Category Archives: Politics

A couple of thoughts on Ferguson

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Street Art-4

I like to think that I never thought I just hit a triple, but that isn’t true, like George Bush, I was born on third base and I have often thought I was responsible for all the easiness in my life. So my emotions on Ferguson are pretty detached and this is not a time for detachment. What I would rather do is post  several quotes that say what I would like to say, only better. The first bunch is from the web but the last two were from good friends who I don’t see enough in real life but still continue to enrich it on facebook, Ophelia Ramirez and Vern Smith.

It is the grand jury’s function not ‘to enquire … upon what foundation [the charge may be] denied,’ or otherwise to try the suspect’s defenses, but only to examine ‘upon what foundation [the charge] is made’ by the prosecutor…As a consequence, neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented. Justice Antonin Scalia,

this outcome, and so many like it, are the result of a system functioning the way it is intended to function. Racism is baked right into the foundation:

Every one of those grand jurors might have hearts of purest gold. The outcome was predetermined precisely because the outcome did not rely on the individual character of the jurors. We have police aggression against black people because the white moneyed classes of this country have demanded aggressive policing and the moneyed control our policy. We have police aggression because the War on Drugs provokes it and we still have a War on Drugs because the War on Drugs puts vast amounts of tax dollars in the hands of police departments and a voracious prison industrial complex. We have police aggression against black people because centuries of gerrymandering and political manipulation have been undertaken with the explicit purpose of empowering some people and disenfranchising others. from Andrew Sullivan’s blog. 

None of that can be solved through having pure hearts and pure minds. Racism is not a problem of mind. Racism cannot be combated by individuals not being racist. A pure heart makes no difference. In response to systemic injustice, you’ve got to change the systems themselves. It’s the only thing that will ever work. Jamelle Bouie 

…..The Language of the Unheard.

I will not condone, nor can I condemn. I hear the heartache of a mother, and the frustration of a people, and all people. I’m looking out into a world so broken, saddened, without answers. Does the quest for the blood of one man atone for a justice that cannot be found? Fear, frustration, hopelessness, desperation….they all share the same face on a million souls. I will not accept that there are no answers, that there are no bridges. Justice too often appears like formless smoke, near, but unobtainable. I will not be distracted by sanctimonious condemnation of the act without the damnation of the stage it springs from. And, most importantly, I will not accept the loss of another generation, when so much can be done, if we reach out…..out into a world that seems so broken, and listen without judging, and find our common ground. To build a new future, to find justice, to end the cycle. Vern Smith

A grand jury of twelve people – nine white, three black – decided that the policeman who shot and killed an unarmed teenager will not be indicted of any charge. I did not sit on the jury, nor was I present at the shooting. I do not know, and may never know what really happened. Perhaps the policeman really did feel threatened and in the few seconds he had to make a decision, he felt the use of a firearm was the only way to handle the situation. Perhaps in following the strict letter of the law, the grand jury felt they could not, in good conscience, render an indictment. I just don’t know.

What I do know is this: racism in this country is alive and unfortunately, quite well. I see it in my own life. I well remember my brothers being pulled over and harassed by the police for no other reason other than the color of their brown skin. I hear it in the comments I still get, such as, “You are very pretty for a Mexican girl”, or “For a Mexican, you speak well”. I see it in my extended family where my sister-in-laws niece was killed in a drive by five years ago and the police have yet to catch the killer because, really, they do not have the time/resources to investigate the killing of another black teenager killed in an area where this is an everyday occurrence. And my experiences pale when compared to the 200 plus years of discrimination that people of color have endured, and continue to endure in this country.

I understand the outrage with the lack of indictment of yet another person who has killed an unarmed young man of color. I understand the feeling of despair. However, looting, rioting, destroying property, and possibly hurting someone else is not the answer. How does this possibly help?

What I also know is that we have an opportunity to turn this around; an opportunity to put the outrage into something constructive; an opportunity to turn from hate and know that love really is the answer. Think of the immense changes Gandhi facilitated through non-violence. Civil rights were in large part brought about through determined non-violence. Peaceful actions are more powerful than rioting and looting. More powerful than killing. And more powerful than hate.

