an article on Multiculturalism in Canada, of how 40+% of the population of Toronto was foreign born, 40% of the population of Vancouver and how this made a create mixed society, where the Aga Khan choses Canada as the site of the Muslim research center on pluralism. Supposedly multiculturalism has become a basic Canadian value.

Yet the question comes up on how you deal with this problems of multiculturalism of inviting in people that don’t necessarily share your ideals.

How do you address people that appreciate the religious freedom, yet get exposed to laws that ban the wearing of face veils (the niqab) for religious reasons, or wearing of ceremonial daggers by Sikhs. By the way, if the wearing  of religious symbols is frowned upon in public buildings, can people show crosses as jewelry or wear their yamulkes?

A leader in the current Economist (November 25) listed four common oppositions to banning these items:

1. the veil shows a refusal by Muslims to integrate into broader society.
2. such closing is testimony to the oppression of Muslim women
3. the display of religious symbols is an affront to secular societies
4. there are settings in which the wearing of Muslim veils can be intimidating or offputting to pupils or juries.

What does it mean to have a modern nation? Another blurb:

One school of thought says that it is time to set firmer rules for what is expected of citizens and to define more clearly what it means to be Canadian.

The same November 18 issue had a letter of somebody writing in about Europe’s real location (i.e. is Turkey or Kazakhstan part of Europe), but stating

Legally, a country is defined as European, not by its geography but by its democratic and institutional adherence to common European values, specifically human rights and fundamental freedomes. Europe thus defines and organizes itself. Robert Schuman, France’s foreign minister and a founding faterh of the EU’s institutions, provided that definition of Europe at the signing of its statues in May 1949 and today all roads to Europe lie through Strasbourg.

So is a nation defined by geography or culture? How does multiculturalism fit into an existing culture. How much freedom is in freedom?

One more snippet. What is multiculturalism, tossed salad, or the pronounced melting pot. Last weekend we were for hours at a Christmas market that was organized off the main streets. While the music was playing we watched the people shopping. Our town is a small town, you pride yourself of knowing everybody. Yet for hours we watched people come and go and recognized nobody.  Not only that, but 99% of the people visiting were white. Nothing wrong with that, but it makes it hard to claim that we have an integrated society, which Hawaii is so proud to advertise. In reality it’s most likely a tossed salad, with the ingredients all being thrown together, yet still being recognizable as very separate components, living harmoniously among each other. Is that multiculturalism?

Back to nation-building. If nations are all about ideals, and if you can invite nomads, such as wombats, that share your ideals, to come live with you, then why would some immigrants come to live there and then decide to destroy it? Wouldn’t it be easier to just quit and leave?

But idealism may smash into realism. People don’t just immigrate for idealistic reasons. Some come to address more basic needs, such as for a financially better life that back home. They’re lower on Maslow’s hierachy of needs. If they’re not stable in life to have basic necessities taken care off, they can’t proceed up the pyramid and think about idealistic self-fulfillment. Our idealism doesn’t match their needs, and so we clash and misunderstand.

So what about this multiculturalism? How do you keep a tossed salad together? How do you get a blended savory soup, and would you want to get one?

Economist Article 1 and 2, originals found (here and here).

Multiculturalism in Canada
One nation or many?
Nov 16th 2006 | OTTAWA
Canadians continue to believe in diversity and tolerance. But it is becoming harder

OVER a long and painful history the Ismaili Muslim sect has been dispersed, at times forcibly, to 25 countries across the world. So when their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan, announced last month that he had chosen Ottawa as the site for his new research centre on pluralism, it was widely seen as a particularly powerful endorsement of Canada’s tolerant multiculturalism. But his comments came as this approach, enshrined in law and seen by many Canadians as part of their national identity, is coming under unprecedented public criticism.

In recent weeks, the debate in Britain over the wearing of the niqab or face veil has crossed the north Atlantic to Canada. It came on the heels of claims that the leaders of the large Indo-Canadian population in British Columbia were turning a blind eye to widespread domestic violence. Last year saw an acrimonious dispute in Ontario over whether Muslims could use Islamic sharia courts to settle family disputes. (The provincial government eventually decided that they could not.)

In themselves, fights over cultural practices and symbols are nothing new in Canada. Sikhs went to the Supreme Court to win the right for uniformed policemen to wear turbans and students to wear ceremonial daggers known as kirpans. What is new about the latest arguments is an underlying tension between some cultural practices of recent immigrants and the mainstream values of Canadian liberal democracy, such as sex equality.

This comes as a small minority of Muslim immigrants seek to emphasise their separation from, and even hostility to, the wider society. In June 17 Canadian Muslims were arrested on charges of plotting terrorist attacks on targets including the national Parliament. “Muslims are the first group to seriously challenge our notions of multiculturalism and tolerance,” says Neil Bissoondath, a writer on the subject.

Similar debates have raged in Europe. Two things give them a different edge in Canada. First, even more than the United States, Canada is nowadays a nation of immigrants (see chart 1). Immigration is both increasing and increasingly non-European (see chart 2). Second, from its birth as a self-governing nation in 1867 Canada was a multicultural mixture of British and French settlers and the indigenous people they called Indians. A century later, this was officially recognised. In 1971 Pierre Trudeau, a Liberal prime minister, declared Canada bilingual and multicultural. The Multiculturalism Act of 1988 replaced the previous policy of assimilation with one of acceptance of diversity.

Multiculturalism has since sunk deep roots in government, reflected in everything from broadcasting to education policy. It has itself become a basic Canadian value. Polls show that a majority support continued immigration and do not want it limited to whites. Almost half believe that immigrants should be free to maintain their cultural and religious practices. But a poll published this week reflected the new disquiet: when asked whether those practices should be tolerated if they infringe women’s rights, a large majority said No. Some feminists counter that Canada tolerates other practices that they see as demeaning, such as cosmetic surgery.

One school of thought says that it is time to set firmer rules for what is expected of citizens and to define more clearly what it means to be Canadian. Adherents to this view gleefully seized on a comment by Yann Martel, a novelist, that “Canada is one of the greatest hotels on earth—it welcomes everyone from everywhere.” (Mr Martel claims that he was misunderstood.)

But most commentators still subscribe to multiculturalism as not just a worthwhile aspiration but as the only way of holding Canada together. To preserve it, some trust in muddle-through. When another writer, Michael Ignatieff, who is standing for the vacant leadership of the opposition Liberals, said he favoured recognising Quebec as a “nation”, he was roundly abused, and not just by those who favour a stronger Canadian identity. Better to leave well alone rather than going through the wrenching process of reopening constitutional debates, his detractors said. “Canada is a country that works better in practice than in theory,” said Stéphane Dion (echoing a national cliché), one of Mr Ignatieff’s rivals for the leadership and himself a Quebecker.

Others worry that laissez-faire is a recipe for rising tension. They say there is no alternative but to negotiate solutions to cultural clashes, new or old. Rudyard Griffiths of the Dominion Institute, a think-tank concerned with Canadian identity, points to a long history of finding ways to accommodate seemingly intractable differences of language, culture and religion, such as those between English and French speakers or Catholics and Protestants.

Some of the new disputes will doubtless be resolved in the courts. Politicians, who until a few years ago were happy to talk up multiculturalism, have mainly fallen silent. There have been a few exceptions. Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario, said of the niqab debate that women were free to do as they pleased. Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister, invited the Aga Khan to dinner. His government is helping to set up the new pluralism centre. Officially, then, Canada still stands squarely behind multiculturalism. But the silences are eloquent.

No burqa bans
Nov 23rd 2006
Why it is nearly always wrong to outlaw the wearing of the Muslim veil

Reuters

WHAT you wear is a statement of who you are. From the old man’s cardigan and frayed tie to the youngster’s torn jeans plus lip-stud, dress stands for identity. For that reason laws on clothing should be avoided unless there is a compelling case for them. There is no such case for the Dutch government’s plan to outlaw the wearing in all public places of the face-covering burqa and niqab by Muslim women.

