Radio Free Taiwan

That’s what I like to call it. Remember when the teacher would punish the whole class because some punk wouldn’t admit to smacking gum? Every kid knew it was wrong - of the teacher, that is. Here’s a letter I wrote to the Taipei Times yesterday. I’m not sure they’ll print it, but I’ll stick it here too.

To the editors:

Thank you for writing a timely and sensible editorial on the escalating situation in the Middle East.

Clearly, most, but not all, people in the world find Israel’s approach to conflict offensive. The question is why. I believe that these things come down to what might be called doctrines. Israel deals with affronts to its standards in a way that is different from most other countries. As spoken in the recent film, Munich, the basic goal seems to be sending a specific message: “Don’t f**k with Israel.” But while hunting down specific terrorists might be acceptable in many people’s eyes, Israel has broadened this approach considerably since the seventies, using some pretty extreme rationalization in my opinion. Israel’s doctrine now seems to be a simple and blunt one that can be summed up in two words: collective punishment. Israel’s attitude seems to be that a crime committed by one Palestinian is a crime committed by all Palestinians. This allows Israel to rationalize helicopter gunship attacks on apartment buildings in retaliation for primitive rocket lobbings or attacks on small groups of Israeli soldiers.

To be fair, it must be said that the Palestinians also seem to follow the doctrine of collective punishment. The suicide bombings are an obvious example. Either one side or the other needs to take the moral high ground in this conflict and stop punishing a whole population for the crimes of a few. Doubtlessly, a majority of people on both sides of the dispute would prefer to live in peace. After all, both Palestinians and Jews are Semetic people who have co-mingled in this part of the world for thousands of years.

Since Israel has so much money and technology, I feel the moral onus is on that country to raise its standards and make a visible effort to avoid collective punishment when engaging in conflict. But Israel currently appears to be doing the opposite: favouring blatant collective punishment, still dreaming that this will somehow make the Palestinians wake up and realize the simple solution that is, “Don’t f**k with Israel.” Such an approach is obviously stupid and invites escalation. But few are willing to label the situation accurately, so this horrible situation keeps getting worse.

Peter Dearman
Taipei

Here is a photo of Beirut under attack:

Apparently this video is being suppressed. Fox has been pressuring Web sites to remove it. They, of course, did a while back. I haven’t looked too far into it, but I hope it’s one of those conspiracy theories that isn’t true. I often think we should all be surprised at how much freedom of the press is actually extended to us (and to Americans especially). I saw Chomsky lecture once at McGill, and he said something like, the secret tactic of the American military-industrial-complex is to tolerate dissent so that true dissidents can be written off as crackpots while the elite screw everybody.

But if they’re really going to go ahead and make a move toward rewriting history a la Orwell…. well, perhaps that will bring a turning point, or perhaps they will be successful, and people will start the process of getting used to having their memorable history (the stuff they lived through) recreated right before their eyes.

But, at least for now, we still have our Chomskys, our Michael Moores, and - bless his needy soul - our Charlie Sheens.

You can download a nice hi-rez copy of that Fox report here:
CARL CAMERON’S FOX NEWS
STORY ON THE ISRAELI SPY RING

I’m fed up with the lack of media coverage of depleted uranium, so I set up a BBS discussion board to foster open debate of this controversial issue. You can help this site, www.DUBBS.info, attract more attention by making a link to it on your Web page, Google Base or MySpace page. Ideal links will look like these:

Please visit this Depleted uranium BBS.
Please visit to debate depleted uranium.

On the site, you can also find some link buttons and banners to use if you like, such as this one:




The address is: www.DUBBS.info

There are so many things I wish I’d make it a habit to do at least once each day. One of them is blogging. Hah. There’s also flossing, studying Chinese, tidying up my trail of newspapers and notes. And wht was it I heard from Tony Robbins or someone like him once? Spend an hour of each day working on success. Yeah, well. That’d be nice. I waste more than several most days continuing my education on how horrible everything is. And I consider myself to be somewhat prone to depression. I guess I still see it as training myself. I expect things to get worse.

