The Phoniness of the Georges

Michelle Cottle is on fire in the New Republic, in her excellent expose of the fake boorishness that surrounds George Bush and George Allen (the latter still smarting from his macaca quip). She notes that Allen, the rich California kid, has been playing at being a rednceck for years, and that his choice of the word "macaca" shows that he can't even get his racial insults right. But she has a broader point to make:

"And what never ceases to amaze me is how pretenders like Bush (eternally aiming for good ole boy status) and Allen (with even grander pretensions of redneckdom)
always seem to latch on to the less admirable aspects of the breed."

With Allens, it's faux-confederacy, and that all goes with it. With Bush, it's even worse:

"Less overtly offensive but equally obnoxious is Bush's I-never-put-much-stock-in-book-learnin' shtick: Doesn't follow the news. Doesn't pay attention to so-called experts and other pointy-headed types. Doesn't bother himself with policy details. Goes with his gut. Blah blah blah. This sort of reverse snobbery may have been the most common and least admirable trait among the true good ole boys I knew. These were the type of men who would sink thousands upon thousands of dollars into the piece of crap truck they took mud-bogging every Saturday but claim poverty when it came time to pay for their kids' college education. These people weren't just ignorant; they were proud of their ignorance--snickering about how going to a good college just made folks uppity."

She concludes:

"Unfortunately, you make a lousy role model for the vast majority of Americans, who, sadly, don't have a rich, well-connected, exceedingly forgiving daddy to bail their butts out every time they get busted for drunk driving, need a safe place to sit out a war, or manage to drive an oil company into the ground."

Kind of sums it up, doesn't it?

The curiouser and curiouser world of higher math, or Poincare vindicated

And now for a scheduled break from Lebabnon, Leiberman, and US foreign policy.

The Poincare Conjecture has been proved! Although I only learned about this yesterday, via a long overdue Times editorial, the proof has been circulating since 2003. Except that “proof” may be too strong a term; “sketch of proof by enigmatic genius leading to feverish gap-filling by eminent mathematicians” is a better description. And therein lies a tale.

The precise formulation and significance of the Poincare conjecture is inaccessible to those without a considerable mathematical background. Suffice to say that it is the major outstanding problem in topology, and one of the most storied challenges in mathematics, having resisted attempts at proof (or a counterexample) for over a century. It is also one of the Millennium Problems: a set of seven mathematical problems each carrying a million dollar prize for its resolution, courtesy of the Clay Institute.

The Conjecture states, roughly, that if all loops in a bounded three-dimensional space can be shrunk to points through deformations of the space, then the space must be topologically equivalent to a three-sphere (note that a three-sphere is not what we normally think of as a sphere; topology deals with surfaces, and the surface of an everyday sphere has only two dimensions, not three). The analogue conjecture for all higher dimensions was proved over twenty years ago, but the three-dimensional problem has been a much harder nut to crack.

Enter a Russian, an unworldly genius who is the spitting image of Rasputin. Until recently Grisha Perelman was a forgotten man, a mathematician who hadn’t published in eight years, a ghost whose colleagues were unaware even of what field he was working in. He first showed promise as a teen, winning the 1982 International Mathematical Olympiad with a perfect score. After earning his PhD at the St. Petersburg State University, he was a post-doctoral student at the Courant Institute, SUNY, and at UC Berkeley. Colleagues from that era recall his brilliance, his inability or unwillingness to talk about anything other than math, and his many-inch long fingernails, which he claimed to grow so that he could open a book at the exact page he wanted. In 1996 he returned to Russia—spurning positions at various American Universities—to join the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg. Once there, he effectively fell off the academic map.

In early 2003 Perelman posted two papers on arXiv, a website popularly used by scientists and mathematicians to disseminate their research (usually as a precursor to submitting the work to a peer-reviewed journal). Neither paper mentioned the Poincare conjecture by name, but they claimed to provide “a sketch of a proof” of a more general conjecture—the Thurston Conjecture—of which the Poincare Conjecture is a special case. Both papers were concise in the extreme, often outlining arguments while omitting the details, full of statements such as “the proof of [this lemma] can be extracted from the proof of [an earlier lemma]”, which are fine in a Calculus 100 textbook, but a bit difficult to swallow in an extraordinarily original and difficult exegesis at the frontier of mathematics. Nonetheless, the cognoscenti soon sensed that something big was afoot. In May Perelman accepted an invitation to tour America, lecturing for weeks on end to packed audiences at Princeton and the Courant Institute, and fielding questions on his approach from the best mathematicians in the world. By all accounts he was clear and convincing in every detail. At the end of the tour, he had satisfied everybody who was anybody that he had at the very least achieved a seminal advance in mathematics, even if the jury was still out on Poincare’s Conjecture.