As it happens, the plan’s announcement by Rita Verdonk, the hardline Dutch immigration minister, was a political stunt aimed at reviving her party’s flagging fortunes before this week’s election (see article). But a new Dutch government, when one is eventually formed, may still adopt it. And the proposed ban follows a big debate about the Muslim veil in many other European countries.

In 2004 France passed a law to stop the wearing of the Muslim hijab (headscarf) by girls in state schools. Several German states have banned teachers from wearing the headscarf. One Belgian town has outlawed the burqa and niqab from its streets. Recently a former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, caused a row by inviting his Muslim constituents to remove their veils when they met him; and a lawsuit confirmed that British schools could sack teachers who wore face-covering garments. Turkey, a mostly Muslim country, has banned the wearing of the veil in public buildings ever since Ataturk established the modern republic in the 1920s.

Those who favour such bans put forward four main arguments. First, the veil (especially the burqa and niqab) shows a refusal by Muslims to integrate into broader society; Britain’s Tony Blair called it a “mark of separation”. Second, such clothing is testimony to the oppression of Muslim women; they are said to don veils largely at the behest (or command) of their domineering menfolk. Third, the display of religious symbols is an affront to secular societies (this line resonates especially in France and Turkey). And fourth, there are settings—the schoolroom, the courthouse—in which the wearing of Muslim veils can be intimidating or offputting to pupils or juries.

Some of these arguments are stronger than others, but none supports a blanket Dutch-style ban. Muslim dress can indeed appear as a mark of separation, but racial and sectarian discrimination surely counts far more—and bans on religious clothing are likely to aggravate it. Oppression of female Muslims is regrettably common, and should be resisted; but many women choose to wear the veil for cultural reasons, and others do so (as they do in Arab countries) as a sign of emancipation, or even as a fashion statement. France and Turkey have fiercely secular traditions that can be interpreted to justify restrictions on religious symbols; but such restrictions are best applied sparingly, and only in state offices, not in the streets. Similarly, decisions to bar the wearing of Muslim dress in courts or by teachers and pupils are surely better left to local discretion than imposed nationally.
When a ban only encourages

Moreover, there are powerful counter-arguments against bans on Muslim dress. For a start, it is illiberal to dictate to others what they can wear, especially when those others form a religious minority. A ban may foster, not deter, harassment or religiously motivated attacks. It would play into the hands of those who argue that Islam is a non-European religion, even though there are at least 15m Muslims in the European Union. And it can make it harder for mainly Christian countries to demand that mainly Muslim ones practise greater religious tolerance—a demand that the pope will, rightly, be making again when he visits Turkey next week.

Above all is the risk that, far from discouraging the wearing of the veil, a ban may serve to encourage it. Today only a tiny handful of Dutch Muslims wear the full-length burqa or niqab. Like the rest of Europe, the Dutch have learnt at first hand about the growing danger from Islamic radicalism. Intolerant measures aimed at Muslims are likely only to foment it.

Posted: social/culture, local

Spreading Idealism or Spreading Mayhem0

(Original found here.)

I heard a quote on a radio show about the president’s visit to Vietnam recently that America has been bringing hope and prosperity to the people of Asia for 6 decades. Oh really.
In the Nov. 18 issue of the Economist was an article about Guatemala, talking about the “gruesome cost of a failure to reform.” It included this start for a paragraph:

Guatemala has long had one of the world’s highest murder rates. An American-organized coup which overthrew a democratic government in 1954 led eventually to more than three decades of civil war between the arm and left-wing guerillas which ended only in 1996. This claimed perhaps 200,000 lives …

Today I heard a story about Robert Gates, the current candidate for defense secretary, of how he was not only in the midst of the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was also part of an operation called Iraq-gate, where the US, during the Iraq and Iran war of the 1980s funded first the Iranians with weapons, then cut that off to fun the Iraqis, then back again - I guess in the effort to bring hope and prosperity to a volatile region.

The outcome is always the same. The Lancet, a respected British medical journal recently estimated the numbers of Iraqi casualties, those that we don’t count, at (I think) 500,000. “No way” came the outcry, “it couldn’t be more than 50,000.” 500,000 is just shameful, but 50,000 seems to have a nice ring to it.
Now at the end of this is an blog entry is an article discussing how the military is now considering applying Vietnam era war tactics towards the situation in Iraq, since the current approach obviously isn’t bringing the right results.

So for 60 years we’ve been at this game of pushing our weight around, bringing our hope and prosperity to countries that might not want it. Then we get upset, when they get upset at us, calling them ungrateful. We attack them, or go in to fix things, usually unleashing civil war. Meanwhile, when things don’t work, we don’t develop creative approaches, but go back to failed approaches of the past, so that we can forget the current messes. Are we learning? Are we smart? Can you call this idealism?
Imagine if we were at the other end. If there was another country in the world (it could be friendly to us) trying to do the same thing. Would we just sit by idly waiting for things to implode? Would we have a choice?

Vietnam Tactics Borrowed for Iraq
Military advisers, speeded-up handover and U.S. withdrawal similar procedure.
PETER SPIEGEL
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — New tactics favored by U.S. military officers in Iraq borrow heavily from the end of another war that might seem an unlikely source for a winning strategy: Vietnam.

The tactics — an influx of military advisers and a speeded-up handover to indigenous forces followed by a gradual U.S. withdrawal — resemble those in place as the U.S. effort in Vietnam reached its end.

In historical assessments and the American recollection, Vietnam was the unwinnable war. But to many in the armed forces, Vietnam as a war actually was on its way to succeeding when the Nixon administration and Congress, bowing to public impatience, pulled the plug: first withdrawing U.S. combat forces and then blocking funding and supplies to the South Vietnamese army.

If they hadn’t, the South Vietnamese army, which had been bolstered by U.S. advisers and a more focused “hearts-and-minds” campaign in the later stages of the war, could have fended off the communist North, military thinkers have argued.

In their view, progress was undermined by President Nixon’s decision to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in 1969 in the face of political pressure at home, despite military objections that the South Vietnamese army was not ready to go it alone. Another key U.S. mistake, they contend, were the deep cuts by Congress to military aid to Saigon beginning in 1974.

For many in the military, the lesson of Vietnam is clear: Maintain public support and be patient.

Consciously or not, President Bush encapsulated that view during his weekend trip to Hanoi, where he was asked whether there were lessons in Vietnam for the war in Iraq. Instead of military tactics or strategy, he answered by talking about the impatience of the American public, and how success in war can be slow.

“We’ll succeed unless we quit,” Bush said.

The view that Vietnam could have been won if public opinion and political will had continued to support the war effort is far from universal, particularly among historians outside the military.

Stanley Karnow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the war from the day the first American was killed in 1959 to its ultimate end, said Hanoi was nowhere near capitulation by 1973 when the Paris Peace Accords were signed.

“They’re clutching at some sort of way to justify hanging on in Iraq,” said Karnow, whose “Vietnam: A History” is frequently considered the definitive account of the conflict.

“The war in Vietnam, in my estimation, was unwinnable for the simple, basic reason that we were up against an enemy that was prepared to take on unlimited losses. They would have gone on fighting endlessly.”

For years, the debate over the end of the Vietnam War occupied students and scholars in the military’s academies and war colleges. But with the Pentagon struggling to find answers in Iraq, the lessons of Vietnam have taken on more than an academic interest.

The course that senior military officers now appear to be steering in Iraq mirrors the “Vietnamization” program implemented by Nixon and his military chief in Vietnam, Army Gen. Creighton Abrams, in the late stages of the war.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, leader of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, laid out that path at recent congressional hearings. He said the biggest change he anticipates in the coming months is a large-scale increase in U.S. advisers.

