Sic Semper Tyrannis

...rule by fist, fiat, fear, and fury is destined to fail.
-Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future.

I find the alliteration pleasant, and we can all hope that the idea is true.
I omitted the first three words of the sentence, "In the long run," which I think are unnecessary.

PS: I might as well write about Howard Gardner's book here. Howard Gardner is probably best known for his theory of multiple intelligences which stands in opposition to the psychometric theory of a single factor g, revealed by IQ tests, that underlies all (human) intelligence. "Five Minds for the Future" I chanced across in the new books section of the library, and since it is a slim volume, and since it somehow connected in my mind with one of Bee's lines of thought, I picked it up. If we have a chance at solving the problems of the future, surely it will be by cultivating the minds of the future.

The five minds are the disciplined mind (master of a discipline), the synthesizing mind (that can draw together different disciplines), the creating mind (I don't need to describe that, do I?), the respectful mind (a mind that culturally aware and able to work with diverse people), and the ethical mind (no description needed, either). Gardner could have made myriads of choices in this synthesis, but argues well about these five as being central.

Gardner describes the characteristics of these minds, and why they are important, and also how we might cultivate them. It is in the last part the book is at its weakest, because the truth is that we simply do not know how to cultivate these qualities. E.g., to train Olympic athletes, we know what precisely needs to be done physically. Of course we do not know how to create the mentality of a champion. For our future minds, the situation is rather vague, all we can do is akin to - prepare good soil, sow good seeds, water them, and then pray! When even how to teach elementary mathematics remains in dispute, then can we expect any better in this much more difficult enterprise? Our ignorance is profound. We await a Newton of the teaching profession to give us a beginning. What one such has to accomplish is outlined in this book.

From Bee's Gallery

From Bee's Gallery: Nothing Else Matters

It resonates strongly with me. The tone of this week.

PS: you may have to go backwards and forwards in the slideshow on that page to see the drawing.

The Lifeblood of a Civilization

Here. E.W. Dijkstra

In the Western world, 66 institutions have enjoyed a continuously visible identity since 1530. Among those 66 are the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church and the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man. What makes these 66 so interesting ... is that the remaining 62 are all universities!

Read the whole thing.

The How-To of Successful Propaganda

How Does Right-Wing Media Craft Its Message? - Wollman, Fuller and tristero

Memories of Summer

Another Solar System is discovered!

The result and the method of achieving the result are the most exciting news of the day.

NYTimes:

Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets......In the newly discovered system, a planet about two-thirds of the mass of Jupiter and another about 90 percent of the mass of Saturn are orbiting a reddish star at about half the distances that Jupiter and Saturn circle our own Sun. The star is about half the mass of the Sun.

.......

Since 1995, around 250 planets outside the solar system, or exoplanets, have been discovered. But few of them are in systems that even faintly resemble our own. In many cases, giant Jupiter-like planets are whizzing around in orbits smaller than that of Mercury. But are these typical of the universe?

Almost all of those planets were discovered by the so-called wobble method, in which astronomers measure the gravitational tug of planets on their parent star as they whir around it. This technique is most sensitive to massive planets close to their stars.

The new discovery was made by a different technique that favors planets more distant from their star. It is based on a trick of Einsteinian gravity called microlensing. If, in the ceaseless shifting of the stars, two of them should become almost perfectly aligned with Earth, the gravity of the nearer star can bend and magnify the light from the more distant one, causing it to get much brighter for a few days.

If the alignment is perfect, any big planets attending the nearer star will get into the act, adding their own little boosts to the more distant starlight.

That is exactly what started happening on March 28, 2006, when a star 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius began to pass in front of one 21,000 light-years more distant, causing it to flash. That was picked up by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or Ogle, a worldwide collaboration of observers who keep watch for such events.

Ogle in turn immediately issued a worldwide call for continuous observations of what is now officially known as OGLE-2006-BLG-109. The next 10 days, as Andrew P. Gould, a professor of mathematical and physical sciences at Ohio State said, were “extremely frenetic.”

Valentine's Day

On a normal day, a dozen roses, such as those here, are $9.99 a dozen. On Valentine's Day morning, the same are $34.99! What a gift of such roses means may be reconsidered.

Me, I prefer growing my own roses, though they are season-bound, pricklier, less picture perfect, but infinitely more fragrant and alive and fun.



PS:
To keep Wolfgang happy:

Roses

Note: looks correct on my Macintosh, but not on a Compaq nc6230, where the shadows are wrong.

Dijkstra on the Buxton Index

Here:

A very useful measure is —called after its inventor— the "Buxton Index". John N. Buxton discovered that the most important one-dimensional scale along which persons are institutions to be compared, can be placed is the length of the period of time in the future for which a person or institution plans. This period, measured in years, gives the Buxton Index. For the little shopkeeper around the corner the Buxton Index is three-quarter, for a true Christian it is infinite, we marry with one near fifty, most larger companies have one of about five, most scientist have one between two and ten. (For a scientist it is hard to have a larger one: the future then becomes so hazy, that effective planning becomes an illusion.)

The great significance of the Buxton Index is not its depth, but its objectivity. The point is that when people with drastically different Buxton Indices have to cooperate while unaware of the concept of the Buxton Index, they tend to make moral accusations against each other. The man with the shorter Buxton Index accuses the other of neglect of duty, the man with the larger one accuses the other of shortsightedness. The notion of the Buxton Index takes the moral flavour away and enables people to discuss such differences among themselves dispassionately. There is nothing wrong with having different Buxton Indices! It takes many people to make a world. There is clearly no moral value attached to either a long or a short Buxton Index. It is a useful concept for dispassionate discussion.

Hoping to have a dispassionate discussion based on this of variety of phenomenon.

On new physics at the LHC

Dorigo's summary of Mangano's paper.

Key point:

One should think of two phases for a discovery: establishing the deviation from the S[tandard] M[odel of particle physics], and understanding what this deviation corresponds to. It is crucial to maintain these two phases separate.

There are so many Beyond Standard Model [BSM] theories with so many adjustable parameters that any deviation that the Large Hadron Collider results might exhibit from the Standard Model will almost certainly fit into a BSM. Therefore the knowledge that a deviation fits a BSM carries no information on whether the deviation is real or an experimental artifact.

The Key to Happiness

CIP makes a profound point in a simple way - the key to happiness is to never live in a place with bad weather. :)

Two Americas

Glenn Greenwald:

Bestowing retroactive telecom amnesty is nothing more than the latest step in creating a two-class legal system in America, where most citizens suffer grave penalties if they break the law, while our most politically powerful and well-connected actors are free to do so with impunity.

The United States now elects a King, not a President

Copied in full:

Mark This Day

02.07.08 -- 1:24PM

By David Kurtz

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is back on the Hill today, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. Paul Kiel is covering it at TPMmuckraker.

So far, he's dropped two big bombshells. DOJ will not be investigating:

(1) whether the waterboarding, now admitted to by the White House, was a crime; or

(2) whether the Administration's warrantless wiretapping was illegal.

His rationale? Both programs had been signed off on in advance as legal by the Justice Department.

Cynics may argue that those aren't bombshells at all, that the Bush Administration would never investigate itself in these matters. Perhaps so. But this is a case where cynicism is itself dangerous.

We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not.

It is as brazen a defense of the unitary executive as anything put forward by the Administration in the last seven years, and it comes from an attorney general who was supposed to be not just a more professional, but a more moderate, version of Alberto Gonzales (Thanks to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer for caving on the Mukasey nomination.).

