My little policy and op-ed section.I promise I’ll make this searchable when I
have the time and wherewithal to introduce an intrasite
search engine; for now, just scroll down the list of links below to read the
topic that you’re interested in, or use the Ctrl-F option to search for
keywords on this page (Social Security, Iraq, environment, and so on).
A brief entry about the “Certified Humane”
labels that have been appearing (since 2004) on animal-derived products in your
neighborhood grocery store.There’s been a concerted industry-driven effort to establish and oblige
strict compliance with a set of practices designed to minimize the suffering
and improve the experience of farm animals that provide us with meat and dairy
products.But this will be of little
avail unless the consumer supports the effort.This is my little plea for support on the consumer side of things.
The sight of courageous Port Authority Police and New York
firefighters, charging into the smoldering Twin Towers after the attacks of September
11, 2001, astonished many people, in large part because we just don't expect
such voluntary, unheralded, in-the-line-of-duty heroism to occur much in the
real world. And yet we saw it in spades on that day. It's actually much more
common than we often appreciate, and its fact is something that we take for
granted, fading to the background, as it were. Even if this jaundiced, often
cynical day and age, when we've come to anticipate and brace for the worst in
people, we should remember that for the vast majority of the time, the vast
majority of people do their jobs competently, unwavering, and often, even
heroically.
Nuclear weapons are probably the most useless, expensive,
dangerous, and counterproductive components of a modern superpower’s
arsenal.Nope, that’s not a misprint—for
all their hi-tech ooh-aah potential and Freudian symbols
of potency, nukes are peculiarly lousy weapons on any real battlefield.They are grossly imprecise and the dumbest of
dumb weapons, afflicting an enormous radius and causing enormous civilian
damage and suffering far beyond any military gain.They ruin a nation for occupiers and deprive
both sides of any economic gains, due to the lingering effects of radioactive
fallout.Furthermore, we in the US have the
additional, not-so-slight problem that we and Russia still point thousands of
nukes at each other’s cities, ready to be launched within minutes.There is the prospect of an accidental launch
which, in 1983 and 1995, nearly did occur due to computer and clerical errors;
and there is also the prospect of a religious fanatic, fired by zealotry,
launching the nukes as a fulfillment of personal beliefs (and compelling
subordinates to do the same).As history
has shown, political leaders of a nation often behave irrationally, and the
rational-state assumption of the mutually assured destruction (MAD) doctrine,
which keeps US and Russian nukes pointed at each other, is perhaps the
doctrine’s most serious flaw.Indeed,
with our conventional power and increasingly advanced technology, nukes are
almost useless to us or any other civilized nation; conversely, they are a
dream weapon for terrorists who simply wish to cause as much damage to civilian
populations as possible.The only value
of nuclear arms would be as a deterrent, yet in this regard we would benefit
far more from a strategic posture like that adopted by most other nuclear
nations, with 20-30 nuclear devices used to ward off potential invaders.Otherwise, we would best serve our military
and our national defense by focusing our financial and human resources on
increasing the precision of our weapons and ensuring they cause as little
damage to civilian populations as possible.If the brutal business of war must be implemented, best to make it as
rapid and precise as possible.
An extended version of an article submitted to antiwar.com, this essay focuses specifically
on the clear and present danger posed by the US-Russian nuclear posture to the
viability of democracy in the United
States. Because of the sheer size of our arsenal, and
the ludicrous time constraints imposed by the launch-on-warning doctrine, the US President is
rendered virtual carte blanche over launch decisions involving nuclear weapons.
He can receive advice from Strategic
Nuclear Forces officers but he ultimately has sole discretion over the launch
authorization, and could even do so offensively (in addition to the customary
retaliatory scenario), essentially on a whim.There is a gross and appalling absence of checks and balances to review
this decision, a chasm present virtually nowhere else in the government.Yet, such a decision would be of far greater
importance than any other our government could make. Therefore, the US President has essentially been
vested with the powers of a dictator. This
article explores how we arrived at this disastrous juncture, and what can be
done to remedy it.Excerpts of this
article (for cross-referencing elsewhere), on the very concrete dangers
of nuclear arms and specific steps
to improve our nuclear doctrines, are also provided here.
In the history of the colonial wars of the 19th
and 20th centuries, Britain,
France, and Italy
were defeated on numerous occasions by indigenous armies.In no part of the world did their attempts at
colonization suffer so much difficulty than in the Muslim world.The British in particular suffered many
disastrous defeats at the hands of opponents in Arab and Muslim lands, while
the French endured one of their country’s most painful periods in the dirty war
against the Algerians in the 1960s, which led ultimately to defeat.The Italians themselves suffered defeat at
the hands of largely Muslim Ethiopia in 1896, at the Battle of Adowa.In more
recent decades, the USSR was
in many ways undone by the Soviet Union’s disastrous intervention in Afghanistan
from 1979-1988, in which the Russians confronted a tenacious and skilled
guerrilla insurgency which drained the Russian treasury and was integral to the
Soviet break-up and decline in 1991.
