Swami Uptown Archive: January 2005

Thought for Today

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Everything solid melts into air.

--Karl Marx

Where's Swami?

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Later in December, feeling the need to do some uninterrupted work on my book and sensing the onset of burnout, I asked for a month-long sabbatical. Fittingly, this will begin on Monday--the day after the Iraqi election. Will the guest bloggers who will be doing weeklong stints here comment on this event and connect it to larger questions of morality and Right Conduct? Fine if they do, fine if they don't--after almost nine months of me, you deserve a fresh voice.

One of those bloggers--she'll show up for the last week in February, so as to make a less jarring transition to my return--is Mrs. Uptown (Karen Collins). It's almost worth sitting on my hands for a month to watch her cheer the Good and prosecute Evil.

February, I need not say, is the shortest month of the year. I'll be back to annoy you before you know it.

Is It Patriotic for Soldiers to Mutiny?

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

A reader writes from around the globe--an ashram in India--about yesterday's blog and my question (Will soldiers have to refuse to fight to make Bush understand that this war must end? Is mutiny now...patriotic?):

My question is: How can the millions of us who are disgusted with the war mutiny in an effective way? There has to be a way that millions of us can make resistance real. There must be an economic trump card we can play and possibly even get "mutineers" in other countries to use globalization against this juggernaut of insanity. I have not been able to come up with it, but I feel it must be sitting there, to be discovered.

Me too. I spoke in London this morning. The speaker after me was Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric--a gentleman of some influence, doncha think? I wanted to ask him: What's your obligation as a corporate officer to influence national policy? But I was a guest of the company that sponsored this conference, and he might not have realized that, and then I might have made a problem for my very gracious hosts.

I sure miss that CEOs Against the War group that formed during Vietnam.

Election Day in Iraq

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Watching American reporters on English TV--and then watching British TV--gives you a sense of how thick a layer of propaganda we endure.

(Okay, maybe we don't. Maybe the Brits hate freedom. Got to consider that, just out of fairness to the Administration. Have you finished considering that? Good. Now we can move on.)

Here's an unvarnished report on pre-election reality in Iraq from

Dahr Jemail

, an American who went to Baghdad as an independent reporter:

With the "elections" just three days away, people are terrified. Families are fleeing Baghdad much as they did prior to the invasion of the country. Seeking refuge from what everyone fears to be a massive onslaught of violence in the capital city, huge lines of cars are stacked up at checkpoints on the outer edges of the city.

Policemen and Iraqi soldiers are trying to convince people to stay in the city and vote. Nobody is listening to them.

Here in Baghdad, although the High Commission for Elections in Iraq has yet to announce their locations, schools which are being converted into polling stations are already being attacked.

Iraqis who live near these schools are terrorized at the prospect.

"They can block the whole city and people cannot move," says a man speaking to me on condition of anonymity, "The city is dead, the people are dead. For what? For these forced elections!"

At least 90 streets in Baghdad are now closed down by huge sand and/or concrete barriers and razor wire. The number is growing daily.

"Now I'm afraid mortars will hit my home if the polling station is attacked," he adds. He'll be moving across town to stay at a relative's house, which is not near one of the dreaded polling stations.

An owner of a small grocery shop nearby is just as concerned. He had to negotiate with soldiers to have them leave an opening on the end of the barrier so people could access his place of business.

"I'm already living off my food ration, and have little business," he says while pointing at the deserted street, "Now who wants to come near my shop? All of us are afraid, and all of us are suffering now."

A tired looking guard standing nearby named Salman chimes in on the conversation. "I would be crazy to vote, it's so dangerous now," he says with a cigarette dangling from his hand, "Besides, why vote? Of course Allawi will stay in. The Americans will make it so."

If so, you read it here first.

Americans Bring "Freedom" to Iraqi Women (Not)

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Here's

an Iraqi woman, writing in the Independent

:

These elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and US-led military assaults of the 20-odd months since Saddam's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.

Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other women in the Middle East, women in Iraq are now losing even their basic freedoms. The right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality, but the subjugation of women was never a goal of the Baath party. What we are seeing now is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection combining to take Iraq into a new dark age.

Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing make-up, or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.

The new norm -- enforced at the barrel of a gun by Islamic extremists -- is to see women as the repository of honour and shame, not only on behalf of family and tribe but the nation...Since when did Islamic groups -- the very people doing the hostage-taking, torturing and killing -- start caring about the rights of Iraqi women?

Take the case of Anaheed. She was suspended to a tree in the New Baghdad area of the capital and then first shot by her father (a solicitor no less) and then by each member of her tribe. She was then was cut into pieces. This to clear the shame on the tribe's honour for having wanted to marry a man she was in love with. This happened in late 2003, months after the "liberation."