President Bush has now laid down his most aggressive challenge to the very constitutional authority of Congress. It is a naked assertion of executive power. The founders would have called it tyrannical. His cards are now all on the table. This is no bluff.

Late Update: TPM Reader RF:

David Kurtz's "Mark This Day" blurb misses the most important point -- it's not just that the Attorney General's position is that a DOJ Order makes the subject activity legal but that, as Nadler brought out, there is now no recourse to a judicial test, either criminal (through refusal to prosecute) or civil (through the state secrets privilege based solely on a DOJ affidavit). The DOJ is entitled to take whatever position it wants, however self-serving and unitary, but now there is no avenue for judicial review and so that is the end of the story. That is the important point here.

Gerbera - final

I learn, but slowly.

Gerbera Daisy - Improved

Short story - much improved.
Long story - read the first comment.

Gerbera Daisies

Details

1/8 sec at f/1.8 (camera on tripod)
85mm (Canon EF85mm f/1.8 USM)
ISO 100
No flash
Canon EOS 5D

My comments - I took two dozen variations with the 24-105mm and the 85 mm lenses, with dark and light backgrounds, without and with flash (direct and reflected). Somehow none of them capture the exact color and warmth of the flowers. This one is the closest out of the camera. Playing with all the sliders in Adobe Lightroom doesn't improve things. I'm wondering if maybe the precise color is outside the gamut of the computer LCD screen. More likely it is my novicehood. Perhaps I need to get a color card to be able to learn how to do precise color corrections.

Analysis of the Edwards campaign

Here is an excellent analysis of what went right and what went wrong with the John Edwards campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

I'm excerpting this one paragraph as an aside, because it goes to something I'm just beginning to grasp, namely, that the first word in "participatory democracy" is redundant; there is no democracy without active engagement by the majority of citizens. The infrastructure of democracy may linger on but will decay away if the citizens are passive. Apparently lots of wise people have not understood this yet.

You should be able to see immediately why John’s populism was anathema to the SCLM {So-Called Liberal Media}. They view voters as members of a passive audience, whereas populism assumes the grassroots are made up of citizens to whom public institutions, like government and the media, are ultimately answerable, and that when they are not, public activism is a vital answer.

How power is used

From a Rick Perlstein article on the Fox news network:

Like his account of the time he did an interview with David Brock for a critical article Brock did for New York magazine on Fox News. Roger Ailes was not happy. Our hero gets a call from his agent, one of the most powerful in TV news:

""Danny. Did yoo give an intavyoo to Noo Yawk magazine?... I already know the ansa. I got a phone call from Roger Ailes an owwa ago. He told me that until I drop you as a cloyent, any demo tapes I send ovah for talent jobs will sit in the cawwna and gatha dust."

Here was the interesting part: the article had not yet been published. So how did Roger Ailes learn about his participation? Explains Cooper:

I made the connections. Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview. Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called The Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.

Feingold on FISA

The Free Market is a creation of Government

Americans in general suffer from the dangerous ideological illusion that free markets occur in spite of rather than because of government regulation.

The free market will be efficient only if correct information is readily available to all players in the market. The trouble in the financial markets today is that good information is not available.

From The New York Times...trust in much of the financial system — banks, brokerage houses, ratings agencies, bond insurers, regulators — has been severely damaged by the subprime mortgage crisis...

One of the more disturbing aspects of the current woes, and a reason that this crisis is unfolding in slow motion, is the inability of these sophisticated institutions to assign accurate values to their holdings...Firms have had difficulty computing their losses because the securities central to this mess are complex, even incomprehensible...Investors who bought these securities clearly did not know what they were buying; they relied on credit rating agencies like Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings to tell them whether their stakes were risky or not. But the rating agencies were disastrously wrong in their risk assessments and spent late 2007 downgrading securities they had recently rated as solidly AAA....

“The financial markets have become more and more opaque and so we don’t know enough about where the weaknesses are and what the magnitude of those weaknesses may be,” Mr. Kaufman said. “So far the Federal Reserve and other supervisory authorities have done little about removing the opaqueness and setting new ground rules for financial disclosure. And I have not heard a call from Congress for an investigation where it will ask the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal and state banking regulators, ‘What did you miss and why did you miss it?’ ”

Certainly, greater disclosure of the risks in these complex securities and the institutions that hold them is in order. And investors must be confident that the values assigned to these holdings reflect market reality. So far, no one has come up with a plan to correct these market shortcomings.

We cannot say that the market by itself "understood" the need for transparency. It is after all the largest market players that created this mess.

Governments are instituted to protect our "God-given" rights. They are also instituted to create the "free" market.

No to Warantless Surveillance and telecom amnesty

Please all two American readers of my blog, make the phone calls and faxes suggested here - at a minimum - and let the Senators know how you feel.

Here: http://firedoglake.com/2008/01/23/fisa-fundamentals-trust-us-does-not-cut-it/

The American War Economy

Chalmers Johnson on the war economy - how America is being sunk by its military expenditures.

Kanyakumari

The view from the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, at the confluence of the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea; on the left the Vivekananda Memorial, on the right the statue of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. South of these two islands there is only ocean until Antarctica.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews problem

Even in 2008, we have such a person on TV!

Chris Matthews, a.k.a. "Tweety" has serious issues.

An example:

Matthews has claimed: "[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." John McCain's political career got started after he left his first wife for a wealthy and politically connected heiress, married her, and ran for Congress. But Chris Matthews doesn't suggest that the reason McCain is a "U.S. senator ... a candidate for president ... a front-runner" is that he "messed around." Even Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said Matthews' comments about Clinton went too far: "I mean, it's rough business what these people over there [at MSNBC] are doing. We don't do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband messed around. I mean, that is -- that is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."

Matthews periodically gets it into his head that the most important question in the world is whether Bill Clinton will be a "distraction" or whether he will "behave himself." He badgers Clinton aides about the question and warns that Bill Clinton "better watch it." He asks if Clinton will be a "good boy" or be guilty of "misbehavior." Matthews is not so subtly referring to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. But curiously, he doesn't have the same concerns about McCain or about Rudy Giuliani, as I wrote nearly a year ago.

Think about this for a second: Chris Matthews is holding it against Hillary Clinton that her husband cheated on her. But he doesn't hold it against John McCain and Rudy Giuliani that they cheated on their spouses. Matthews seems to think women are to blame when their husbands have affairs -- and men who cheat on their spouses are blameless.

John Edwards - Go For Gold - January 18, 2008

John Edwards: $7 Million Dollars In One Day - Make It Happen

Help John Edwards, our most progressive candidate $7 million on one day!

Contribute on Friday, January 18, 2008.

PS: making this post "sticky".

On the road to Kanyakumari

Revealing headline

Militants Escape Control of Pakistan, Officials Say.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

Actually, the militant networks were started in the mid-70s; Pakistan was cultivating Hekmatyar, Rabbani and Massoud even before the Soviet invasion of Pakistan. The purpose was first to gain influence in Afghanistan, to quash some of Pakistan's restive minorities, and later to wage a war of thousand cuts against India.

As long as the West, in particular America, had a friendly general in charge in Pakistan, it connived at, and if not aided directly, aided indirectly via money and material to the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies the growth of these militant (really - terrorist, but why quibble over euphemisms when reality is so visibly ugly) networks. America's partner in this crime was Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile the West preached equal-equal, accomodation with terrorists and sang of human rights to India.

