Robert C. Koehler: On the Momentum of Cynicism and War

"No matter how futile, repulsive or dysfunctional war may be, it persists" Barbara Ehrenreich wrote in her book Blood Rites. A fascinating story in the New York Times just after Christmas showed this "persistence" unfolding before our very eyes. Remember Iraq? The sale of arms to Iraq, $11 billion worth of almost everything: Fighter jets, battle tanks, cannons, armored personnel carriers, armor and helmets, even sport utility vehicles, is going to move forward even though it makes little sense from multiple points of view, including US geopolitical interests. As far as I can tell, the sale is going through because "war persists", or something persists, a force invisible to reporters and beyond the control of diplomats, at least those who speak on the record. "The Obama administration is moving ahead with the sale," the Times informs us, "despite concerns that that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is seeking to consolidate authority, create a one-party Shiite-dominated state and abandon the American-backed power-sharing government." Well, so much for "democracy". So much for talking about anything noble. Excuse me if I seem to be speaking as though I'm surprised. The only thing that surprises me is how quickly and thoroughly our pretenses disintegrate once we're done with them, and how badly we get on with business as usual. Or rather, business as usual gets on with us.        

Tom Engelhardt: A Military First Policy on a Destabilizing Planet! r

Here's the way it actually wend down in Washington last week: A triumphant performance by a commander-in chief, who wants you to know that he's at the top of his game. When it came to rolling out a new 10-year future of the US military, the leaks to the media began early and the message was clear. One man in charge of your future safety and security. His name is Barack Obama. Don't worry, he has things in hand. Unlike the typical president, so the reports went, he held sic meetings with top Pentagon officials, the Joint Chiefs, the service heads, and his military commanders to plan the next decade of American war making, and he was no civilian bystander at those meetings. On a planet where no other power has more than two aircraft carriers in service, he personally nixed a Pentagon suggestion that the country's aircraft battle groups be reduced from 11 to 10, lest China think our power-projection capabilities were weakening in Asia. His secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, spared no words when it came to the president's role, praising his "vision and guidance and leadership". Panetta described Obama's involvement thus: "This has been an unprecedented process, to have the president of the United States participate in discussions involving the development of a defense strategy.  

Nat Parry: The Enduring Shame of Guantanamo!

When the Guantanamo prison camp, originally dubbed by the US military Camp X-Ray, opened in January 2002, the United States came under international criticism that was nearly unprecedented in its intensity in modern US history. Some of the loudest complaints came from the staunchest US ally, the United Kingdom, where three cabinet ministers, Robin Cook, Patricia Hewitt and Jack Straw, expressed concern that international agreements about the treatment of prisoners war were being breached. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, also objected to the camp and called on President George W. Bush's administration to follow the Geneva Conventions. In a January 19, 2002 column in the British Independent, Robinson argued that because the Afghanistan conflict was of an international nature, "the law of international armed conflict applies." She took issue with the administration's assertion that the prisoners were "unlawful combatants" and thus outside the protections of the Geneva Conventions. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said that despite the Sept. 11 atrocities, "changing our values and our way of life would be terrorism's first victory." Amnesty International expressed concern about the tactics being used surrounding the camp. Keeping prisoners incommunicado, sensory deprivation, the use of unnecessary restraint and the humiliation of people through tactics such as shaving them, are all classic techniques employed to 'break' the spirit of individuals ahead of interrogation," the human rights group said.

John Hooper: Italian Cruise Ship Disaster!

If you have seen Titanic. That's what it was like: As icy seawater began to swamp the Costa Concordia, passengers desperately scrambled down ropes to safety. They fought over lifeboats, a mother crawled up almost vertical corridors in pitch blackness with her daughter, and elderly couples sobbed as icy decks slipped under water. A harrowing picture is emerging of the chaotic evacuation of more than 4,000 people from the luxury cruise ship that sank in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tuscany, killing at least three, and leaving several others critically hurt. As divers continued to search for possible missing or trapped passengers and crew of the Costa Concordia, survivors described scenes of total panic and confusion aboard, as crew were at first unwilling, then unable to launch lifeboats, while the ship listed into the freezing sea. Survivors described climbing down ladders and ropes to escape. Kirsty Cook, one of eight British dancers working on the cruise, said that she was "lucky to be alive" after using a rope ladder to climb down to a rescue boat. Another dancer, Rosie Metcalf, 22, from Dorset, had to cling to a fire hose before being winched to safety by a helicopter crew.

Tom Engelhardt: Obama Shows His War-Mongering Side

Here's the ad for this moment in Washington: Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advise. Will pay. Please respond respond quickly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington, DC. Here's the way it actually went down in Washington last week: a triumphant performance by a commander-in-chief who wants you to know that he's at the top of his game. When it came to rolling out a new 10-year plan for the future of the US military, the leaks to the media began early, and the message was clear. One man is in charge of your future safety and security. His name is Barack Obama. And - not to worry -he has things in hand. Unlike the typical president, so the report went, he held six, count'em: six! meetings with top Pentagon officials, the Joint Chiefs, the service heads, and hid military commanders to plan out the next decade of American war making, and he was no civilian bystander at those meetings either! On a planet where no other power has more than two aircraft carriers in service, he personally nixed a Pentagon suggestion that the country's aircraft carrier battle groups be reduced from 11 to 10, lest China think our power-projection capabilities were weakening in Asia. His secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, spared no words when it came to the president's role, praising his "vision and guidance and leadership".???  

The Economist: Free Will and Politics!

My colleague has a beautifully written post at Big Think on recent challenges to the idea of free will. He argues that the claim that free will is an illusion is itself illusory, as it misunderstands the idea of the term "illusion". To claim that something is an illusion is to say that it is a deceptive representation of some other actually existing thing which one has experienced. For example, a desert mirage looks like the sea, but there is no water out there. But internal experiences, such as the sense of having free will don't have any external referent. The sense of having is only an internal experience, and there is no way someone could have an illusory experience of the sensation of freedom, as opposed to a real experience of the sensation of freedom. It'd be like having an illusion of being angry, or, as he more elegantly put it: "That free will you thought you felt, that was an illusion." I think this misses the most important point about contemporary challenges to the idea of free will. The notion that free will is an illusion because reality is mechanistically determined is the old 19th century challenge to free will, Dostoevsky's "Underground Man" piano-key universe of predictable physical collisions. 

Ron Paul: The large-sale Government Intervention in The Eonomy? yh

The large-scale government intervention in the economy is going to end badly! Any number of pundits claim that we have passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 5%. Many of these same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession. A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less.  Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and President Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble. The Fed has already overseen a 95% loss in the dollar's purchasing power since 1913. If we do not stop this profligate spending soon, we  risk hyperinflation and seeing a 95% devaluation every year!