In each of these cases, the Muslim world has taken on a
fascinating centrality:Although the
Arab and Muslim states were far too debilitated, fractious, divided, destitute,
and technologically backward to themselves rise up as great powers, their
propensity to trap colonial powers in draining, difficult, and extremely
expensive wars—which in general resulted in eventual defeat for the Western
imperialist in question—profoundly affected the balance of power among nations
and alliances that could vie for such supremacy.Thus serial British disasters in Afghanistan
in the 1800s effectively enabled Russia to incorporate Central Asia into its
sphere of control, while British failures in Egypt, Iraq, and Aden hastened the
collapse of the British Empire and led to the eventual expulsion of British
forces from the oil-rich Middle East—to be replaced by competing factions
supported by the US and USSR.Afghan
resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s, meanwhile, was instrumental in the
ascendancy of the United
States as the world’s sole superpower in the
1990s.Now, we see this motif in
evidence once again, as the United States
itself suffers in battles against opponents in Muslim countries who see the US as
an imperial aggressor.Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, and
the Iraqi insurgents in particular, have launched a protracted and draining
campaign to evict US forces from the Middle East.While the Iraqi guerrillas are themselves far
too weak to ascend as global powers, they are causing enough misery for the USA to
affect the global balance of power.Since the enormously costly Iraqi insurgency is taking place in the
context of the appearance of the Euro as an alternative reserve currency in
1999, as well as the propensity of the current US Administration to finance the
war with debt (and the concurrent interest of leading neoconservatives to
expand the war still further), the Iraqi insurgents are effectively bleeding
the US Treasury even as they bleed our military, so much so that the dollar is
progressively declining as an international currency of choice.The Iraqi fighters are thus in essence
tipping the global balance of power in favor of America’s
main competitors:the EU, India, and China.While there will probably (and hopefully) not
be precipitous collapses or economic upheavals, the dollar is losing its
dominance, as are the English language and American culture in general.This discussion is instructive since our
current problems ensue from our own errors and miscalculations as much as our
determined adversaries in Iraq,
yet it appears that the pattern is manifesting itself once again:The Iraqi guerrillas are effectively changing
the current global power arrangement.
The
unusually voluble terrorist leader spelled out his grim plan in one of his
videotapes just before the US
election in November of 2004. He cares
little about US freedom and
democracy, and does not harbor fantasies of a conquest or mass conversion of
the USA.His objective was far more
simple and just as devastating:He stated an intention to bankrupt the United States.Mistakes by leaders and high officials of
both parties in the US
have opened the path for Osama bin Laden to realize his dreadful
aspiration.With the ongoing quagmire in
Iraq in 2005, a new invasion apparently on tap for Iran, and the increasing
shift away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, we are walking
right into bin Laden’s trap, a ruse expressly
designed to draw in the US and ensnare us in a protracted and draining clash
against a guerrilla insurgency that threatens to bankrupt our treasury and lead
us even deeper into the swamp.
Concepts from the natural sciences often wend their way into
completely unrelated debates about anthropology or social and foreign policy,
frequently as a way for an apologist on one side or another to appear more
erudite, and to buttress controversial claims with the supposed sanction of a principle
from the empirical-based natural sciences.The concept of entropy, from thermodynamics, and of
survival of the fittest, from Darwinian evolutionary theory in biology, have
frequently performed such double duty.Unfortunately, these two concepts are also almost always misunderstood
and grossly misrepresented in popular discourse, even by many scientists who
participate in such debates.Their
actual meanings and implications are far more subtle and surprising than a
cursory glance or a superficial rendition of them would suggest.This article discusses their meanings and the
ramifications thereof in greater detail.
A brief article laying out my thoughts on
human cloning and eugenic germline manipulation.I confronted these issues in depth for the
first time in my essay, “Confronting our Souls in the Mirror,” in Volume VI
(2000) of Vision.My views have changed somewhat but my core
concerns remain, and they must be confronted.I delve into the salient topics in this article.
Earnest discussions about US energy policy and heartfelt pleas
to more aggressively exploit renewable energy schemes—like wind, solar,
geothermal, and tidal sources—to supplant fossil fuels often end on a note of
despondence and resignation.Too often,
proponents of alternative energy fall victim to the classic
conversation-stopper:Renewable energy
sources just aren’t cost-effective compared to good ol’
fashioned sweet crude from the oil wells, and are far too expensive to be
practically implemented.This assumption
is false and based on a grossly skewed tally of costs and benefits, since it
takes into account only the easily quantified and immediate expenses of oil
extraction, refinement, and transport; it generally does not consider the true
geopolitical costs to the US of relying so fundamentally on oil and natural gas
that happen to reside beneath the sands of the some of the world’s most
unstable countries, especially in the Muslim Middle East, with all the
attendant costs of military stationings in the region
and the resulting perception of foreign occupation (and terrorist attacks as a
response).The genuine expenses of
fossil fuel reliance do not show up on any company’s balance sheet, and the net
effect is that US policymakers too often drag their feet on renewable fuel
development and promotion, blissfully ignorant of the tremendous long-term
damage we are already suffering because of our abject dependence on foreign
oil.The way any sensible government
remedies such a discrepancy—in a manner that reflects true costs and
benefits—is through incentives like tax breaks and low-interest loans to
entrepreneurs and utilities that exploit renewable fuels and encourage
conservation.However, our shocking
failure to do so in the US—especially when compared to pioneers like Germany,
Denmark, Japan, China, and India—will leave us vulnerable to economic
disruption and political breakdown in the 21st century.We have to escape the trap of economyopia and face up to the true costs of our reliance
on fossil fuels.
A short collection of articles on Gulf War II in Iraq,
initiated by the Bush Administration in the US against the Iraqi regime of
Saddam Hussein and (from mid-April 2003 onward) against a shadowy collection of
former Baathists, Iraqi nationalists, Islamists,
foreign Islamic fighters (from Europe as well as from neighboring and nearby
Middle Eastern countries), and al-Qaeda engaging in battle against Coalition
forces.I’ve been skeptical about this
war from the outset, but I’ve tried to play the part of dutiful policy wonk
here and be as analytical as possible about the historical roots and Byzantine
politics of the Iraq conflict.In the
process, I offer a perspective on Iraq, backed by its
little-discussed history and the previous British colonial occupation of the
region in the 1920s, that doesn’t fit well into the hawk-vs.-dove categories
usually offered up the media.Although
opposed to the war, I reject mere sniping and attempt to suggest productive solutions
in my articles here.
bravenet.com