Then 9/11, the Madrid and London bombings happened, and suddenly "Islamofascism" was a problem. For the West. Suddenly Pakistan is seen as a dangerous place. The savior, of course, is yet another general. Years of warnings by Iranian, Afghan, Pakistani liberals and by leaders of India were unheeded, that sustaining these networks is holding a tiger by the tail.

"Militants out of control" is one of the rare admissions that the most valued non-NATO ally Pakistan was all along a state sponsor of terrorism.

That India has to live in peace with neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and with some 150 million Muslims of its own, of which some tiny fraction can be incited into "militancy" also never occurs to the West. The Western sponsorship of Muslim militancy makes that very difficult. That constant unpunished "militancy" will provoke a countermilitancy among India's non-Muslims is never considered. Always it is India should swallow its losses and shut up, and remain a liberal, tolerant society.

The irony is that Americans are more abjectly afraid terrorist attacks than Indians ever have been. The world has to deal with the insecure, bullying, cowering superpower.

The veil slips but only temporarily. The Western policymakers and opinionmakers will go back to figuring out how to prop up Pakistan's latest dictator who will of course be given full aid to keep the "militant" networks going, except hopefully, aimed only at the right victims.

Nuclear Espionage and 9/11

It reads like a Ludlum conspiracy: the Turkish/Israeli/Pakistani nuclear espionage connived at by people at the highest levels of the United States government and the 9/11 terror attacks are linked.

PS: BCCI is linked to this as well. (Remember BCCI?)

9/11 Commission: obstructed by the Administration

The co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, in a op-ed in the NYT accuse the CIA and the White House of obstruction by not giving the Commission videotapes of interrogations of Al Qaeda operatives.

Glenn Greenwald wonders if anyone will pay attention.

Given the track record of the Democratic Congress and of the mainstream media, the answer is simple - No!

The Continuing Relevance of Gandhi

The fragrance of Gandhi's life and thought continues to waft through the world and works minor magic on people, this example being in Vermont, USA.

Ballerina Veronika Part

Via James Wolcott, Ballerina Veronica Part.
PS: (July 4, 2012): the website hosting this picture has vanished, this is the only copy I could find.

Edwards Quote

The typical immigrant to the US who does well seems to forget what Edwards repeats here:

“Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, ‘I did this on my own,’” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way.”

Of course, to the immigrant one can ask - what might have happened had you not immigrated? and provoke some thought. America's wealthy by inheritance are a different matter.

R.I.P.

The US Bill of Rights (Dec. 15, 1791 - Jan 21, 2001).

A time-line of how it was hanged, drawn and quartered is linked to above.

Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.

A John Edwards endorsement

The Democratic stable of Presidential candidates is quite good, but in case you were not decided, this essay might help you make up your mind. Me, I wish there was a combination of Dodd and Edwards in one person.

A sunset

A memento. Shanmugham Beach, Trivandrum.

Merry Christmas!

One of my neighbor's decorations - the picture does not do justice to it, which means I have some photography technique to learn. I think if a shot could be taken after a snowfall, this would look awesome even with my skills. :)

Three Cheers for Senator Dodd!

Whatever else is true, Chris Dodd took a principled stand today, sacrificing his presidential campaign and alienating his long-time colleagues to do so, and he won. He demonstrated what "leadership" is in action, rather than "rhetoric." Acts of that kind on our national political stage are rare indeed.

If you missed the news, Glenn Greenwald explains.

The Sovietization of America

Ex-Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA), quoted by Steven Clemons:

Fire chiefs in the Big Apple, for example, already have been granted federal security clearances to further this "integration" of firefighters into the homeland security. According to published accounts of such training, firefighters are being trained to watch for "hostile" or "uncooperative" individuals, or those "expressing discontent" with our government. They are also trained to watch for and report on things that "seem out of place" in a home or business such as firearms and video recording equipment. Rooms with "little or no furniture" fall within the reportable suspicious activity.

The New York Times, via dkos

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

Other telecomm providers, reportedly have had no such qualms.


David Habbakuk, via turcopolier:

I find myself here being reminded of the conclusion of the famous Long Telegram which the figure generally regarded as the architect of 'containment', George Kennan, sent from Moscow on 22 February 1946. As his final thought, Kennan stressed that 'we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society.' The 'greatest danger' that could befall the United States in coping with the problem of Soviet communism, he wrote, is that ' we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.' As regards the neoconservatives at least, his warning seems to have been to the point.

As a spoiled British child of the post-war Pax Americana, what staggers me about so many of the neocons is their patently inability to grasp that American success in the Cold War was in very substantial measure due quite precisely to the fact that your country did not behave as the Soviets did. Why then this sudden enthusiasm for Soviet-style thuggery? Allies are 'to be commanded not consulted' -- precisely as in the Warsaw Pact. War and violence the 'birthpangs of a new Middle East' -- sounds very Leninist, doesn't it? This does not mean that military power was unimportant to the outcome of the Cold War -- far from it. But it seems to quite extraordinary that the neoconservatives simply cannot understand that the moral authority of the United States was crucial to the success of the post-war Pax Americana, and also to the retreat and collapse of Soviet Communism.

Pandagon: Nice Guys

July 23, 2008 - this comment I left on Pandagon on Dec 15, 2007 Whatever happened to the Nice Guys®

1. Arun
   December 15, 2007 at 8:48 am

   You mean guys who are deluded that they are nice. That is a narcissist notion; only someone else can judge you nice; and that is context dependent; i.e., A finds you nice but B doesn’t; and even A finds you nice in some situations but not-so-nice in others. “Nice” is not a virtue that stands on its own, such as courage or strength, but is always in relation to someone.

   “I am an unappreciated nice guy” is thus an idiotic statement, because the niceness does not exist without the someone who is appreciating it.

   Nor should the “nice” in “I am a nice guy” be considered to be some kind of a bundle of politeness, consideration, kindness, gentleness, helpfulness, friendliness. (I know we use nice as a shorthand for that bundle when referring to someone else.) Because the guy who is asserting “I am a nice guy” is really admitting that he may be pursuing those virtues not for their own sake, but because it will buy him appreciation. A polite, considerate, kind, gentle, helpful or friendly person does not withdraw or abandon those qualities if they are not appreciated. One sees that “I am a nice guy” can easily turn into “OK, no more Mr Nice Guy”. Qualities of character cannot be so readily changed.

   E.g., if I’m a helpful sort of guy that does leave me open to a certain type of exploitation. Should I find that happening, I can’t stop being helpful, I can only tell the exploiter to stop or avoid that person. If I was being helpful only to win appreciation, however, I’d be able to switch it off in an instant.

A Rescue That Will Fail

Economist Paul Krugman explains why the Federal Reserve cannot make the current bank crisis go away.

One scary fact from there:

...we had an enormous housing bubble in the middle of this decade. To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels.....The financial blog Calculated Risk, using data from First American CoreLogic, estimates that if home prices fall 20 percent there will be 13.7 million homeowners with negative equity. If prices fall 30 percent, that number would rise to more than 20 million.

America's banks in dire straits

Sean Olender explains how "at stake is nothing short of the continued existence of the U.S. banking system"

Excerpts:

The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

And, to be sure, fraud is everywhere. It's in the loan application documents, and it's in the appraisals. There are e-mails and memos floating around showing that many people in banks, investment banks and appraisal companies - all the way up to senior management - knew about it.

...

