A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

An Immodest Proposal

So it's capitalism they worship, eh? Let's give it to them:

"Perfect" capitalism assumes that everyone knows the price point of every supplier in a market. Businesses that offer different prices to different customers are (with certain exceptions) prosecuted for it. How is one to price one's labor without knowing what others receive for theirs? It shall therefore be mandatory for businesses to make public the amount paid to each employee...say...on a quarterly basis. A meeting will be held in every office, in which every employee's name, number of years at the company, and salary are read aloud. Directories of salary will be published on the internet.

In the interest of fostering the most efficient possible commerce, it will be necessary for all companies to know how much wealth each person has in order to target advertising as precisely as possible. Home appraisals, car(s) value(s), loans, etc., will be updated annually. Directories of wealth will be published on the internet.

In the interest of perfecting financial markets, each person's investment portfolio should be available on a minute-by minute basis. If Jeff Goldblum decides to buy heavy into Verizon, your computer should pop up a window to tell you about it. If Mrs. McGillicuddy's prize pooch produces an improbable number of pups, the people have a right to know.

That's capitalism, right? We should make nakedly stark the poverty of folks you thought were doing all right. We need to expose the nest eggs of people who don't need help. How can one hope to emulate the wealthy (disseminate best practices) without knowing who they are and how they do it? How can one avoid the mistakes of the poor without knowing what they did wrong?

In this culture, money is everything. The organizing principle of our economic system is said to be "capitalism," which holds that an "invisible hand" determines the price (relevance, worth, existential quotient) of a commodity in a truly open market. If we are to have actual capitalism, bright light must be shone on every aspect of the financial world, including the personal. Given that a Time magazine poll has 39% of Americans already or expecting to be at some point in their lives in the top 1% of income, such illumination is essential.

Who's with me?

posted by David at 7/30/2003 08:51:00 PM ::

Friday, July 25, 2003

Somerby Update:

Today's Howler has the missing source of evidence I wondered about yesterday, as reported by the Post's David Ignatius:

IGNATIUS: [T]he British intelligence cited by the president was almost certainly based on reporting by the French government. French intelligence sources say that their spy service closely monitors Niger’s uranium production, and France is known to be the most accurate source of information about Niger.

The British focused partly on a report that an Iraqi trade delegation had visited Niger in 1999. Because 70 percent of Niger’s exports are uranium, and because Iraq had bought more than 500 tons of uranium from Niger in the 1980s, the British concluded that the Iraqis were considering renewed uranium purchases. This view was reinforced by additional, post-1999 intelligence, which also almost certainly came from France. The British didn’t tell the United States, because sharing such sensitive information with a third country is an intelligence no-no.

Finally, neither the British dossier nor Bush’s reference to it had anything to do with documents that surfaced last year alleging that the Iraqis had actually purchased uranium from Niger. They were later branded “crude forgeries” by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who were given a copy by the United States. The British were unaware of the documents when they prepared the September dossier and learned of them only after the president’s State of the Union speech.

Now there is a plausible rationale for the SOTU's famous 16 words. Other questions remain:

1) If the British saw fit to tell the White House they had reliable intelligence that Iraq was fishing for uranium in Africa, why didn't the CIA know about it? Tenet lobbied successfully to keep the subject out of Bush's Cincinnati speech, and unsuccessfully to keep it out of the SOTU. The CIA either didn't find the British information credible or wasn't aware of it at all. Why didn't the State Department know about it? Despite apparently having been pressed to include the allegation in his speech to the UN, Colin Powell refused, reportedly referring to the claim as "bullshit."

2) The claim was removed from the Cincinnati speech, possibly because the administration was not yet aware of the additional British intelligence, and included in the SOTU as a result of receiving it. If this proposed timeline is correct, why did Bush's Cincinnati speechwriters put it in the speech in the first place? Was it on the basis of the "dodgy dossier?" If the timeline is correct, there were some in the administration who were willing to press the issue on the basis of "obvious forgeries." While that doesn't rise to the level of presidential lying in a constitutionally mandated address to the American people in the interest of promoting an unprovoked invasion, it does show brazen mendacity on the part of those upon whom we rely to do Bush's thinking for him.

3) Why did we give the phony Iraq report to the IAEA?

4) What of Joseph Wilson and his trip to Niger to check out the story? Wilson is probably the closest thing in this country to the horse's mouth where Niger is concerned, and he concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Iraq had been able to get any uranium from there. Given the tight control over Niger's uranium exports, however much Saddam might have wanted to get his hands on some of their yellowcake, he wasn't going to be able to, and it's certain that every relevant intelligence agency in the U.S. knew it. It's like me looking into buying a blue whale--you can insinuate all you want about my motives, but at the end of the day, we both know I won't get one.

I'm sure Hussein would have liked to invade and conquer the U.S. himself. But the issue was not about what he would have liked. It was about whether or not he presented a credible threat to the United States. Putative existence of evidence of a 1999 Iraqi trade mission to Niger, even if it included proof that inquiries about uranium were made, would have no material effect on Iraq's ability to threaten us. Pointing to it in the context of building a case that Iraq was a danger to us, although not specifically a lie, was blatantly deceptive.

posted by David at 7/25/2003 08:51:00 PM ::

This can't end well

CAIRO, Jul 24 (IPS) - The same official sermon will be delivered in 88,000 mosques across Egypt from this week. The government move is a part of extensive new censorship, and penalization for mosques and preachers that do not toe the official line.

