What if the Nazis had won WWII?

Oftentimes when reading about World War II, I ask myself, 'What if Hitler would have successfully conquered Europe?' This map and explanation provide an answer — one of many — to that fascinating 'what if?'.

Eco-friendly living tip: cease the beef

Eight years ago, general science magazine New Scientist said this:

IT IS hard to measure the methane in a cow's farts. But Dieter Ehhalt has made an estimate. It is hardly an easy task to count how many cattle there are in the world. But the West German chemist has tried to do that too. Ehhalt's answers are, respectively, 200 grams per day and 1300 million. Together, they suggest that the world's cattle emit into the atmosphere approaching 100 million tonnes of methane each year, enough to warm up the planet.

Today global warming is all-the-more pressing. CO2 may be the prime culprit in the eyes of environmental do-gooders, but methane is also a factor in the human-encouraged changing in our planet's climate. It is amazing to look back nearly a decade ago and see that nobody but 'environmentalist nuts' — as they are so often stereotyped in mainstream culture — heeded the warnings of scientists; now the general public is becoming more aware. Still, we see some hardly scientific denials every now and then, and many are still not even pretending to take action, but the thought of the precious polar bear dying out and the Manhattan of 2020 being a tourist spot for scuba divers has changed some minds. Where am I going with this? Well the topic of that old news article is the "Earth-friendly living tip of the week", albeit a few days late — methane, in specific the methane emitted from cows.

Why red meat isn't bad just for your heart...
Cows not only require a huge amount of food and water, considering especially how much food they provide, but also produce large amounts of methane, a key and harmful greenhouse gas that plays a role in global warming. Thus beef consumption is far from a good thing for the Earth.

As was written in the Christian Science Monitor,

American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians every year. ... Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.

Beef is a big part of the livestock problem; a study earlier this year reported that

A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

It can seem daunting that the steak you so enjoy is just as bad for the planet as a long drive in a SUV or 4X4, but it's about true. I'm one of those people who would love to be a vegetarian but just loves meat too much to kick the habit. However, I have lowered my beef intake, especially recently. This is more of a sacrifice than shutting off your computer or television, or changing a few light-bulbs; nonetheless it's something to consider. Lowering beef consumption is better for both health and environment, it seems.

Note: Usually I do the Earth-friendly living tip of the week on Mondays. Since this week has been a bit hectic, it's being done today instead.

Bush's Iraq-Vietnam comparison could easily backfire (like the war itself)

So Bush compares Iraq to Vietnam (sort of)... isn't that what many in the anti-war camp have been doing all along? And when you're trying to push victory in a war, I don't think Vietnam, largely seen as a military and political failure for the United States, is the best thing to cite.

President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.

"The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens," he told war veterans in Missouri.

The price of America's occupation was also payed by the lives of many, in both Vietnam and Iraq. (And what about the Cambodians bombed needlessly and the other casualties of the horrendous, often covert, US policy of the Cold War?)

Mr Bush said the Vietnam War had taught the need for US patience over Iraq.

Patience, or the unneeded costs — in a humanitarian as well as a monetary sense — and blowback wars like Iraq and, notably, the old Soviet war in Afghanistan result in, not to mention loss of political face at home and abroad for those on the losing end(s) of such wars.

President Bush had already made a connection between the US-led occupation of Iraq and the Cold War-era Vietnam conflict in October of last year.

A sketchy connection of past conflict to present conflict
Semi-neocon Christopher Hitchens disputes the Iraq-Vietnam link, offering plenty of contrasts between the Iraq and Vietnam wars, which I myself have my reservations about. In a way, one can compare the Cold War against 'communism' to the global 'war on terror'; Vietnam and Iraq were major fronts of those 'wars', respectively. They both have ideologically-driven parties involved — one might say Saudi Arabia and Iran are Iraq's China, etc., during the Vietnam war. However, the parties involved in the current Iraq conflict are even more of a blur, and at this point America is fighting insurgents while trying to get Iraq to be able to walk with its own too.

Another shared trait of both wars is the unorthodox guerrilla warfare used by the insurgents/communists. Then again, things are much more wishy-washy in Iraq and there is no one enemy. Also Iraq fell with Saddam; America never fully conquered Vietnam (the north ended up taking the south).

Bush's logic that the 'terrorists' will take over Iraq just as the communists did in Vietnam has plenty of holes. For example, just the fact that there is no one group of insurgents hurts his argument. In addition, his new comparison of Iraq to Vietnam, mostly in a domestic political sense, makes it all too easy for those on the other side of the spectrum to argue that Iraq is a failed war, like Vietnam, and even the president who has constantly pursued the war can make that connection.

Not apples to apples
Iraq is complex. With so many outcomes, and so many parties involved or allegedly involved, the policy debate will no doubt rage on in Washington and Baghdad. Iraq can be compared to Vietnam. But it's not a comparison where all the common traits — or at least enough to make a good case — match up.

There are plenty of other comparisons and non-comparisons of the Iraq war to Vietnam, but saying Iraq 'is' Vietnam or saying the reverse (i.e. 'it isn't at all') gets a but too absolute. Things are not that clear cut. Jumping to polar extremes is one of the things that got the United States into this Mideast quagmire in the first place. Hopefully others won't make similar errors in their logic.

Globalization: A very old trade

What we know today as 'globalization' has actually been around for tens of thousands of years, says Nayan Chanda in his new book, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization, reviewed recently in The Economist:

Nayan Chanda, director of publications at the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, provides background facts for less lazy thinking in a lively book that is packed with incident, anecdote and derring-do.

He points out that globalisation is a new word to describe an old process. The word was introduced in the late 1970s and had gained widespread currency by 1999, the time of Mr Bové's visit to McDonald's. Many thought it described a wholly novel phenomenon. But globalisation really began about 60,000 years ago, when the first migrants walked out of Africa. Human history ever since has been a process of growing interconnectedness.

Mr Chanda organises his argument around what he takes to be the four groups that have done most to bring about this interconnectedness: traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors. Though the motives of these groups—to profit, convert, learn or conquer—have usually been selfish, the overall effect of their actions has been to draw us all closer together.

Globalization has its pros and cons. Pros include the spread of knowledge — scientific/technological as well as artistic/cultural, also the factual and the theoretical — and the trade of goods. Cons include the effects of the trading of goods: the spread of diseases, or non-native plants and animals that damage the environment, or the exploitation of a less powerful country by a more powerful one, or the proliferation of negative ideologies and movements. It opened the door for imperialism and colonialism, but also for the spread of gunpowder from one civilization to another. It brought European diseases like smallpox to the 'New World' while also enabling a vaccine invented in Switzerland and manufactured in America to help people in Indonesia confront the latest pandemic.

Globalization helped bring about today's global warming, but might also be the key to solving it. Cooperation, however, is essential. Part of globalization is of when one party dominates, conquers, or forces another to accept their terms; part is an indirect and/or unintentional (or intentional) spread; part is a mutual acceptance and awareness.

Globalization allows people in Argentina read a blog written by a United Nations peacekeeper in Palestine — heck, without an international network there wouldn't be a true UN. Sure globalization is primarily associated with an economic connectivity ("to profit"), but we also see cultural hegemony ("to convert"), a more pacified spread of ideas ("to learn"), and the most abrasive ("to conquer").

We meet globalization's challenges and reap its benefits, and never do we see it relinquish its status as a controversial phenomenon. If humans are naturally curious, then globalization is our way to connect and spread all aspects of our society, and sometimes to accomplish individual aims — invade country X, seek new riches, convert the people of land Y to religion A.

Nowadays we view globalization as the reason Pakistanis suffer in sweatshops to make our Nikes or why France's traditional fine tastes are being corrupted by American fast-food. We sometimes think only of the traders and warriors. Globalization has an ugly past too, such as the African slave trade, but we are all the more aware of its effects now, ironically because of it: the spread of this knowledge, a result of communication which itself is a result of globalization. Sometimes we miss the bigger picture. Without globalization, would I be writing or you be reading this blog?