And then he returned to St. Petersburg, apparently smarting from the unwelcome attention of the media, and eager to return to his hermetic existence. He showed zero interest in pursuing publication or moving up the academic totem pole. It seemed that from his point of view he had solved the problem, and that was all that mattered. Others could fill in the gaps if they wished—and indeed, since 2003 there has been a flurry of papers devoted to explicating his proof in detail—but he was done. His role would be confined to answering e-mails from a select group of mathematical colleagues requesting help at tricky junctures of the proof.

Gradually a consensus has gathered that Perelman’s proof is indeed valid, and that Poincare’s Conjecture can be laid to rest, to rise again phoenix-like as a theorem. None of the researchers in the field have detected any significant flaw in his approach, and slowly and painfully all the gaps in his papers have been filled. This summer saw the arrival of two book-length manuscripts (one of them is available here) that purport to formally prove the Poincare Conjecture on the basis of Perelman’s approach. It is expected that the forthcoming International Congress of Mathematics will impress its official seal of approval on the proof.

Three twists or variations in the plot deserve comment.

First, it would appear that Perelman is a shoo-in for this year’s Fields Medal. This is mathematics’ equivalent of a Nobel Prize, except that it is much more difficult to earn, being awarded only every four years, and only to candidates under the age of forty. But, as is always the case with Perelman, there are problems. In order of intractability these are: Perelman is unlikely to accept the medal, and, indeed, is not even attending the Congress at which the medal will be announced and where he will play the role of invisible superstar; and nobody seems to know if he is under the age of forty and thus eligible for the medal. The blogosphere is rife with conflicting reports of his age. The most promising theory is that he was probably 16 years old when he won the Math Olympiad, which would put his current age at exactly 40!

Second, there is the little matter of the Clay Institute’s million dollar prize for solving one of the Millennium Problems. If Perelman were to be awarded the money, it would probably be shared with Richard Hamilton, who developed the central technique refined and employed by Perelman. But the Institute requires that a proof be published in a peer-reviewed journal and subjected to public scrutiny for at least two years before it receives consideration for the prize. Perelman has not, and will not, publish his proof. As noted, others have published extensively on the subject, and Perelman’s arXiv papers have already been subjected to scrutiny that can only be described with considerable understatement as intense. This may suffice to qualify Perelman for the prize, although it would be disctinctly odd for a mathematician to receive an award on the basis of his colleagues’ publications. In fact, officials from the Clay Institute have stated that they may be willing to change the prize criteria to accommodate Perelman. The real stumbling block, as you might have guessed, is that Perelman does not seem to be remotely interested in either the money or the glamour of being the first recipient of the prize.

Third, there is a mystery bordering on tragedy at this story’s end. On returning from his American tour in 2003, Perelman sporadically answered e-mails from mathematical colleagues, but over time, his responses grew more and more infrequent, and then stopped altogether. According to Russian colleagues, he has resigned his position at the Steklov Institute. His current whereabouts are unknown to the mathematical world.

Torture Update

There have been some significant new developments since I last posted on this topic. Despite the Hamden case, the Bush administration's zeal for torturing people is undiminished. As usual, Marty Lederman is on top of the story.

The issue pertains to proposed amendments to the War Crime Act, which imposes penalties for violating Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Bushites thought they were in the clear by declaring that Common Article 3 never applied to AlQaeda. The Hamden decision said otherwise. A number of theories have been put forward to explain the amendments, including the need to immunize government officials for war crimes that took place prior to Hamden. It is also designed to water down the law, by eliminating the Common Article 3 violations based on "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." But Lederman thinks the intent is even more sinister than this. In his words:

"The real importance of the amendment has little or nothing to do with the military, or with past conduct, and very little to do with "humiliating and degrading treatment." It is, instead, that this amendment is part of an effort to authorize the CIA to continue to use interrogation techniques that violate Common Article 3's prohibition on "cruel treatment and torture" -- including hypothermia, threats of violence to the detainee and his family, stress positions, "long-time standing," prolonged sleep deprivation, and possibly even waterboarding."