As of Friday this week, no preacher will be free to deliver his own sermon, according to a statement from the Awaqaf (religious endowments) ministry. Friday is the holy congregation day at mosques when preachers give their views on religious and political issues.

The sermon will now be written and distributed by officials from the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. The regime has been fighting Islamic groups trying to topple his secular pro-Western rule for the past 15 years.

"Preachers who do not stick to the text (provided every Friday) would be deprived of bonuses and will be subject to an investigation by the legal affairs department at the ministry," according to the statement from the Awaqaf ministry.

The plan also provides for removing independent preachers and replacing them with imams paid for and appointed by the regime.

Preachers at all newly appropriated mosques will be asked to attend state-run religious indoctrination courses. Preachers will only be appointed after clearing an examination and passing a security test.

Wow. Looks like Egyptian Muslims are going to be even more pissed off. And the best part is, a lot of 'em will blame us!

The campaign is "a part and parcel of the pressure the United States places on our regimes to try and limit the Islamic movement," [Muslim Brootherhood official Abdel Monem Abul Fotouh] told IPS. "At the same time as the government and foreign countries are calling for economic liberalization and economic freedom, they want to place restrictions on freedom of expression and religious freedoms in mosques."

No, Abdel, you've got it all wrong! You must have us confused with somebody else. We're the shining beacon of democracy and free speech on the hill (that gives your brutally repressive government $3 billion a year).

This is a deliberate provocation calculated to produce a great swell of protest. Mubarak is taking a huge gamble, that he can goad intractable religious leaders and their more militant followers into jailable offenses and reassert his authoritarian grip. Failing that, his government is history.

posted by David at 7/25/2003 04:43:00 PM ::

Lies and Libertarianism

Daniel Davies makes (still yet another) excellent point in this post over at Crooked Timber. Libertarianism, Davies ventures, should advocate no stigma against the public act of lying, as it does not in itself constitute action harmful to others. “Why,” then, he asks, “have they got such a downer on fraud?”

The prohibition on force is easy to understand. Force is nasty; it harms people directly and interferes with their liberty. But defrauding someone is just offering them an opportunity to harm themselves. Rather like selling them heroin, or persuading them to opt out of a defined benefit pension scheme, two activities that most of us would support people’s right to do, even though we might disapprove of the consequences. If we’re going to establish a strong principle of caveat emptor, as most libertarians seem to think that we should, why should we have a prohibition on that form of free speech known as “lying”? If someone wants to be fooled by a smooth-talking charmer, or decides rationally that they can’t be bothered verifying the accuracy of claims made to them, why should the govenrment step in and paternalistically demand that they be insulated from the consequences of their actions?

‘Pure’ libertarians face a serious theoretical problem in that they are loath to admit that structure and rules are fundamental to the existence of a sphere in which individual actors can excercise their ‘freedoms.’

Without sanctions against the use of physical force, libertarians admit, none of us could be secure in our possessions or persons. Although such rules limit the scope of one’s behavior, they’re deemed prerequisite to civilized society. Rules enforcing truth-telling are equally so.

First, if there are to be any rules whatsoever, there is required some form of institutionalized enforcement authority that determines their applicability. If the rules are to perform the function in society for which they are intended, they must be applied as much as possible to instances of behavior that actually happened. Insofar as data pertaining to the enforcement of the rules is obtained from the mouths of humans, there must be sanctions against fabrication and/or distortion of evidence.

Second, libertarians acknowledge the utility of contracts, which rely for their very essence on the validity of the terms contained within them. If a party to a contract is found to have made false claims, the contract is void. As those who gain advantage by means of dodgy contracts deprive others of their property or services without compensation, the bedrock necessity of contractual truth-telling to a libertarian system is self-evident.

Total proscription of lying is unrealistic and doesn’t make sense, but in areas where one’s words impact upon compliance with accepted rules of conduct, mandating truth is essential.

posted by David at 7/25/2003 09:32:00 AM ::

Somerby Misses the Point

The incomparable Bob Sommerby

Omigod! They did it again! But then, how hard can it be for professional writers to use accurate terms to describe the Bush statement [British--Iraq--Niger--yellowcake]? Answer: Once a Perfect Storm starts to build, it can be very, very hard. For example, Joel Achenbach engages in conventional overstatement on page one of this morning’s “Style” section. Using a stronger term which really can’t be defended, Achenbach refers to “the president’s use of incorrect information about Iraq in his State of the Union address.” But this, of course, has been the norm; like many others, William Raspberry described Bush’s statement as a “falsehood,” although no one has shown that the statement was false.

The "disputed" Niger memo refers to a particular instance where Iraq supposedly attempted to obtain yellowcake. The documents are forgeries, so therefore, the instance didn't exist. As the Bush and Blair administrations have failed to produce a single piece of additional evidence that Iraq has obtained or attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, the statement beginning with "the British government has learned" is pure fiction. It's frickin' made up. A figment.

