Maybe this is widely known, but I hadn't heard until recently that Benedict XVI had joined the ranks of critics of the TSA:
Details here. Now perhaps I can dare hope for an Encyclical about the inanity of the repetitive "current threat level is Orange" robo-broadcasts, or even a Papal Bull addressing the deeper illogic of today's airport-screening exercise in security-theater.
"Your pallium and zucchetto must be off and in the bin. I'm talking to you, sir! All velvet or satin slippers must be on the belt, not in a bin. And this flask -- does it hold more than four ounces of anointing oil? Please step over here..."
[If you're tempted to write, no disrespect meant toward any religious figure mentioned here. I have a different sort of criticism in mind.]
In response to last night's report on the Nexus One phone, a reader asks:
"Thanks for the update. One question. How is the Nexus
One as a . . . uh. . . phone? The iPhone does a
poor job of holding a signal. Nexus One?"
It seems just OK as a "phone" (quaint concept), but I don't really know who's to blame. The phone itself? The T-Mobile network, which I've used for years (because of international data plans) and which is the initial launch partner for the Nexus One, but which seems to have very shaky coverage in the US? (For instance: barely reaching to my house in DC.) America's unimpressive cell-phone performance in general, relative to most other countries? I dunno. I am hardened to a life of often-dropped calls as part of the repatriation process.
Have a long queue of tech items to catch up on -- before returning to "Going to Hell," China-US relations, new small-plane developments, beer, and, yes, "work." First up on the tech front: Nexus One phone, as previously mentioned here.
I could try to be fancy in introducing my comment, but why bother: This thing is great. It's now been eight weeks since I switched my SIM card from a perfectly good Blackberry Curve to the Nexus One to see how it worked. I've never thought of switching it back and no longer have any idea where the trusty little Blackberry might be. (Sorry, BB! It's not your fault.)
My one big complaint remains: typing on the on-screen "soft" keyboard, like an iPhone's, just is a nuisance.
On the other hand, the voice-recognition software is usable enough that more and more I rely on it instead of typing -- for Web searches, to dial phone numbers, to give map and navigation instructions. Medium complaint: the battery makes it through a full day of use, but just barely. On the other hand, the battery is easily swapped out, unlike an iPhone's, so in theory you could take a charged spare. Small weird complaint: most users I've spoken with mention that it's surprisingly hard to figure out how to keep the phone-call ringer ON while turning the email
notification ringer OFF. Yes, there's a way -- it's just not obvious.
In other aspects, this is great and better the more I use it. Seamless integration with Gmail, Google search, and Google's calendar, task, maps, and voice functions -- as you might expect. Somewhat more surprisingly, a full and sharp version of Google Earth; plus, a voice-powered Google Translate function that spans a very large number of languages and, on the ones I have tried, works better than I would have thought. (You say a phrase in English and it gives you, say, the Chinese version -- in characters. Hasn't worked so well when we try to speak Chinese into it! Maybe that shows it actually is working....) Also integrated with, gasp, non-Google functions: Pandora, NPR and NYT news, lots more.
The "Navigate" function, with spoken-out driving directions, led me astray once -- the first time I used it. I was heading to the airport in Duluth, a route I actually knew, and it steered me onto a road it didn't realize had been closed. Since then, flawless.
After the jump, a recent paper from inside Google about other aspects of the phone. It's important to note again that I never used an iPhone so can't do head-to-head comparisons. But on its own this is a real contender.
For the record, this afternoon I was on a live 90-minute Book Salon session on Firedoglake.com. Transcript of 100-odd comments is here. Topics included Ralph Nader, Senate reform, my "going to hell" article, the desirability of a new American revolution, and the fact that many FDL denizens were not sold on my premises or conclusion in that article.
1) Following this recent confession that, contrary to all expectations and previous life experience, I had come across a beer that was too hoppy for my taste, this note from reader Richard Hershberger puts it in perspective:
"I realized a year or two ago where the race for
the hoppiest was leading. We seem to have settled into a
characteristic American microbrew style being an IPA with huge amounts
of hops. I like a hoppy brew as much as the next guy, but frankly, this
is getting boring. Where I used to browse the microbrew cases like a
kid in a candy store, now I spend my time looking for something more
interesting than yet another IPA with excessive hops for the sake of
excessive hops."
2) On the other hand, beer in South Korea, like beer throughout Asia, is still completely safe from anything remotely resembling an "excessive hops" menace. Even the nation's pride, OB, is part of the watery, blah tradition of Asian beers as a whole. Thus I was grateful for another reader's mention of a microbrewery in Seoul that is waging a brave campaign to introduce hops, malt, color, and taste to the nation's pallid beer offerings. Part of the lineup from this brewpub, Platinum, (via article by Andrew Siddons) shown below.