The catastrophic consequences of bond investors forcing originators to buy back loans at face value are beyond the current media discussion. The loans at issue dwarf the capital available at the largest U.S. banks combined, and investor lawsuits would raise stunning liability sufficient to cause even the largest U.S. banks to fail, resulting in massive taxpayer-funded bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, and even FDIC.

The problem isn't just subprime loans. It is the entire mortgage market. As home prices fall, defaults will rise sharply - period. And so will the patience of mortgage bondholders. Different classes of mortgage bonds from various risk pools are owned by different central banks, funds, pensions and investors all over the world. Even your pension or 401(k) might have some of these bonds in it.

...

What would be prudent and logical is for the banks that sold this toxic waste to buy it back and for a lot of people to go to prison. If they knew about the fraud, they should have to buy the bonds back.

...

It is truly amazing that right now everyone in the country is deferring to Paulson [current US Treasury Secy, and former head of Goldman Sachs} and the heads of Countrywide, JPMorgan, Bank of America and others as the best group to work out a solution to this problem. No one is talking about the fact that these people created the problem and profited to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars from it.

...

We are on the cusp of a mammoth financial crisis, and the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are trying to limit the liability of their banking friends under the guise of trying to help borrowers. At stake is nothing short of the continued existence of the U.S. banking system.

Interview with Balu

Interview with Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara.

Bush: the simpler version

Continuing the post below. Sen Waterhouse:

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:

1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”

2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”

3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

Bush's Classified Theory of Presidential Powers

Let Senator Sheldon Waterhouse tell the story:

Because look what the Bush Administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.

For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

If you do not understand the implications of the three highlighted items then continue reading the transcript.

An excerpt:

And then, it gets worse. Remember point three.

The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Let that sink in a minute.

The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that “l’etat c’est moi” and “The King can do no wrong.” Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the “supreme leader.” Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors, “in this company the counsel’s office is bound by the CEO’s legal determinations.” The board ought to throw that lawyer out – it’s malpractice, probably even unethical.

Wherever you are, if you are watching this, do me a favor. The next time you are in Washington, D.C., take a taxi some evening to the Department of Justice. Stand outside, and look up at that building shining against the starry night. Look at the sign outside- “The United States Department of Justice.” Think of the heroes who have served there, and the battles fought. Think of the late nights, the brave decisions, the hard work of advancing and protecting our democracy that has been done in those halls. Think about how that all makes you feel.

Then think about this statement:

The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

If you don’t feel a difference from what you were feeling a moment ago, well, congratulations – there is probably a job for you in the Bush administration. Consider the sad irony that this theory was crafted in that very building, by the George W. Bush Office of Legal Counsel.

A G Noorani skewered

A G Noorani, is an advocate, Supreme Court of India and a leading Constitutional expert. But some of the historical fiction that he promotes is extremely annoying.

Lately, he wrote this: 1946: A fateful year

This includes another one of those myths - India would not have been partitioned but for the sabotage of the Cabinet Mission Plan by the Indian National Congress, specifically by Nehru and Gandhi.

The whole problem with that particular myth is that Pakistan was implicit in the Cabinet Mission Plan, and that too, very much more than the "moth-eaten" Pakistan that Jinnah had to finally settle for; and the Congress leaders recognized that.

Anyway, for once, Noorani was neatly skewered, and that too, by one near and dear. Way to go!

IN his article, “1946: A fateful year” (December 7), A.G. Noorani writes that Jinnah

“accepted the Mission’s Plan of May 16, 1946, which envisaged a federal India based on groups of provinces. It was wrecked by the Congress at the instance of Gandhi who demurred at the proposals from the very outset. Jinnah said in Nehru’s presence on May 11 that ‘if the Congress would agree to Groups of Provinces as desired by the Muslim League, he would seriously consider a Union’.”

In fact, Jinnah himself considered acceptance of a Union that would be strictly restricted to defence, foreign affairs and communications related to defence as a temporary arrangement until the establishment of a sovereign Pakistan.

This was stated in the Muslim League’s June 6, 1946 resolution of acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan:

“In order that there may be no manner of doubt in any quarter, the Council of the All-India Muslim League reiterates that the attainment of the goal of a complete sovereign Pakistan still remains the unalterable objective of the Muslims in India for the achievement of which they will, if necessary, employ every means in their power, and consider no sacrifice or suffering too great.”[1]

The Muslim League resolution also stated that the basis and foundation of Pakistan were inherent in the compulsory grouping of provinces in Sections B and C by the Cabinet Mission Plan and the Muslim League would cooperate in the Mission’s scheme in the hope that it would ultimately result in the establishment of a complete sovereign Pakistan: It said:

“...inasmuch as the basis and the foundation of Pakistan are inherent in the Mission’s plan by virtue of the compulsory grouping of the six Muslim provinces in Sections B and C, [the Muslim League] is willing to co-operate with the constitution-making machinery proposed in the scheme outlined by the Mission, in the hope that it would ultimately result in the establishment of complete sovereign Pakistan.” [1]

Jinnah also stated that acceptance of the Mission proposal was not the end of the struggle for Pakistan in a secret meeting of the Muslim League Council on the same day:

“Acceptance of the Mission proposal was not the end of their struggle for Pakistan. They should continue their struggle till Pakistan was achieved.” [2]

Thus, Jinnah himself stated that his acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan and its compulsory grouping scheme specifying three sovereign constitution-making bodies, was only a means to achieve his goal of a sovereign Pakistan.

Further to note (not published): "Consequently, Congress's refusal to accept the Plan's compulsory grouping scheme specifying three sovereign constitution-making
bodies constituted Congress's bid to prevent partition and to preserve the unity of India. A.G.Noorani has it backwards.

As for Assam, no Indian need feel ashamed if Gandhi prevented a non-Muslim majority province Assam then ruled by Congress, from being handed over by the British to Jinnah, Muslim League and Pakistan, in the name of Muslim self-determination."

The references weren't published either:

[1] Resolution passed by the Council of the All-India Muslim League, 6 June 1946, 'Speeches and Documents on the Indian Constitution 1921-1947', Selected by Sir
Maurice Gwyer and A. Appadorai, OUP, 1957 Vol. II.

[2] Jinnah's Speech at the Secret Session of the All India Muslim League Council, New Delhi, June 6 1946, 'Speeches, Statements and Messages of the Quaid-e-Azam', Vol IV, Khurshid Yusufi, Bazm-i-Iqbal, Lahore.

----

PS - a word of explanation is needed about the "moth-eaten" Pakistan. Jinnah wanted to carry out of India provinces which as then constituted had a barely 51% to 55% Muslim majority, and that had large contiguous areas with non-Muslim majorities. Moreover, he was not willing to offer the large minorities in his hoped-for Pakistan the kinds of guarantees and powersharing arrangements that he was demanding for Muslims as a minority in a United India. For Jinnah, "self-determination" was a right of the Muslims alone.

One might argue that Partition and its accompanying mass population movements and massacres was totally unnecessary in retrospect, and that Congress should have yielded to Jinnah, it would not have been a betrayal of the non-Muslims in what is now Pakistan, etc. etc., had Pakistan also turned out to be a progressive democratic country. But Pakistan did not so turn out; and many fewer millions of people are oppressed by this epicenter of terrorism because of Partition.

There are few sane, thinking Indians who would wish Partition undone. Yes, the cost was horrible. First India and then East Pakistan (also at enormous cost) jettisoned the ever-aspiring-to-the-seventh-century dead weight of Pakistan.