I so urge, no I beg everyone reading this to turn away from violence and use this an opportunity to remember that at our core, we are one. We are brother and sisters all. We have, in this situation, the call to effect change through peaceful and powerful channels.

Today, how will you be peaceable?
Ophelia Ramirez 

A couple of thoughts on Voting this year

Americana, Politics

Voting-76

Don’t be cynical, A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten years old that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and he’s still upset. Judge Philander Coates

I love voting but I don’t always love the results. This year was different, however, in that I didn’t particularly enjoy the voting part either. Partially because I felt certain that I would not like the results. By Tuesday morning, I had quit thinking the polls were wrong, still, I didn’t expect that much of a blow out. But even more disconcerting is that I didn’t care about the results as much as I wanted to and felt I should. My disappointment in Obama has bled into a generalized disappointment and that has dampened my enthusiasm.

I want to be clear that I think Obama is a good, journeyman, President and I want to acknowledge that he has had an uphill fight in getting needed legislation passed . He has done alot of – what I consider – good. Much of it under the radar, like appointing a large number of – mildly – Liberal Appellate Judges which, importantly, is the pool from which the next couple of Supreme Court Justices will come. He has reduced the National Debt (a fact that is often hidden by the Republican’s hysterical screams). He has reduced taxes, although in sort of a backhanded and bumbling way, even if nobody seems to know it.

Still, I am disappointed. Some of that disappointment with Obama are what are usually touted as his major accomplishments ObamaCare and the Economic Recovery. I am not a fan of ObamaCare  – which I think is, primarily, a boon to insurance companies, subsidized by Federal Money  – still, he got a Universal Health Insurance bill through and nobody else has been able to do that. Yes, we have had  a steady, all be it slow, Recovery under Obama but the poor are not part of it and most of the money has gone to a cabal of the already rich.

My biggest complaints, in the end, my real complaints  with Obama are really complaints about his failure to change our National Direction, his failure to be the transformational president of his campaign. We are on a path that I believe is destructive to our country: at home, we, increasingly, have policies that result in less Economic Fairness, less Democracy, less Transparency, and more Oligarchy  and everywhere else, we are locked into what the historian Charles A. Beard calls perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Of course, Obama wasn’t running in 2014, even if the Republicans tried to make the election about him. I am not sure, actually, who was running because most of the Democrats weren’t running as Democrats. I think the refusal to run for the Democrat’s accomplishments but only against the Armageddon that the republican would surely bring on, was a big mistake. In Connecticut, Governor Dannel Malloy ran on the fact that he got some gun controls through, as did John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s governor. They both won but everybody else lost. Including, I think, me.

 

Obama, ISIS, war, and reality

Politics

Snowden-4 If he [Obama] does not go on the offensive against ISIS, ISIL, whatever you want to call these guys, they’re coming here. This is not just about Baghdad, not just about Syria. It is about our homeland, Lindsey Graham

In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus

In a major speech a couple of days ago, President Barack Obama became the fourth President to announce that we are going to bomb Iraq. I’m not saying that we are in a state of 1984-esque permanent war, but the last president who didn’t send troops to fight overseas was Jimmy Carter (but only if we don’t count the failed rescue mission in Iran). Obama’s speech disturbs me, it seems eerily similar to Bush The Younger’s justification for preemptive war and I don’t know why Obama did it.

Yes, ISIS -or ISIL, if you prefer – is taking over parts of Syria and Iraq but that is not the end of the world. Yes they have brutally killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people, but they are not the existential threat to Western Civilization that we are being told they are. When Lindsey Graham hysterically says the sky is falling, he is just being overwrought, or is trying to make other people frantic (I have no idea which).

