10/04/2007

Growin’ Up

In the summer of 1979, a few months after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) staged the “No Nukes” concerts in New York City.

One of the acts, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, took the stage to a tremendous roar from the audience. Many interpreted the noise as Bruce’s bridge-and-tunnel followers calling his name. Others heard boos.

Among activist-rockers like Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt, Bruce and the E Streeters were the odd band out. In four albums of songs about cars, girls and summer nights there hadn’t been a word about politics or the environment or social issues. Bruce declined to release a statement for the event’s program, saying the music was its own statement. Most damning to cynical was the fact Bruce hadn’t performed publicly in many months because of a lawsuit. He was accused of taking advantage of an easy opportunity to get his on-stage chops back without making a commitment to the issue.

Twenty-eight years later, Bruce is releasing albums all about politics and issues with just a dusting of summer nights, girls… er, women and the occasional motorcycle.

Maybe it’s about growing old. Rock and roll has long sold the illusion of eternal youth, regardless of how we cringe watching Mick and Keith grind away, still feigning dissatisfaction 40 years later.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion, Nuclear Energy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
09/27/2007

Ric Was Right

At the beginning and end of 2004, I wrote here that it would be the year that determined whether America would remain a democracy. The axis upon which that question turned was whether George Bush would receive a second term in the White House, but there was more to it than that. Through that year, I was able to see too many incidents pointing to creeping totalitarianism in our country.

Everyone was supposed to feel relief last year when the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Perhaps we were supposed to feel even better as we watched the Bush Administration and the Republican Party collapsing into scandals and incompetence in the months since.

I wish I could agree, but I can’t. I think we’ve swung so far into complacency and cowardice that we don’t realize how far gone we are. If we need evidence for that hypothesis, look no farther than the resolutions passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate this week commending the American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and condemning MoveOn.org for its New York Times ad. The ad asked if Gen. Petraeus, would become “Gen. Betray Us” by cooking the books for the Bush Administration in his testimony before Congress.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
09/20/2007

Stanley Milgram, Call Your Office

In 1961, in response to the “I was just following orders” defense of Holocaust logistician Adolf Eichmann, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram devised a series of experiments in which volunteers were led to believe they were administering progressively stronger electric shocks to a fellow volunteer on the order of an authority figure conducting the experiment. In each of the experiments, Dr. Milgram found 60-65 percent of the subjects willing to obey directions and administer even what they thought were excruciating jolts of electricity, despite the screams and pleas of the “victim” to stop the experiment.

Dr. Milgram offered two potential explanations for the results of his experiments. One is the power of conformism: that in an unfamiliar situation, an individual will leave decision-making up to the group or hierarchy, in this case, the person posing as the experiment director. The second, or “agentic state theory” holds that the volunteers who complied with the order to administer the powerful shocks saw themselves as merely following orders of a superior and therefore not responsible for their actions – the same defense Eichmann used in his trial.

Dr. Milgram died in 1984, so he can’t call his office. That’s too bad, because I wonder what his response would be to the nation-wide “Milgram experiment” we’ve been conducting with police officers and electroshock weapons, most commonly known by the trade name “Taser.”

Tasers are famous again this week after campus police at the University of Florida used one on a student who was deemed obstreperous when asking questions of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
09/13/2007

The Far Side of Apocalypse

This week’s news is dominated by the war debate in Washington, where the president and his generals urge the Congress to pour more lives and money into the Pit of No Progress.

Elsewhere in the news, Russia’s Vladimir Putin fired his prime minister and legislature, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his resignation after months of scandal and suicide in his cabinet and Pakistan has begun to look as unstable as Afghanistan.

The weather page reports hurricanes in Texas, earthquakes in Indonesia (and worries about tsunamis); glaciers in Greenland and the Andes are melting even faster than expected, as is the arctic icecap. The health news says there’s an outbreak of Ebola in Africa, adding to the misery AIDS already inflicts on that continent.

Turn to the business page and learn that the housing meltdown shows signs of worsening, the economy is shedding jobs for the first time in four years and the dollar plunged to an all-time low versus the euro. On top of all that, this morning I opened the paper to see Led Zeppelin is having a reunion concert.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy, Global Warming, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)
09/06/2007

Slime of War

If there can be a good war, then World War II was it. It was an unambiguous battle between good and evil and the good guys won. Another bonus was – oddly – the universal draft that pulled men from all walks of life and ranging in age from late teens to early 40s. The army that resulted after the war, after all the draftees went home, was probably a better reflection of the American cross-section than this nation had seen since the Civil War. In recent years, the military has not presented such a clear reflection of America’s face.

While the military reflection has changed in several aspects, the most important is the drift to the political right. Evidence for that can be seen in the last two presidential elections, in which the Republican Party went to great lengths to ensure mail-in ballots from overseas military personnel were counted – even if they arrived after the deadline. There’s nothing wrong with the military’s rightward drift, per se – soldiers and sailors are as free to enjoy the political liberty they defend as the rest of us. From a professional point of view, however, the military as a whole and its individual members are supposed to shed their politics when they pull the uniform on in the morning.

Evidence that that may not be the case was presented in last Friday’s Washington Post. A story in the middle of the front section was titled: “Lawmakers Describe ‘Being Slimed in the Green Zone.’”
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)
08/30/2007

Double American Standard

Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig is all over the news this week after the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call reported he’d pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor following his arrest in a restroom in the Minneapolis airport.

According to police reports the senator, seated in a stall, tapped his foot, then scooted it toward an undercover officer’s foot in the next stall, then waved his hand beneath the stall partition. These are alleged to be signals indicating one man wishes to have sex with another man.

In his defense, Mr. Craig said his actions were misinterpreted because he has a “wide stance” when defecating. He did not explain the hand waving. He said he pleaded guilty to put the incident behind him because he knew an Idaho newspaper was preparing a story in which men had come forward to say they have had sex with the senator in public restrooms.

As a congressman in 1982, Mr. Craig issued a press release denying he is a homosexual, even though no one had accused him. Rumors about his sexual activity have dogged him for years, even as he has voted with his Republican colleagues opposing legislation to level the American playing field for lesbians and gays.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
08/23/2007

No New Nukes

Now that George Bush and Dick Cheney are held in nearly-universal scorn, there seems to be a creeping complacency in America, that they’ve done all the harm they can and all we have to do is wait 17 months and the bozos will be gone.

That’s not true, there’s plenty of mischief still available to the Terrible Twins and as we saw with the wiretapping bill last month, there are more than enough foolish Democrats willing to abet Bush/Cheney shenanigans.

When Congress reconvenes in a few weeks, it will take up consideration of an energy bill and the Cheney cronies will be pushing for the construction of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Expect to hear that we need – desperately need – more nuclear power as a solution to global warming. All the politicians who’ve been doing the bidding of big oil (“Oh no, we can’t tax ExxonMobil’s billions in windfall profits.”) and big auto (“Oh no, we can’t raise fuel-efficiency standards.”) will now stand in the wells of their respective bodies and tell us that unless we allow another wave of nuclear experimentation wash across the nation, your grandma will die of heat stroke.
Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming, Nuclear Energy | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)