Bribing the Saudis with weapons = key to stability?

America is to give billions of dollars in military aid to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern states. Is it trying to buy friends using weapons as currency? Yep. Will this work out well for anyone, hold the Saudis? Nope.

History repeats itself: Bribing against extremism
This is not the first time the US hopelessly tried to get the Saudis to be a viral beacon of moderacy in a sea of extremism. As this Slate article points out, 26 years ago Reagan tried to bribe the Saudis into joining the peace process... (long quote, I know, but it's worth it):

Twenty-six years later, this rational for selling arms to the Saudis is still valid. Two weeks ago, President George W. Bush announced that the United States will host a regional peace conference in the fall, and clearly the Saudis would be the big "get."
...
But luring the Saudis to the peace conference is not the only reason the Bush administration wants to sell the Saudis some of the most sophisticated weaponry on the market. It's not even the main reason. The deal, officially announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, "will help bolster forces of moderation and support a broader strategy to counter the negative influences of al-Qaeda, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran," according to her statement.

In short, it is meant to ensure the Saudis' commitment to the "moderate" camp, to help Washington better manage its affairs in Iraq and prepare to block Iranian expansionism in the region. The United States is practically bribing the Saudis to make them more cooperative in Iraq and more confident in light of an emboldened Iran. This is yet another manifestation of an administration that is setting its priorities anew: No more reforming the Middle East—let's focus on managing it in the old, realist way. Using friends, however reluctant, against foe; manipulating regional powers against each other; using whatever regimes are at hand to ease the pressure on the United States.

The problem with the Saudis, though, is that time and again they have proved to be unbribable and unmaneuverable. In fact, it is Riyadh that is manipulating Washington into this questionable deal, using tactics they've been perfecting for decades—never fully committing themselves, always leaving the door open to other alternatives to keep the United States on its toes. If America will not sell them weapons, they might turn to China or Russia. And as for the threat from Iran, they know that the United States knows that leaving the Saudis to their fate is not an option. Not as long as there's no real alternative to the fuel they so generously provide.
...
This new deal with the kingdom is no more than another down payment, an attempt to ensure its future cooperation on a number of issues on which the Saudis should have cooperated long ago. ... This is one of many instances in which the Saudis have defied U.S. interests and played the double agent: working with Syria on the fate of Lebanon, orchestrating an agreement between rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas, allowing Saudi businessmen to keep an open channel to al-Qaida.

So why is Saudi Arabia so bad (besides the human rights abuses and support for terrorism, and all that other jazz)?
An influential US envoy to Iraq has even said that Saudi Arabia is a driving force behind the instability in Iraq. Oops... How's that for an example of a moderate and positive Mideast actor with strong ties to America? One has to wonder: In the US-Saudi relationship, who's exploiting who?

The nature of pure government and the absolutes

Pure communism looks nice on paper, and works in theory, but not practice. Not only is that kind of equality impossible, it gives the supposed-to-be-government-less state too much power — and we all know how greedy people are with power. Big governments and free markets are not compatible with communism, but the former shows up when It also only works, so far, with small isolated groups.

Democracy, on the other hand, is not collectivized like communism and works best with less government power, bulk, and intervention and freer markets. Democracy works much better in practice than communism, but essentially guarantees that the people — or at least those who can vote — will only be absolutely equal in one aspect: the right to vote.

Pure democracy, like pure communism, also does not work well on a large scale and can be more easily overthrown in times of war (see Ancient Greece/Athens' time of pure and direct democracy). Pure libertarianism and anarchy are very impractical, for there will always be people who want to be in charge and will rise to the top. Just as it is not our nature to fully collectivize en masse, it is not our nature to have neither leader nor government. If you put a group of people with no knowledge whatsoever on a deserted island, you can easily bet that one or two or a limited number will vie for the leadership of the group. Maybe there will be a power struggle; maybe the group will split. No matter what there is no way each individual in that group would maintain their status as equals in terms of power.

It seems that with humans, the absolutes or pure governments — whether pure libertarianism (ie no government) or some form of ultra-authoritarianism (nearly absolute government) — can only exist on paper. Even when they are twisted in a way so those absolutes can exist in a semi-absolute manner, have their been any cases when a government supposedly providing pure 'freedom' (former example) or 'security' (latter example) worked well? No. Absolutes, like pures, are theoretical. And when there are attempts to implement them in real life — e.g. absolute good, absolute evil, pure communism — the end product is usually bad.

This is a post in this blog's Ideas about Democracy series. Next planned topic in the series: 'What's better, and more important in a democratic society and government in general, the individual or the group? Which should be served primarily and which is more rational in political matters'

The CIA: coming clean

The CIA is to declassify years of documents confirming many of it's shady and illegal Cold War practices. Topics like this — knowing, or rather not knowing, what a supposedly free and democratic country as the United States was and still is doing against any measure of human rights, freedoms, and more — get me a bit fired up.

The Washington Post reported:

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.
...
The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."
...
Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.

The BBC went further into what exactly these papers will reveal.

The papers, to be released next week, will detail assassination plots, domestic spying and wiretapping, kidnapping and human experiments.

Many of the incidents are already known, but the documents are expected to give more comprehensive accounts.
...
Among the incidents that were said to "present legal questions" were:

* the confinement of a Soviet defector in the mid-1960s
* assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro
* wiretapping and surveillance of journalists
* behaviour modification experiments on "unwitting" US citizens
* surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971
* opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union; from 1969 to 1972 of mail to and from China

These actions are not those of an agency of a free, liberal democratic government. While not turning into a paranoid, "everyone's out to get me"-ist, a citizen should always remain aware of what his or her government is doing to prevent the removal of their own liberties. Those of us who live in America, Germany, India, and other democratic countries should protect our freedom by using the powers democratic governance gives us; those who live in unfree states should also do what they can for freedoms. Moreover, fake wars are no excuse for taking away the freedom of citizens or of others outside of the country. Doing so is counter-intuitive and, as I said before, not the actions of a free state.

People like former secretary of state and still-foreign policy leader Henry Kissinger want skeletons like these to remain in the dark closets of the CIA, so to speak. He has fought any investigation into America's intelligence agency's misdeeds. Perhaps the reason he fights against the ugly truth is because he himself was a proponent of despicable policy, like bombing civilians in Cambodia or overthrowing democratically-elected world leaders and killing many for the sake of posturing. Why stoop to the enemy's level? Who did Kissinger turn to to commit these misdeeds? The CIA. These are no conspiracy theories.

In 1975, CIA Director William Colby told then-President Gerald Ford that his summary of the CIA's activity had descriptions of "things [the CIA] shouldn't have done". A day later on 4 January, Secretary of State Kissinger told Ford that divulging these documents — in effect telling a nation the truth about all the horrible things its government has been doing — would result in a political disaster, like a new Watergate. Further withholding information of illegal and shady deeds from the public for your own political security is pretty sad on the part of Kissinger and the Ford administration.

While it's good that the CIA is finally doing this (a bit late though), I wonder how exactly some of these — need I emphasize it more — horrible acts are, as Hayden calls them, "crown jewels". Moreover they are reminders of a time which I for one hope America never returns too. The Cold War was much worse than the current GWOT in how the government acted and how people's freedoms were suppressed — but that's no excuse for the Bush administration's condemnable "war on terror" actions either.

Many of the misdeeds listed above were similar to what the unfree, authoritarian Soviet government agencies were doing, just as Bush is in some ways using similar scare tactics as the terrorists he is fighting against. See a pattern? An enemy develops, government takes advantage of people's fear, government gains power and engages in illegal and bad activities for its own power and for whatever other reasons in its 'war'.