The horror is making it into the newspapers almost every day these days. Yessiree, with the groundlessness of the Iraq attack, white phosphorus, even depleted uranium getting some coverage, it’s quite remarkable how well everybody is holding up. Well, I guess some of them lived through the Kennedy era, and there was the Gulf War - a turning point for my basic mentality - but I am still in awe of everybody’s ability to behold the horror and pretend that everything is perfectly normal. What solace is there? Some stupid theory like this one?

I really do want to make the world a better place. That’s why I “waste” so much time — more and more lately — honing my skills as a social critic that no one ever listens to. Why should they? People won’t even listen to me when I tell them Aspertame is bad for them. People who know I have biology and journalism degrees; Even after I tell them I researched it thoroughly and that I’m telling them because I’m their friend and I care. Not only do people believe what they want to believe. I’ll tell you this. People, more surely, don’t believe what they don’t want to believe.

Just Googled it. Only six hits for “don’t believe what they don’t want to believe.” Had the thought as I was writing. I’m a genius. That’s it. All my wasted time was worth it. I now know the truth. We got it all wrong. Some people believe what they want to believe, but most people don’t believe what they don’t want to believe. Okay, obviously I didn’t quite coin it, but hey. Maybe this is a place to start, ’cause we got a lot of fixing to do to deserve our consciences to be free from the guilt of apathy and inaction.

I was going to move on to Exhibit A, a story from today’s paper about dying children (billions of them nearly - just because we won’t donate a pittance to establish basic water services), but maybe I better stick with the new revelation for a moment. Let’s say that is the problem. Thinking out loud here. Duh. Smack me. Um… I was reading a great book a while ago, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” really it’s a great book, and I remember he starts off, and that was about as far as I got although I insist it’s a great book, and he says firmly, with a lot of evidence (I talk like this too) that you simply cannot convince anybody of anything by fighting with them.

He’s right. I know it’s a bit hard to believe, but he convinced me with all his evidence, that successful people have an uncanny ability to never browbeat others into agreeing with them. Carnagie says successful people rather engineer their opponents into agreeing with them. Can this be done on issues of global concern, like our environmental mess and the fact that idiots seem to control everything and are driving us toward total destruction at an accellerating rate? How can concerned people engineer a soft sell on this one? I’ll have to think about that one.

On with the exhibit! Here’s the link:
Many kids still dying for a glass of water

Excerpt:

In the next 24 hours diarrhea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation will claim the lives of 4,000 children. The annual death toll from this relentless catastrophe is larger than the population of Birmingham. Dirty water poses a greater threat to human life than war or terrorism. Yet it barely registers on the radar of public debate in rich countries.

At any one time, close to half the population of the developing world is suffering from water-related diseases. These rob people of their health, destroy their livelihoods and undermine education potential. The statistics behind the crisis make for grim reading. In the midst of an increasingly prosperous global economy, 2.6 billion people still have no access to even the most rudimentary latrine.

Over 1 billion have no source of drinking water.

In Britain, the average person uses 160 liters of clean water each day.

Ouch! Read that again. That’s gotta be heavy, right? Really. Read it again. Can that be for real? I’ve been backpacking to a lot of nooks and crannies of Asia and I’ve never seen a place where I couldn’t get bottled water. Then again, I’ve never been to Africa. And anywhere that backpackers go, a trail of money provides bottled water for all.

Bottled water is part of the problem really. Read on.

The slum was Kibera. With a population of 750,000 it is one of the largest informal settlements in Africa and accounts for one-quarter of people living in Nairobi. Over 90 percent lack access to a latrine, giving rise to a phenomenon that didn’t figure in the movie: the “flying toilet.” Lacking any alternative, people defecate into plastic bags that are thrown into the street, with terrifying consequences for public health.

Kibera is a microcosm of what happens across the developing world. Rapid urbanization and a crumbling water and sanitation infrastructure in cities like Jakarta, Manila and Lagos have left millions of poor people in overcrowded slums facing a constant threat from water infected with human excrement.

