Month: October 2010

Timothy Noah argues against the Stewart-Colbert rallies:

Stewart-Colbertism scorns extremism of all types, but especially conservative extremism, and most especially conservative extremism driven by ignorance or religious fundamentalism. It is mildly critical of liberalism, but mainly for failing to combat conservative bombast more effectively. It endorses, implicitly, whatever liberal consensus has managed to survive these past 30 years, but isn't terribly interested in the details.

All this works well as humor, but as a sentiment shouted through a bullhorn to thousands stretched between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument, it will translate into, well, judging other people for what they don't know. It will do so no matter how much everyone laughs.

Shachtman analyzes the Wikileaks trove. There's no evidence, however, that they were part of any ongoing program as claimed by the Bush administration:

Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents…

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base…

Even late in the war, WMDs were still being unearthed. In the summer of 2008, according to one WikiLeaked report, American troops found at least 10 rounds that tested positive for chemical agents. “These rounds were most likely left over from the [Saddam]-era regime. Based on location, these rounds may be an AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] cache. However, the rounds were all total disrepair and did not appear to have been moved for a long time.”

The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.

But the more salient issue may be how insurgents and Islamic extremists (possibly with the help of Iran) attempted to use these lethal and exotic arms. As Spencer noted earlier, a January 2006 war log claims that “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons were smuggled in from Iraq. That same month, then “chemical weapons specialists” were apprehended in Balad. These “foreigners” were there specifically “to support the chemical weapons operations.” The following month, an intelligence report refers to a “chemical weapons expert” that “provided assistance with the gas weapons.” What happened to that specialist, the WikiLeaked document doesn’t say.

I know of no incident when these weapons were actually used against US troops. And the irony, of course, is that it was the invasion that gave insurgents and Islamists access to these remnants.

Only the most crazed followers of the weekly contest need continue. A reader writes:

VFYW League Members –

The 9-week regular season has come to a close with Krakow, Poland. As with the other times the VFYW Contest has been from Europe, all the matches were very close (except for T's hail-mary New Zealand pick):

R (Munich 395 miles away) beat T (Christchurch, NZ 11,111 miles away)
N (Berlin 224 miles away) beat S (Riga, Latvia 425 miles away)
J (Warsaw 111 miles away) beat A (Prague 210 miles away)
Myself (Prague 210 miles away) beat H (Maribor, Slovenia 380 miles away)
C (Budapest, Hungary 293) beat The C (average distance 1,633 miles away)

In the two key matches impacting the playoffs, J beat A in an extremely close match and C knocked The C out of the playoffs (and closed out a four game losing streak for The C after a 4-1 start).

Here are the final standings for the regular season:

Standings   Name (w/l record)    Total Distance    Points    Closest Guess
1st*              M  (6-3)                        22,463                12                    0
2nd*            R  (5-2-2)                     32,187                 12                   0
3rd*             H  (5-4)                        20,384               10                   72
4th*             C  (5-4)                         26,206                10                   88
5th*             J  (5-4)                          31,886               10                    3
6th*             S  (4-4-1)                      10,703                 9                     0
7th               N  (4-5)                         14,877                 8                     2
8th               The C  (4-5)                 24,529                 8                   285
9th               T  (3-6)                         49,076                6                    369
10th             A  (2-6-1)                      26,495                5                      0

2 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, 0 points for a loss – total distance is the tiebreaker

Top six qualify for the playoffs – R and myself have first round byes and the 3rd and 4th team have mileage spreads in the first round.  Here is the playoff picture for next week.  Note – everyone still makes picks for the sake of season long stats and good old-fashioned pride.

First Round (10/23):

1st seed – BYE (M)
4th seed (C minus 750 mile spread) vs. 5th seed (J)
3rd seed (H minus 1,500 mile spread) vs. 6th seed (S)
2nd seed – BYE (R)

Semi-Finals (10/30):

1st seed (M minus 1,500 mile spread) vs. winner of 4th vs. 5th week one match
2nd seed (R minus 750 mile spread) vs. winner of 3rd vs. 6th week one match

Championship Match (11/6):

Winner of match one vs. Winner of match two (no spread)

As I said in the beginning of the season, there's no Price is Righting for the mileage spread playoff rounds as the person with the spread could simply pick a city within that spread and guarantee victory.  The way the picking will work is that everyone in a playoff match (except the Championship) can only pick once.  The person with the spread (in round one this is C and H) must make their pick first – preferably by Sunday night.  Once they've made their pick then their opponent can make their pick (and obviously this should be further away than the mileage spread).  For scoring, C and H's distances will be the actual distance minus their mileage spread, even if this ends up being a negative number. 

Just fyi, I cut the original spreads for the second round matches to equal the #3 and #4 seed spreads – the 4,000/2,000 mile spread seemed too high – the biggest benefit for the #1 and #2 seed should be the first round bye.

IT'S ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Names have been shortened to first letters for anonymity's sake.)

On general suspicion and nervousness around people wearing “Muslim garb”:

I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts.

On general suspicion and nervousness around people with dark skin, in a TNR colloquium about whether it was justified, given the objective racial statistics of who is likeliest to commit crime:

Neither black nor white store owners are in business to display the virtues of admitting people of all colors, creeds, and fashions to their stores. They are in business to make money. I would want to take precautions to prevent robbery; I would look closely at people entering the store. The race of a potential customer would be one factor among many to be considered as I girded myself against thieves.