How depressing is this? But then it's hard to think of much the Bush team does in Iraq that doesn't make the 12th Century look like a better alternative to some....

Bill O'Reilly: Stupid Is As Stupid Does

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

Michael Grant, a Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, made the mistake of going on "The O'Reilly Factor" and trying to have an intelligent conversation on Intelligent Design--the theory that there's a Higher Power behind evolution and other scientific phenomena.

Revolutionblog

serves up the transcript, including:

GRANT: In the biology class we deal with science, with the natural world and what fits our conventional concepts of science.

O'REILLY: But what if it turns out there is a God and He did create the universe and you die and then you figure that out? Aren't you gonna feel bad that you didn't address that in your biology class? `Cause then it would be science, wouldn't it? You know, if tomorrow the deity came down and proved himself, then it would be science, wouldn't it, sir?

There's more. Much more. Not for the faint of heart.

The Beauty Part

January 28, 2005 | 5:00 p.m.

It's not exactly pretty--machine-gun drums, Ramones chords, angry lyrics ("Sieg Heil to the President Gasbag")--but it's definitely great music, the first #1 CD in memory that really deserves huge sales. I burn 300 calories every time I step on the elliptical trainer and punch it up on my iPod. It's a rock opera, with echoes of The Who. It's punk. It's rock. It's exciting as hell, brimming over with life-affirming sedition, leavened by the occasional ballad. I mean, of course, Green Day's

American Idiot

. Crank it up --- it's therapy.

Thought for Today

January 27, 2005 | 3:30 p.m.

Humanity cannot bear too much truth.

--T.S. Eliot

Mea Culpa

January 27, 2005 | 3:30 p.m.

I grasped that yesterday's piece about the temperature of hell was humorous, but I missed the fact that it was intended as such--not as a college exam paper. A sharp-eyed reader went to Snopes.com--a site I know well--and came up with

the real story

. I stand corrected.

The President's Soul Is Missing in Action

January 27, 2005 | 3:30 p.m.

I have been moving fast, running around London on a business mission, and preparing to give a talk that has to be just right. So I didn't watch

the President's out-of-the-blue press conference

. I did read it, and could just picture the President having a damn fine time showing that he was both in command and in a noncombative mood--even when a reporter or two wondered aloud about the neverending stream of lies that cascades from the lips of everyone associated with this Administration.

I thought it was odd that the President didn't lead with the 31 Marines who died in the Iraqi desert, but I didn't realize how odd until I read

James Wolcott

this morning:

Ponder that a moment. The White House announces a press conference in the morning. After the announcement comes the news that 31 Americans died in a chopper crash in Iraq (6 others died today in separate incidents). The president takes the podium fresh with the knowledge of that tragedy--and radiates a cheerful disposition bantering with the press about senior citizens and their faulty memories....Imagine if Bill Clinton had been chirpy and chipper having just received the news of 31 soldiers dying in the theater of combat--Rush Limbaugh would have devoted three hours to it, and Fox News would have dragged Dick Morris out of the all-you-can-eat buffet for his "expert analysis."

When Bush did address the soldiers' deaths, he said that we "weep and mourn" when Americans die, but as he was saying it his hand was flatly smacking downwards for emphasis, as if he were pounding the table during the business meeting, refusing to pay a lot for a muffler. The steady beat of his hand was at odds with the sentiments he was expressing--he didn't look or sound the least bit mournful or sombre. And why should he? Death doesn't seem to be a bringdown for him. There isn't the slightest evidence that he experiences the anguish LBJ did as casualties mounted in Vietnam.

As I noted a few weeks go, this inappropriate affect runs through Bush's career--his sneer at fellow born-again Karla Faye Tucker comes to mind. And in his groundbreaking book "

Bush on the Couch

," psychoanalyst Justin Frank takes us on a guided tour of Bush's childhood pleasure in administering small cruelties.

But 31 Marines (and six others killed in Iraq yesterday)! It's one thing to be a Big Picture Guy--it's another to lack all human feeling. We know that Bush is insulated from all criticism and negativity. We know he much prefers to swagger and bully than listen and compromise--indeed, he's so universally hated for these traits abroad that, in his column today, eternal Pollyanna

Thomas Friedman

suggests he keep his mouth shut when he jets off to Europe:

There is nothing that the Europeans want to hear from George Bush, there is nothing that they will listen to from George Bush that will change their minds about him or the Iraq war or U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Bush is more widely and deeply disliked in Europe than any U.S. president in history. Some people here must have a good thing to say about him, but I haven't met them yet.

