January 2010 archive

In “Illiteracy: The Downfall of American Society”, Education Portal reports that 50 percent of adults in America cannot read a book written at an 8th grade level.  20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level.  42 million American adults can’t read at all.  The number of American adults classified as functionally illiterate increases by about 2.25 million each year.

Many of those people are Teabaggers . . .

Yeah.  That’ll help.  

Finding America on a map is also a problem.  According to National Geographic News, 11 percent of young Americans can’t locate the United States on a map. The location of the Pacific Ocean is a mystery to 29 percent, 58 percent don’t know where Japan is, 65 percent don’t know where France is, 69 percent don’t know where the United Kingdom is.

Knowledge of current issues and historical events is just as abysmal. Saul Friedman notes that 34 percent of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, nearly one-third of Republicans don’t believe Obama was born in the United States, more than two-thirds don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade, 24 percent could not name the country we fought in the Revolutionary War.

Many of these people vote, with predictably appalling results.  According to Freedom Daily . . .

Political scientist Michael Carpini analyzed thousands of voter surveys and found that there was “virtually no relationship” between the political issues that low-knowledge voters said “matter most to them and the positions of the candidates they voted for on those issues.  It was as if their vote was random.  

Low knowledge voters comprise 36 percent of the electorate and provide the deciding margins in almost all contested congressional and presidential elections.  Here in the 21st century, with multiple crises facing us, with the worst crisis of all–global warming–steadily intensifying, we have little if any chance of dealing with any of these crises through the political system, because our elections are not decided by the well-informed voters who make rational decisions in the voting booth, they’re decided by the voters who have no fucking idea what’s going on.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about our current situation in the government. And the wars. And our current and seemingly never ending involvement with torture.

With the somewhat recent revelation that some suicides in 2006 were questionable at best, I’m reminded of the things happening in 2006 and why more investigations into the Bush administration are necessary.

Report Casts Doubt On Guantanamo Suicides

by The Associated Press [via NPR]

January 18, 2010

Three Guantanamo Bay detainees whose deaths were ruled a suicide in 2006 apparently were transported from their cells hours before their deaths to a secret site on the island, according to an article in Harper’s magazine.

The published account released Monday raises serious questions about whether the three detainees actually died by hanging themselves in their cells and suggests the U.S. government is covering up details of what precisely happened in the hours before the deaths.

I first read about the suicides through that NPR article. It says the suicides likely happened at a facility near the main Gitmo facility, referred to as “Camp No.” The justification for setting up these facilities and for using this kind of interrogation technique is apparently 9/11:

After the terror attacks on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA set up a number of so-called “black” sites around the world, where harsh interrogations of terrorism-era suspects took place.

The Harper’s article suggested such a site at Guantanamo Bay may have belonged to the CIA or to the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command.

I remember 9/11. I remember how it was used as the justification for everything. I remember how people were tortured after 9/11 because they wouldn’t link 9/11 to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. I remember how the administration saw an opportunity with 9/11 and they went for it. When it didn’t work they tortured. They lied. They made up other claims that Hussein was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Last time there was a whistleblower revealing evidence to hamper the Bush administration’s plans, I remember how they outed his CIA agent wife.

I remember how their link from 9/11 to Saddam Hussein, al-Libi gave bad information to authorities because he was tortured. And this information was revealed in a DIA report that Dick Cheney read. And he committed suicide. I wrote about it, in fact.

I’ll quote from myself, again. May 15, 2009:

Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to investigate claims of Iraq trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from Africa:

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) — not by his wife — largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

Cheney had asked for more information on an intelligence report earlier on the same day questioning the link between Iraq and al Qaeda. In response to his request, the CIA sent Wilson to Africa, and an aide to Cheney testified that he had no idea his request would result in that trip.

So, he wanted information but didn’t think they’d send someone to get information?

The DIA in question had some very interesting and useful information. You’re definitely going to want to read this:

WASHINGTON — A government document raises doubts about claims that Al Qaeda members received training for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, as Senate Democrats yesterday defended their push for a report on how the Bush administration handled prewar intelligence.

   […]

   The document from February 2002 showed that the agency questioned the reliability of Al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. He could not name any Iraqis involved in the effort or identify any chemical or biological materials or cite where the training took place, the report said.