He gets to this position by noting that the proposed amendment restricts the definition of torture to that under the federal torture statute, which is substantially weaker than under Common Article 3. The administration claims that the "enhanced CIA techniques" are not torture under the federal torture statute.

Just remember, Bush is a "Christian" president who "shares our values"...

A Brief Liturgical Detour

There is much debate in the Church these days pertaining to the appropriate translation of the Latin texts of the Mass. I'm not getting embroiled in the whole debate here. Suffice it to say that the current English translation tends to be rather pedestrian and banal. Changes will be coming shortly, and this is (generally speaking) a good thing. For example, I'm all in favor of translating "Et cum spiritu tuo" with "And with your spirit" instead of "And also with you". For an overview of the issues, see the address by Bishop Roche of Leeds (Chair of the International Committee on English in the Liturgy, the ICEL) to the US bishops a few months ago.

Generally, liturgical conservatives approve these changes, and the argument used is that the English mass is merely a translation of the Latin text, and hence we need the best and most accurate translation possible. Fair enough. I buy it. But there is one big stumbling block for them, and that is in the Creed. In the Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed (laid down by two successive councils of the undivided church in 325 and 381), the current English translation says "for us men and for our salvation.." and "By the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man". Now, I would contend that the word "man" in these instances is badly translated. Deriving from anthropos in Greek, and homo in Latin, the word that underpins this text is gender-neutral, and really means "human". English does not have such a term, and "man" was used traditionally to denote an encompassing vision of "humanity". But many reading this will not get this subtlety, especially today, and will think that the Creed is saying something that it is not. So, in the interest of the best and most accurate translation, shouldn't we say "for us and for our salvation" and "he ... was made human"? But no, this drives conservatives crazy, the very same people who strive for accurate translations of the Latin texts into English. They seem more wedded to their view that "man" means "humanity", and begin arguing in favor of what the English words should mean, instead of whether or not they accurately reflect the Latin. And this, I think, reflects an element of bias and inconsistency.

Everything That is Wrong With the Pro-Life Movement

Bishop Doran of Rockford Illinois penned a recent screed attacking what he thinks is wrong with American culture and public life (via Amy Welborn). He doesn't hold back:

"The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation."

Interesting list. A cynic might so it was chosen to present the Republicans in the best possible light. I could easily think of another seven "secular sacraments" that also cheapen the culture of life: the death penalty, unjust war, poverty, disdain for the environment, lack of health care, racism, and torture. By that list, the Republicans don't look so good, do they?

But this is precisely the problem with the pro-life movement. By aligning themselves with one particular party and one secular philosophy, they lose integrity and seriousness. Bishop Doran's list is a case in point. Many will look at my list and argue that abortion is far more serious than anything on this list. But the same could be said of the candidates on Bishop Doran's original list!

Ultimately, it's not about getting into a pissing contest over lists and priorities. No, if the pro-life movement wants to garner broader support and respect, it must twin its opposition to abortion with respect for life in a broader sense. It must return to Cardinal Bernardin's concept of the seamless garment (see my earlier post on abortion). What seamless garment opponents fail to appreciate is that it is not an either-or choice. A consistent position brings respect, and respect can create the preconditions for political success. Bishop Doran's list will bring nothing but derision. We cannot let this group turn the Church into an affiliate of the Republican party.

Operation Litani

Picture this scenario: southern Lebanon comes under the control of a powerful and popular militia committed to the destruction of Israel. The area is flooded with well-trained well-financed guerrillas, and border tensions increase. Finally, a few members of the terrorist organization crosses into Israel to provoke a response. Israel responds by invading Lebanon and seizing the area below the Litani river, to create a buffer zone. Large numbers of Lebanese deaths follow.