To add insult, the poor pay more for their water than the rich. In Kibera, you pay three times more than in Manhattan or London, and 10 times more than in high-income suburbs of Nairobi. Similar patterns are repeated across the cities of the developing world. The reason: water utilities pump subsidized water to well-off customers, but seldom reach the poor. Most slum dwellers face a choice between buying water from high-cost private traders, or taking a long trip to the nearest stream.

Meeting the UN’s millennium development goal of halving the proportion of the world without access to clean water would cost US$4 billion a year for 10 years. That amount represents just a month’s spending on bottled mineral water in Europe and the US.

For less than people in rich countries now spend on a designer product that produces no tangible health gains, we would roll back one of the main causes of preventable childhood death. And for every US$1 invested, another US$3 to US$4 would be generated through savings on health spending and increased productivity. So why have rich countries been cutting aid to water and sanitation for the last five years?

I would like to add for comparison that the Iraq Invasion has cost nearly US$250 billion so far. So I guess that money could hve been better spent. If you feel sorry for children dying needless painful deaths that is.

But don’t believe it! I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m sure that story is simply not true. There is no way that the leacders of America, who have the best intentions in their hearts, would ever knowingly allow money to be diverted away from saving the lives of children and put into efforts that destroy the lives of (Arab) children. What is described in the story is an oversimplification and obfuscation of the real truth which is that America does everything a country could possible[sic] do to export Democracy and a proper Way of life for all the people of this great world, thank you very much, and what was the question? Do we ignore mountains of death due to simple problems with low tech solutions? Well, we can’t have high tech without the low tech, now can we? No we certainly can’t. Amen.

I can’t wait for the day I stop including myself in the we. Is there a real war, a just one, I can sign up for and earn my stripes fighting this all-too-old world order? God bless America. Really. Her people need some help. After we help the children. I don’t know how. Go ask Bono.

And go read the whole story. It’s by Kevin Watkins, who is director of the UN Human Development Report Office. Man, the UN can sure come up with key staff members that know how to tell whoppers! Do you remember those weapons inspectors? How about that, huh?

Next issue: the raping of the oceans; Back to you, Jane.

Just kidding. But shaving the dog, yes. And wagging the dog will come later.

As you can see, we sent Didi in for a shave. Apparently he was very well-behaved and loving toward everyone. Anne said he seemed very proud of himself after the treatment. He certainly is a bit more cuddly, as we’ve had fairly chilly weather this week. We let him on the bed now because he seems cleaner. He’s getting into it. Whereas before he would get too hot or fidgity and jump down withing a few minutes, now he’s likely to stay all night.

Everyone says he’s very cute. I think he looks a bit silly, and nude. Fewer people are scared of him now. You’d be surprised how many people in Taipei will go all nervous when happy, harmless Didi trots toward them.

Moving on now to selected horoors of the world, a recent online discussion got me looking into the Diebold e-voting machines that are at the center of considerable controversy in the US. If one leans toward the side of not trusting GWB and the neo-cons to follow the normal rules of democracy, these e-voting machines are scary. Much of the scandal has been broken by Brad of The Brad Blog, the tagline of which reads, ‘Be the media. Somebody has to.’ I now proudly sport a bright green link to that blog on the right.

Brad is much more effective than a journalist since he expects powerful people to lie to defend themselves and their power. Here is a link to his convenient summary page. He’s done a lot of writing on this one.

To make half of a long story short, Ion Sancho, Leon County, Florida’s election chief was a little suspicious of his voting machines made by Diebold, an American company that makes most of their profits from ATMs (I can’t resist the urge to add, supposedly). So he called in a computer expert, Harri Hursti from Finland, who figured out a way to drastically change election results just by preprogramming some data on the memory card that collects the votes. This was about a year ago. Sancho has had a lot of negative pressure on the job since then. Diebold denied that Sancho had proved anything, but oddly enough, other tests of the machines seemed to convince most witnesses of their fallibility. More recent tests even pushed Sancho’s complaints back into the press. See this story from the Miami Herald.