He also said he hopes to hand over responsibility for security to Iraqi forces in less than a year — faster than Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. top officer in Iraq, had estimated just weeks earlier — and spelled out his resistance to an increase in American combat troops.

“I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more,” Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If more troops need to come in, they need to come in to make the Iraqi army stronger.”

For some military experts and historians, several of whom advise the Pentagon on Iraq policy, that strategy sounded familiar, recalling Abrams’ shift in Vietnam after taking over from Army Gen. William Westmoreland in 1968.

After that revamp, an increased advisory effort and accelerated pacification program, which included enlarging the South Vietnamese army, was finally beginning to work by the early 1970s, military scholars argue.

Those efforts were undermined, their thesis goes, by a lack of political will at home, which forced the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the Saigon government to go it alone before they were ready.

“Gen. Westmoreland preferred to fight the war with American troops; he saw the advisory effort to help the South Vietnamese as very secondary,” said Kalev Sepp, a counterinsurgency expert at the Naval Postgraduate School who has traveled to Iraq frequently to advise U.S. military officers. “When Abrams took over, he turned it back around and he emphasized the advisory system as part of the way the Americans could disengage.”

Among the administration’s Iraq war planners, the influence of the late Abrams has been felt before.

The strategy of “clear, hold and build,” in which U.S. forces remain in captured towns to provide security while reconstruction begins, was first articulated by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice more than a year ago and closely echoes Abrams’ “clear and hold” strategy implemented shortly after taking over from Westmoreland.

More recently, officers steeped in Vietnam’s lessons have been brought into the Pentagon by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as part of his task force rethinking Iraq strategy.

Among them are Army Col. H.R. McMaster, whose doctoral thesis was on the failures of the military leadership during Vietnam, and Army Col. Peter Mansoor, head of the military’s new counterinsurgency center — an organization dedicated, in many ways, to reteaching the “hearts-and-minds” strategies that Abrams emphasized.

Although possible recommendations are still being debated within the Pentagon, the panel is reportedly leaning toward a short-term increase in U.S. forces, perhaps as many as 20,000, followed by a significant ramping up of training and advising efforts for Iraqis, including an increase in the size of the Iraqi military.

Much like in Vietnam, the new strategy is being pushed after several years of large-scale combat operations that may have killed thousands of insurgents, but also alienated the local population.

Perhaps more troubling is that like the Abrams’ initiatives, which ran from 1968 through 1973, the current move to step up training of the Iraqi forces comes at a time domestic support for war is on the wane and political winds are blowing in favor of a quick pullout of combat forces.

Posted: politics

Designing Politics0

This is an old topic, but it was an interesting design issue to add to the blog.

Political Designs

The recent election is done, the opposition took over. As part of the election process there were a few discussions of what happened. It was interesting to me to hear how people really play politics.

The big surprise is that people pass laws not to address a specific issue, but to force another issue.

For example, there were a lot of ballots in specific states seeking an amendment to ban gay marriage. In my understanding, the Republican party doesn’t really care about any constitutional amendment, or any specific ban on gay marriages, they’re seeking to infuriate the population to come out in droves to vote for this issue, and by the way also vote for your local Republican. The gay marriage ban is just the spark to get people off their seats.

Similarly, this year there were several amendments to raise the minimum wage. Again, the Democratic party may care little about the actual minimum wage, but this is an issue that resonates with Ddemocratic voters, so the hope is that they will show up at the ballot to vote for this, and by the way also support the Democratic candidates. Another spark.

Now in South Dakota they passed a law banning all abortion. This law was so restrictive, that (I may be misquoting) that it didn’t even provide exits in case of rape or incest of the woman. It was a crazy law, even the South Dakotans were against it. But the law wasn’t the point. This law was introduced in full expectation that it would get challenges, and appealed, and ultimately be sent to the Supreme Court as an entry to dismantle Roe versus Wade, the big federal abortion law. That was the plan. Apparently Planned Parenthood saw through this and took an alternate route. They did not sue the State of South Dakota, but instead introduced a ballot to inform the people of what happened. The people reviewed it, and per ballot initiative struck down the law. The people won, and the State lost its plan to move this up to the Supreme Court.

I guess the above is the way it goes. People are sheep, so it’s easy to design “real” secondary outcomes to “pretend” primary requests. I just don’t feel too good that the legal backbone of this country is the play money with which to achieve your goals. With these political designs you have to be careful of not seriously damaging the existing infrastructure, by introducing changes on the way to your plan execution that come with unintended side effects if your plans aren’t followed through. Shit happens.

Laws are the fundament of our society. Playing frivolously with laws cheapens our accomplishments, and undermines the basis of our existence.

Posted: social/culture, design, politics

Smuggling Dangerous Ideas0

Another little brain fart that wasn’t initiated by a specific newspaper article.

There’s been a bit of questioning about the millions of dollars spent to improve our airports and harbors and how that is not making us safer. Meanwhile there is a big worry with North Korea building a nuclear missile that this missile technology could end up in the hands of rogue nations. So there are thoughts about naval blockades, all ships leaving North Korea being inspected on the high seas, etc.

Maybe I’m confused, but I don’t understand why we are so worried about hardware. Building a nuclear weapon involves building hardware. That involves making drawings to build that hardware. That involves plans. That involves ideas. Ideas are thin air that take up a lot less space that a missile. And ideas can be sent digitally.

Engineers do that all the time. Parts are drawn up and sent to a fabricator for manufacturing. Most manufacturers never see parts of the completed assembly, just pieces here and there, and usually they don’t question what the parts are for. Say you had an assembly of 500 parts, maybe 200 are off the shelf and 300 need to be fabricated. Don’t get the 200 off-the-shelf parts from a single source. Don’t get the 300 fabricated parts from a single vendor. Nobody understands the whole picture, except for you who puts everything together at the end.

As far as getting the plans out of North Korea - how about a DVD? or the Internet? encrypt it, or again don’t send it all at once, so it doesn’t make sense to anybody.

Now if you had somebody sympathetic in the United States you could send them the plans and have them assemble it, perhaps from North Korea (unsympathetic) through South Korea (sympathetic) to here.

Let’s take this one step further. The technology isn’t there yet, but by using a 3D printer you could print the part without anybody seeing any part of your plans. You send the file and get back your part. In fact, the 3D printers aren’t that expensive. Get yourself a whole bunch, set up a warehouse, and you could fabricate the whole assembly yourself in a warehouse without anybody seeing you do it. And this could happen next door.

So again, I don’t quite understand it. We could spend billions on boats and patrols and airport checkpoints to wait for the day when somebody will try to drive across the boarder with a giant missile in the shipping container, or we could consider that it will be inevitable that the quality of fabrication will get to the point where everybody could build anything by themselves at their own choosing. If you go the second route, do you need to change the rules of the game? Do you change your approach?

Posted: social/culture, design, politics, science

An Punch in the Face for a Touch of Realism0

The other day I watched “Inside Man,” Spike Lee’s movie about “a bank robbery that wasn’t”, advertised as a “smart, and taut thriller.” Smart movies are brain food. This one is a puzzle, a game of cat and mouse between the police and the bank robber. It’s basically a good movie, though if you throw out a smart movie, expect people to poke at the holes in the story. I wouldn’t bother to do that with a stupid movie, there it would be a waste of time.

This movie had me wondering about a couple of things:

• you have bank robbers shopping for paint at Home Depot?
• they mysteriously bring steel framing into a bank to reframe a room. How did that get in, in those small bags they were carrying?
• they make a room smaller, but the store keeper/supply specialist doesn’t notice
• the bank employees don’t notice the paint fumes that would have been in that storage room (no ventilation anywhere)
• the thieves spend a lot of time stalling to dig a hole into a concrete floor. They bring steel framing, they don’t bring a concrete drill. The hole they dig stops at a pipe. Is it a sewer pipe? Are they connecting the toilet for the guy in hiding straight to sewer main?
• since the partners say that the main robber, Dalton, must have stunk after a week in that hole, how come nobody smells him in the wall? Where does he poop and pee? What does he eat (a week’s worth of food is quite a bit, there’s no trash anywhere)? Why don’t they leave some water with him, so he can wash?
• what would have happened if the police had provided a bus? Who would have driven, the partners that spent so much time in the movie creating an alibi?