3) Finally, a new approach to the hops question, from a reader in the Midwest:
"If you like hops, and happen to find yourself in
Ft.
Collins, CO, I had an American Pale Ale at the bar at Coopersmiths
where
they actually put a little tea bag of hops in the glass. Was pretty good.
(Like all their beers.)"
3A) Bonus hop item: I would be remiss to end a hop dispatch without an admiring mention of the wonderful local (to DC) Hop Devil Ale, from the Victory Brewing Company of Downingtown, Pa. Lots of hops and body -- but abundant rather than excessive. Some day I will get to their brewery.
1) Searchable PDFs. The huge PDF versions of the Office of Professional Responsibility report condemning John Yoo and Jay Bybee, and David Margolis' memo overruling the OPR recommendations, had the disadvantage of being image files only. You couldn't search by keyword -- for instance, "organ failure." Searchable versions of both of these reports, along with many other torture-memo-related documents, are now available here. These allow you to determine quickly that discussion of the Yoo/Bybee "organ failure" standard (for what constitutes torture) occurs at 14 points in the OPR report. Thanks to reader MC for the tip, and to the creator of the searchable-PDF site, who is a commenter at Marcy Wheeler's ongoing discussion of OPR and related info.
2) What Margolis said. A reader writes:
"I disagree with your reading of the Margolis memo. It's true that he argues that the period after 9/11 was a different time, and that normal standards about caution might therefore not apply. But that is far from his main point. Rather, his point is that the OPR report doesn't even *have* a consistent standard---the very rule under which it finds Yoo and Bybee guilty of misconduct requires them to have intentionally or recklessly violated a known, unambiguous obligation or standard, and OPR never quite manages to identify such a standard, let alone to defend it.
"In fact, in the original drafts which OPR was prepared to release to the public in early 2009, the report failed to even mention the office's own analytical framework for professional misconduct. It tacked on that analysis after criticisms from Yoo and Bybee themselves, without changing the conclusions, giving a disturbing impression of exactly the practice the report argues Yoo and Bybee engaged in: fitting the arguments to the conclusion rather than vice versa. This is not the performance that those of us were looking for who had hoped for some professional consequence to fall upon at least a few of those who squandered our nation's moral standing and made our leaders liars when they declare before the world that America does not torture."
I agree with this reader that the "no established standards" argument was an important part of Margolis' case. But on re-reading the (searchable!) version of the memo, I'm still struck by the same thing I originally mentioned: how much of his analysis depends on the political/cultural assessment that in the months after 9/11, normal standards of judgment were suspended. Read and decide for yourself.
3) Selective morality: what about the drones? A reader with a military background writes:
"I have not read the OPR report and will not argue
with your
conclusions. But I do find disconcerting and disconnected this outrage
with torture and the quiet and evidently total acceptance of drone
attacks in
non combatant areas that result in civilian deaths. As set forth by
Jane
Mayer in The New Yorker and a few articles by others, it appears
indisputable such
drone attacks have killed over 500 civilians including women and
children. All attacks were cleared by a lawyer. Should the judgment of
these lawyers be held accountable? Evidently not, since these attacks
are
applauded as a great success and heralded by the Obama Administration.
"As onerous as torture is, the tactics of drone
attacks
killing civilians in non combatant areas and the bombing of Hiroshima
seem to have
more in common than a comparison of torture to Hiroshima.
"I find this acceptance of the drone civilian deaths
quietly accepted
while a mistake by a 19 year old soldier in attacking a compound where
he believes
there to be an enemy is subject to a court martial as well as roundly
condemned
to be confounding."
My first reaction is: the drone attacks, with attendant death of innocents, are part of the "normal" moral calculus and compromise of war. "Just war" theory recognizes that often war's objective* is to kill leaders or soldiers of the other side, and that inevitably this has meant death and suffering for civilians as well. That is why I described the A-bomb question as an extreme case of the moral-war debate: because so many non-combatants were so deliberately killed. The drone attacks are thus a new instance of a familiar tragic dilemma and debate. Torture is something else, which is why it has been condemned even by societies that recognize the morality of certain kinds of war. Still, I agree, the drones deserve more debate than they've been getting. ___
* Of course, a war's real "objective" is advancing your side's interests and forcing the other side to capitulate. Achieving that goal without fighting is the best kind of war, as theorists from Sun Tzu onward have pointed out.
In response to this post, arguing that the Office of Professional Responsibility report on the "torture memos" is comparable to John Hersey's Hiroshima in making the public confront what was done in its name, a reader who is an academic historian writes:
"One can only hope that the OPR report makes the same splash that
Hersey's Hiroshima did, and that like Hiroshima (which
wasn't published in Japan until 1949, but sold very well once the U.S.
authorities permitted its release) it eventually gets read in places
which were the targets of U.S. policy. That said, it might also be
worth noting that Hiroshima's reception in the U.S. has a
complicated legacy. Yes, the book confronted the U.S. public with
unforgettable imagery of the devastation and human suffering caused by
the atomic bombs, and perhaps for the first time forced readers in the
U.S. to consider the Japanese victims as people not unlike themselves.