The year? 1978
The militia? The PLO.
The outcome? No decline in the power of the PLO in the south, many more years of disastrous civil war in Lebanon, and a very angry local population.

Some lessons are never learned...

The UK Terror plot: Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical.

This is an excellent piece by Craig Murray, who was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0815-36.htm

At the very least, it provides much needed motivation for calm stock-taking from the UK terror plot story.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The latest terrorist arrests in the UK show that John Kerry was right. John Kerry has been vindicated. George Will makes the case today in this context:

"Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point."

This was the great tragedy of the 2004 election, that people bought into the nonsense that voting for Bush made them safer, and mocked people like Kerry who proposed solutions that did not involve dividing the world into the "good guys" and the "evildoers" and bombing the latter back to the Stone Age (as Seymour Hersh showed, this way of thinking is alive and well in the Bushite bubble). And Bush had the gall to say:

"We disrupted a terror plot, a plot where people were willing to kill innocent life to achieve political objectives,"

No, Dubya, you didn't disrupt anything. Your reckless middle eastern adventures have made the world a more dangerous place. And instead of taking intelligence seriously, the Bush administration has actively undermined it. By exposing the identity of Valerie Plame to embarrass her husband when he criticized the faulty logic that underpinned the Iraq war. By using terror alerts for political gain. As Josh Marshall noted:

"The 18 months prior to the 2004 presidential election witnessed a barrage of those ridiculous color-coded terror alerts, quashed-plot headlines and breathless press conferences from Administration officials. Warnings of terror attacks over the Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions, then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the Democratic convention.

So it went right through the 2004 election. And then not long after the champagne corks stopped popping at Bush campaign headquarters, terror alerts seemed to go out of style. The color codes became yesterday's news. With the exception of one warning about mass-transit facilities in response to the London bombing on July 7, 2005, that was pretty much it until this summer. "

The problem with detailing the faults of the Bush administration in a zero-oversight environment is that there are so many of them, and as the next disaster arrives, the last one is quickly forgotten. But Paul Krugman is right to bring our attention to an important little fact that we should not so conveniently forget:

"Suspicions that the Bush administration might have had political motives in wanting the arrests made prematurely are fed by memories of events two years ago: the Department of Homeland Security declared a terror alert just after the Democratic National Convention, shifting the spotlight away from John Kerry and, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, blowing the cover of a mole inside Al Qaeda."

More here. Yes, with the Bush administration, politics is everything. And since the corporate donors won't exactly line up behind the appropriate safety measures to secure cargo on plane and nuclear and chemical facilities, well, we are still in the danger zone, despite the aggressive rhetoric. Here's something to bear in mind:

"About one quarter of all U.S. air cargo is transported by U.S. passenger planes. Based on the best current estimates, between 10% and 15% of the more than six billion pounds of cargo that flies that way each year ends up actually inspected."

So yes, John Kerry was right. Right on the use of intelligence and law enforcement as a means to defeat terrorism. Right on the need for a multilateral approach and nurturing allies. Right on the need to go after Al Qaeda, not got mired in a diversion like Iraq. Right to hone in on implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. But no, people believed the drivel about the pansy boy on the windsurf that was no match for big bad Bush. And now we are paying the price. Say it loudly: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES.

Was the Bush Administration Complicit in the Attacks on Lebanon?

I expect, rather hope, that the Seymour Hersh article in this week’s New Yorker will create a major ripple, first in the blog world, and then in the mainstream media. Hersh, who was at the forefront of investigative reporting on the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse case, as usual, has written a well-researched piece. The thesis of this article is one of major concern—the Bush Administration was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Indeed, Israel had shared its plan for attacking Hezbollah with Bush Administration officials well before the July 12th kidnappings.

There are many reasons, most of them foolhardy, why the Bush administration would go along with the Israelis in planning to attack Hezbollah, and Hersh’s even-handed article discusses them at length. However, what I find most striking is that the Israeli campaign was encouraged by the U.S. because it was deemed as a dress rehearsal for forthcoming actions on Iran. So, the bloodshed and devastation inflicted on Lebanon, in the eyes of Bush Administration officials, was just a part of a greater game.