And there are other “little” things that just make you wonder.

• Jodie Foster is introduced as a magnificent c**t, and she comes across as so superior. But basically she walks into the bank, meets the robber, he tells her he already has what she wants to protect, she walks out, and disappears for the rest of the movie. Huh? Brilliant character indeed. Well, at the end she wants to sell an apartment to Bin-Laden’s cousin - how edgy. She’s a realtor with an attitude.
• The main bad guy, Christopher Plummer, Mr. Case was a Nazi sympathiser, 50 years ago. He got stinking rich doing some questionable work. He started a bank and for 50 years was very successful, generous, a good person. Now he’s close to dying and is concerned that his secret may come out. My question: why hang on to an incriminating diamond and a Nazi document that may destroy you. Do you want to give it to your children? Why not burn the paper, throw away the diamond and stop living on that timebomb. No, instead you hide it in a security deposit box, whose number is mysterious not showing up in the sequence of bank boxes?
• Who does the main bad-good guy work for? Why go to all this trouble to hijack a bank, take hostages, stake elaborate fake assasinations, build fake rooms, to potentially later hijack a guy who’s close to dying? OK, you get some diamonds, but this guy takes, initially, only the document, and then later decides to take the little bags of diamonds, but to leave the big Cartier one, to start the trace research into war crimes.

There were a couple of good starting points

• The police using rubber bullets to shoot the escaping hostages, instead of just shooting them with real bullets.
• The bank employee losing his turban due to police handling, not wanting to not talk until he gets his turban back. And no, he’s not Arab, he’s a Sikh (duh).
• The “good” bad guy gets away.

But the biggest problem I had with the movie was the level of violence. The main policeman, after the crisis is over, mentions that nothing happened, nothing got stolen, nobody got killed. So all is well. But, what about the people that were the hostages. They had their cellphones taken. They had to strip to their underwear. Some were unruly and had to be tied up. Do they think nothing happened?

What about the bank manager that “forgot” about his cell phone. You can tell from the post rescue interviews that he got beaten up pretty well. Perhaps he needed hospital, or at least medical, attention. Does he think nothing happened?

And what about the bank robber. He goes through all this trouble to not hurt people. He uses toy guys, fake blood, but when it comes to establishing authority, it’s a step into a side room, and and punch the guy’s face in.  He says “anybody else here thinks they’re smarter than me?” Basically he capitulates, and from his reaction that’s ok. I’m against the death penalty, he may say, I’m to smart for it, but if you don’t listen to me, I’ll smash your freaking face in.

It leaves a sour taste in your mouth. As does the guy with the supposed heart condition that’s perfectly ok once outside. He’s lying. Mr. Turban capitulates to the police and talks without getting his turban back. Police wins.

Somebody else watching was turned off after about 20 minutes, i.e. before the whole Jodie Foster conflict starts, accusing me of being attracted to senseless violence. I’m not sure it was senseless, but it didn’t fit the spirit of the genre.

Or perhaps it does. In the last few weeks I watched three “smart” movies: Infernal Affairs, Brick, and now Inside Man. The both feature people working with their wits, and it’s amazing to watch the puzzles fall into place. But they all feature a good amount of bloody violence, people getting tortured, beaten up, shot, killed, dropped off buildings, whatever.

Is that necessary?

I’ll throw out a couple more things. “Schindler’s List” and “Silence of the Lambs” are good movies. I don’t want to watch them again.

Is physical torture much worse than mental torture? This same weekend I’ve watched Jim Jarmusch “Coffee and Cigarettes” which is a nice minimalist piece that involves a bunch of conversations, duets you may say, between rather different characters. It’s honest, and mentally aggravating at points, because that’s how people act. They’re not always nice and truthful, and life isn’t always fair. I enjoyed it, but wondered is this mental torture any different?

I remember an old movie from 1972 “Sleuth” with Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine that is also about a game of cat and mouse, which impressed me back then, but now is just a sense of nastiness in my conscience (I haven’t watched it in 15 years).

I don’t know what to think. Cleverness is one thing, but it’s just a different level of power. That’s ok. Some stories are physically brutal. But this movie was advertised as not playing that kind of game.  What it left me with though, was the poor schlob of a character that ended up experiencing what happens when mental authority meets physical authority.

Posted: social/culture, media

Nothing Bad Happening, Just Don’t Talk0

(Original found here).

Way to get yourself into a Catch-22. The government doesn’t want to be seen as doing anything bad regarding torture, but once they release you from their detention you can’t disclose how you were treated. How is that enforcable - by keeping the people indefinitely?

Woah!

Top-Secret Torture
The Bush administration claims detainees can’t disclose how they were treated.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; Page A26

BURIED WITHIN a recent government brief in the case of Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan is one of the more disturbing arguments the Bush administration has advanced in the legal struggles surrounding the war on terrorism. Mr. Khan was one of the al-Qaeda suspects who was detained in a secret prison of the CIA and subjected to “alternative” interrogation tactics — the administration’s chilling phrase for methods most people regard as torture. Now the government is arguing that by subjecting detainees to such treatment, the CIA gives them “top secret” classified information — and the government can then take extraordinary measures to keep them quiet about it. If this argument carries the day, it will make virtually impossible any accountability for the administration’s treatment of top al-Qaeda detainees. And it will also ensure that key parts of any military trials get litigated in secrecy.

Mr. Khan is one of 14 people transferred to Guantanamo earlier this year from the CIA’s secret prison program. After his transfer, lawyers seeking to represent him asked for an order granting them access on the same terms as lawyers representing other detainees. The government objected on two main grounds. It contended that the court lacks jurisdiction because of two new laws that strip federal courts of authority over detainee matters. That may well be correct, and Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed last week that any consideration of counsel access should wait until the court of appeals rules on the jurisdictional question.

But the government also argues that Mr. Khan is different from previous Guantanamo inmates; their lawyers are cleared to see information classified at the “secret” level. The CIA program, however, involves top-secret information, so lawyers for Mr. Khan would have to be cleared at a higher level — and access would have to take place under more restrictive circumstances.

The trouble is that at least some of the secrets the government is trying to protect are the very techniques used against people such as Mr. Khan — and its means of protecting them is to muzzle him about what the CIA did to him. CIA official Marilyn A. Dorn said in an affidavit that Mr. Khan might reveal “the conditions of detention and specific alternative interrogation procedures.” In other words, grossly mistreating a detainee now justifies keeping him quiet.

The problem with this argument is not just its Kafkaesque sheen. If the courts accept it, it would have vast practical implications. The integrity of any military trials of the high-value detainees will depend on their excluding evidence obtained by unduly coercive means. By the logic of the government’s argument, however, all of that litigation will have to take place in secret. Detainees are also supposed to be able to appeal their status as enemy combatants to the federal appeals court here in Washington. The government’s logic would all but assure that the bulk of any such appeal would be secret as well. So accepting this theory would mean that no claim of torture could be resolved in a transparent and accountable fashion. Given the importance of open trials for the high-value detainees, it’s hard to imagine a principle that would more thwart the effort to bring them credibly to justice.

Posted: social/culture, politics

The Future of (local) Health Care0

(Original articles here, here and here).

There has been a lot of commotion in the local paper as more and more doctors are leaving because they can’t afford to stay here any longer. The insurance industry (a virtual monopoly) claims nothing is wrong. Two residence beg to differ.