Hersey's choice of middle-class, well-educated Japanese as
representatives of the larger public helped in this regard; that so many
of the victims in his book were Christian was also a factor. In other
words, Hiroshima's effectiveness at provoking sympathy for the
Japanese victims of the bombs was in part a function of its ability to
also make Americans think of themselves as potential victims. I wonder
if readers of the OPR report will be able to make that leap from the
suffering inflicted on the victims of Bybee and Yoo to their own
circumstances.
"Second, Hersey's piece
almost certainly helped provoke Stimson's February 1947 Harper's article,
"The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb." Concerned about the growing
public sentiment in opposition to atomic weapons in general, if not to
their use against the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stimson
was persuaded to help construct what would appear to be a definitive,
insider's account of the decision-making process leading up to the
bombings. His description of the decision to use the weapons as having
been weighed against the estimated cost of an invasion, and his
portrayal of the decision-making process itself as deliberate, careful
and morally upright, had the desired effect. It would be more than a
decade before that narrative was effectively challenged, and historians
continue to struggle against the the argument that the bombs saved a
"million American lives."
"While I don't see
Margolis as comparable to Stimson - who knew that the decision-making
process he described was a fiction - I do wonder which narrative will
emerge out of these early histories of the dark Bush years. Will it be
one which closes the door on continued engagement with the costs of
torture, or one which treats such engagement as without merit?"
On a related point about the torture memos, but also with a Hiroshima angle, reader Zach Hansel writes:
"You wrote about "the Dick Cheney view, the 24 view, which equates the torture memos with Abraham Lincoln's imposition of martial law."
"Dick Cheney is not merely arguing to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, but is also arguing to torture people held under that standard, and he's advocating it whether or not there's an imminent threat of attack. Lincoln was shot down by the Court when he held would-be saboteurs in Indiana in 1864 because Indiana was not facing an immediate threat. The Court found martial law illegal in Hawaii in 1944 because the state was not under an immediate threat of attack.
"I think both of those examples are fairly analogous to the threat
posed by terrorism today. There was certainly the chance of a surprise
attack against Hawaii at that time or sabotage in either Indiana or
Hawaii at either time. There's a chance that a terrorist affiliated
with a terrorist suspect in our custody can attack at any time,
anywhere.
"So, Cheney's matching Lincoln and going further than Lincoln in
two ways... Cheney's position is equivalent to saying that, since
Hiroshima
was necessary, the atom bomb should be our first resort in any
international conflict." [My emphasis]
(Title of this item changed from previous soft-sell approach.)
When you are done reading this month's issue of the Atlantic -- and, as previously instructed, you should start with this article by Don Peck; then read Bruce Falconer's incredible and riveting profile of a "Dr. Death" in Switzerland; and then read all the rest of the great offerings:
After that, please read the full Office of Professional Responsibility report on the "torture memo" misconduct of Jay Bybee, now a Federal appeals court judge; and John Yoo, now a tenured professor at the UC Berkeley law school. The report is available as a 10MB, 289-page PDF download here. Seriously, this is a document that informed Americans should be familiar with, as a basis for any future discussion about the costs and consequences of a "global war on terror" and about the maintenance of American "values" in the world.
Through American history, there have been episodes of brutality and abuse that, in hindsight, span a very wide range of moral acceptability. There is no way to "understand" lynchings that makes them other than abominations. But -- to use the extreme case -- America's use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always be the subject of first-order moral debate, about whether any "larger good" (forcing an end to the war) could justify the immediate suffering, the decades-long aftereffects, and the crossing of the "first use" frontier that this decision represented.
My point now is not to go through the A-bomb debate. It is to say that anyone who is serious in endorsing the A-bomb decision has to have fully faced the consequences. This is why John Hersey's Hiroshima was requisite basic knowledge for anyone arguing for or against the use of the bomb. The OPR report is essentiallythis era's Hiroshima. As Hersey's book does, it makes us confront what was done in our name -- "our" meaning the citizens of the United States.
If you want to argue that "whatever" happened in the "war on terror" was necessary because of the magnitude and novelty of the threat, then you had better be willing to face what the "whatever" entailed. Which is what this report brings out. And if you believe -- as I do, and have argued through the years -- that what happened included excessive, abusive, lawless, immoral, and self-defeating acts done wrongly in the name of American "security," then this is a basic text as well.