Nowadays the CIA is actually weak. It has lost the badge of authority it carried as it painted a picture of the Red Army marching across American soil and performed commonly operations like the ones listed above. Now the Defense Department has far more power; the CIA is underfunded and the intelligence community often thrust aside — even when it is right, like in the case of 9/11 and the failure in Iraq; and more directly under the president's political authority, the FBI is more notorious for restrictions of domestic civil liberties.

For a bit more on the foreign policy of America during and before the Cold War, see my Monroe Doctrine essay. The National Security Archive has a page on these "family jewels".

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Let's just hope that chapter in the American intelligence community's history has come to a close, or is to end at least with the next president. I highly recommend checking out the archive page linked above; it also documents all the CIA's broken promises of declassification — making Hayden's announcement look less and less like a positive step forward and more like something that should have happened long ago.

Rock music and American pop counterculture

From the early origins of rock and roll, to the age of rebellion, to modern fads...
Popular culture and entertainment have always served something people could copy — whether that thing is a lifestyle, a drink, or a hair style. The Beatles were idolized and modeled by Western youth in the 1960s. Fonzie in the American TV show Happy Days provided a role model for many of that generation. He was cool; people wanted to be like him. Jennifer Aniston's character's hairstyle in Friends was copied enough for it to earn its own place in American fashion: "The Rachel". American pop culture has served as a promoter of turning points in American culture.

Pop culture — the widespread appeal of modern or radical cultural elements in a society — seemed to flourish in the 1960s in the form of art, just as being a rebel (i.e. counterculture) seemed like the cool thing to do. It's important to note that like many phrases, pop culture has various definitions believed by various people. A pop culture reader, Common Culture, defines pop culture as

the shared knowledge and practices of a specific group at a specific time...pop culture both reflects and influences people's way of life...pop culture is transitory, subject to change, and often an initiator of change.

Rebellion is a common theme in modern pop culture, especially in regards to music. Punk and its early rock predecessors created a lifestyle in the style of its music. Art has always been a good measurement of a society's openness, its cultural diversity, and even its political feelings. Just as punk music rocked to the voices of angst and rebellion, and the more recent emo movement has played to the (intentionally) depressed, hip-hop and rap saw their beginnings in African Americans venting against the white foundation of the United States. Dr. Dre's (et al) "Fuck the Police", Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", and, in modern rap, "Ridin' [Dirty]" have served as an outlet against a real or perceived oppressor — it's time to stand up, to rebel.

Punk rock was brought to the US in great part by the many great rock bands of the United Kingdom. Bob Dylan's pop-folk became legendary and lasted decades; Elvis Presley's individual popularity saw the role of rock and roll music in pop culture exemplified with his country and blues "rockabilly" (1950s); The Beatles brought pop and rock in general to the United States from Britain (1960s); the Rolling Stones paved the way for more blues and rock and roll (1960s-'70s); David Bowie, the 'chameleon' of rock, was especially influential in the 1970s; the Sex Pistols rocked in a purely punk fashion (1970s); Pink Floyd ushered in progressive rock (1970s) and Led Zeppelin hard rock and heavy metal (1960s-'70s); Queen created an explosion in glam, arena, and hard/progressive rock (1970s-'80s); Nirvana's grunge rock brought in an era of its own in the '90s. Most of the aforementioned came from the UK, a common trend in the history of rock, especially punk.

Especially in their beginnings, movies also served as great pioneers in change of culture and opinion. Though Hollywood didn't used to be so 'liberal' as it is today, movies and television did break down a good many of taboos. But the real counterculture movement rested in the hands of the music industry, with many of the artists introducing pop rock, punk, etc., to our borders coming from Britain. The roots of rock rest in the US though, thanks in part to the great racism against blacks in the US. Such racism also later resulted in hip-hop and rap music from mostly-black urban inter-city areas. Jazz and blues were the predecessors to rock. Scott Joplin in 1899 published a very important composition, "The Maple Leaf Rag", that would come to usher in an age of jazz by boosting the genre of ragtime. Jazz became particularly prevalent in the 1920s and '30s. Ray Charles influenced soul, and thus rock, in the '50s. Motown and soul, which branched off from early jazz in a separate direction than rock, grew in the 1950s and '60s. The early rock and roll innovators bridged what was then experimental and classical music into pop rock.
As rock became more prevalent on American airwaves and in its culture, more bands came and more branches of rock were creates. There are some who believe that rock in general is a force to use to fight against 'the man', just as Public Enemy fought 'the power'. There have often been "rock against..." movements — like "Rock Against Bush" or "Rock Against Racism". Charity events like Live Aid use rock music for a reason: it is often seen as the music of change. It's also popular and culturally influential. And how much many punk rebels want others to think of them as a small, distant, underground minority, punk and related forms of rock have entered the veins of American music, with political and cultural venting galore, and mainstream appeal. Alternative rock, hard rock, progressive rock, psychedelic, and punk rock all express in their music a means of change from the status quo, a rebellion of sorts also seen in some urban music (e.g. rap, hip-hop).

1970s punk rock helped build alternative rock, which was more of a culmination of various rock genres, including electronic, folk, and jazz, and indie music. Alternative rock resulted in more forms of indie, as well as grunge, Britpop, and post-punk. Marginalized in the 1980s, alternative saw its true calling in the '90s and the beginning of the next millennium. All Music Guide states:

Alternative pop/rock is essentially a catch-all term for post-punk bands from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. There is a multitude of musical styles within alternative rock, from the sweet melodies of jangle-pop to the disturbing metallic grind of industrial, yet are all tied together by a similar aesthetic -- they all existed and operated outside [sic] of the mainstream.

What effects on the fabric of pop culture in the United States have rebellious music reaped? The 1960s and '70s saw the real formation of modern (post Second World War) counterculture. Counterculture is the political opposition of the current mainstream by a cultural group creating a movement for a period of time. There have been many times of counterculture prevalence, but possibly none so influential, rebellious, and liberal as the counterculture of the modern era. This counterculture was spread throughout developed nations (i.e. North America, Western Europe, New Zealand, Australia) by the rebel youth largely of the Baby Boom.

Hippies were the main group of US counterculture, as opposition to the Vietnam war grew, sex, drugs, and other moral issues became less taboo (within that cultural group), and the conservative politics and culture seemed too restricting, especially in terms of civil rights (segregation) and governmental powers during the Cold War. Briefly put, counterculture of that time period brought about change by those in wealthy, educated nations. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and non-musical figures like Andy Warhol, played large roles in this movement. Nowadays, hippies are almost nonexistent, emphasizing the place of pop-counterculture in specific period of time, and not a more evolving, drawn out phenomenon like general culture.
Just as counterculture is a wider movement, rebellion can be large or small in scale. Rebels or pseudo-rebels popped up during and after the counterculture that lasted from roughly 1965 to 1978 in the United States. Punks and indies are seen as the more mainstream survivors or evolution of the counterculture movement. Any sort of rebellious movement has fought conformity, the establishment, and the social status quo — e.g. embracing communism throughout the Cold War, opposing the Iraq war today. The main timeframe where counterculture wasn't a subculture was in its 20th century, post-WWII heyday.

There is no doubt there will be future punk manifestations in the now-postmodern art era. However, it is unlikely we will see another era of hippies, music revolutionaries, and a shift in nearly every form of Western art and culture anytime soon. Who will be the next Beatles, the next Warhol, or the next Sex Pistols? Pop culture will evolve just as art does in one sense and society in another. The anti-establishment voices in music and entertainment will continue to cry out — as long as there is an establishment or movement to fight against.

References

"Alternative rock." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

"Black History Month 2003: Timeline of Key Dates in African-American History". NPR. 2003.

"Counterculture." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Cousin Steve. "Timeline: Significant events in the history of Rock Music". 1998.

"Genre: Alternative/Indie-Rock." All Music Guide.

McKinney, Jessie. "Pop Culture Definition". Homepage. 13 Feb 2004.

Palmer, Robert. "Critic's Notebook; The Evolution of Rock, a Long and Winding Road". New York Times. 22 August 1985.

Petracca, Michael and Madeleine Sorapure. Common Culture. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004.