Toxic Texas

Toxic to any form of rational thought, that is.

NYT Editorial

In most states, we hope, the state department of education would take the lead in ensuring that students receive a sound scientific education. But it was the Texas Education Agency that pushed out Ms. Comer after 27 years as a science teacher and 9 years as the agency’s director of science.

As Ralph Blumenthal reported in The Times yesterday, Ms. Comer forwarded to a local online community an e-mail message from a pro-evolution group announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. Professor Forrest testified as an expert witness in a 2005 Dover, Pa., case that found intelligent design supernatural and theological and definitely not part of a scientific education.

An hour later, Ms. Comer was called in by superiors, pressured to send out a retraction and ultimately forced to resign. Her departure was instigated by a new deputy commissioner who had served as an adviser to George Bush when he was governor of Texas and more recently worked in the federal Department of Education.

It was especially disturbing that the agency accused Ms. Comer — by forwarding the e-mail message — of taking a position on “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.”

Melting Pot vs. Thali

I hope the thali version of globalization wins over the melting-pot version.
Shashi Tharoor:

You've remarked that if America is a melting pot, then India can be seen as a thali. It's an interesting observation. Does this correspond to the Nehruvian ethos of unity in diversity? Would you care to elaborate?

Yes, I think you can connect the two. My point is that the melting pot essentially induces conformity. You have a society where whether you've come from Croatia or Italy or Scotland or Ireland, you essentially - within the span of a generation - are speaking the same language with roughly the same accent, wearing the same sorts of clothes, eating the same sorts of food, celebrating the same sorts of holidays. That will be the idea of the great melting pot - the creation of an American out of this hybrid background of European races. In India we don't do that. We have people who are quite conscious of their separateness: their different clothes, their different food habits, their different appearance, their different languages, their different religions, and so on. And yet, of course, there's a common shared identity as well. And that to me is the magic of the Indian thali with all these bowls on one plate. But each of the bowls contains a separate dish. They don't necessarily mix with the next and they don't certainly flow into each other. And yet they belong together on the same plate and they combine on your palate to give you a satisfying meal. And to me that is a better metaphor of the Indian experience than the melting pot because, aside from the elite urban English-educated Indian, there's not the same sameness about, say, a Kerala rice farmer and a Haryanvi jat peasant. And yet they are conscious, at a certain level, of sharing a larger roof over their heads together - this idea of Indian civilization. To me, that's part of what India is all about. I think I wrote in one of my books that the whole thing about India is that we're able to endure differences of color, creed, caste, custom, costume and conviction, and still rally around a consensus. And that consensus is that in a democracy you don't really need to agree all the time so long as you agree on the ground rules of how you will disagree and where you will disagree. And that ability to contain the real differences we have is one of India's great strengths as a nation. And that's why I've made such a virtue of Indian pluralism in all my writing.

The Wild, Crazy West

Via dkos, this story about the truth of the Ugly American:

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it....

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.
...
During a hearing last month Lord Justice Moses, one of the Court of Appeal judges, asked Alun Jones QC, representing the US government, about its treatment of Gavin, Tollman’s nephew. Gavin Tollman was the subject of an attempted abduction during a visit to Canada in 2005.

Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said.

He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”
...
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “This law may date back to bounty hunting days, but they should sort it out if they claim to be a civilised nation.”

PS: What it means:

It means that the United States does not respect the sovereignty of any government, nor does any treaty bind the US. (And then it wonders why countries feel that nuclear weapons are a necessity as a security guarantee.)

On superhuman powers and religion

A quote from S.N. Balagangadhara's "The Heathen In His Blindness..."

Does Spiro really have no theory? Could his conviction that religion is
a cultural universal have its roots elsewhere? I have suggested that religion
is the background framework. In that case, the ‘consensual’ definition must express the vengeance that a theory will take for being oblivious to its presence. Reconsider Spiro’s claim (1966: 91):

Since ‘religion’ is a term with historically rooted meanings, a definition must satisfy not only the criterion of cross-cultural applicability but also the criterion of intra-cultural intuitivity; at the least it should not be counter-intuitive. For me, therefore, any definition of ‘religion’ which does not include, as a key variable, the belief in superhuman…beings who have power to help or harm men is counter-intuitive.

Now it is a matter of established consensus that the Hindus worship trees, serpents, various animals (cow, monkey, and condor), images and idols. Are we to consider these people religious? It all depends, one may want to retort, whether or not Hindus consider the animals as “superhuman beings that have the power to help or harm men”.

In non-trivial ways, animals can help or harm human beings, but Spiro does not probably have this in mind. The problem might well be about the belief states of the Hindus: do they believe that animals are ‘superhuman’ beings?

This is a question about the hierarchy of life on earth. Humans are at the summit of ‘creation’ and animals are well below them in the ladder of life constituting the ‘infra’ or ‘sub-human’ species. Consequently, and only because of it, can gods be ‘super-human’.

Cultures do exist which recognise the differences between species, but do not recognise any hierarchy of life on earth. Even if human life is a desirable form of life, or even as a privileged form of existence, this does not imply that either goal or direction is attributed to the emergence and ‘evolution’ of life. One such culture is India and, in fact, one of the problems of the Christian missionaries with the Brahmins had to do precisely with this issue, as Rogerius (1651: 110) records it:

Hier toe an zijn sy niet te brenghen datse souden toe-staen dat een Mensch, de Beesten overtreffe, end dat den Mensch een edelder Creatuere zy, dan de Beesten, om dat hy met een voortreffelijcker Ziele zy begaeft. VVant soo ghy dat haer voor hout, sy sullen segghen, dat oock dierghelijcke Zielen de Beesten hebben. Indien ghy dit wilt betuygen door de werckingen van de redelijcke Ziele, die in den Mensch, ende niet in de Beesten, haer vertoont: soo heb je tot antwoort te verwachten…dat de reden, waerom de Beesten niet soo wel reden, ende verstant, voor den dagh en brengen, ende soo wel als de Menschen, en spreken, zijn, om datse gheen Lichaem en hebben ghekregen, dat bequaem is, om de qualiteyten van haer Ziele te voorschijn te brengen…

[You cannot make them admit that Man outstrips the beasts and that he is a nobler creature than the animals because he has a superior soul. If you try to remonstrate with them on this, they would say, animals also have a similar kind of Soul. If you try to demonstrate this by the workings of the rational soul, which is evident in Man and not in the beasts: you may expect an answer…that the reason why the animals do not exhibit the kind of rationality and understanding that human beings can show, why they cannot speak as man does, is because they are not given a body capable of exhibiting the qualities of their soul…]

In other words, to the Christians, Man was/is at the summit of creation. To the Hindus, it was/is not so. Where does this take us with respect to Spiro’s definition? His definition cannot be ‘useful’ to us unless we presuppose at least some amount of (suitably diluted) Christian theology: gods are superhuman, which is why they are worshipped; humans are at the top of the hierarchy of life with animals well below them, and so on.

This ‘minimal’ definition, which appears reasonable, merely expresses a linguistic and historical intuition of a religious culture: how could a religion not acknowledge the existence of ‘superhuman’ powers? This is a secularised theology, as far from ‘science’ as anything could possibly be.

PS: to add to the confusion, if I understand it correctly, moksha is available only to humans, not to animals or to devas.