Interesting how the Industry assumes we’re stupid and offers us the easy answers to “set the record straight.” Things are never simple. With all these Baby Boomers approaching retirement, the worries are growing.

I still ask, is privatizing health care a good thing? Even if you’re hiding behind a non-profit status does that make it better. What does non-profit mean? If you’re paying your CEO $500,000 salary a year, because you need to attract a high-paying CEO to run an effective health care organization, is that non-profit? Non-profit for whom? Investors?

Industry Response

HMSA
Insurer responds
Sunday, November 19, 2006 9:46 AM HST

Two letters recently appeared in these pages that talked about a decision by a Kona physician to leave private practice after many years. In short, HMSA’s reimbursements were blamed for the physician’s decision. With all due respect, I’d like to help set the record straight.
On the subject of reimbursements, HMSA reviews its physician reimbursements every year. For the past decade, for example, HMSA physician reimbursements have increased nearly every year. In fact, physicians were informed this month of a fee adjustment to be effective in 2007, which will increase HMSA reimbursements to physicians an estimated $10.3 million.

It is also important to understand that HMSA is not the only health plan which pays benefits for physician services provided to members. There are other commercial plans in the marketplace, and there are government plans (Medicare and Medicaid), too. Based on information we have seen, HMSA’s reimbursements are generally higher than those paid by these other plans.

In conclusion, I should remind readers that HMSA is a nonprofit community service organization. As such, it does not operate for the benefit of investors. There are no investors. It operates for the benefit of its members and the community, and has done so since 1938.

Its mission is to provide the community with access to quality, affordable health care. Since its founding, HMSA has paid providers about 93 cents of every dues dollar for services rendered to its members. The other 7 cents has been used to operate the health plan. All things considered, that’s not a bad value for your health care dollar.

Cliff Cisco
Senior Vice President
HMSA

Resident 1 - A Response (not really responsing to the previous), that pretty much shoots down the previous explanations

HMSA
Criticism continues
Sunday, November 19, 2006 9:46 AM HST

The elections are over. Now, comes the hard part for the people of Hawaii. What are the people of Hawaii doing for medical care? On the Island of Hawaii we have just lost our last internist, one of 18. This does not include the specialists who have had to close their practices. And we are going to fly to Honolulu the next time we have a sore throat that lasts more than three days? Are all emergent cases going to be airlifted to Honolulu because the ERs can’t handle them?

This is the time for real panic for the residents of Hawaii, especially those on the Island of Hawaii. Listed below are all of the reasons that our family doctors and specialists are no longer able to practice in the state of Hawaii. Read the HMSA 101. Look at what they have denied the thousands of people that have paid for this medical care. Their doctors are gone.

The people of Hawaii must protest this action of HMSA. They must not tolerate the fact that they do not reimburse these doctors enough for their services, enough to make a living. Those doctors have mortgaged their homes and cashed in life insurance policies to see that they could care for their patients. They have run out of money, their own resources, in order to care for the patients.

People, wake up and do something about this. This is about us, our children, our parents, and our neighbors. Don’t let this continue. Do something. Contact your representatives, council members, senators. Contact the people who say they represent you. Now is the time to take action on your own behalf. Don’t wait, every minute you wait, another doctor quits.

1. HMSA pays no taxes.

2. HMSA cannot be sued.

3. HMSA has the lowest (and declining) physician reimbursement in the U.S. of any private insurer.

4. HMSA claims the highest allowable administrative costs of any private insurer in the U.S.

5. HMSA claims it needs the highest financial reserves, well above those required by law.

6. HMSA has the highest market share of any private insurer or company in the U.S., a virtual monopoly in healthcare in Hawaii.

7. Hawaii is the only state with near universal mandated employer provided health care insurance. Then HMSA is in a completely unique position to control an entire market with almost no competition.

8. HMSA executives are as numerous and highly paid as any in the U.S.

9. HMSA directly competes with physicians in private practice.

10. HMSA operates for profit activities, even though untaxed.

11. HMSA functions with virtually no accountability or oversight by government.

12. HMSA is one of the five most profitable business entities in the state.

13. HMSA has contributed to the collapse of primary health care in Hawaii, although this is widely recognized as the foremost problem in healthcare in the U.S.

14. HMSA continues to profit by subsidized care in hospitals. The hospitalist program at Kona Community Hospital is an example of physician medical services that could not survive without subsidy from other sources, thus citizens of Hawaii in effect pay double for certain healthcare services.

15. HMSA controls the political process that should provide protection for citizens from exploitation and mismanagement, through paid lobbying.

16. HMSA pretends to control costs and maintain stable premiums, while progressively extracting increased payments from patients for medications and MD services.

17. HMSA imposes a burden of interference and delay upon physicians, designed to retard the delivery of good medical care. No quality or safety purpose is served. HMSA profits in the short run.

19. Since 1999, HMSA has caused the majority of MDs in West Hawaii to close their private practices.

20. In Hawaii, unlike other states, it is illegal for physicians to bargain or negotiate with a dominant health insurance company such as HMSA.

EE, Kailua-Kona

Resident 2

Medical care
A question for HMSA
Thursday, November 23, 2006 11:02 AM HST

I admit I do not understand the legalities concerning a business as large as HMSA; it’s for-profit, not for-profit, and political implications of its power.

What I can speak of, from personal experience, is the lack of available services on the “outer islands.” I now live on Oahu and that is how residents think of you. People I have spoken to in the medical field are not even aware there is a crisis. Regardless of the tax base, Oahu is the center of services and funding.

Having lived in Captain Cook more than five years and insured by HMSA during that time I have one question for the insurance company: How is it that you are not out of compliance with your own contracts by not providing services on all islands?

The answer I have been given is that the specialties are available - if you travel to Oahu. There is something wrong with that answer.

When my husband had heart surgery, he flew to Oahu, rented a hotel room for several days, and used taxis for transportation until he was admitted to The Queen’s Medical Center for surgery. His doctors required my presence, so I also flew over and rented a place near him. There was a bus strike that year, so I also used taxis. This resulted in non-medical debts, as if we had been on vacation. The doctors involved gave us a break on the co-pay portion of the medical services which was money directly out of their pockets. The tax on those services was almost $1,000 and the tax collector does not give breaks.

I saved all my receipts expecting to be reimbursed by HMSA for medically necessary travel. I was told that is not part of the coverage.

I asked about air ambulance and was literally laughed at.

A quadruple bypass and travel home two days later certainly did not qualify for such an expensive service.

I agree and would gladly have driven to Kona Community Hospital for the angiogram and resulting surgery. His own doctor (who is now leaving practice) could have overseen and coordinated his care and managed follow-up issues as they arose.

We would have all been much happier, healthier, and our own neighborhood would have received the income generated from this medical crisis.

So, again, my question: Why must we come to you for services included as part of the premium I and my employer pay for health care?

HMSA frequently answers questions raised in WHT. Maybe it can explain this one example — I’m sure it is not unique to me but many people have similar stories from the “outer islands.”

EW, Kaneohe

Posted: local, health

The “Right”-ness of Citizen Journalism0

(Original found here).

Citizen Journalism? The below happens when private citizens film video and post them online. The police complains that they don’t show the whole story. But how is that different from regular media?

It’s also interesting that regarding the incident where UCLA campus police tasered a student in the library, police has to say:

the student refussed to comply with rules that he show a college identification card or leave the library

Nice. So the fact that the student was of middle-eastern descent is not worth mentioning. And the fact that somebody who doesn’t show a library card has to be electrocuted because he doesn’t follow the rules is ok too. And if police didn’t have a taser, they would have felt free to shoot the guy?

Hmmm. Don’t know what to make of that. Yes, every story has multiple sides to it. So now it’s not “authority” who says what happened, but “video” who does is a little worrisome to the people who are supposed to be in control.