To conclude the logical sequence, if not to resolve this issue (which will be debated past the time any of us are around), you should then read the recent memo by David Margolis, of the Justice Department, overruling the OPR's recommendation that Yoo and Bybee should be punished further. It is available as a 69-page PDF here. Margolis is a widely-esteemed voice of probity and professional excellence inside the Department. What is most striking to me as a lay reader is how much of his argument rests not on strictly legal judgments but rather on a historical/political assertion.
The assertion is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, anxiety was so high, fears were so great, and standards of all sorts were so clearly in abeyance, that normal rules about prudence and arm's-length deliberation cannot fairly be applied in retrospect. Ie, "you had to be there." Perhaps. (And, of course, we all were there.) In normal life we recognize the concept of decisions made in the heat of the moment, under time pressure, and without complete info. But it is worth noting that the central "torture memos" were from mid-summer 2002, nine months after the initial attacks -- by people whose job was supposed to be providing beyond heat-of-the-moment counsel.
The "torture years" are now an indelible part of our history. The names Bybee and Yoo will always be associated with these policies. Whether you view them as patriots willing to do the dirty work of defending the nation -- the Dick Cheney view, the 24 view, which equates the torture memos with Abraham Lincoln's imposition of martial law -- or view them as damaging America's moral standing in ways that will take years to repair (my view), you owe it to yourself to read these original documents. I tried to make this point in more halting real-time fashion yesterday in a talk with Guy Raz on NPR.
... it's an opportunity to mention one of my favorite parts of The Internet.
A reader wrote a while back asking where he might find a full copy of my 1987 Atlantic article about the Philippines, called "A Damaged Culture." It was extremely controversial in the Philippines for a long time, so even though it was from the magazine's pre-internet era I thought it was worth putting the text on line -- and did so a couple of years ago, here.
I thanked him for his interest and sent him the link. But I at least thought of directing him to this site: http://tinyurl.com/yfthl99.
Spoiler alert: if you already know everything about "Let me Google that for you," no need to click. Otherwise, worth checking out.
In one previous entry, I urged Evan Bayh to use his lame-duck Senate seat through the rest of the year as a giant megaphone to talk about what's wrong with the place; and then congratulated him on his first clear step in that direction.
I will confess that most of the reader messages I received boiled down to: "Don't get your hopes up, he has never rocked the boat." OK. But in keeping with the "today is the first day of the rest of your political life" philosophy, I'm going to judge by the evidence as long as it's positive. Now we have another encouraging step from Bayh. He has a prominent op-ed in tomorrow's NYT talking about the dysfunctional Senate in general and making detailed recommendations about the filibuster in particular. For instance:
"[T] Senate should reform a practice increasingly abused
by both parties, the filibuster. Historically, the filibuster was
employed to ensure that momentous issues receive a full and fair
hearing. Instead, it has come to serve the exact opposite purpose -- to
prevent the Senate from even conducting routine business.
"Last
fall, the Senate had to overcome two successive filibusters to pass a
bill to provide millions of Americans with extended unemployment
insurance. There was no opposition to the bill; it passed on a 98-0
vote. But some senators saw political advantage in drawing out debate,
thus preventing the Senate from addressing other pressing matters....
"[F]ilibusters
should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a
commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in
theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public
notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant
decline in frivolous filibusters."
It's worth reading the whole thing -- and, more importantly, rewarding and encouraging politicians who decide to head in this direction. Keep going, Sen. Bayh! Visual inspiration* to keep in mind:
_____ * Yes, I realize that the drama of Mr. Smith turns on Jimmy Stewart's character carrying out a marathon "real" filibuster. But the larger point of the movie was a challenge to coziness and corruption in the Senate, a message that lives through the years.
1) From a recent trip to Ohio, a beer whose cheeky name I really admire -- not to mention really admiring its hoppy taste. Here it is: Burning River Pale Ale, from Great Lakes Brewing Co.
OK, I realize that Kids Today might not recognize the puckish elegance of calling a Cleveland-brewed beer "Burning River." Details here. Dennis Kucinich would be able to explain. (UPDATE: I am remiss in not having mentioned Randy Newman's famous song on the same theme, "Burn On," his tribute to the mighty Cuyahoga.)
The picture above is from the web site. Below, the beer last week in situ at a Holiday Inn near Dayton:
2) From a recent trip to Northern California, the solution to a "dividing by zero" paradox in the beer world. In math a dividing-by-zero problem is, of course, one that is unsolvable by definition. In the beer world, I have always thought the counterpart would be the concept of "adding too many hops." Skimping on hops? The bane of cheap, weak lagers the world round. Throwing hops in by the ton? The more the better! You couldn't possibly use too much.