PPS: The logical possibilities are:


1. Balu is wrong, and Hindus believe animals have superhuman powers.
2. Hindus worship beings that have no superhuman powers.
3. What Hindus do appears similar to, but in reality is very different from Christian worship. In general, conflating rituals or an attitude of reverence with worship is a mistake.

#3 is the most interesting - it raises the question - just what is it that Hindus are doing? (Please be careful with the words "worship", "scriptures", "holy" used there, they are loaded words and may obscure instead of help understand.)

Feelin' Groovy

Today, if someone pushed me from the fifth floor, I'd be singing happily on the way down. Not sure why I feel so light-hearted, I haven't

- attained moksha
- fallen in love
- published a viable theory of everything
- won a lottery

or any such thing. There's nothing special happening this weekend either. None of the piles of boring but necessary stuff to do has evaporated.

Come to think of it, except for the first item in my list, I should feel some resentment on being pushed, because it would interrupt the many interesting things left to do. But I wouldn't, I'd be waving a cheery farewell.

Strange. I think as I grow older, my power of introspection diminishes, my intentions, motivations are increasingly a mystery to me.

Enjoying it while it lasts :)

dkos: Things That Are Not Torture

A Hunter diary.

The United States does not torture. This has been definitively stated at all levels of government, including by the President of the United States. The United States may perform techniques of enhanced interrogation; it may engage in coercion; it may inflict suffering akin to that experienced at the moment of death; it does not, however, torture. The United States clearly follows the Geneva Conventions in all circumstances in which it has deemed the Geneva Conventions to apply. The United States unambiguously follows its own laws regarding the rights of prisoners in all instances in which the United States has deemed those prisoners to have rights. It does not treat prisoners in a cruel or inhumane fashion. The Vice President of the United States has explicitly endorsed the legality and reasonable nature of this technique.

The United States may have enhanced interrogation techniques, borrowing methods of methodical drowning used by the Khmer Rouge, the Spanish Inquisitors, and various others that populate the cruelest edges of history.

But we are the United States, and that is the difference: the United States does not torture.

Diwali 2007

Our Rangoli:

Estimating the Size of the Revolution

The American political system is rotten to the core. The confirmation by the Senate of Mukasey to the post of the Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States is simply an example that is exceptionally easy to understand; there is nothing unusual about it in any other way.

The Senate has abandoned its Constitutional Duty of Advice and Consent, and replaced it with Abdicate and Capitulate. To quote the New York Times editorial:

[Mukasey] was simply asked if, as a general matter, waterboarding is illegal.

It was not a difficult question. Waterboarding is specifically banned by the Army Field Manual, and it is plainly illegal under the federal Anti-Torture Act, federal assault statutes, the Detainee Treatment Act, the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. It is hard to see how any nominee worthy of the position of attorney general could fail to answer “yes.”.......

....Democrats have done precious little to avoid the kind of spectacle the world saw last week: the Senate giving the job of attorney general, chief law enforcement officer in the world’s oldest democracy, to a man who does not even have the integrity to take a stand against torture.

What is needed to stem the rot?

The Republicans in the Senate all have to be voted out. I include Lieberman in their number. Replaced by whom, though? One of the two key enablers of the Mukasey confirmation is Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) who is the chair of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee! He has to go. Diane Feinstein (CA) has to go. The Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has to go. What about the Democratic Presidential hopefuls in the Senate? None of them showed any leadership in trying to block this nomination, or even to force a clarification of Mukasey's stand on torture (a group of distinguished career intelligence officers who are appalled by waterboarding even as they are keenly aware of the practical necessities of their job suggested to the Senate leaders that Mukasey be given a full briefing in private before continuing with the nomination). As it turned out, they didn't even vote. That means Clinton, Biden, Obama, Dodd should be shown the door.

This is just one issue, isn't it?, etc.

This is just one easy to understand issue. But it is symptomatic of a pattern of behavior of this Senate. The Democratic Senators have perfected the "oppose but are powerless to stop Bush" charade. They artfully register their opposition only when that opposition is bound to fail. E.g., they will not even attempt to block a bad bill or nomination in committee or filibuster it on the floor; they just want their pious vote "against" recorded. Glenn Greenwald describes the game quite well.

The size of the revolution

Virtually all of the current Senate has to face their accountability moment. Will it, can it happen? Not immediately of course, but over the next three election cycles. Since the answer from any sane observer is no, most will likely not even face serious challengers, then expect that the rot will simply continue to grow.

___

PS: Desi links to a great cartoon

Fawke You, Washington!

(The title is from a comment by a freeper.)

Congressman Ron Paul, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, broke GOP online fund raising records on Guy Fawkes Day, by raising about $4.2 million.

Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British Parliament, but today he is given a different meaning; he is taken as a reminder

It is not the People who should fear the Government, but rather the Government which should fear the People.

Ron Paul is an old-style conservative, anti-war, anti-interventionism, for limited constitutional government and for fiscal responsibility, contra the neo-cons. He also has some antediluvian positions.

The Republican establishment would like Ron Paul to go away. From the left, Glenn Greenwald opines on the Ron Paul phenomenon:

The Paul campaign is now a bona fide phenomenon of real significance, and it is difficult to see this as anything other than a very positive development.

There are, relatively speaking, very few people who agree with most of Paul's policy positions. In fact, a large portion of Americans -- perhaps most -- will find something in his litany of beliefs with which they not only disagree, but vehemently so. Paul has a coherent political world-view and states his positions clearly and unapologetically, without hedges, and that approach naturally ensures greater disagreement than the form of please-everyone obfuscation which drives most candidates.......

.....So there is at least something in Paul's worldview for most people to strongly dislike, even hate, if they are so inclined. Yet that apparent political liability is really what accounts for the passion his campaign is generating: it is a campaign that defies and despises conventional and deeply entrenched Beltway assumptions about our political discourse and about what kind of country this is supposed to be.

While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way. And there are a lot of people who, more than any specific policy positions, are hungry for a political movement which operates outside of our rotted political establishment and which fearlessly rejects its pieties, even if they disagree with some or even many of its particulars.

and

Perhaps most importantly, Paul is the only serious candidate aggressively challenging America's addiction to ruling the world through superior military force and acting as an empire -- not by contesting specific policies (such as the Iraq War) but by calling into question the unexamined root premises of these policies, the ideology that is defining our role in the world.

The Atlantic, 1946, on Pakistan

1946 article on India, Pakistan

Sampler

When Congress ministries took office in seven out of eleven provinces in 1937, Moslem Leaguers (who had polled only 4.6 per cent of the total Moslem vote) were denied any share in the spoils of office. Moslem League propagandists have represented this situation as a denial of their legitimate rights, and as proof of a Hindu determination to dominate India. Tactically, it may have been unwise of Congress, but under a party system of government it is difficult to see how it could have done otherwise. Congress did not refuse office to Moslems as such, but to Moslems who were not members of Congress.

For Congress is not, as League followers claim, a Hindu organization. The Hindu Mahasabha is the party of orthodox Hindus. Congress is, and always has been, open to Moslems, and has a notable Moslem president, the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Mr. Asaf Ali is another Moslem member of the Working Committee. To expect Congress to present ministerial offices to its political rivals is as if the British Labor Party, after its recent overwhelming victory, should be invited to give Cabinet posts to members of the insignificant Independent Labor Party, which had opposed it at the polls.

How many nations in India?

The experience of one election convinced Jinnah that his party could never hope to enjoy a ruling majority. In 1940 he accordingly resurrected the theory of Pakistan, claiming that Hindus and Moslems are two separate nations.