   The agency concluded that al-Libi probably misled the interrogators deliberately, and he recanted the statements in January, according to the document made public by Senator Carl Levin, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The DIA report said that the links between al Qaeda and Iraq were probably not to be trusted and that al-Libi’s information was bad. This was made all the more strange when, in the midst of the Plame scandal, Karl Rove sent an email to the reporter Matthew Cooper, saying not to “get too far out” on Joe Wilson, the whistleblower, because the administration had information to discredit his findings and it was going to start declassifying things soon.

If they had this information, I don’t understand. This whole incident happened because Cheney asked the CIA for more information on the Iraq-AQ link and the Niger yellowcake. The CIA asked Joe Wilson to go to Niger because of his expertise on the subject, and Cheney says that the CIA misinterpreted his request and that he never wanted a trip to Niger. If there were information already to cast doubt on Wilson’s new information then why ask for any new information? It already existed!

Valerie Plame’s work consisted of monitoring WMDs going into and out of Iraq and Iran.  

I’ve been watching the Prop 8 trial…except not really, since SCOTUS disallowed us folks who couldn’t be in the courtroom to watch what may be the most important court case ever for GLBT people.  So I watched the transcripts instead, as they were posted by the people at the Courage Campaign Institute and FiredogLake.  

One of the assertions made time and again by the defense was that Proposition 8 was not based in animus.

What?  No strong dislike of GLBT people?  No enmity?  Are we seriously expected to believe that there was no hostile attitude?

I’d like to think that one could discount those assertions as being false on there face.  But this was a court of law.  I am no lawyer, but as a writer and a mathematician, I know words and logic.

Having followed the trial closely, I have to ask the following.

When you deliberately choose not to learn about people who you wish to discriminate against, what is that if not animus?

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 42 Top Stories.

1 Disease spreads in quake-hit Haiti

by Virginie Montet, AFP

29 mins ago

Just had a gold star couple come in the shop looking for a flagpole on which they want to fly a USMC flag along with the US flag.  Their son was killed two weeks ago in Afghanistan two months into his fifth tour.  

Man, what do ya say, what can ya say.  I offered our condolences professionally and personally but whats that really mean.  Sometimes even in a simple job like this, selling flags, reality strikes home.

During the State of the Union address, President Obama noted what a slew of other previous Presidents have noted–that the United States of America needs to start exporting goods again.  Few people can disagree with a statement like this, but what Obama, nor any of his predecessors have ever discovered is precisely what one would need to trade with other countries and in what form this new invention would take.  If were wise enough to know, I’d probably be well on my way to being a very wealthy man, so I don’t underestimate the challenge in front of us.  However, though I believe that the capitalist system caters more to the selfish side of us more than the altruistic one, with selfishness does come innovation for the sake of maximum material gain, and in that regard, perhaps our basest instincts might come to everyone’s aid, at least for a time.

Careworn phrases like “good old fashioned American ingenuity” have been utilized over and over again for at least a century, insinuating strongly that there was no problem beyond our grasp which would not eventually render a solution.  And, honestly, I don’t think that this mode of thought nor of rhetorical framing has ever really gone away altogether.  But what I do think is that we don’t often look for these signs so much for where they are so much as where we think they ought to be.  Everyone can drive by and see the looming, titanic mass of buildings that house a paper processing plant or a textile mill, but the more subtle evidence of, say, a software design firm is much less visible to our senses and our psyches.  Even though we may be headed towards a purely service-based economy, other developing nations are only now in the process of beginning their industrial phase of growth.  Though our example might be the means by which they set their sights and chart their course, one must also crawl before one walks.  

If we were all more or less on the same page the whole world round regarding economic parity, then exporting commodities would be a much easier task.  Right now we do retain some residual elements of an earlier day, but often our products can’t compete globally because they cost more to produce and thus they cost more to purchase.  I honestly believe that we can be indebted to one of two stances in this instance, but not both.  Either we pay people more in line of a fair wage, granting them adequate benefits— recognizing that this will ensure that many countries can always buy what they need at a cheaper price from another source, or we slash costs to the bone and with them salaries and benefits.  It goes without saying that I would never advocate the second position, but for the future going forward that model might be the only option that makes our products look attractive and compelling to another country or region’s buyer, based on the current state of affairs as they exist today.