The callousness with which this administration continues to operate is astonishing. Lebanon, which anyway has now proved to be a much harder battleground than the slick war planners from Israel and the U.S. had though it would be, is a mere dot next to Iran’s dimensions, especially with respect to military, personnel, and economic might. Did no one think of these basic points before engaging in such murderous planning?

If a military college student tried to make an argument along these lines (attack Lebanon; weaken Hezbullah; gain pointers for Iran) in a war games class, I suspect he or she would be chastised by the instructor for an overly simplistic, ill-informed, and poorly judged piece of analysis. Shockingly, in real life, ideas that would get an F in the classroom are now the best that can be offered by the most powerful nation on earth.

Will the Israelis and Americans learn nothing from the failed campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Lebanon? Military might, which invariably leads to unintended consequences as seen over and over again, is a vastly inferior second to prudent diplomacy. Achieving a lasting peace is seldom borne out of outright military campaigns. The history book of international conflagrations is littered with instances of leaders who arrogantly believed that everything would work out if only they could have the enemy on his knees. What each successive generation of military campaigners seems to ignore is that wars end when ideas, not a people, are defeated. To fight ideas, there is no substitute for goodwill, smart and long-term strategic thinking underlying diplomacy, and respect for humanity.

First Thoughts on the Latest Terrorist Plot

As details of this horrendous plot emerges, it seems that the terrorists can be traced to the UK and Pakistan, and that Al Qaeda is behind it. Not Iraq, not Hamas, not Hezbollah. No, the guy that Bush let escape in a stunning display of ineptitude, and then confessed he didn't really care much about-Osama Bin Laden. From his press conference on March 13, 2002:

"Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. "

Why are the Democrats not hammering home this line? You can be sure that the right-wing noise machine would be all over this had Gore been president. When will be Democrats learn that they need to deflate the bubble surrounding Bush's "war on terror" mystique?

Vintage Galloway

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html

So what does Leiberman's loss mean?

The netroots crowd - daily kos and co., without whom Lamont's victory would have been impossible - are over the moon. On their view, Leiberman's loss shows that people-power has returned to American politics, and a man who exemplified cross-party cheerleading for a war that most Americans no longer support (most especially not in Connecticut) has received his just desserts - a generous helping of humble pie.

On the other hand, I'm sure that the centrist DLC is privately desolated by last night's primary. Why? Because they think that the only way to win back Congress and, more importantly, the Presidency, is to appeal to the moderate middle of the electorate. They fear that the Cindy Sheehans and Marcos Moulistases will drag their party leftwards over a cliff.

Which view is correct? Here's an interesting take from an unexpected source, Joe Scarborough, conservative TV pundit, and former Gingrich acolyte, who ran for and won a seat in Congress in 1994. Key excerpt:

George Bush's loss to Bill Clinton in 1992 had put Republican operatives
and strategists in a panic. They feared that Bush had been beaten like a drum
because radical conservatives like Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Shaffley and Pat
Robertson had hijacked the GOP Convention. So while Bill Clinton spent the next
two years moving left, the Republican National Committee desperately sought
moderate candidates that would talk, walk and vote like, say, Joe Lieberman. The
goal was to blur all differences between Republicans and Democrats.

Because of that logic, I spent most of 1994 fighting Republican
bureaucrats on the local, state and federal level who did everything in their
power to elect my very moderate opponent in the GOP primary. A week before the
primary, the Republican Congressional Committee campaign director let me know
that I might as well give up. 1994 would be the year of the Moderate.

Yeah, right.

Within a few months of that conversation, scores of right-wing,
knuckle-dragging, spear-carrying conservative barbarians like myself ran through
our moderate Democratic opponents like Barry Bonds through a bottle of roids. It
was ugly. Darting to the base was the ticket to victory for the Party of Reagan.

Fast forward twelve years and now we find many making the same
misguided arguments, except this time they are giving their stupid advice to
Democrats generally and Connecticut voters specifically.

Ned Lamont may be a pencil-necked geek, as Imus claims, but he is the
type of candidate that will bring out the Democratic base in an off-year
election. That is especially true this year because George W. Bush is even more
unpopular than Clinton was when the GOP swept into power.

My advice to Democratic voters this year is "Go left, young man!"