"Punk ideologies." Wikipedia.

"Queen declared 'top British band'". BBC News.

Robb, John. "Popular culture: The Birth of Punk". The Independent. 5 Nov 2005.

Turnwall, Craig. "The apparent indeterminable classification of counterculture", an essay.

Van Dorston, A.S. "A History of Punk". Fast 'n' Bulbous Music Webzine.

Weighing organized religion

Religion can help more on a local, individual scale; whereas it harms more on a wider, organized scale. A personal faith is more empowering on one than an alliance to a religious body or movement. When used in political ways, organized religion only injects another power flow.

Religion can help by giving people a sense of being and to help others, on the other hand it also is the cause of many wars and vices against those of differing belief systems. Faith needn’t need rules. Even with religion, a devout follower may not have the fervor to outreach and make positive religious influence on society — especially if their faith does not preach such altruism or good rules.

Rule of thumb: there is no need for moral politicians; only ethical ones. Morals are personal or religious; ethics are legal and, thus, carry a weight of rationality and objective sense morals cannot. Nonetheless, both morals and ethics — especially in a religious sense — are opinion.

Would we be better off without religion? Probably. Historically, religion And it is an unneeded byproduct of the human psyche. Though it does take much creativity and brainwashing skill to become a religious leader, or to even create a religion.

Religion is embedded in human civilization, and mostly it has done little good. Soon after the days of Christ religion became used as a tool of empires. It halted human progress and resulted in the deaths of many in the Middle Ages, when it was still a tool of the state. Slowly religion and politics parted ways but they continue to be useful together for those wishing to acquire power.

Before the time of widespread empires of religion, society did benefit from the spreading of knowledge religion provided, and the wider values it instilled. In ancient times religion spawned the growth of societies into states resulting in progressive peoples. As one blogger noted about the "benefit of organized religion from a social or anthropological perspective",

...it goes without saying that historically-speaking, religion has been a massive force for good in human civilization.  Jared Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs and Steel, notes that there’s plenty of anthropological evidence to suggest that it wasn’t until we saw the transition from mere tribes to chiefdoms that organized, socially-relevant religion came into existence.  Sure, Diamond notes, religion existed beforehand, but it was merely concerned with personal piety and had little social significance.  So, with Chiefdoms, for the first time we began to see the phenomenon of a distant ruler which necessitated a ’state’-sponsored religion.

In short, Diamond notes that the collective and cooperative peaceful existence of large numbers of people was made possible in the first instance by organized religion.  What is more, this large, organized and peaceful existence of a large number of people was what made agriculture, aqueducts, education, literacy and exploration all possible.

What is scary is how people can follow their religions leaders to a point which they would be willing to die for them, and kill other innocents in the process. The many wasteful wars fought over beliefs is another indicator of religion's dangerousness. However, people fight over land and items, and that isn't an argument alone for the abolishment of property. Right now — especially in more fundamentalist hotbeds like much of the Muslim world and parts of America — religion is used as a tool of political/religious leaders to radicalize the population and kill many while collecting more power. In the US it is used to slow down essential scientific (and societal) progress (e.g. stem cells) and acts as a powerful special interest (e.g. Christian right). In the Mid-East, religion is the prime ideal extremists use to complete their objectives.

Of course there would still be violence if there was no (organized) religion, or what we see as organized religion. But if not for religions like Christianity and Islam, the human civilization would be more developed and less distraught than it is in its current state. The vast majority of the world's people are religions. I respect a person's right to be religious; but that doesn't mean I have to respect their chosen beliefs. However I'm not going to kill them over their beliefs.

technorati tags: muslim+world, USA, terrorism, radical+religion, organized+religion, society, christianity, empire, history, extremist+ideology

America’s imperial motives, real and perceived

There is a perception in the Mid-East and elsewhere that the United States is a hostile, hegemonic power. Even though that’s wishful thinking, the reality is quite different. Still, political leaders from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden are able to use the imperialistic, evil superpower approach to get support. In bin Laden’s case, that support is used to fight the US; in Putin’s case it is just used to make his people think they need a protector (him) and increase his power. Ironically leaders use fear of the US to increase their own political motives as American policy makers use fear of those other leaders to increase their power. The United States' post-9/11 foreign policy has not only made it arguably more vulnerable to attack — because of perception and the fueling of terrorist insurgent movements — but has also damaged diplomatic ties. This is emphasized by the Bush Doctrine.

The Mid-East has a history of being colonized by European powers, though not as completely as some other areas of the world. Much of what is now the Mid-East fell under the Ottoman Empire, which was reduced to Turkey soon after the start of the 21st century. Cries of neoimperialism are common in modern politics in formerly colonized countries. Leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe craft alternative universes in which America and others are ruthlessly trying to take his nation, and he is the only one who can stop them. These tactics include using false, victimized versions of history along with peppered terror rhetoric about how the world’s powers are set to invade. Similar cries can be heard among Islamist leaders, albeit with a more religious spin. America, the Great Satan, is out to get all of Islam, they say, and will not rest until it controls all of the fruitful, oil-rich Middle East. Depending on how one defines 'empire' and perceives 'empire', there may or may not be an American Empire.

If the US was so obsessed in controlling all oil resources in the Middle East — and indeed if it invaded Iraq for the oil — as it is alleged, policy would be different. Ferguson points out the flaws in the ‘America is only interested in the Mid-East for the oil' argument in Colossus (p. 109):

[America] would surely have ... difficulty in one fundamental respect. For nothing could have been better calculated to alienate the Arab peoples than constant support for the state of Israel.

Whether America is a true hegemonic demon or not, there is no doubt it has tried to exert its power as the global police, the untouchable enforcer of self-defined good, the setter of standards and prime user of force, under the Bush administration. The neoconservative role in the White House has not only expanded the presidency at home, but attempts to do the same abroad, with a neoimperial zest for self-supremacy. However, as the US tries to expand its world power, its foes use that to their advantage, striving to make their people believe the US has already made itself a full-fledged empire. The neoimperial actions are likely to fail, says G. John Ikenberry,

If history is any guide, it will trigger resistance that will leave America in a more hostile and divided world.

Threats of force like preemption, a prime area of the Bush Doctrine, which was used in the case of the Iraq war, are not likely to be received well by the international community either.

History repeats itself

A 90-second Flash animation charting 5,000 years of imperialism in the Middle East. Explains a lot.

Going too far: Bush does not equal Hitler

Feminist Naomi Wolf has a provocative article in The Guardian, "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps", where she compares George Bush to the likes of Hitler. She raises interesting points, but gets a bit extreme.

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

Yes, America and many other countries are facing civil liberty restrictions in the name of fighting terrorism. However it is hard to compare these restrictions to the ones faced by those under Nazi rule. (Of course anyone well-known claiming to be speaking for a set group of people (e.g. women, Muslims, gays, etc.) is often extreme extreme.) There are, in fact, parallels between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany, just as there are parallels between other like topics. Bush is an unpopular leader; Hitler is a (now) unpopular leader. Both Nazi Germany and Bush's America paint a picture of evil in a war against a broad group — albeit the 'war' of the Nazis was not at all justified in any way (i.e. the "Final Solution"). Wolf's list contains items (or 'steps') as broad as "7. Target key individuals".

It is a joke to call America 'fascist', just as it's ridiculous to come up with claims of "Islamofacism". It is likely Wolf wanted to get attention by choosing an extreme-sounding stance and provocative premise — activists, writers, bloggers, and all sorts of other people speaking out do it all the time. She is right to point out we should learn from history to see where we have gone wrong and how we can do better, but by automatically labeling Bush a dictator, she dilutes and discredits a large part of her argument.