Another instance of Iraq attempting to get uranium may well have happened. But we had no idea. Bush said we knew he did. Until I see credible evidence to the contrary, that claim is a lie.

Instead of shuffling blame back and forth, the administration should just make the evidence public, "national security" be damned. The fact that it hasn't tells me there isn't any evidence.

The movers in this administration have had conquering Iraq on their minds since long before Day 1. They have pushed, pulled, twisted and bribed our way into this war, and a lot of their arguments, such as the the complete and utter fabrication of ties between the government of Iraq and al Qaeda, were bullshit. If Iraq wasn't a threat, we didn't need to spend $100 billion to get our boys shot and blown up in a remote desert. Everyone in the administration was shilling for this unnecessary war, using any club available to beat our need to invade Iraq into our heads. It should have been obvious, even to our press corps.

I'm a big fan of The Daily Howler, and think Bob Somerby is one of the finest and most productive writers on the web. He just missed the point on this one.

posted by David at 7/25/2003 12:08:00 AM ::

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

One year done

A Level Gaze is a year old today. I'd like to thank everybody who linked the site, provided useful comments, and everyone who took the time to read it. It's been a really wonderful experience which I hope will last a few more years yet. Cheers!

posted by David at 7/23/2003 04:11:00 PM ::

Real Realpolitik

The neocons are often given credit for their big-picture perspective. While progressives worry about trivialities like living wages, provision of health care, and the environment, they are trying to contend with The Survival of Western Civilization Itself. They maintain that the world is a fundamentally dangerous place that America must actively shape to protect itself. They would not have us rely on diplomatic safeguards against the emergence of global strategic threats. We should maintain our security and preeminence through the threat and use of force, squashing any emergent power before it has the chance to do us harm.

Interesting doctrine, eh? Unfortunately, even under its own terms it’s obviously doomed.

Leaving aside the fact that this principle was the basis of a “preemptive” invasion of a country that was not even vaguely threatening to us, it won't work for real threats either. Following our glorious victory in Iraq, we are now getting a lot of serious contemplation from the neocons of preemptive military action against Iran and Syria. And then what? More of the same?

Will we have the money to invade, occupy, and materially change these countries so they will not reemerge to cause us trouble in the future? Will we have the political will to do so? As technology continues to advance and atomic weapons become cheaper and easier to manufacture, will all countries decide against acquiring them, even while under the thumb of an avowedly hegemonic hyperpower? Can we be sure that no new weapon of mass destruction that doesn't require expensive engineering and rare components will be invented at some point in the future? Can we formulate and enact policies over the long term such that no country, group, or individual will decide to work toward our destruction?

The answer to all of these questions is no. There is no magic formula to neutralize all global threats. Economic basketcases North Korea and Pakistan have found that acquisition of nuclear weapons is, dollar for dollar, the most efficient route to international influence, respect, and security. That lesson isn't going to be lost on other countries; so long as the world continues to be a chaotic place, governments are going to opt for proven deterrents over faith in the goodwill of the U.S., their neighbors, or international institutions. Unless we bomb the rest of the world back to the stone age, it's a good bet that fifty years from now dozens of countries will have nuclear weapons. Is this the solution that will be ultimately proposed?

What’s worse, I don’t even think the neocons really mean what they’re saying. If nonproliferation of WMDs is a goal worth going to war over, you don't have the luxury of being selective about it. They don’t act against China, which has pretentions to global-power staus and certainly has the means to cause us a lot worse harm than Iraq could ever have done. The administration hawks pussyfoot around Pakistan, nuclear-armed, seething with Islamic militants, and roughly a heartbeat away from becoming a fierce enemy. They blithely ignore happenings in Russia, which is still smarting from its come-down in the global hierarchy, is badly policed, is still armed to the tips of its teeth, and is teeming with impoverished military officers and scientists possibly willing to sell any of dozens of kinds of WMDs to the highest bidder. Strangely, for dealing with these countries, diplomacy and international consensus are the preferred tools.

The neocons who dragged us to war in Iraq painted themselves into a corner by claiming the invasion wasn’t about oil, the only material difference between Iraq and the countries we didn't attack. Had they been above-board about it, their arguments would have at least held together. It’s tempting to wonder why they weren’t. Possibly their reticence came from a desire to avoid a global outcry over the nakedly imperialist implications of such an admission. Possibly it came from a calculated attempt to maintain political support at home. Maybe they don't really care whether they make sense or not.

Update: David Neiwert has an excellent post with a lot more background information and analysis.

posted by David at 7/23/2003 04:06:00 PM ::

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

Should we give them Purple Hearts?

Just heard on Jay Leno that injuries involving fireworks hit an all-time high this year.

Suppose it has anything to do with the hyperventilating, chest-thumping, mouth-breathing "patriotism" the right has been enforcing? I can see it--what godfearing parent is going to tell Little Dylan he can't play with explosives for America? Even Iraqi and Afghanistani kids are doing it.

posted by David at 7/08/2003 11:49:00 PM ::

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