But I have now found the exception: Hopsickle Imperial Ale, from Moylan's brewery of Novato, in Marin County. Very good, and "Triple Hoppy" as the label says. But... for the first time in my life, the following words entered my brain: "You know, this might be too bitter." Next, let me at those math problems.
3) From a recent trip to Southern California, welcome news that the Hangar 24 Brewery has gone from a shoestring startup to a big recession-defying success. Two years ago, I learned in faroff China about my ideal fantasy business: a craft brewery, at a small airport! And in my hometown to boot. On several visits since then I've seen it expand. Now -- you can hardly get into the place.
Branded capital goods for a little startup:
I take my good news where it's available, which often tends to be in the microbrew realm.
A crash in East Palo Alto two days ago after an early morning take-off apparently in fog, killing three employees of the Tesla electric-car company; the notorious suicide/murder/terror crash in Austin yesterday; a landing in the wee hours this morning at LAX by a 23-year old student pilot who stole a Cirrus SR-22 airplane and flew it erratically all over the place.
The stolen plane, Cirrus N443CP*, in happier times:
These are completely different situations -- weather-related accident; psychopathic crime; extremely reckless joyride/misconduct putting the joyrider himself at dire risk, respectively -- but they are sure to be linked in news stories by the rote/reflexive "this comes one day after an incident in which..." faux-logical connector.** There is nothing more to say about the Palo Alto crash than condolences to all affected. More tomorrow, when I am again at a computer, on the "security" and "terrorism" implications of the other two cases. ___ * Why are Cirruses often in the news? Over the past ten years, they have become the biggest-selling model of small single-engine piston plane in the world. Something like 5,000 of them are now in operation, so if there is news about small airplanes, it often is news about a Cirrus.
** I made that sentence up, but sure enough, here is what the LA Times story says about the LAX case: "The incident comes one day after a 53-year-old pilot, who had been
battling the Internal Revenue Service for decades, plowed his
single-engine Piper Cherokee into a Texas building housing IRS offices,
killing at least one worker. "
Previously here;
"going to hell" article here. Many correspondents have argued, as I did in my original article, that something basic in the structure of government has made it hard or impossible for national officials to concentrate on real national problems. (As opposed to score-settling, posturing, fund-raising, and so on.)
Sol Erdman, of the non-partisan Center for Collaborate Democracy, and his colleague Lawrence Susskind of MIT, wrote in with a proposal to change the nature of Congress by changing the way Congressmen are elected. Before you ask: they argue that the changes they propose would not require a Constitutional Amendment, and therefore are in the realm of "things that could actually be done."
Their whole paper is now online as a PDF here. It is long but worth reading. A few representative quotes: What's wrong with Congress now (may sound familiar, but stay tuned...)
"U.S. elections are organized in such
a way that each lawmaker gets powerful incentives to act against the
public interest. To begin with, a typical member of Congress can win
reelection just by convincing a majority of his or her district's voters
that the other party is more untrustworthy, incompetent or corrupt
than his own. And any politician knows how to make that case in graphic
terms that voters can easily grasp.
"Voters today have equally perverse incentives. That is, in each congressional district, every voter -- every young single, middle- aged parent, senior citizen, truck driver, teacher, salesperson, lawyer, business owner, conservative, liberal and moderate -- has to share the same representative. These diverse groups of district residents have distinct -- often opposing -- needs, values and political beliefs.... So, if a member of Congress advocates a detailed solution to a
controversial issue, several large blocs of voters in his or her
district are likely to oppose his stand, perhaps even enough to want to
throw him out of office. The typical lawmaker therefore avoids proposing
real solutions to the most controversial issues.
The behavior current incentives reward:
"The members of
Congress have found that there are far safer ways to stay in office [than dealing with the nation's real problems]. The
safest tactics include:
"1) Reducing hard issues to simple slogans. "2)
Passing measures that seem to address major problems but which put off
the hard decisions into the future. "3) Blaming the country's direst
problems on the other political party.
"These strategies succeed so
often because of how congressional elections are organized today.
Typically, one Republican competes against one Democrat for each
district's House seat. Any lawmaker can therefore stay in office just by
convincing most voters that the other party is more incompetent than
his own."
Could a change in Congressional election procedure be Constitutional?
"Fortunately, the Constitution doesn't require that members of the
House represent districts. The Constitution doesn't even mention districts. It lets each state decide how to elect its own Representatives,
with Congress having the right to supersede the states' decisions."
More in their paper, including an elaboration of a new election system they have in mind. Worth checking out.
On the road and changing planes, let me take four minutes on Boingo to refer readers to an op-ed yesterday by Jerome A. Cohen, who has been involved for decades is the campaign to expand citizen rights and the rule of law in China, in the South China Morning Post. You have to register or subscribe (worth it!) to read the whole thing, but the headline and subhead get the idea across.