I can go out and protest against Bush if I want to; I can criticize him freely too. There is no way one could do such actions if they were under the rule of despots like Hitler or Pinochet. Last time I checked Americans can vote and exercise tools of democracy too. While I will not dispute the fact civil liberties are being treaded on in a number of countries — including the US — Wolf and like-minded commentators go too far in their claim of American authoritarianism.

technorati tags: naomi+wolf, article, facism+america, bush, hitler, nazi+germany, united+states, usa, freedom

Slavery and more

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. See here (official UN site) for more details.


"No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms." Article 4, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's been about 200 years since the abolition of slavery in Britain and the British Empire, and an odd altruistic sort of crusade against slavery by the British. It's also around two centuries since US President Thomas Jefferson signed an act banning the slave trade, though slavery continued for years to come.

Of course, slavery and similar practices are still around today.

technorati tags: slavery, history, holidays, UN, british, jefferson, human+rights, racism

A view of executive power, 145 years ago

The following are extracts from the book Executive Power, by B. R. Curtis. The book was published in 1862 and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy the last time I was in Washington DC.

From the preface:

Extract from President Lincoln’s proclamation of September 22, 1862. … "Understand I raise no objection against it on legal or constitutional or legal grounds; for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may be best to subdue the enemy." — President Lincoln to the Chicago Delegation.

Pp 24-27:

The framers of the Constitution thought it wise that the powers of the commander-in-chief of the military forces of the United States should be placed in the hands of the chief civil magistrate.
…
But all the powers of the President are executive merely. He cannot make a law. He cannot repeal one. He can only execute the laws. He can neither make, nor suspend, nor alter them. He cannot even make an article of war. He may govern the army, either by general or special orders, but only in subordination to the Constitution and laws of the United States, and the articles of war enacted by the legislative power.

The time has certainly come when the people of the United States must understand, and must apply those great rules of civil liberty… If they fail to understand and apply them, if they fail to hold every branch of their government steadily to them, who can imagine what is to come out of this great and desperate struggle.

Are the great principles of free government to be used and consumed as means of war? Are we not wise enough and strong enough to carry on this war to a successful military end, without submitting to the loss of any one great principle of liberty. We are strong enough. We are wise enough, if the people and their servants will but understand and observe the just limits of military power.

What, then, are those limits? They are these. There is military law; there is martial law. Military law is that systems of laws enacted by the legislative power for the government of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia when called into the actual service of the United States. It has no control whatever over any person or any property of any citizen.
…
But there is also Martial law. What is this? It is the will of a military commander, operating without any restraint, save his judgment, upon the lives, upon the property, upon the entire social and individual condition of all over whom this law extends. But, under the Constitution of the United States, over whom does such law extend?

Will any one be bold enough to say, in view of the history of our ancestors and ourselves, that the President of the United States can extend such law as that over the entire country, or over any defined geographical part thereof, … save in connection with some particular military operations which he is carrying on there? Since Charles I. lost his head, there has been no king in England who could make such law, in that realm. And where is there to be found, in our history, or our constitutions, either State or national, any warrant for saying, that a President of the United States has been empowered by the Constitution to extend martial law over the whole country, and to subject thereby to his military power, every right of every citizen? He has no such authority.

In time of war, a military commander, whether he be the commander-in-chief, or one of his subordinates, must possess and exercise powers both over the persons and the property of citizens which do not exist in times of peace. But he possesses and exercises such powers, not in spite of the Constitution and laws of the United States, or in derogation from their authority, but in virtue thereof and in strict subordination thereto.

The author goes on to say, on page 28, that the military authority that commander holds is restricted to the actual battlefield, the site of war, and not the entire legal territory.

P 29:

He is not the military commander of the citizens of the United States, but of its soldiers.

P 33 (out of 34):

Let the people be right, and no President can long be wrong; nor can he effect any fatal mischief if he should be.

Almost 150 years after the writing of this book, the contents are all the more relevant. The United States faces as unreal a 'war' now as it faced a real and necessary one then. That is, the US is supposedly in a war against terrorism today; it was in a real civil war in the mid-1800s.

Even in a civil war, as the author states, the president is not all-powerful in the ways of law. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq do not include fighting on American soil or against the United States itself (most other wars have). The "war on terrorism" is even less of a reason for the president to extend his military war powers — which are far from unconditional — onto the people of the United States.

President George W. Bush has shown he does not care what the people of the United States think, unless it has a real political effect on him. Since he is a lame duck and cannot be reelected, Bush has no reason to listen other than to look better in the history books. Bush has himself stated that history will judge him well — a statement many people, myself included, view as utter idiocy.

The broad, overreaching powers of the Bush administration are disturbing, with things like the warrantless wiretapping issue, detention and rendition of untried noncitizens, and other civil liberty-harming areas of the 'war on terror'.

No president, whether a Lincoln, a Truman, or a Bush, is legally supreme. The current president seems to think otherwise with his White House's unfettered expansionist view of presidential authority, and the Bush administration's constant overriding of the checks and balances that the Congress and Supreme Court provide. Bush and Cheney believe in the unitary executive. What is written in the law books is often very different from what actually happens. The US Constitution is a 'just a piece of paper' after all.


Song stuck in my head right now: Flathead by The Fratellis

Swedish transparancy and the public's right to know

I thought this was an interesting area of the Constitution of Sweden.

From the Swedish government site on the Freedom of the Press Act:

Chapter 2. On the public nature of official documents

Art. 1. Every Swedish citizen shall be entitled to have free access to official documents, in order to encourage the free exchange of opinion and the availability of comprehensive information.

Art. 2. The right of access to official documents may be restricted only if restriction is necessary having regard to
1. the security of the Realm or its relations with another state or an international organisation;
2. the central fiscal, monetary or currency policy of the Realm;
3. the inspection, control or other supervisory activities of a public authority;
4. the interest of preventing or prosecuting crime;
5. the economic interest of the public institutions;
6. the protection of the personal or economic circumstances of private subjects;
7. the preservation of animal or plant species.

Any restriction of the right of access to official documents shall be scrupulously specified in a provision of a special act of law, or, if this is deemed more appropriate in a particular case, in another act of law to which the special act refers. With authority in such a provision, the Government may however issue more detailed provisions for its application in a statutory instrument.

The Act was passed in 1766, but included true freedom (i.e. full capability to criticize government) in 1810.

Most areas of the Swedish Constitution have been around a long time. The sections governing openness to the public has faced reforms on the specificity of the documents available (i.e. no major state secrets within a certain period of time) and have been liberalized, but not restricted, in recent times. The method allowing Swedes to access what their government does and writes looks to be like a liberal, constitutionalized version of the United States' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which is relatively recent in real terms (when it was first put into place, requests were much more restricted even than they are now) and can be impotent at times, even for documents that should no longer be deemed confidential.

Many other democratic countries have similar tools for governmental transparency to the public. Although I am no expert on the issue, from what I've read Sweden's open government-public relationship remains the most fair to the people. It is also the oldest.

In a world where terrorism is used as an excuse for exercising political power and, thus, keeping vital information from the people — circumventing a true democratic republican system — it is nice to see there are still countries that keep open. Those, such as Britain and especially the US, who have opted out from as much democratic openness than they used to offer before the 'war on terror' (though during the Cold War things were even worse in the US), still maintain their democratic systems.


If anyone is interested in taking action on freedom of expression in their country or another, there is a great Amnesty International campaign called Irrepressible. Irrepressible, which I have a button for on the lower area of the right sidebar, deals with modern political censorship.

Not all of us are lucky enough to live in places like Sweden where there is a right to free expression; and the ability to have our own government answer to us, its people.

Plenty of woe, and some promise, in Indonesia

Indonesia never escapes the headlines, which is usually a sad thing...
It seems as if there is always some sort of disaster brewing in Indonesia. Whether it’s a shipwreck or a plane crash or a tsunami or an earthquake. In fact, three of the four aforementioned have occurred in major recent incidents.

With the fire-on-ship incident a little bit ago and the earthquake (killing 82 at the least) and plane crash (killing at least 22) just this month, just within the last couple weeks disasters have killed hundreds. Unsurprisingly, the plane crash, the lesser of the two accidents this month, has garnered much more attention than its less-deadly companion, the earthquake. Aircraft problems always get more attention — like terrorism, it is a public and media obsession.