Police: Amateur videos don’t tell story
By ANDREW GLAZER,
Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 23, 1:44 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Arlin Pacheco turned her video camera from the kittens on her porch to the police officers she saw chasing and tackling a neighbor. The camera was rolling as one officer pressed his knee on the man’s neck and punched his face. That arrest of suspected gang member William Cardenas didn’t draw much attention until last week, when Pacheco’s video appeared on the YouTube Web site.

Footage of two other arrests quickly followed, and the images fueled an uproar and accusations of police brutality in a city already infamous for the 1991 Rodney King beating.

Amateur videos of police using force on suspects have sparked varying degrees of outrage from California to Philadelphia and Europe after onlookers captured incidents on cheap cameras or video cell phones and posted footage on the Internet.

Some law enforcement officials worry about the effect, arguing that showing only a tiny part of an event can’t tell the whole story. They also fear widespread exposure of such video clips might give officers pause in the future, even when force is justified, and that could put people in danger.

“You know, policing is oftentimes not pretty,” Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said. “The video, as we’ve seen from time to time, particularly if you’re looking at a slice of it, makes it look even less pretty.”

Recent images of an Iranian-American student at the University of California, Los Angeles who was repeatedly shocked with a Taser by campus police have been viewed nearly a million times on YouTube and led to protests and an independent investigation.

Police say the footage was notable for what it left out: The student refused to comply with rules that he show a college identification card or leave the library.

Another amateur video shows an LAPD officer using pepper spray on a handcuffed homeless man who was then left in a closed patrol car.

“A video speaks for itself,” said Sherman Austin, 23, who trains a network of amateur videographers who film arrests and post footage on the Web site CopwatchLA. “The camera doesn’t lie.”

But in the 2005 case of the homeless man, Benjamin Barker, a district attorney’s investigation cleared the police officers of wrongdoing.

In the Cardenas case, a court commissioner also found that the officers did nothing wrong because Cardenas was resisting arrest on a felony warrant claiming receipt of stolen property.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice acknowledges the images may “polarize and politicize police investigations,” but she they also force the LAPD to look inward.

“Without them, there is no pressure at all for police to examine use of force, and they are not policing themselves,” said Rice, who was appointed by the Police Commission to examine the LAPD’s response to allegations of officer abuse.

Bob Baker, president of the department’s 9,000-member union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said police have nothing to hide.

The union applauded a plan announced this week to install digital cameras in some cruisers starting this year. Uncut footage of arrests — even those requiring force — will insulate police from undue accusations of brutality, Baker said.

“Putting cameras in cars will give people a full story of what took place,” he said.

Chris Biller, a retired LAPD veteran, said the feeling of being constantly watched could put officers and civilians in danger.

“It will cause policemen to hesitate, to look around,” said Biller, 68. “In action, this eventually may cause death or serious injury.”

Attorney John Barnett, who represented one of the officers in the King beating, said in-car cameras would encourage suspects and police to behave appropriately. Unedited images will usually show police meticulously follow guidelines, he said.

“If everyone knew they were being videotaped, if they knew the public would see what they see, I don’t think having a video camera would make them hesitate,” he said. “Every department should welcome as much video and audio evidence as is available to explain what they see on a day-to-day basis.”

Still, Pacheco and other citizens intend to keep their cameras close.

“Nothing happens until it is shown in public,” Pacheco said. “Putting a spotlight on the LAPD is the only way we can weed out the bad apples.”
___
On the Net:
http://copwatchla.org/

Posted: social/culture, media

The Convenience of Untruths0

Lying could be a book topic. I found two articles in the same paper (here and retyped) and then a third article that I’ve been carrying in my workbag for weeks (original here). It’s scary how blase the whole topic is. We lie, so what?

First article is by Richard Reeves, entitled “A Nation of Liars.” It throws together a couple of things.

The second article is about Del Monte shutting down its Hawaii pineapple operations. It’s a big deal, 500 people mass layoffs that required the State Legislature to step in. Supposedly there were promises being made that are now being broken. The pineapples were right, Maui pineapple was going to step in and take over the fruits, but the next day Del Monte started to destroy their patch. They do this before Christmas. They’re out of there in a hurry. Why? Because it is no longer economically viable? It doesn’t sound honest, or respectful. But apparently it’s not an issue.

The third article talks about a much more obvious deception about a bunch of right-wing nuts pressing their agenda onto ABC television (and Walt Disney) by hoping to pin some obviously false statements onto the former administration. They’re making a movie with false information about real people. They know it’s fake, they call it a dramatization. Who would be able to keep the facts straight. Then they’re encouraging their supporter to watch this en masse, to increase ratings, which will increase the likelihood of more trash like that being shown. So the success is fake too. Then the CEO of the television company claims he knew nothing about it, after his company secretly pursues production and advertises it as a great television event. And the response is fake too. And you know, all this smearing apparently is also ok.

Boy oh boy.

Richard Reeves 

Richard Reeves
A NATION OF LIARS
11/16/2006

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — This was the September memo before the president began telling lies about the war in October:

“During the next two months, because of the lack of ‘rebuttal time’ before the election to justify certain actions which may be distorted to the U.S. public, we must act with special care — signaling to the (Iraqis) that we are behaving energetically despite the restraints of our political season, and to the U.S. public that we are behaving with good purpose and restraint.”

That memo was circulated in the State Department in September 1964 as President Lyndon Johnson was running against Sen. Barry Goldwater. I substituted “Iraqis” for “South Vietnamese.”

I’m sure there was one like that in October of this year, when President Bush decided he would lie about replacing Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense — as he admitted two days after the election. He simply did not want to send “wrong” signals to American voters and Iraqi leaders. (If there is such a thing as Iraqi leadership.)

I took that quote from page 171 of a 1978 book I regularly consult, “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life” by Sissela Bok. I met her for the first time a couple of weeks ago at a conference at Harvard University. “You’re my hero,” I said, and that’s not a lie.

I asked her an author’s question: “Is the book still in print?”

Yes, she said. It was republished in 1999 with a new preface. The new bits, I found, were livened up because the country was obsessed with President Bill Clinton’s lie about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Bok, who was a professor at Brandeis University when she wrote the book, wrote in the new preface:

“No matter how our own period comes to be judged … what is already certain is that we are all on the receiving end of a great deal more lies than in the past. Whether or not there is more lying ‘per capita’ by, say, politicians or lawyers, the fact is that we are made aware of many more such lies.”

That we are. We need “rehab” for liars — although maybe we already have it. “Rehab” is where congressmen, clergy and movie stars go to escape the press when they are caught in the lies they live.

“Lying” is not a book about politics. We all lie, after all, and some of it is obviously defensible. When the killers come in Rwanda asking where your mother is, should you tell the truth? On a more trivial level, we all lie many times a day. “How are you?” is a question begging for a lie. “Fine” is the only acceptable answer. Do you think people ask that because they want to hear about your bad back or that your kids are driving you nuts? “I’m fine. I really am.” Are doctors supposed to tell you that you’re dying? Only on “House,” the television show, does a physician love to tell people they don’t have a chance.

Political lying, though, is an interesting subject, because the risks are higher. Public men and women, after all, have to defend themselves before and against voters. The danger from them is higher than for, say, lawyers, or the guy telling you how great you look. President Bush regularly astonishes with his lies. Most of what he says about, say, Iraq, is preposterous.

I have written long studies of three presidents. Two of them, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, were gifted liars. Both were able to remember the lies they had told in the past and were handy enough with words to generally get away with it. Richard Nixon destroyed himself because he told so many lies that, in the end, he and his own people, the few, ended up spying on each other because none of them knew anymore what was actually true.

It’s the cover-up, stupid. Bok uses an old quote, in paraphrase: “It is easy to tell a lie, but hard to tell only one. The first lie must be thatched with another or it will rain through.”

I’m not saying Bush is stupid. Ignorant, maybe. But as a kind of compliment to him, I would say: Practice does not always make perfect. Our president is not a good liar.