His article is called "Fight the Good Fight: As China rises, foreigners need to keep protesting against
cases of injustice on the mainland." It argues that the United States should continue the same contradictory-sounding but strategically sensible policy toward China that it has more or less maintained throughout the past 30 years. This involves looking for areas of cooperation wherever possible -- on financial and business matters, on environmental challenges, on strategic measures like those I discuss at the end of this article. In general, that means that the United States should treat China as a potential partner unless compelled to do otherwise.
But American leaders should also resolutely speak up for values the country is supposed to believe in -- individual liberties, religious tolerance, due process, freedom of expression -- and not be afraid to criticize Chinese policy when these issues are at stake. Thus the Chinese government will complain every time an American president meets the Dalai Lama -- but the United States must continue those meetings in consonance with its own beliefs*, despite the protests, and continue to complain when Chinese dissidents are locked up, as in the Liu Xiaobo case. Why make gestures like these? According to Cohen:
"Despite the regime's censorship, [such protests] boost the sagging morale of those in mainland China who hope for freedom and due process of law, as the country's beleaguered rights lawyers and activists emphasise [sic -- Cohen is American but the SCMP is in Hong Kong!]. Moreover, they give the world a fuller picture of contemporary China than that provided by the Olympics, the Confucius Institutes that the government has established abroad and its mind- boggling economic accomplishments. China's quest for "soft power" - international influence based on more than military and economic coercion - will always be frustrated as long as there are continuing foreign protests against abuses suffered by dissidents, religious figures, criminal defence lawyers and others.
"Finally, if stated with requisite humility, public reaffirmation of the basic human decencies that every government should accord its own citizens as well as foreigners reminds all countries, including the US, of the importance of practising what we preach to China."
As is evident from this last line, Cohen is not blind to America's deviations from its own ideals. Anyhow, this is what to think about today's meeting, as I sign off and run to the next plane. __ * To be clear, those legitimate American beliefs do not involve support for "splittism," the main Chinese government charge against the Dalai Lama. Rather they involve respect for him as a spiritual leader, a view 100% rejected by the Chinese government but accepted in most of the rest of the world.
UPDATE: Jerome Cohen's full essay is available here in English with links to versions in both simplified and traditional Chinese. Thanks to ESZ.
Previously here; "going to hell" article here. Part of my original pitch was that America's economic, cultural, and intellectual resilience was strong, but that our basic governing institutions were proving to be worse and worse matched to the challenges of these times. Thus:
"When Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, he said again and
again that America needed "a government as good as its people." Knowing
Carter's sometimes acid views on human nature, I thought that was
actually a sly barb--and that the imperfect American public had generally
ended up with the government we deserve. But now I take his plea at
face value. American culture is better than our government. And if we
can't fix what's broken [in our system of government], we face a replay of what made the months after
the 9/11 attacks so painful: realizing that it was possible to change
course and address problems long neglected, and then watching that
chance slip away."
A number of correspondents wrote in to say that this was pandering -- indeed, of the sort I thought Carter was indulging when suggesting to audiences that problems all originate somewhere else, and certainly not with the good, fine American folk. A really honest jeremiad, some of these messages suggest, wouldn't blame some abstract American "system" for our failings; it would tell Americans that they were being so spoiled, ill-informed, short-sighted, and in other ways non-civic that they deserved just the government they/we now have. Here is a sample, which argues that one generation (my own) is the place where the trouble really starts:
"I've been reading the proposed structural fixes to our political system
posted in the blog and have been getting exasperated because I know that
any proposed structural fix must pass through the same broken political
system. That's not going to happen, no matter what the fix is.
"The reason it's not going to happen, imho, is because only the smaller
part of our political problems is the gridlock-enabling senate and other
governmental institutions. The senate and other institutions have their
problems, but other generations have made them work, across a spectrum
of political opinion as wide as the current one. The bigger part of our
current problems is us, by whom I mean baby boomers like
myself--currently (I believe) the largest demographic group of voters
and office holders.
Yesterday I expressed my hope and dream that Sen. Evan Bayh would use the next ten months -- while he's still in the Senate and has both a vote and a public megaphone -- to do something about the things he says are driving him out of public life.
Today, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, Bayh said flat out that he thought the filibuster was being abused and the rules should be changed. Even (gasp) that he might "lead" an effort to reform it! See the discussion in this clip, which starts two minutes into the interview:
"It's [the filibuster]just brought the process to a halt, and
the public is suffering. So the minority needs to have a right. I think
that's important. But the public has a right to see its business done.
And not routinely allow a small minority to keep us from addressing the
great issues that face this country. I think the filibuster
absolutely needs to be changed."
Who says dreams don't come true! At the very least, an encouraging dreamlet-scale start. Ten months to go, Sen. Bayh; nothing to lose; a lot of good to be gone; and a reputation to gain.