But in Washington and almost all other major cities, blacks do patronize jewelry stores. A jeweler in Beverly Hills who closed his door to heavily bejeweled Mr. T would be foolishly closing his cash register. Unless I am a racist, race and age cannot be the sole deciding factors in calculating whom I will and will not let into my store. And I certainly would not close my door to, say, all young black men – not even to those who are casually dressed and behaving nervously. I would act cautiously in dealing with them, as I would with an antic, strangely dressed white man.

As a cabdriver I would apply the same considerations. Discrimination can be used judiciously. I would certainly exclude one class of people: those who struck me as dangerous. Nervous-looking people with bulges under their jackets would not be picked up; nor would those who looked obviously drunk or stoned. It all comes down to a subjective judgment of what dangerous people look like. This does not necessarily entail a racial judgment. Cabdrivers who don’t pick up young black men as a rule are making a poorly informed decision. Racism is a lazy man’s substitute for using good judgment.

The elevator question is disingenuous. I suspect you are suggesting that I am a white woman getting into an apartment building elevator with a strange black man. Of course, black women have just as much to fear as white women. Nevertheless, black women living in black neighborhoods ride elevators with black men frequently, and do so without being raped. In this situation and all others, common sense is my constant guard. Common sense becomes racism when skin color becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me.

Notice that Williams uses facts and evidence to make these judgments. Yet the facts and evidence in the case he was discussing on Fox News prove that there is no statistical reason whatever to get nervous around those in Muslim garb on airplanes – since no terror attacks in America have been conducted by people in that attire. Yet that factor – and that alone – is what he invokes to justify his fear. This is anti-religious bigotry in its purest, clearest form.

In stark contrast, in the case of generalizing about nervousness and suspicion of thievery toward African-American men, Williams is far more circumspect. He takes statistical evidence into account; he looks for aspects in a human being that, independent of their race, might make one suspicious. He rules out judgment based on their clothing or their “acting nervously”. But when it comes to Muslims in traditional garb, he feels nervous because of that fact alone, and associates them immediately with a terror suspect involving Islam in general – not radical Jihadism – as at war with the West.

So generalized nervousness around people wearing Muslim garb (who statistically have committed zero acts of terrorism in the US) is not bigotry; but generalized nervousness and suspicion around young black men (who statistically were much more likely to commit the crimes in question in the thought experiment in the colloquium) is racism.

Why, in other words, did Williams not say about those in Muslim garb:

Common sense becomes bigotry when religious attire becomes a formula for figuring out who is a danger to me.

Why does he have this extreme double standard? And how dare he use his own record in defending civil rights for African-Americans to justify his bigoted prejudice against devout Muslims?

I think the answer is pretty obvious. He is on Fox News, pandering to the anti-Muslim bigot, Bill O’Reilly. And Roger Ailes rewards him for that role, as a “liberal” justifying anti-Muslim bigotry, because pandering to bigotry makes for good ratings and good politics.

(Hat tip: Glenn Greenwald, whose full post is also well worth reading.)

(Photo: Eric Draper/White House via Getty).

An excellent new video in support of Prop 19:

Proposition 19 – The New Leaf from ISHOTHIM on Vimeo.

Laura Miller reviews Avi Steinberg's Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian:

Among the library's regulars were the sagacious Fat Kat, who regarded Hasidim with all the respect due to a notably effective gang — "You did not fuck around in their neighborhood unless you had the green light"; Chudney Franklin, who had a highly articulated and not implausible plan to develop a Food Network cooking show called "Thug Sizzle" (he later changed the title to "Urban Cooking"); and C.C. Too Sweet, a pimp working on his autobiography while earning pocket money from fellow inmates by writing love letters in the style of arrest warrants ("Your sentence is in a maximum security facility called 'MY ARMS.'").

Jonah Lehrer reports on a new study that shows that "angst has creative perks":

[O]ur fleeting feelings can change the way we think. While sadness makes us more focused and diligent – the spotlight of attention is sharpened – happiness seems to have the opposite effect, so that good moods make us 20 percent more likely to have a moment of insight. The second takeaway is that many of our creative challenges involve tasks that require diligence, persistence and focus. It’s not easy making a collage or writing a poem or solving a hard technical problem, which is why sometimes being a little miserable can improve our creative performance.

(Image by artist Rich Bunce, featured in the London Independent Photography Show)

Steven Leckart drinks beers for lunch with Aubrey de Grey. They discuss de Grey’s controversial anti-aging proposals and the future de Grey envisions:

What’s going to happen is the curmudgeons — the card-carrying gerontologists who think it’s very dangerous to be over-optimistic — will eventually recognize the data available to us from mice is so solid we can go out publicly and say, “It’s only a matter of time.” That’s going to take a panel of interventions in mice that’s so comprehensive we actually add two whole years to the lifespan of mice that are already in middle age before we start.

That may be overcautious. We may be able to get gerontologists on board with a more modest result than that. However, at that point, game over. My job will be done. I can retire. Because that will be the point when Oprah will be all over it and the following day it will become impossible to get elected unless you have a manifesto commitment to have a war on aging.

I just wish he hadn’t called it that.