Del Monte

HONOLULU - Fresh Del Monte produce Inc. said Friday it will halt its Hawaii operations immediately, well ahead of a 2008 closing announced earlier this year.

The announcement brought statements of disappointment from hawaii’s two U.S. senators and was decreied by the union representing workers.

“The company’s action was compelled by various factors; specifically, the production volume of pineapples is significantly lower than the company’s original estimates,” Del Monte said in the statement reported by CPacific Business news.

“This extreme drop in production volume, coupled with depressed pineapple pricing resulting from the increase of supply in the overall pineapple market, has had a negative financial impact on the company,” the company said.

“As a result, the company regretfully will not be able to sustain a financially viable operatin in hawaii as originally planned through 2008,” it said.

Messages left by The Associated Press with the company were not immediately returned.

Del Monte said it will lay off 551 workers on or around Jan. 22.

The move leaves Dole Food Co. as the only major pineapple grower on Oahu. Maui Pineapple Co. is the state’s largest remaining pineapple producer, farming more than 6,000 acres on Maui.

“Because of our unique ability to process canned pineapple, we stand ready, willing and able to step in right away to salvage the pineapple crop that Del Monte is apparely leaving behind with its abrupt departure,” Maui Pineapple President and CEO Brian Nishida said.

He said his company is willing to work with landowner Campbell Estate and the union.

“Being laid off is never easy, but being told just as the holidays are approaching is especially cruel,” the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 142 said in a statement.

“The layoff is occuring 60 days from the announcement, in compliance with federal law,” the union said. “However, the company has indicated to some workers that they will not be offered work during that period, meaning unemployment and probably no pay.”

Del Monte announced in February that it was leaving Hawaii because it was no longer economically feasible to grow pineapple in the state. The company’s last pineapple crop, which was planted later that month, will produce fruit through mid-2008.

“They just want to pack up and go home, leave everything to rot,” Earl Totten, who has worked for Del Monte for 41 years, told television station KHON.

“In the beginning they were telling us, ‘Don’t worry. There’s a lot of fruit out there. There’s enough fruit to carry us to 2008. There’s a lot of money to be made in that, and we’re not going to walk away from it.’ But apparently (there was) no truth in that.”

Hawaii’s Democratic U.S. senators issued a statement in Washington that said they were saddened and disappointed at Del Monte’s action.

“I am concerned about the impact this loss will have on families that make their livelihoods in the fields of Del Monte,” Se. Danial Akaka said.

“I can assure you that the Hawaii congressional delegation will do whatever is necessary to alleviate the pain resulting from this closure,” Sen. Daniel Inouye said.

Walt Disney

The Right-Wing Roots of ABC’s 9/11 Movie
By Max Blumenthal, The Nation
Posted September 13, 2006

On Friday, September 8, just forty-eight hours before ABC planned to air its so-called “docudrama,” The Path to 9/11, Robert Iger, CEO of ABC’s corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, was presented with incontrovertible evidence outlining the involvement of that film’s screenwriter and director in a concerted right-wing effort to blame former President Bill Clinton for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place. Iger told a source close to ABC that he was “deeply troubled” by the information and claimed he had no previous knowledge of the institutional right-wing ties of The Path to 9/11’s creators. He reportedly said that he has commenced an internal investigation to verify the role of the film’s creators in deliberately advancing disinformation through ABC.

After stating that she was “looking into” my questions about the production of The Path to 9/11, ABC Vice President of Media Relations Hope Hartman declined to comment on this story.

All week, ABC has withstood withering criticism for The Path to 9/11’s imaginative screenwriting that depicts Clinton and members of his administration either ignoring threats from Al Qaeda or botching operations that could have eliminated terror-master Osama bin Laden. Iger conceded in a September 5 press release that key scenes in The Path to 9/11 were indeed fabricated, calling the film “a dramatization, not a documentary.” Behind the scenes, Iger reportedly made personal assurances to some of the film’s most prominent critics that those scenes would be edited out. But even though some deceptive footage was cut from the original, much of its falsified version of events leading up to 9/11 remains.

Iger now bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the product of a well-honed propaganda operation–a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far-right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, a secretive evangelical religious right group long associated with Horowitz, founded by The Path to 9/11’s director, David Cunningham, that aims to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision, has taken the lead.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC signed David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). According to Sara Diamond’s book Spiritual Warfare, during the 1980’s YWAM “sought to gain influence within the Republican party” while assisting authoritarian governments in South Africa and Central America. Cunningham, Diamond noted, was a follower of Christian Reconstructionism, an extreme current of evangelical theology that advocates using stealth political methods to put the United States under the control of Biblical law and jettison the Constitution. Cunningham instilled his radical ideology in young missionaries by sending them to “Discipleship Training School.” A former student of Cunningham’s school claimed “similarities between cult mind controlling techniques and the [Discipleship Training School] program instituted by YWAM.”

When the young Cunningham entered his father’s ministry, he helped found an auxiliary group called The Film Institute (TFI). According to its mission statement, TFI is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.” Cunningham has placed over a dozen interns from Youth With A Mission’s Discipleship Training School in film industry jobs “so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,” according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham’s TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled Untitled History Project. “TFI’s first project is a doozy,” a newsletter to YWAM members read. “Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!” (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted last week after its publication by the blogger Digby, but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series “under a shroud of secrecy” about the 9/11 attacks. “At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries ‘Untitled Commission Report’ and producers refer to it as the ‘Untitled History Project,’” the Post noted.

Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive Untitled film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.

Nowrasteh’s conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too “politically incorrect” to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo–both friends of Nowrasteh–

announced they were “partnering” with Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as “A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.”

Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens. The group’s headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a “think tank” bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugar daddies like billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.)

In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, Horowitz led the right’s campaign to pin the blame for attacks on Clinton. On February 19, 2002, Horowitz’s organization mailed 1,500 lengthy pamphlets to major media outlets which claimed to expose how “the left” in general and Clinton in particular had “undermined America’s security,” thus causing 9/11. Two years later, Horowitz penned a lengthy manifesto for his FrontPageMag blaming Clinton once again for having “accepted defeat” in the fight against Al Qaeda. Horowitz singled out Clinton’s National Security Council Director, Samuel “Sandy” Berger, as especially culpable for allowing the terror threat to fester, casting him as “a veteran of the Sixties ‘anti-war’ movement” who “abetted the Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia.”

This year, Horowitz’s Hollywood hothouse finally spawned his most potent anti-Clinton propaganda device. With the LFF under Horowitz’s control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh’s Untitled project, which finally was revealed last August as The Path to 9/11.

Like Iger, Horowitz has pleaded ignorance about the sectarian agenda of the film’s creators. Responding to an article I wrote for the Huffington Post exposing Horowitz’s involvement in The Path to 9/11 (on which this article is adapted), he claimed in a blog post, “In fact, I never heard of David Cunningham or his group before reading about them in Max’s hilarious column.”

However, Horowitz’s public relations blitz on behalf of the film began at least a month ago with an August 16 interview

with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine In the interview, Nowrasteh described how The Path to 9/11 was filmed “under the very able direction of David L. Cunningham.” (Doesn’t Horowitz read his own magazine?)

Nowrasteh also foreshadowed the film’s assault on Clinton’s record on fighting terror. “The 9/11 report details the Clinton’s administration’s response–or lack of response–to Al Qaida and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests,” Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag’s Jamie Glazov. “There simply was no response. Nothing.”

A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton Administration officials and reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review published by FrontPageMag that emphasized the film’s partisan nature. “The Path to 9/11 is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I’ve ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible,” Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty’s article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and

Los Angeles Times by more than a week.

Murty followed her review with a blast e-mail to conservative websites such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers to throw their weight behind ABC’s mini-series. “Please do everything you can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries,” Murty wrote, “so that The Path to 9/11 gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!”