I don’t know much about ISIS but I do know enough to know that they are not going to load up onto some Islamic version of Liberty Boats and come over here to take over, any more than Saddam Hussein did. Yes, ISIS took  alot of ground in a very short amount of time, or, maybe more accurately, it has been a short amount of time that we have been hearing about them. Even more alarming seems to be that they have been taking over territory across national borders (borders Europe so cavalierly drew about a hundred years ago). Sure, they seem to be an especially nasty organization, or – at least – they have some very nasty members who take pride in publicly killing helpless people. And, yes, they seem to be almost miraculously successful, but they are not going to be sailing – or flying, or even marching – over here. There are lots of reason for getting in a war with ISIS – some of them may even be pretty good – but the fantasy that they are going to attack us is not one of them.

According to the New York Times, while ISIS may be built on bloodshed, it seems intent on demonstrating the bureaucratic acumen of the state that it claims to be building. Its two annual reports so far are replete with a sort of jihadist-style bookkeeping, tracking statistics on everything from “cities taken over” and “knife murders” committed by ISIS forces to “checkpoints set up” and even “apostates repented. They are trying to setup a new country, ruled by Sunnis, out of parts of two failed countries now ruled by Shiites. Yes, it is possible, maybe even likely, that some of the Americans and Europeans who went to – let’s just say – The Levant to join the battle and learn the trade of killing people, will try to go back to their home country to terrorize us. But, by and large, we know who they are. This time we are paying attention (maybe too much attention, maybe that is part of the reason they became radicalized in the first place).

I feel confidant that, if and when, a ISIS radical comes back into the United States, we can keep track of them. What I don’t have confidence in is our ability to pick a side in a Civil War and have that side become a functioning democracy. We picked Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to run Iraq and he, systematically jailed Sunni leaders, shut Sunnis out of power, and refused to pay tribal militias. In many ways, this is what paved the way for ISIS. We didn’t know Maliki was going to do that, we didn’t expect him to do that, he said that he wouldn’t do that, but he did. I cannot think of even one Civil War in which our side won (except, obviously the US Civil War).

We think that our agenda is so right that it will make a difference, but every side thinks their agenda is right. We are outsiders – with all that implies – and are regarded as such. Edward Luttwak  points out how outsiders become the other and are hated even by those they came to help. The very word ‘guerrilla…describes the ferocious insurgency of the illiterate Spanish poor against their would-be liberators, under the leadership of their traditional oppressors…King Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time in Spain’s history offered an independent judiciary, freedom of the press, and the abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the aristocracy and of the Church. … Despite the fact that the new constitution would have liberated them and let them keep their harvests for themselves, the Spanish peasantry failed to rise up in its support. Instead, they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly innovations of the foreign invader. For Joseph was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by French troops. That was all that mattered to most Spaniards—not what was proposed but by whom it was proposed. 

The rights and proper behavior that we find self evident is not necessarily self evident to Vietnamese, Iraqis, or Egyptians (or French, for that matter). There are people in all of those countries who do want us there but there are more that don’t. The people who want us there are mostly the people in power and, in the Middle east, they are the dictators.

It seems to me that when we do help, provide air support for example, we actually made the side we are supporting weaker. I think that Obama knows this, his speeches, in the past, have indicated that, but the pull of war, as the universal answer, is strong. That is sad, we are not what I want my country to be but, even under Obama, war has become the solution to almost every problem.

MoveOn and Net Neutrality

Local events, Politics

Net Neutral-9883
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell, Animal Farm

I don’t know as much about this as I should so please, Please! let me know if I have said anything in error. All I know is what the speakers told me at the rally in the pictures (Ok, and what I read in the email propaganda I get on a regular basis).

In January, in a lawsuit brought by Verizon, an U.S. Appeals Court of three judges threw out the federal rules that required Internet providers to treat all Internet traffic equally. The Court said Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. In this case, the Commission, means the FCC which has said that broadband is not the same as a utility and the Court then said, in effect, if it isn’t a utility, you can’t regulate as such, come up with new rules.

In May 2014, according to ZD Net, the Federal Communications Commission decided in a 3-2 vote on Thursday morning that it will allow telecommunications and broadband providers to charge content providers for preferential treatment across their respective networks. Simultaneously, and confusingly, the FCC also stated that broadband companies could not slow down or block incoming traffic outright. The people who are good at reading FCC tea leaves, think that this is the end of Net Neutrality, AT&T and Comcast can now charge more for higher speed. Because of public outcry, this new rule has now been put on hold for 120 days so the FCC can hear public comment.