Before 1940 no one outside the Moslems, and few among them, took Pakistan seriously, but by persistent advocation in season and out, Jinnah has made of it the central issue before India today. He has made of the League a real political party, and in the recent elections to the Central Legislative Assembly it won all the Mohammedan seats (30), polling 86.6 per cent of the total Moslem votes. These elections were based on the extremely restricted franchise of the 1919 Act, and the total number of votes cast was only 586,647, representing almost exclusively the propertied classes.

In the provincial elections now taking place, with an electorate of over 30 millions, the League is unlikely to repeat its 100 per cent success, but there is little doubt that it will gain a decisive majority of Moslem votes for a policy of Pakistan.

The real problem starts from this point the League is pledged not to make the new Constitution work unless it starts from the basic assumption of Pakistan. There must be not one but two constitution-making bodies, says Jinnah -one for Hindustan and one for Pakistan. Hindus naturally are not willing to submit, in advance of the elections, to the dictation of a minority.

Allegations of corrupt practices and official interference have been made by the League and Congress in the Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province. Doubtless many are true. The greatest curse of Indian political and administrative life is corruption running like a putrefying streak from top to bottom. Election returns from the North-West Frontier Province show, however, that the majority of Moslems in their traditional home are opposed to the vivisection of India.

Jinnah wrecked the Simla Conference - called by the Viceroy, Lord Wavell -in July, 1945. He can wreck the elections. All he has to do is to stall, and the longer he stalls, the stronger he grows.

Quotables

Things that tickled me:

...he had a personal philosophy of Manifest Destiny in which a higher power had already made his choices for him. By virtue of him choosing A over B, A was right. This outlook made him reckless, or a Muslim, and he wasn't that, that's for sure.

Hocus Potus - a novel by Malcolm MacPherson

Neoconazis

(Via CIP) Andrew Sullivan points out that the neocons are making precisely the same arguments in defense of torture that the US rejected and condemned the guilty to death in the case of the Nazis.

Officials write to the Senate about the AG nominee

Via dkos, from No Quarter:

Mukasey Nomination: Letter from Intelligence, Military, Diplomatic & Law Enforcement Professionals

PREFACE:

A group of distinguished intelligence and military officers, diplomats, and law enforcement professionals delivered an urgent message this morning to the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling on them to hold the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey until he takes a clear position on the legality of waterboarding.

Their message strongly endorses the view of former judge advocates general that waterboarding "is inhumane, is torture, is illegal.” The intelligence veterans added it is also a notoriously unreliable way to acquire accurate information.

They noted that the factors cited by the president and Mukasey as obstacles to his giving an opinion on waterboarding can be easily solved by briefing Mukasey on waterboarding and on C.I.A. interrogation methods.

The intelligence veterans noted that during their careers they frequently had to walk a thin line between morality and expediency, all the while doing their best to abide by the values the majority of Americans have held in common over the years. They appealed to Senators Pat Leahy and Arlen Specter to rise to the occasion and discharge their responsibility to defend those same values.

THE MEMORANDUM FOLLOWS. OF NOTE: YOU MAY REPRINT THIS MEMORANDUM AT ANY BLOG OR SITE, IN FULL, AND WITH PROPER ATTRIBUTION AND A LINK BACK TO No Quarter.

===============================

MEMORANDUM FOR: Chairman and Ranking Member Senate Committee on the Judiciary

FROM: Former U.S. Intelligence Officers

SUBJECT: Nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General

Dear Senators Leahy and Specter,

Values that are extremely important to us as former intelligence officers are at stake in your committee’s confirmation deliberations on Judge Michael Mukasey. With hundreds of years of service in sensitive national security activities behind us, we are deeply concerned that your committee may move his nomination to the full Senate without insisting that Mukasey declare himself on whether he believes the practice of waterboarding is legal.

We feel this more acutely than most others, for in our careers we have frequently had to navigate the delicate balance between morality and expediency, all the while doing our best to abide by the values the vast majority of Americans hold in common. We therefore believe we have a particular moral obligation to speak out. We can say it no better than four retired judge advocates general (two admirals and two generals) who wrote you over the weekend, saying: “Waterboarding is inhumane, it is torture, and it is illegal.”

Judge Mukasey’s refusal to comment on waterboarding, on grounds that it would be “irresponsible” to provide “an uninformed legal opinion based on hypothetical facts and circumstances,” raises serious questions. There is nothing hypothetical or secret about the fact that waterboarding was used by U.S. intelligence officers as an interrogation technique before the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004. But after Alberto Gonzales became attorney general in February 2005, Justice reportedly issued a secret memo authorizing harsh physical and psychological tactics, including waterboarding, which were approved for use in combination. A presidential executive order of July 20, 2007 authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” that had been banned for use by the U.S. Army. Although the White House announced that the order provides “clear rules” to govern treatment of detainees, the rules are classified, so defense attorneys, judges, juries — and even nominee Mukasey — can be prevented from viewing them.

Those are some of the “facts and circumstances.” They are not hypothetical; and there are simple ways for Judge Mukasey to become informed, which we propose below.

Last Thursday, President George W. Bush told reporters it was unfair to ask Mukasey about interrogation techniques about which he had not been briefed.

“He doesn’t know whether we use that technique [waterboarding] or not,” the president said. Judge Mukasey wrote much the same in his October 30 letter, explaining that he was unable to give an opinion on the legality of waterboarding because he doesn't know whether it is being used: “I have not been made aware of the details of any interrogation program to the extent that any such program may be classified and thus do not know what techniques may be involved in any such program.” Whether or not the practice is currently in use by U.S. intelligence, it should in fact be easy for him to respond. All he need do is find out what waterboarding is and then decide whether he considers it legal.

The conundrum created to justify the nominee’s silence on this key issue is a synthetic one. It is within your power to resolve it readily. If Mukasey continues to drag his feet, you need only to facilitate a classified briefing for him on waterboarding and the C.I.A. interrogation program. He will then be able to render an informed legal opinion. We strongly suggest that you sit in on any such briefing and that you invite the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to take part as well. Receiving the same briefing at the same time (and, ideally, having it taped) should enhance the likelihood of candor and make it possible for all to be — and to stay — on the same page on this delicate issue.

If the White House refuses to allow such a briefing, your committee must, in our opinion, put a hold on Mukasey’s nomination. We are aware that the president warned last week that it will be either Mukasey as our attorney general or no one. So be it. It is time to stand up for what is right and require from the Executive the information necessary for the Senate to function responsibly and effectively. It would seem essential not to approve a nominee who has already made clear he is reluctant to ask questions of the White House. How can a person with that attitude even be proposed to be our chief law enforcement officer?

We strongly urge that you not send Mukasey’s nomination to the full Senate before he makes clear his view on waterboarding. Otherwise, there is considerable risk of continued use of the officially sanctioned torture techniques that have corrupted our intelligence services, knocked our military off the high moral ground, severely damaged our country’s standing in the world, and exposed U.S. military and intelligence people to similar treatment when captured or kidnapped. One would think that Judge Mukasey would want to be briefed on these secret interrogation techniques and to clarify where he stands.

The most likely explanation for Mukasey’s reticence is his concern that, should his conscience require him to condemn waterboarding, this could cause extreme embarrassment and even legal jeopardy for senior officials this time not just for the so-called “bad apples” at the bottom of the barrel. We believe it very important that the Senate not acquiesce in his silence—and certainly not if, as seems the case, he is more concerned about protecting senior officials than he is in enforcing the law and the Constitution.