Murty’s efforts were supported by Appuzo, who handles LFF’s heavily-trafficked blog, Libertas. Appuzo was instrumental in marketing The Path to 9/11 to conservatives, writing in a blog post on September 2, “Make no mistake about what this film does, among other things: it places the question of the Clinton Administration’s culpability for the 9/11 attacks front and center…. Bravo to Cyrus Nowrasteh and David Cunningham for creating this gritty, stylish and gripping piece of entertainment.”

When a group of leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to Iger urging him to cancel The Path to 9/11 because of its glaring factual errors and distortions, Apuzzo launched a retaliatory campaign to paint the Democrats as foes of free speech. “Here at LIBERTAS we urge the public to make noise over this, and to demand that Democrats back down,” he wrote on September 7. “What is at stake is nothing short of the 1st Amendment.”

At FrontPageMag, Horowitz singled out Nowrasteh as the victim of an unconstitutional crime. “The attacks by former president Bill Clinton, former Clinton Administration officials and Democratic US senators on Cyrus Nowrasteh’s ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11 “are easily the gravest and most brazen and damaging governmental attacks on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans since 9/11,” Horowitz declared. The next day, Horowitz reposted his 2004 manifesto holding Clinton responsible for 9/11, explaining that, “With tonight’s premiere of the ABC-TV movie The Path to 9/11, the truth [sic] impact of the Left’s policies in bringing about the nation’s worst terrorist attack is finally coming to light.”

Although Iger and ABC trimmed as much as thirty minutes of deceptive footage from Sunday’s episode of The Path to 9/11, it appeared nonetheless as a mostly faithful adaptation of Horowitz’s anti-Clinton essay. Indeed, The Path to 9/11 still contained its most egregiously false scene, in which Sandy Berger refuses to authorize a CIA officer’s request to capture bin Laden, who is completely surrounded by rival Northern Alliance soldiers. After the halted (and totally fictional) operation, “Kirk,” the (completely imaginary) CIA op played by Donny Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame, stands on a hilltop beside the Northern Alliance’s quixotic warlord, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

“Are there any men left in Washington?” the script has a frustrated Massoud asking “Kirk.” “Or just cowards?”

“Cowards?” The question is quietly being raised in the corridors of ABC-TV’s headquarters in Burbank, California. Besieged in his lush office, Iger privately agonizes that he was complacent about an attack on his network’s reputation by a band of political terrorists. But when faced with his own version of the Taliban, he appeased them.

Max Blumenthal is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at the Nation Institute based in Washington, DC. Read his blog at maxblumenthal.blogspot.com.

Posted: social/culture, politics, local

Moral Hypocrisy and the Convenience of Organized Religion0

(Original found here).

Ellen Goodman describes the situation of recently disgraced pastor Ted Haggard, who turned out to be a gay drug-abuser. Two major sins he preached against. I like the approach of using this “crisis” as a publicity stunt to retreat, “recover” only to come back and tell everybody that you can overcome the evils of drug abuse and homosexuality.

I reheard the bit about “forgive the sinner, not the sin” (or something like that), and it’s amazing how you can lash out against all these evils in the world, and then if one of your own strays, it’s just a matter of forgive and forget.

I saw Carlos Mencia talk about that as part of his skit, of how having a religion is far superior to not having one. I may be paraphrasing, but the gist was that he’s a Catholic, and for Catholics it’s easy. You break the law, you go to church, to confess, and badabum, it’s done with. You’re scottfree and back on your way to heaven, as if nothing happened.

Hello? I never thought that non-religious people would be more deeply affected by an offense (have a higher moral consciousness) that the moral righteousness. Perhaps going to church provides the easy way out and that’s why it’s popular.
How many church leaders have been at the peak of hypocrisy. If it’s not child abuse, hookers, embezzlement of funds, you have Pat Robertson encouraging the assassination of a foreign head of state. Though shall not kill, indeed. Remember “I have sinned?”

Argh.

The Closet of Self-Hatred
By Ellen Goodman
November 17, 2006

I SUPPOSE it’s hard to count Ted Haggard as a direct casualty of the 2006 election since his name wasn’t on any ballot. But if the evangelist had not been a prime supporter of a Colorado amendment banning gay marriage, Mike Jones might never have seen him on TV and said, “Oh my God, it’s Art.” The gay prostitute might never have outed the minister of the New Life Church as a customer of rentaboy or a referral for methamphetamine.

So the Sunday before the election, Pastor Ted resigned, labeling himself a “deceiver and a liar.” He no longer heads the National Association of Evangelicals, nor does he field calls from the president. He’s embarked on religious rehab, more properly known as “spiritual restoration,” an odd name that seems to combine New Age steps and fundamentalist beliefs.

Still, what strikes me in the aftermath is not just the hypocrisy of Pastor Ted. I keep flashing back onto this sentence in his confession: “There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.” Haggard was not referring to marital infidelity or drugs, but to his gayness.

Haggard seemed like a kinder, gentler, and greener evangelical than many on the religious right. Yet he once equated Gay Pride Day with Murderer’s Pride Day and looked to the Bible for the last word in science as well as religion. This was not just a man split between his walk and his talk. This was a man repulsed by himself.

How do we think about this repulsion? In the aftermath of his revelation, reactions were as bifurcated as our culture. Sympathy came in two varieties.

On the one hand there were congregants, fellow ministers, and letters-to-the-editor writers who heard a man wrestling with real demons. Their sympathy was for a sinner.

On the other hand there were people who heard a man wounded by the culture of demonization. Their sympathy was for a man primed for repression and deception by the teaching of homosexuality as a sin.

We’ve heard echoes of this duality before. When “Brokeback Mountain” was presented as the ultimate gay cowboy story, the religious right found its own moral message in the movie: Look at the damage done by the evil of homosexuality. But other moviegoers saw the culprit of the tragedy in the repressive atmosphere that hung over these two men and the landscape.

Haggard’s deception and repulsion are, in some ways, lagging indicators of changing attitudes and science. Thirty years ago, only 13 percent of Americans thought homosexuality was inborn while 56 percent thought it came from the way people were raised. This year, for the first time, more Americans believe that homosexuality is inborn (42 percent) than due to upbringing (37 percent). More gays, more friends, families, co-workers have come to believe that gayness is not a choice, let alone a sin.

Nevertheless, this week Catholic bishops meeting in Baltimore offered guidelines for ministering to gays that might have been — indeed were — from the distant past. The tone, said one bishop, was meant to be “positive, pastoral, and welcoming” to gay Catholics. But the message was that “homosexual inclinations” are “disordered,” that gays should live in chastity, and that they are banned from marrying or adopting. In short, gays are welcome with open arms into the church as long as they declare themselves sinners and reject — repel? — their own sexuality.

Writing for the conservative National Review, David Frum compared Haggard with Jones, the one who outed him. Surely, Frum wrote, Haggard was the more moral of the two for fighting his impulses, raising a family and a church. But are those the two choices? The gay prostitute and the gay closeteer? Aren’t they the flip side of the same coin?

In many places we are witnessing another way out of the repulsion — the creation of open homosexual unions, the establishment of gay families with all their ordinary, imperfect, daily struggles. We are watching the incremental acceptance of same-sex benefits and civil unions, and, at least in Massachusetts, gay marriage.

I suspect that Haggard’s idea of “spiritual restoration” is the restoration of the closet. “From time to time,” he wrote, “the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface.” If anything , he seems to want more tools to fight the “dirt.” This charismatic man may well reappear, “cured,” as a poster boy for the ex-gay movement enlisted to preach “hope” for the homosexual.

But those whose families and workplaces and neighborhoods include openly gay men and women will always see this lost soul as a poster boy for the real damage caused by the old-time ministry of self-hate.

Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.

as a repair mechanism about.

Posted: social/culture