In my "Cyber Warriors" article in the current issue, I mention that a variety of internet-security experts contend that we are living in a "pre-9/11 era" on this subject. But this they mean not that thousands of people will be killed and everything about U.S. politics and policy will be thrown up for grabs. Rather, the image is meant to suggest that policy and public awareness will be divided into "before" and "after" phases. And "after" this happens -- whatever "this" turns out to be in the cyber-destruction field -- people will ask why we weren't more vigilant ahead of time. A story just now in the Washington Post uses just the same imagery, talking about an exercise yesterday that was "staged... to demonstrate to a complacent public the
plausibility of an attack that could in many ways be as crippling as the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes."*
From Gary Chapman, of the LBJ School at UT Austin, who has been writing about the internet aspects of national security since the 1990s, an objection to mis- and over-use of the "pre-9/11" imagery. Later on, I'll post a contrary view, from another tech veteran who thinks that the warnings are perfectly appropriate. Chapman writes:
"Concerns about cybersecurity and the potential for a national
"catastrophe" initiated by hackers -- whatever their motivations or
backing -- are reasonable; until people start using analogies to 9/11 or
begin talking about a looming "digital Pearl Harbor." Admiral Mike
McConnell [former NSA director, whom I quote several times in my article] has been raising such alarms, but count me as a skeptic. It is
difficult to imagine the loss of any computer-dependent system
comparing to the spectacle of 9/11, its implications for security for
ordinary Americans, or the emotional impact of that event, particularly
over the horrifying deaths that millions of people watched on
television. Likewise, the significance of Pearl Harbor, which launched
the country into the biggest war of all time, is not likely to be
matched by a computer-related failure, even one that dramatically
damages the global financial system. We should use the analogies to 9/11
and Pearl Harbor sparingly, if at all, and not for a possible failure
of computer networks or digital transactions. Terrorists using weapons
of mass destruction might qualify, but not computer hackers.
"Admiral
McConnell believes that nothing will motivate Americans to take
cybersecurity seriously until a disaster happens, which is probably
true. But unlike 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, Americans are likely to blame the
managers of institutions that are the targets of hackers, not the
hackers or their sponsors, who will in any case be obscure or difficult
to identify. McConnell apparently believes that the cybersecurity of big
banks is a matter of national security, but it would be hard to imagine
an industry with lower esteem in the eyes of the public these days, and
therefore one that is highly unlikely to "come clean" about their
vulnerabilities to hackers. The public, in its current sour mood about
large institutions in the U.S., would probably support the *dismantling*
of a system that makes the U.S. vulnerable to computer threats rather
than more government spending to secure the Wall Street firms that
precipitated the financial crisis and the recession."
In similar vein, a tech-policy veteran who asks not to be named writes:
"The loose talk about "digital Pearl Harbor" and "equivalent to 9/11" is
regrettable, in my opinion. We should learn how to calibrate
cyberthreats, which are serious but not in the same league. Something
bad happening to PayPal or even CitiBank is not the same as planes
bombing Hawaii or crashing into the World Trade Center, I'm sorry. We
should resist these kinds of analogies."
By instinct and experience I am skeptical of "threat-inflation" sloganeering, whether about the cyber or the "real" world. (No doubt this point is at top-of-mind right now because I am sitting in an airport lobby where every five minutes the PA system delivers the news that "the current threat advisory as established by the Department of Homeland Security is 'Orange'." Tell me, please oh Lord, who on Earth is made safer or more secure, or which evil-doer anywhere is more hindered, by repetitive broadcast of this moronic boilerplate? What does the "current" level mean, if it never changes?** Why is it the same in Washington DC, which someone might want to blow up, and rural Mississippi, which is probably under less imminent threat? What am I supposed to do or think because it's "orange"? Is there any conceivable reason this system is still in place -- other than the fact that no political official dares take the risk of recommending that it be lowered? But I digress.)
Back to cyber-security: I think the 9/11 comparison is useful strictly in the terms mentioned above: That if there is some large disruption, the whole issue will be discussed in an entirely different way, and policies will change, in both positive and panicky overkill directions. Acting calmly right now would be preferable ... but so would a lot of other things that we not going to do.
Next up: a reader's argument that 9/11 allusions are indeed realistic when it comes to the potential damage done by cyber-threats. ____ * Update: I see that the Atlantic Wire is on
this theme too. Escher-drawing style, it includes a reference to my own Atlantic article on the topic.
** To be fair, it has only been at its steady "Orange" level for the past four and a half years, since the summer of 2005. So it's not that it "never" changes; it just hardly ever changes -- as wars begin and end, regimes rise and fall, world politics changes, terrorists are arrested or set free, etc.