So, so far, the status of the Internet is in limbo, but the chances of Net Neutrality becoming the Law of the Land are pretty slim. Obama, who as you may remember, ran on Net Neutrality, appointed  Tom Wheeler to the Chairmanship of the FCC.  That may seem like a surprise because Wheeler was the top lobbyist for Comcast and AT&T who have fought Net Neutrality for over a decade (and Wheeler did much of that heavy lifting). But it really shouldn’t be too surprising. Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, and Obama often play golf together – Roberts is a major donor and has had Obama over for dinner – and that means he has lots of time to present his point of view. I’m not saying that it is nefarious, they play golf together, they are friendly, Roberts pitches his point of view.

The way I see it is, can enough people make enough noise to outweigh Brian Roberts, one guy with alot – thinking of you Gail on that spelling – of money and the access it buys. Roberts has a point of view and he has a right to that point of view and, one on one, none of us has a chance to have our point of view heard equally. That may not be fair, but it is real. If two of us speak up, it still will not matter, if twenty million of us speak up, Brian Robert’s point of view probably won’t matter – although  the NRA may be so powerful that it is an exception – and I have no idea where the tipping point is. But I am convinced that there is a tipping point; I am convinced that, at some point, if enough people speak up, they will be heard.

Even though the chances of keeping the net neutral are slim, it wouldn’t hurt – and you might feel better about yourself – if you sign one of MoveOn. org petitions and send it along. If you really want to feel good about yourself, send the FCC a comment directly.

Internet-3-2Oh, the pictures? It was a MoveOn rally on an intersection that they thought Obama would pass on the way to a fundraiser in Los Altos Hills. He either went a different way or came by helicopter. I think the helicopter theory is more likely because several helicopters, escorted by two Marine V-22 Ospreys, were flying in the area.

 

Pattern Recognition and the Seduction of Simplicity

Politics

Ukrane Cartoon 2

In one of the early episodes of Cosmos – which is as far as I’ve gotten – Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how we humans have evolved to be good at recognizing  patterns. He may have even said that pattern recognition is something that all animals are good at. Either way he is, of course, right. The better an animal is able to recognize patterns, the more likely their survival. After all, any animal that is able to intuit the pattern of her world – The best grass is by the wide spot in the river, or The lions like to sleep during the day. – will flourish at the expense of another animal just wandering around at random.

We – Home sapien – are so good at pattern recognition that we often see patterns when there really isn’t one. From around the time Homo erectus stood up, in the neighborhood of one and half million years ago, our ancestors have probably been seeing patterns in the stars. By the time we actually became Homo sapiens and started migrating out of Africa – going North toward the bright star that is always the same direction – we had already, probably, started naming those patterns.

Today, I – and most of us – see bigots and racists every time we see somebody waving a Confederate Battle Flag. Every time Western Europe moves east, the Russians see Nazis. But not all patterns are really there and most patterns are only there some of the time. A pattern, by definition, is not one hundred percent. I think that is easy to forget, to think the pattern is a simple answer. That simplicity is the handmaiden of certainty and Certainty makes us so comfortable.

As an aside, somebody – I think it was Gail Cousins – posted a quote from Lupita Nyong’o on the seduction of inadequacy. I love that term, I love the depth and subtlety. Seduction, so gentle a word used here and still, so insistent, like an undertow. Most of us feel that undertow and some of us get swept away by it.

I – all of us, I think – want to be right, we want to be certain and to be certain, requires answers. Years ago, maybe in the late 70s, I was at a plant show and saw a striking plant labeled Beaucarnea Species, I asked the guy selling the plant if he knew the species name and his eyes said, If I knew the name, I would have put in on the label. But his mouth said, Uh….Beaucarnea stricta? I bought the Beaucarnea and happily labeled it Beaucarnea stricta. End aside.