There has also been a major mudslide and another ferry incident in December, in which hundreds were killed when the boat sank. In January, a plane carrying over 100 disappeared. Just in the past month there has also been a blast at a port and deadly protests.

Corruption, poor safety records, lax government regulation, technical troubles, and poor infrastructure have all been blamed for many of the disasters, though Mother Nature has killed the most. There was a huge earthquake last year and an even larger tsunami in late December 2004, not to mention a large risk of another major tsunami last year. Terrorism still remains an issue.

Profile: Indonesia (Wikipedia, CIA factbook, Economist [1] [2])...
Indonesia is big; it is basically a collection of islands. It is the largest Muslim-majority country and the fourth largest overall country on the planet. Indonesia is also the third largest democracy, bested only by India and the United States. Indonesia is a young democracy at that, and, like India, is democratic at the high, governmental level, but runs into troubles when one zooms to the local level.

Located in the south Pacific, north of Australia and southeast of the Indian ocean, Indonesia became an independent state in 1949, after declaring independence four years earlier. With a state so vast with most areas being former colonies of the Netherlands, there was bound to be ethnic conflict.

The government has had significant trouble holding the country together. With issues like Avian bird flu and Islamic extremism (e.g. Bali nightclub bombings), the Jakarta-based republic has remained surprisingly intact.

The country gained independence led by General Sukarno, who was Indonesia’s nationalistic leader. Following a conspiracy by the Communist Party of Indonesia to unseat Sukarno in a 1965 coup, there was a power fight between Sukarno, the current president, and a military leader named Suharto. Suharto won. Most probably in a mindset of paranoia, Suharto presided over a great purge of communists, which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between hundreds and a couple of million.

Suharto finally fell in 1998 and reforms have followed. There have been plenty of separatist movements, some — plenty — still dragging on, though notable achievements include the ones with East Timor and Aceh.

technorati tags: indonesia, news, politics, sukarno, history, profile, country, facts, suharto, bird+flu, plane+crash, natural+disasters, indonesia+disasters, earthquake, tsunami

Japan still denying history

Circa 45 years ago, World War II-era Japan was expanding into what it hoped would be come an empire. The fascist-like military-led government, with the symbolic emperor at the top, was yearning for three things: land, iron ore, and oil. The latter two would allow the Japanese to industrialize more, and land is a commodity everyone wants — hold the radioactive Chernobyl and Yucca Mountain sites.

Japan has been all-too-modest over the WWII atrocities the former regime committed. One notable incident and constant source of tension between Japan and the lands it invaded in the late 1930s and early 1940s is the Nanking Massacre in Nanjing, China. The incident, also known as the Rape of Nanking, occurred when Japanese soldiers slaughtered somewhere between 150,000 and (the more likely) 300,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women in late 1937.

Recent controversies include the now-former Japanese Prime Minister visiting a shrine commemorating Japan's soldiers in the Second World War, as well as Japan's denial of incidents in school textbooks, for instance. As a note: the shrine incidents were ruled by a Japanese court as overstepping the bounds of state and religion; and provoked furor from South Korea and China time and time again.

So what has the Japanese government — still under conservative rule — done now to anger neighbors, historian, and most of the rest of us? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has explicitly denied the Japanese military forced women into sex slavery, even though that directly contradicts and defies historical evidence as well as previous government reports.

"There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it," Abe told reporters Thursday. "So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly."

His remarks came as the U.S. House of Representatives has begun debating a resolution that would call on Tokyo to "apologize for and acknowledge" the military's role in wartime sex slavery.

But at the same time, in keeping a trend to revise Japan's history, a group of conservatives in the governing Liberal Democratic Party is stepping up calls to rescind the 1993 declaration.

That was the declaration by the Japanese government that admitted the sexual slavery and apologized, albeit poorly, to the women.

A nationalist who long led efforts to revise wartime history, Abe softened his tone after becoming prime minister last autumn. In fact, he at first said that he recognized the validity of the declaration, angering his conservative base.
...
Historians contend that about 200,000 women — Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Japanese, Dutch and Europeans — served in Japanese military brothels. For decades, Japan has denied that its military had been involved.

That denial changed a bit after 1992-3, but, as evident from everything from political statements to school books, Japan has a long way to go in accepting history.

No one not involved is to blame, but it is the government's responsibility to history and the its neighbors — the victims — to fess up to the despicable crimes of the past. In no way should people use negative stereotypes on the Japanese as is still done with Germans, because those same people are just as bad at accepting history than the Holocaust and war-crimes deniers.

How does Abe think siding with the history-denying Japanese far-right will help him? Abe's ratings have been taking a series of hits lately, not least following the row over the health minister calling women "birth-giving machines".

technorati tags: japan, japanese+politics, news, politics, japan, china, south+korea, shinzo+abe, abe, world+war+II, war+crimes, history

Washington's war of independence equals Bush's war on terror?!

First Bush compares himself/is compared to Lincoln and now he moves on to another revered president: Washington. In both comparisons he used the fact both of these presidents were wartime as the keystone of his comparison. However, both wars were vital and real, Lincoln used war powers when the estabilishment was in shambles anyway. It is not like there are no courts today, so Bush and his supporters have no argument. America's survival is not at stake in the 'war on terror' so I am starting to worry about the current US commander-in-chief's mental state, or that of his speech writers.

This rhetoric is starting to get a bit out of hand...

President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday, likening George Washington's long struggle that gave birth to a nation to the war on global terrorism.

"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home and above a mostly frozen Potomac River.

The thing is, Washington fought for a genuine cause — though somewhat botched, exaggerated, and glorified in history's angle. He was noble nonetheless. Bush, on the other hand, took advantage of a national disaster (9/11) that left a country shocked and scared. He used that fear and exchanged it for political capital. Washington was a general, having little to do with the often dirty American politics of his time. Bush is a politician, and not very good one at that. Washington listened to his advisers and other voices and opinions around him. Bush follows his own beliefs, shunning all those holding a different view.

The war that led to American sovereignty ("American Revolution" is actually an incorrect phrase because it was not a technical 'revolution') was fought partially with violent and intellectual terrorism, and some on the battlefield. Many fighting were the equivalent of what we would call terrorists nowadays. Even though their cause was, for the most part, good, they still terrorized and many politicians used false propaganda against or for the British side or used violence in the name of goodness, while they were actually implementing a form of terrorism. Anyways, the 'war on terror' is just a political phrase used to describe a variety of fronts against supposed terrorism.

Now, I ask you, does the Global War on Terror really equal the American War of Independence? Does Bush equal Washington? Not by a long shot.

technorati tags: george+washington, washington, george+w+bush, bush, presidents+day, presidents-day, politics, american+revolution, american+war+of+independence, war+on+terrorism, gwot, history, politics, news

US Cold War foreign policy and the death of Pinochet, and the GWOT

Pinochet
From BBC News:

Chile's former military leader Augusto Pinochet has died in hospital aged 91.

A Washington Post feature:

Pinochet assumed power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup supported by the United States that toppled the [democratically] elected government of Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had pledged to lead his country "down the democratic road to socialism."

First as head of a four-man military junta and then as president, Pinochet served until 1990, leaving a legacy of abuse that took successive governments years to catalogue. According to a government report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.

It seems that many throughout the Americas still have the ignorance of the Cold War. (BBC News)

Despite his human rights record, many Chileans loved him and said he saved the country from Marxism.

And

His supporters argue, as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, that Pinochet "saved Chile for democracy".

They contend that he stepped in when the country was on the verge of chaos that could have led to a Communist take-over and alignment with the Soviet Union.

More like 'saved Chile from democracy'. Anyone ever wonder if he was the one who instigated much of that chaos? Thatcher, as many know, was not too much of a friend of the people, so she shouldn't even talk about democracy, especially when saying that brutal dictatorship is better than democracy. Pinochet cheated the Chilean people by stealing their money, killing and torturing, trampling on human rights, and basically ransacking the government and social structure.