As my colleague T-N Coates has pointed out, Evan Bayh's very-last-minute decision not to run for the Senate is graceless by most normal measures. He didn't talk with the President or the leader of his party in the Senate, both of whom obviously had a stake in his decision. He caught his state's party organization so much by surprise that they may not be able to get a substitute on the ballot under the normal rules.
The puzzlement to me is how this fits with the previous 25 years of his political life -- rather, what retrospective light it sheds on that time. Bayh has held elective office since he was 30. He became Indiana's governor at 33 and U.S. senator at 43.
If he really cared about his Indiana constituents and their problems through that time, great! But if so, how can he walk away with this kind of careless disregard about whether, in the style of his departure, he is smashing up things that had said were important to him. If, on the other hand, these issues and people never really mattered that much, and public life had been a kind of popularity contest -- well, that may be true of a lot of politicians, but they don't like to reveal it quite this bluntly.
Here's a constructive suggestion: Do you really care about the partisanship that is ruining public life and that, as you said, has driven you from the Senate, Mr. Bayh? Then why not use the fact that you are still in the U.S. Senate for most of another year -- a platform 99.999% of Americans will never occupy -- and apply all the power you can to advance causes you care about. What is holding you back?
Unlike everyone else up for election this year, you don't have to worry how this or that bout of truth-telling will look on Election Day. Let 'em bitch! You don't need an interest group to endorse you or a civic club to applaud you any more. Do you think hyperpartisanship is destroying the Senate? Why not call out people -- by name, by specific hypocritical move -- when you see them doing what they should be ashamed of? I guarantee that the press would eat this up. Why not a ten-month public seminar, through the rest of this year, on who is doing what, and how it could be different? Do you object to personal "holds" on nominations? Make it an issue! You have an idea of some issue where Republicans and Democrats might agree? Be specific about it and see what you can do. Again, if I know anything about the press and the melodrama of public life, I know you could turn it to your advantage -- and the public's, Mr. Smith style.
Suggested role model:
Your father, Birch Bayh, became a senator even younger. He was 34 when he took office, and 52 when defeated by Dan Quayle. In between -- through three Senate terms, 18 years -- he acted as if he was using his office for something, rather than just occupying it. That is part of the reason he eventually became vulnerable, as someone too "liberal" for his base. His punishment was to leave the Senate involuntarily, something you're now doing by choice. What he tried to do, at some risk to himself, you can now do risk free. His reward is his reputation. Yours could be the same.
About a year ago, on a trip to Hong Kong, I saw a single bottle of Sierra Nevada beer that somehow had made it to a grocery store shelf. After I bought it I wrapped it up in a scarf, then later tucked it inside a shoe in my suitcase and brought it all the way back to our apartment in Beijing to save for a special moment. That was my policy on the few times I improbably saw a Sam Adams or Rogue Dead Guy beer in a mainland Chinese store. All of this was defense against the bleakness of the local offerings.
Last week, at a grocery store in the SF Bay area, this is what I saw (click for larger and more lovingly detailed, from this Nexus One camera phone shot). It's disorienting.
We may be headed down, but it's a cushioned descent. More on the Rogue Dead Guy saga in China shortly; also, on the Nexus One's camera and other features. And yes, yes, I realize that a Chinese aficionado of, say, wild mushrooms or Sichuan spices might have the converse reaction if going back to a Chinese traditional market from the bleakness of sanitized American stores.
Whole series here; original article here. Reader Malcolm McPhee of Washington state writes to suggest a single Constitutional amendment to solve several problems at once:
"I agree with you that our old, broken and dysfunctional governing system is an alarming problem. I want to suggest another possibility for reform that requires neither a constitutional convention nor a coup. I also want to suggest that there is a better way than continuing to work within our system's flaws and limits to secure our nation's future.
"I maintain that a single constitutional amendment that cuts to the core of American government's dysfunction would work vastly better than a coup, a constitutional convention or continuing to muddle through within the present system.
"That constitutional amendment would deal with election, election finance and the use of money in the public sphere. Obviously, actual wording warrants considerable thought and effort. However, I can suggest some example content:
"1. Prohibit the contribution of anything of value to candidates for federal office or to federal officials.
"2. Establish federal government funding and procedures for federal elections.
"3. Provide for direct election of the president.
"4. Prohibit the use of super majorities in any public election and in the rules of legislative bodies except in amending the US or state and local constitutions/charters.
"5. Other
"This amendment would be designed to return the right of government "by the people" to America and to reduce the influence of money in American elections and governance.
This recommendation rests on several arguments:
1. That this amendment does cut to the core of the American government's dysfunction
2. That government of the people, by the people, for the people, is still worth dying for and preserving.
3. That money has corrupted our system so gradually, so insidiously and so thoroughly that we do not even recognize it as a serious problem per se and often view it as a given.