In such an environment, the only thing that Mr. Bush could do to change people's minds about him would be to travel across Europe and not say a single word - but just listen. If he did that, Mr. Bush would bowl the Europeans over. He would absolutely disarm and flummox people here--and improve his own image markedly. All it would take for him would be just a few words: "Read my ears. I have come to Europe to listen, not to speak. I will give my Europe speech when I come home--after I've heard what you have to say."

Dream on, Tom. This guy thrives on the hatred of our allies and the pleas of cooler thinkers who want this war to end--that stuff is vitamins for him. It's perplexing, isn't it? Like you, I spend a lot of thinking wondering how to reach this guy (or his advisers). And I come up with ... nothing.

This morning a Swami regular sent me a month-old

Seymour Hersh speech

. As he pointed out, Hersh sounded scattered and scared:

We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?" Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over--by cultists.

And what can stop this madness? Hersh says:

We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks.. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it.

Has it come to that? Have we reached a point where the only way to get this President's attention is for the men and women who volunteered to die for him tell him they'd rather spend years in the brig than report for duty? When did mutiny become the highest expression of patriotism?

The Beauty Part

January 27, 2005 | 3:30 p.m.

They're extinct. They're beautiful. In the dead of winter, they're a shot of warm weather. They're

The Rarest of the Rare

.

Thought for Today

January 26, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

--George Bernard Shaw

London Calling: Yankee, Wake Up!

January 26, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

Greetings from London. Refreshing to be here. Coming in from the airport, the driver slagged Tony Blair. In the papers, Blair has revealed that he doesn't press President Bush on the environment, as he thinks that's the role of American business readers. Editorial reaction: The bloke's naive.

The 31 Marines killed in the helicopter crash in Iraq--I'll believe mechanical trouble; I have a hard time with the theory that it hit a power line; really? in the desert?--take second place here. The bigger news: four Brits released from Guantanamo--after three years without charges being brought--were grabbed by English police when they got home.

In short: no enthusiasm for the war here. And our Embassy has so many traffic barriers--and soldiers armed with machine guns--it's hard to find much enthusiasm for the US either. No wonder the papers tend to mock Blair and remind him that, in the US/Brit relationship, one side only gives and the other side only takes.

Why Is This?

January 26, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

Okay, so you risk your life to cast a ballot in Iraq. But an absentee ballot in the United States? What's the risk?

CBS reports

:

Registration for overseas absentee voting in Iraq's national election has been extended by two days because the turnout so far in the weeklong campaign has run far behind expectations, organizers said Saturday.

As of Thursday, fewer than one in 10 of the estimated 1.2 million eligible Iraqis living abroad in 14 countries had registered.

Logical conclusion: None of these Iraqis are in any hurry to go home.

Looking Out for the Security Guard: A Hearwarming Story

January 26, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

From

The New Yorker

:

At Packer Collegiate, in Brooklyn Heights, for instance, the fifth-grade bake sale, which had originally been intended to benefit a less fortunate school in Tanzania, was jointly dedicated to Tanzania and relief for tsunami victims. And when Marco Sylla, the Packer school's security guard, or "hall master," and an Army reservist, was called up for active duty in December, it seemed only natural that the school would offer him the continued use of his Packer laptop, for keeping in touch, and that the Parent Association would buy him a going-away present--an iPod. One upper schooler loaded the device with classic rock, and several dozen students presented Sylla with farewell cards. At a school assembly, he received a two-minute standing ovation.

They decided what he needed in the event he found himself in Iraq was body-armour. That's a $1,500 commitment.

After one day, the parents had raised twenty-three hundred dollars. A hundred and thirty families have now contributed. And students, too, have chipped in. "Whatever I have left tomorrow after lunch, I'm not going to be spending it this weekend--I've got a busy weekend--so I'm just going to drop it in the folder," a tenth grader named Matt said the other day.

Now comes the hard part: shopping. "The particular kind of armor that's actually being given out by the Army right now is called the Interceptor," Glant explained. The Interceptor Multi-Threat Body Armor System, made of Kevlar, is capable of stopping 7.62-mm. rounds. "They're only selling it to the Army," Glant said. "But there are several different types of body armor that you can get either over the Web or at police-supply stores. You know, pretty high-level bulletproof vests. And then there are various inserts and attachments you can get."

For now, the parents are still awaiting Sylla's measurements, and news of whether he will in fact be stationed in Iraq. If there's any money left over, they plan to provide Sylla with various sundries: phone cards, deodorant, scorpion powder.

Lucky Sylla. Lucky kids. Damned good school.

How Hot Is Hell?

January 26, 2005 | 3:00 p.m.

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the

professor shared it with colleagues

, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you, and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

Note: This student received the only "A."

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