Speaking specifically about food, for example, I note that our own cultural attitudes are often to blame for much of the disparity.  The more affluent among us can afford to be socially conscious by means of pocketbook and pay two times as much for products at a Whole Foods or a locally-grown produce Farmer’s Market.  The poorest, of course, simply aren’t afforded this option.  Americans might cut corners or scrimp to buy a wide screen television or to save up to take a vacation, but never towards food.  Food is always supposed to be readily available, unquestionably cheap, and supremely varied.  Organic food is a kind of innovation of sorts, since though its stated purpose is to use older methods of cultivation, it still combines elements of more modern technological strategies with the tried-and-true methods of a different time.  Though it would never willfully adopt this label, organic food is itself a hybrid concept—one that seeks the middle ground between old and new.  

These, of course, are previously established channels and instances.  As for what product or products would find favor among the consumers of the globe, one assumes upon first thought that the most likely innovation would come in the form of some new technological breakthrough, one perhaps tied closely to the computer or the internet.  However, like organic food, perhaps it would be best to seek for something with a foot in old ways and a foot in newer formulations.  The most enterprising soul would be wise to recognize that products can be designed purely with the intention of always having a reliably steady stream of buyers and demand, or that they can be modified in the hopes of both making money and pulling in less developed countries and regions more economically in line with ours.  Straddling the gap between the way it has always been and they way it needs to be is partially why we are at the impasse in which we find ourselves.  While I do believe that the phrase “ethical capitalism” is a complete oxymoron, I do also recognize that if we are left with a system unable to be discarded for quite some time, it would be much easier if we limited as many disparities and points of difference between people as we could, since then it would be able for us to better address the remaining and still quite numerous problems left over.  

We are still in the middle of a shift between an industrial economy and an information-based one, but at times our benchmarks and guideposts are indebted to a by-gone epoch.  Nostalgia is strong and so is the resistance to the way things were always supposed to be.  For instance, I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, a city which was forced to completely reinvent itself after the collapse of its native steel industry in the 1970’s.  In so doing, it embraced banking and a world-class health care center based around a university, both of which are the two largest employers in the metro area.  We might be wise to emulate their example, which is far from the only instance that a city teetered on a knife’s edge between survival and disaster and managed to righted itself.

It is a short-sighted, short-term gain over long-term ultimate resolution means of thinking that got us into our current mess.  American must learn that delayed gratification provides temporarily discomfort but eventual, eternal satisfaction.  Greed drives humans to go for the quick cash-in and the gravy train, instead of a more modest, but still very satisfying profit.  I don’t ascribe to a theory of American exceptionalism because I am too aware of the times at which we fall short, though I also recognize that we are far from the only country, society, or culture which has a tendency to opt for the quick fix rather than engaging in the soul-searching and introspection which leads towards true resolution.  Lasting success is based on hard work and research, not the accidental score.  

Neither do I count myself among the numbers of those who adopt a cynical tact towards American identity and greater purpose that seeks fault first and rarely gives room for success.  Somewhere between those who believe that our best days are yet to come and those who assert that we are soon going the way of the UK into second-tier country status is something close to the reality of the situation.  Still, what we require right now is a new kind of skill set, one willing to work with existing trends, rather than fight them, build up native industry without seeking salvation in the form of a foreign company with an open checkbook, pay a bit more than usual for household staples with the understanding that increased cost doesn’t always mean money wasted, and recognize that in a truly fair world, it shouldn’t matter who is number 1 or number 500.  If money is what makes the world go round, we can’t begin to get any other unfair construct in check until we ensure that monetary policy levels the playing field.  Real equality does not trickle-down and it never will.  

Haven’t posted anything in about a week or so on the Inquiry as I’ve had some other issues I’ve been following and there wasn’t really much more coming out as to the tidbits of what was happening on this side of the pond, my interest in this as the Brits are holding these hearings and that’s up to them to sort out there own leaderships guilt or innocence in justification for Iraq.

Tony Blair’s turn to testify is today and that’s already started, you can tune in here as he will be testifying for some six hours, these live video’s are then archived.

Not much has been covered as to these hearings here in the states even when mention of our administration, and others, were talking about taking down Saddam before 9/11, on 9/11 and shortly after and more.