In all irony, Pinochet died on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights' 50th anniversary.

Cold War
Some of these anti-Communist diplomatic maneuvers used by the United States during the Cold War era were mentioned in the essay I posted on this blog about the Monroe Doctrine:

Throughout the early 20th century, the U.S. sometimes questionably created regime changes in Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and other nations, as well as occupying or invading (and many times running or controlling in some way) Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and El Salvador, among others. In addition, the CIA and other clandestine agencies also interfered with many Latin American nations from the 1950s through the 1980s (Rosenfelder; Wikipedia). Many of these interferences, including regime changes, the establishing of puppet governments, assassinations, occupations, and embargoes, were done in the climate of fear of communism that encapsulated the Cold War, some of which the legality is disputed and the “claim of self-defense” had “no legal basis” (Hilaire 96). Many times regimes were changed from left-leaning or even moderate democracies or republics to military dictatorships, because of the fear that the democracies or republics could turn to communism.

Chile was one of the nations the US undeniably supported, that is, during the reign of Pinochet.

Counterpoints
On an Oxblog post made by conservative-leaning David Adesnik, I commented

David, you know that the United States was a major force that got Pinochet into power and kept him there, right? (Oh, that Kissinger...) Yes, and he obviously wasn't too great for the Chilean economy; replacing democratically-elected leaders with a coup backed by the US was all too widespread and common during the Cold War.

In a civil and direct response, the author replied

Clearthought, I'm glad you pointed out Kissinger's role in Pinochet's rise to power. An important reminder of what "realism" in foreign policy is all about.

With regard to replacing elected governments with dictatorships during the Cold War, even one instance counts in my book as "all too common", but actually there weren't that many.

Off hand, I can think of Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973. There were also instances in which we didn't do enought to prevent democratic governments from falling to a coup d'etat or other assault.

But the real thing we did is stand by and not complain too much about all of the dictators we chose to collaborate with. Was that the best way to prevent Soviet expansion? I don't think so.

And now we face the same question today. Should we push hard for democracy in the Middle East, or focus on stabilizing pro-Western dictatorships. Strangely, many of those who think we shouldn't have befriended dictators during the Cold War are now calling for exactly that approach to the War on Terror.

"War on terror"
The final thought he presented in Adesnik's reply comment is one to ponder: how are US policy support of governments during the Cold War different than that of this "war on terror" (see this post). One point is that the Cold War was an era, it had an inevitable ending and, although it was not clearly set out the objectives of the War, there was a start and finish to the United States-Soviet Union conflict. In this "war on terror", there is no real start and finish. There has pretty much always been terror; there will always be terror. It's part of our existence, though one may argue the civility of such existence. The "war on terror", like the "war on drugs", is only a metaphorical war, the target is not concrete, and even less is the objective. It is a shame the media did not challenge the wording of the politically-charged words "war on terror" soon after their post-9/11 existence, now this "war" is imprinted into history. As Juan Cole noted in an article for Foreign Policy republished here.

'The war on terror has no end.'

That's the plan. The Bush administration has defined the struggle vaguely precisely so that it can't end; President Bush clearly enjoys the prerogatives of being a war president.

So the administration has expanded the goals and targets of this war from one group or geographical area to another.

If the "war on terror" is indeed all these things, then it could drag on for decades. More likely, the American public will not tolerate such a costly grab bag of initiatives for much longer.

If there is no major attack in the United States, pressure will build on Washington to stop fiddling with the politics of Kandahar and Ramadi, much less those of Damascus and Tehran. At some point, the American public will have to choose between paying for Bush's ongoing wars and Medicare. And that will be the true end of the war on terror.

As far as the popular counter argument about the GWOT and the "clash of civilizations" between the US and Islam, Cole cleans that up too.

'9-11 was a clash of civilizations.'

False. The notion that Muslims hate the West for its way of life is simply wrong, and 9-11 hasn't changed that.

The exhaustive World Values Survey found that more than 90% of respondents in much of the Muslim world endorsed democracy as the best form of government.

If it is not a clash of civilizations, what is it? It is a clash over policy.

The bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq has now created another point of tension: The Muslim world does not believe that Iraq will be better off because of the U.S. intervention.

Autonomy and national independence appear to be part of what Muslims mean by "democracy," and they consider Western interventions in Muslim affairs a betrayal of democratic ideals. Sept. 11 and the American response to it have deepened the rift over policy, but they haven't created a clash of civilizations.

technorati tags: Pinochet, augusto+pinochet, war+on+terror, terrorism, adesnik, oxblog, blog, comment, opinion, news, in+the+news, current+affairs, clash+of+civilizations, foreign+policy, foreign+affairs, politics, united+states, usa, muslim, islam, gwot, 9-11, communism, dictatoriship, government, in+perspective, clearthought, cold+war, history, human+rights, monroe+doctrine, latin+america, chile

The Great Library: The Royal Library of Alexandria

On this page is a paper I wrote last winter (December 2005, January 2006). The topic is the ancient library in Alexandria. 

The Library of Alexandria

The Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt was a library way ahead of its time, with an astonishing collection and many developments, the library affects the world even today. The Library of Alexandria is often considered the “first library in a modern sense” (Edwards and Fisher 211). The people of the library were very hands-on and enthusiastic about their work. They did not just sit and read quietly, but they gazed at the stars, dissected human bodies to learn about anatomy, sparked controversy on a plethora of topics, and forever changed history’s course with their developments. Important theories of the world were created at the library, and the modern library as we know it took its first bloom at Alexandria’s splendid library. 

The library, for better or for worse, endured changes between thinkers and between ideologies and religions. Names like Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Eratothenes, Euclid, Archimedes, and, of course, Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies are connected to the library. The library was a place where hundreds of thousands of written works were copied and collected, and it is a place where, sadly, probably some of the most informational and influential works of the Hellenistic age were destroyed. With at least 300,000, and up to (a more likely) 700,000 books, the library was not only a place of important people and discoveries, but also a very vast library.

In 331 B.C., Alexander the Great ordered the city of Alexandria be built.  Alexander would never set sight on the miraculous Egyptian city, built in his name, for he died in 323 B.C. at a mere age of 33 (Trumble 2). After his death, Alexander’s empire, which stretched from Europe to  Egypt and India, was divided among his generals. The generals did not rule unitedly, but divided their pieces of the empire and ruled each one separately. A general named Ptolemy became ruler of Egypt and its surrounding areas. 

Ptolemy ordered the Egyptian capital to be changed from Memphis to the flowing port city of Alexandria. Ptolemy was a man of the sciences and learning, so he decided to make Alexandria a city of learning. What better way than to create the greatest and most famous library in the Ancient World and one of the most miraculous hubs of learning of all time: The Library of Alexandria.

The library actually started as a branch of the great learning center probably suggested by one of Ptolemy’s advisors, Demetrius of Phaleron. The great library and research center would be called the Museion, “named after the Greek goddesses of science and learning, Muses” (Trumble 2-5). The Library of Alexandria eventually became a great library. 

Even though the Library of Alexandria is clearly the most famous library in ancient times, there were libraries before it. There were records of temples in Egypt, long before the Library of Alexandria, that housed books and there were private libraries and collections throughout the world. These private libraries included that of philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, in addition to the libraries of the wealthy and of other cities. As far as public libraries go, however, “the first known public library was in the Greek city of Athens” (Trumble 5). 

After Ptolemy I (or Ptolemy Souter) died, the library continued to grow under his son Ptolemy II (or Ptolemy Philadelphus). The library gained its many books mostly by seizures from homes and ships in Alexandria. The Ptolemy family ordered homes and docked ships to be searched and their books to be taken to the library, either to keep or to make copies of them. Most of the books were in Greek, but some were in Hebrew and a slew of other languages. Ptolemy II made exchanges and deals with other nations and cities to be able to take or copy their works. With books from many countries and in many languages, the Library of Alexandria was eclectic, diverse, and large.