Sancho first clashed with Diebold in May, when he teamed up with a nonprofit election-monitoring group called BlackBoxVoting.org, which has made a crusade of showing that electronic voting machines are subject to fraud. BlackBox hired Herbert Thompson, a computer-science professor and strategist at Security Innovation, which tests software for companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Thompson couldn’t hack into the system from the outside. So Sancho gave him access to the central machine that tabulates votes and to the last school election at Leon County High.

Thompson told The Herald he was ‘’shocked” at how easy it was to get in, make the loser the winner and leave without a trace. The machine asked for a user name and password, but didn’t require it, he said. That meant it had not just a ”front door, but a back door as big as a garage,” Thompson said.

From there, Thompson said, he typed five lines of computer code — and switched 5,000 votes from one candidate to another.

”I am positive an eighth grader could do this,” Thompson said.

After BlackBox and Sancho announced the results, Diebold’s senior lawyer, Michael Lindroos, wrote Sancho, Leon County and the state of Florida questioning the results and calling the test ”a very foolish and irresponsible act” that may have violated licensing agreements.

Apparently the voting maching software actually uses Microsoft Access databases. That’s reassuring. Moving on, a quick look at Wikipedia tells me:

Together, ES&S and Diebold Election Systems are (as of 2004) responsible for tallying approximately 80% of the votes cast in the United States. The software architecture common to both is a creation of Mr. Urosevich’s company I-Mark. Some experts claim that this structure is easily compromised, in part due to its reliance on Microsoft Access databases.

and

In August 2003, Walden O’Dell, chief executive of Diebold, announced that he had been a top fund-raiser for President George W. Bush and had sent a get-out-the-funds letter to Ohio Republicans. In the letters he says he is “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.” Critics of Diebold interpreted this as implying that he might rig the company’s electronic voting machines to give an unfair advantage to Bush. The letter also was seen as an indication of a perceived conflict of interest by critics. He has responded to the critics by pointing out that the company’s election machines division is run out of Texas by a registered Democrat. He also claims the statement about delivering Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush was simply a poor choice of words. Nonetheless, he vowed to lower his political profile lest his personal actions harm the company. O’Dell resigned his post of chairman and chief executive of Diebold on Monday December 12, 2005 following reports that the company was facing securities fraud litigation surrounding charges of insider trading.

DES claims its systems provide strong immunity to ballot tampering and other vote rigging attempts. These claims have been challenged, notably by Bev Harris on her website, Blackboxvoting.org, and book by the same name. Harris and C. D. Sludge, an Internet journalist, both claim there is also evidence that the Diebold systems have been exploited to tamper with American elections — a claim Harris expands in her book Black Box Voting. Sludge further cites Votewatch for evidence that suggests a pattern of compromised voting machine exploits throughout the 1990s, and specifically involving the Diebold machines in the 2002 election. DES also has come under fire for the recent discovery that the Diebold voting machines do not and did not in 2004 meet the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) error standard.

Well there you have it. Do you trust this picture? I don’t. Not now, not ever. It depends far too much on the presumed honesty of people holding power. Do you think the ‘founding fathers’ of the USA would have gone along with such nonsense? What is it for? The vote counting system isn’t broken, or at least it wasn’t for the most part before e-voting became commonplace.

And again, I know I sound like a broken record on this one (as if anyone is reading anyway), but where is the media on this one? How can they sleep at night? Please visit www.blackboxvoting.org and learn more about this

FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM

with modern day American democracy.

I’m sure I won’t be, but I just want to be the first to say that I think the Mohammed cartoon flap will go down in history as an event nearly as important to our current historical epoch as 9/11 itself.