It is important to get beyond shadowboxing on this key issue. In our view, condoning Mukasey’s evasiveness would mean ignoring fundamental American values and the Senate’s constitutional prerogative of advice and consent.

At stake in your committee and this nomination are questions of legality, morality, and our country’s values. And these are our primary concerns as well. As professional intelligence officers, however, we must point to a supreme irony—namely, that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation practices are ineffective tools for eliciting reliable information. Our own experience dovetails well with that of U.S. Army intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. John Kimmons, who told a Pentagon press conference on September 6, 2006: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.”

Speaking out so precisely and unequivocally took uncommon courage, because Kimmons knew that just across the Potomac President Bush would be taking quite a different line at a press conference scheduled to begin as soon as Kimmons finished his. At the White House press conference focusing on interrogation techniques, the president touted the success that the C.I.A. was having in extracting information from detainees by using an “alternative set of procedures.” He said these procedures had to be “tough,” in order to deal with particularly recalcitrant detainees who “had received training on how to resist interrogation” and had “stopped talking.”

The Undersigned
(Official duties refer to former government work.)

Brent Cavan
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Ray Close
Directorate of Operations, CIA for 26 years—22 of them overseas; former Chief of Station, Saudi Arabia

Ed Costello
Counter-espionage, FBI

Michael Dennehy
Supervisory Special Agent for 32 years, FBI; U.S. Marine Corps for three years

Rosemary Dew
Supervisory Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI

Philip Giraldi
Operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist, Directorate of Operations, CIA

Michael Grimaldi
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Federal law enforcement officer

Mel Goodman
Division Chief, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Professor, National Defense University; Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Larry Johnson
Intelligence analysis and operations officer, CIA; Deputy Director, Office of Counter Terrorism, Department of State

Richard Kovar
Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA: Editor, Studies In Intelligence

Charlotte Lang
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

W. Patrick Lang
U.S. Army Colonel, Special Forces, Vietnam; Professor, U.S. Military Academy, West Point; Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); founding director, Defense HUMINT Service

Lynne Larkin
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA; counterintelligence; coordination among intelligence and crime prevention agencies; CIA policy coordination staff ensuring adherence to law in operations

Steve Lee
Intelligence Analyst for terrorism, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA

Jon S. Lipsky
Supervisory Special Agent, FBI

David MacMichael
Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, CIA; History professor; Veteran, U.S. Marines (Korea)

Tom Maertens
Foreign Service Officer and Intelligence Analyst, Department of State; Deputy Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Department of State; National Security Council (NSC) Director for Non-Proliferation

James Marcinkowski
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations, CIA by way of U.S. Navy

Mary McCarthy
National Intelligence Officer for Warning; Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council

Ray McGovern
Intelligence Analyst, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; morning briefer, The President’s Daily Brief; chair of National Intelligence Estimates; Co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Sam Provance
U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst, Germany and Iraq (Abu Ghraib); Whistleblower

Coleen Rowley
Special Agent and attorney, FBI; Whistleblower on the negligence that facilitated the attacks of 9/11.

Joseph Wilson
Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Ambassador and Director of Africa, National Security Council.

Valerie Plame Wilson
Operations Officer, Directorate of Operations

Brutality

I stupidly turned on the radio this morning (NEVER a good way to start the day!) to an Anne Garrels' story from Iraq. I'll link to it later, whenever it appears on the NPR web-site.

You'll understand what I mean, when I tell you that Garrels informs us that regular US military personnel were in tears describing to her the brutality of US Special Forces (towards Iraqis).

PS: Here's the link to the NPR story.

Mathematics cannot substitute for ethics

Multi-billion dollar losses at big banks are making the news these days.

Big name investment bankers assembled dubious mortgage loans into securities, the ratings companies gave these products investment grade ratings, and investers purchased this blessed junk.

No doubt these will all claim good faith effort and take refuge in the excuse of the failure of their mathematical models of risk. But the models were premised on eternally rising housing prices, which is an absurd assumption. You don't need any sophisticated quant analyst to tell you that.

It seems very clear to me that the lure of ringing up immediate transactions and making a profit in the short term greatly outweigh the long-term well-being of the bank for its employees, CEO downwards. Presumably they make their bonuses and are out doing something else when the whole thing blows up.

Just how bad they were is outlined in this dailykos story.

This is from Fortune magazine, quoted there:

In the spring of 2006, Goldman assembled 8,274 second-mortgage loans originated by Fremont Investment & Loan, Long Beach Mortgage Co., and assorted other players. More than a third of the loans were in California, then a hot market. It was a run-of-the-mill deal, one of the 916 residential mortgage-backed issues totaling $592 billion that were sold last year.

The average equity that the second-mortgage borrowers had in their homes was 0.71%. (No, that's not a misprint - the average loan-to-value of the issue's borrowers was 99.29%.)

It gets even hinkier. Some 58% of the loans were no-documentation or low-documentation. This means that although 98% of the borrowers said they were occupying the homes they were borrowing on - "owner-occupied" loans are considered less risky than loans to speculators - no one knows if that was true. And no one knows whether borrowers' incomes or assets bore any serious relationship to what they told the mortgage lenders.

....

In this case, Goldman sliced the $494 million of second mortgages into 13 separate tranches. The $336 million of top tranches - named cleverly A-1, A-2, and A-3 - carried the lowest interest rates and the least risk. The $123 million of intermediate tranches - M (for mezzanine) 1 through 7 - are next in line to get paid and carry progressively higher interest rates.

Finally, Goldman sold two non-investment-grade tranches [and kept one more, the riskiest, as its fee for the deal}

(...)

Even though the individual loans in GSAMP looked like financial toxic waste, 68% of the issue, or $336 million, was rated AAA by both agencies - as secure as U.S. Treasury bonds. Another $123 million, 25% of the issue, was rated investment grade, at levels from AA to BBB--.

Thus, a total of 93% was rated investment grade. That's despite the fact that this issue is backed by second mortgages of dubious quality on homes in which the borrowers (most of whose income and financial assertions weren't vetted by anyone) had less than 1% equity and on which GSAMP couldn't effectively foreclose.

The Need to Innovate

The energy to run a technological civilization and the resiliency of the environment to man's activities are in deep depletion. If we do not want the majority of humanity to live in great material deprivation and misery, we need to do things differently. Sometimes even Thomas Friedman is worth quoting in this regard:

Why should you care what they’re driving in Delhi? Here’s why: The cost of your cellphone is a lot cheaper today because India took that little Western invention and innovated around it so it is now affordable to Indians who make only $2 a day. India has become a giant platform for inventing cheap scale solutions to big problems. If it applied itself to green mass transit solutions for countries with exploding middle classes, it would be a gift for itself and the world.

To do that it must leapfrog. If India just innovates in cheap cars alone, its future will be gridlocked and polluted. But an India that makes itself the leader in both cheap cars and clean mass mobility is an India that will be healthier and wealthier. It will also be an India that gives us cheap answers to big problems — rather than cheap copies of our worst habits.

The Surge in Iraq

The current trend line in Iraq for casualties is pointed downwards. The trend could be real, i.e., not equivalent to some of the previous downturns in violence. It could be because of the surge - the efforts of General Petraeus and his men. It could be for a variety of other reasons.

Is it real? Only time will tell.

The graphic whose small version is below is from icasualties.org.