The Library of Alexandria grew and grew, and eventually could not comfortably house any more materials. “During the reign of Euergetes, the number of books grew so large, a second library [or “daughter” library] had to be built” (Trumble 8). This “daughter” library of the Library of Alexandria was called the Serapeum, named after the god Serapis. The Serapeum was much smaller than the main library and is often times referred to, along with the main library, as the Library of Alexandria. To many, the Serapeum is synonymous with the main library, so the two are often referred to as one library.

There were many famous people, advancements, and discoveries at the Library of Alexandria (and its sister structure, the Museion). Scholars at the library mapped and measured the Earth and stars and produced the “greatest work of ancient astronomy, the Almangest of Claudius Ptolemy” (Stille 247). There was a great amount of scholarly work at the library, for the Library of Alexandria “virtually invented modern scholarship, creating the definitive text of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey” (Stille 247). According to references, “Ptolemy [I] invited the great mathematician Euclid to Alexandria and Euclid’s famous Elements of Geometry bore a dedication to Ptolemy” (Stille 247).  The Library of Alexandria even contained, eventually, the Greek philosopher Aristotle's collection of books (Fischer 58).

The Ptolemies called upon rulers of other nations for texts and had plentiful Jewish and Buddhist scriptures, among other religious books. Many of these religious works were translated by religious scholars actually at the library. On the topic of religion, Alexandria also produced Platonius, a Christian philosopher, the famous Gnostic gospels, and works of a Jewish thinker named Philo. Alexandria is credited with producing many other religious works and thinkers. 

Alexandria was in a league of its own. With two large libraries and a museum (and research center), it possessed great buildings and research facilities along with distinguished professionals on staff. These professionals specialized in a wide variety of categories, too. The city had a zoo, an anatomical institute, and an observatory (Crew 73). 

It is no wonder Alexandria was a hub of science and knowledge in the ancient world. The libraries and the museum were closely related and were centers of information and research. Of course, the facilities at Alexandria, namely the main library, had their share of rivals. Most notably of these rivals was the Pergamon library, which fought unsuccessfully to match the might of the Library of Alexandria (Crew 73).

A good source estimating the number of books housed in the libraries is the twelfth-century writer John Tzetezes. Although Tzetezes’ ancient sources of this information are lost today, there are records that Tzetezes wrote that, according to his source(s) at the time, there “were 42,800 books in the Serapium, and 400,000 mixed books and 90,000 unmixed books in the main library” (qtd. in Trumble 8-9). One debate is what Tzetezes meant by “mixed” and “unmixed” books. According to Kelly Trumble, a writer about the library, “A “mixed” book probably contained more than one work, “unmixed” being a book of a single work” (9).

One major drawback of a large library was that it was hard to find anything with no efficient cataloguing system. The Library of Alexandria was no different and had troubles cataloguing its vast collection. Luckily enough for the librarians of the library, at least "an encyclopedic catalogue of scrolls was used... most in Greek [alphabetical order]" (Fischer 183).

On the topic of librarians, the librarians of the Alexandrian library had to be not only librarians (in the modern sense of the word); they had to be "full-fledged philosophers" (Sarton 145). Even so, "as the Library of Alexandria was a nursery to humanists and philologists, the closely related [and, many times, synonymous] Museion of Alexandria was a home to anatomists and astronomers" (Sarton 145).

Sadly, the library was not open to all. Back in the time of the Library of Alexandria, libraries were more repositories of knowledge. They were exclusive and many of them were private. Now, in modern times, the library serves mainly as a public resource of knowledge; although now they contain a lesser percentage of human knowledge of the world than did the libraries of ancient times (Edwards and Fisher ix). 

With "few or no duplicates in the library's collections" (Kent, Lancour, and Daily 8), the Library of Alexandria surely had a true, eclectic collection. There were quotes that, together, the Museion and other libraries had a total of around "700,000 volumes when [so Plutriarch says] it (the library collections) were burned" (Kent, Lancour, and Daily 8).  This burning was, at least, in part started by the event when the famous Roman emperor Julius Caesar began his fiery siege of the city of Alexandria, in 47 B.C. 

Even with the alleged total destruction of the library by Caesar, there were so many events written after it that included the Library of Alexandria in them. This leads many modern scholars to believe that only some parts of the library or its collection were destroyed or, at the least, harmed [at all]. The leader of Egypt at the time of Caesar's failed capturing of the city was Cleopatra. Interesting enough, the also-famous Cleopatra had a previous relationship with Caesar. 

The ruler Mark Antony, another of Cleopatra's very close friends, was said to have given around 200,000 (some reports say up to 300,000) books from a rival library, the Pergamon library, in 32 B.C. (Kent, Lancour, and Daily 8). This event is presumably to compensate from loss of books from Caesar's invasion. Thus, Mark Antony's gift to Cleopatra leads people to believe that books had been lost from Caesar's attack. Since books had been lost, they obviously needed replacing.

Even after these blurry sequences of events, more awaited the library. When Christianity spread, anti-pagan leaders threatened the great library. As the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science says, "In 391 A.D. the Patriarch Theophilus  decided to convert all the temples of Alexandria into churches, and riots broke out, probably most intense around the Serapeion as the center of the older religion [the pagan religions of the past]" (Kent, Lancour, and Daily 8).

            During Theophilus' acts, the pagan temples and shrines were destroyed. After this unclear historical event, many teachers and scholars fled the city to other areas. Many of these 

places were flourishing, and accepted teachers and learning (such a city, at the time, was Constantinople). However, science and culture were still growing in the city of Alexandria until another mysterious and tragic turn occurred.

Arab conquering was taking place in many areas around the globe. A man name Amru conquered Alexandria in 634 and was said to have burned the [entire] library (of Alexandria) on the orders of the leader Caliph Omar. But this event, according to many scholars, has no basis and is "refuted by many who have studied the library's history" (Kent, Lancour, and Daily 8).  No matter what the fate of the library, it was virtually inexistent in 416 A.D. (Sarton 156).

Today almost nothing remains of the Library of Alexandria. There is little to no useful knowledge that has been gathered from archeological expeditions. However, there is knowledge of the library gathered from letters and books around the time of the library, therefor scholars today must rely on the ancient writings almost solely. 

Today, even though the old Library of Alexandria is inexistent, the spirit of the library still lives on in the city of Alexandria. Recently, the Egyptian government opened a new library, with a huge collection, that honored the old library. The "new Library of Alexandria" was opened in 2002 and named the Bibliotheca Alexandrina ("Egypt Opens New Library of Alexandria"). The city of Alexandria was a wonder in the ancient world, and that wonder lives on to this day.

Works Cited

Battles, Matthew. Library: An Unquiet History. New York: W.V. Norton & Company, 2004.

Crew, P. Mack. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 7 (Part 1: The Hellenistic World). Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Edwards, Brian, and Biddy Fisher. Libraries and Learning Resource Centres. Oxford (UK): Architectural Press, 2001.

"Egypt Opens New Library of Alexandria." National Geographic Today. 16 Oct. 2002. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1016_021016_alexandria.html> (4 Dec. 2005)

Fischer, Stephen Roger. History of Reading. London (UK): Reaktion Books, 2003.

Haag, Michael, ed.. Rough Guide History of Egypt. London (UK): Rough Guides, 2003.

Kent, Allen, Harold Lancour, Jay E. Daily, eds.. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Vol. 26. New York: CRC Press, 1979.

"Library of Alexandria." Wikipedia. 16 Nov. 2001. 4 Dec. 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria> (4 Dec. 2005).

Sarton, George. Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C.. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959.

Stille, Alexander. The Future of the Past. New York: Picador Publishing, 2003.

Trumble, Kelly. The Library of Alexandria. New York/Boston: Clarion Books (Houghton Mifflin), 2003.