I mean it. The first thing that set me off was my own reaction the moment my Web-surfing girlfriend told me from across the room that mobs attacked certain embassies because of offensive cartoons - an issue which I had never heard of before. I suddenly became enraged, and torrents of rhetoric laced with the word they came spewing out of my mouth. How dare they declare what we can’t print? And so forth. Lot’s of people are still spewing yet.

Why do I now say it was spew? Because I reacted without thinking. In fact, it almost felt as if I’d been programmed to react that way. The next day, without learning too much more about the situation, I thought to myself and declared to my girlfriend that I thought this cartoon thing was gonna become really huge. I was feeling a little shocked by my initial agressive reaction, but I was still thinking it was ridiculous for muslims in their native countries to be protesting against what some cartoonists and newspapers had drawn to defile Mohammed. Surely they would know better than to try and enforce a censorship on the West.

I forget exactly what I was thinking during the next couple days as I read more about the flap during my compulsive daily newsreading. After a bit, I got around to checking out a rebuttal from the other side. I went to Wikipedia to get my balance. I found out that the cartoon controversy had been going on for a few months and that the cartoons were printed with two specific intentions in mind: to test/demonstrate freedom of the press, and to provoke the anger of muslims.

I take issue with the second point, as does most of the muslim world. Since when have mass-circulation newspapers been acceptable tools for the provoking of ethnic or religious groups? (Okay, I do know that mass media in many Arab countries is used this way, but I am taking to task the standards of Western society not discussing the faults of the Arab world.)

What I find disturbingly insidious is that I had gone through my initial heated reaction and its denoument basically in the frame of mind that the cartoons had depicted Mohammed almost as if by accident, as if the cartoonist didn’t know that that was sacrilege. I think I was under suspension of disbelief. I was implicitly assuming that “we” were not out to get “them.” But it turns out we were. Which is, I theorize, why “we” have reacted so strongly. Heck, our embassies have been attacked many times before.

The standard muslim defense for the protests and embassy sackings is that the West holds double standards on the issue of printing cartoons in order to offend ethno-racial-religious groups. Would the same papers run cartoons mocking the holocaust? Running cartoons of Jesus doesn’t count because nobody really takes offense to that. Targeting a group is the neccessary condition of the test.

It is quite a good defense I think. I’ll double check later, but I don’t think any Western papers ran any holocaust cartoons to demonstrate that such a right to offend is applied equally.

Still, a subconscious sense of guilt over our own hypocrisy hardly explains the reaction I see, with everyone and their dog slapping ‘Support Denmark’ banners onto their blogs and Web sites. Maybe it was just that it was Denmark. I suppose if that country had made it to the hockey finals in the Olympics most of the Western world would be rooting for them too. Who wouldn’t support little Denmark against the throbbing masses of fundamentalist Muslims?

But that can’t be the whole explanation either. No. It is deeper. We are programmed, though we don’t like to admit it. Freedom of speech is our opiate-cum-security blanket. It is the lynchpin of the American system of oligarchic control. Although obvious examples of injustice in the American socio-political system abound (Eg. lying about Lewinsky vs. lying about everything), the American public has been almost totally pacified by the deification of freedom of speech.

I once saw Noam Chomsky speak, and the first thing he said was that no wise person should trust him since, after all, by speaking he was fundamentally empowering the oligarchs by providing a strong example of the toleration of dissent. Far better, he reasoned it would be, if the powers that be sought to suppress his message. By tolerating dissent, the American (and Western) system insulates itself against nearly all dissent which might otherwise prove dangerous. Nobody has proved this like GWB and his administration.

This is why I say, the Western indignance over the cartoons reflects the hopes of Westerners that they do in fact live under a system that is reasonable. There are few other signs of that reasonability these days. The rich are getting richer; the poor, poorer; the strong do as they please; governments abrogate all responsibility to their electorates.

It seems to me that the average Westerner will defend free speech to the grave, especially to justify his sense of cultural superiority. Without this comfortable illusion (because our freedom of speech is far from absolute), he would not have many clear principles to point to when justifying the feeling in his heart that his own culture is somehow better than that he has been trained to hate.