There's much in this. But it fails to address the million dollar question: is the liberal base really as big as the (in retrospect) conservative base? I don't think it is. So certainly the Democrats should turn baseward, but judiciously, in baby steps. If that sounds difficult, it is.

Catholic League Watch

The Catholic League, headed by William Donohue, purports to defend Catholicism against "defamation and discrimination". As there is much anti-Catholicism in our culture, an organization such as this can play a useful role. But not in its present form. Donohue is more keen on turning the organization into an arm of the "culture war" which is code for aligning the Catholic church with the interests of the Republican party (indeed, one of his best friends is James Dobson, whose evangelical group seems to regard Bush as the second coming...).

Anyway, I will try to expose a fair amount of Catholic League hypocrisy in these pages. For now, let's address the Mel Gibson issue. Gibson is something of a hero to the Catholic League, and their press release of February 26, 2004 says it all:

"Already, left-wing censors in Hollywood are out to get Mel. They think they can stop him. But it's too late for the blacklisters to win. Nothing can stop the public from rallying around Saint Mel."

That's right. Because his movie, The Passion of the Christ, is being used as a weapon in the "culture war" by Donohue to bludgeon his opponents, he becomes "Saint Mel". Now here's the catch: Gibson is not even Catholic! While famously reticent about what he actually believes, he has a habit of building his own churches (including one for his famously anti-semitic father). Cardinal Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, asserted that the church he attends in Malibu is not in communion with the Catholic church. Tim Rutten in the LA Times noted that Gibson bought a church in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, for $750,000, and that his infamous father is overseeing the project, for a group of so-called "traditional Catholics". These are an interesting bunch of schismatics. They detest Vatican II, mainly because of the Declaration on Religious Liberty and the new approach to Judaism. Many of them are avid sedevacantists too, believing there is no valid pope. And yes, they can also be a pretty anti-semitic bunch.

But, to William Donohue, he is Saint Mel. And Bill, to be fair, stands by his saints, claiming that "There's a lot of people who have made comments which are bigoted who are not necessarily bigots." Funny how he never says that when he is attacking Democrats, isn't it? The outpouring of love continues: "Mel Gibson's apology is a model of contrition, and it reflects the genuineness of his faith." And what faith might that be, Bill?

On Notice-- The Second Wave

I've created a monster....

And Here is My List!

Stephen Colbert Thinks Like Me!

Look what he has put "on notice"! Actually, go to the website listed, and Stephen can also put your very own pet peeves "on notice". Yeah!

Postmodernism and the Bushite Ascendancy

What prompted this post was the results of a recent poll stating that about 50 percent of the population believes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and that the number is increasing over time, not falling. Also, 64 percent continue to believe that Saddam had strong ties to Al Qaeda.

What the hell is going on? Well, an AP report notes (via the Carpetbagger Report):

"...experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq."

This gets us back to a fundamental philosophy underpinning the Bush administration: if you say it enough times, people will believe it. And if people believe it, it becomes true. We were given an inkling of this in Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, in which coined term "reality-based community". From Suskind (quoting a Bush loyalist):

"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.""

Well, this is nothing more and nothing less than a cynical form of postmodernism, the denial of all objective truth, which can easily veer into a jaded moral relativism. [And Bush is the "Christian" president, because....??].

In an insightful essay earlier this year, Michiko Kakutani (in the New York Times) noted that such ways of thinking are becoming endemic in our culture:

"We live in a relativistic culture where television "reality shows" are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the "reality-based community," can assert that "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." Phrases like "virtual reality" and "creative nonfiction" have become part of our language. Hype and hyperbole are an accepted part of marketing and public relations. And reinvention and repositioning are regarded as useful career moves in the worlds of entertainment and politics. The conspiracy-minded, fact-warping movies of Oliver Stone are regarded by those who don't know better as genuine history, as are the most sensationalistic of television docudramas."

Indeed. Our culture is saturated with this kind of relativistic thinking. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction because we said he did. Global warming is not a problem, and evolution can be mocked, because there is no such thing as objective truth in science. And the Bush administration is a postmodern cheerleader, that asserts that there is, (in the words of Kakutani) "no such thing as truly independent reporting or even a set of mutually agreed upon facts". In such a world, Mel Gibson's father's views on the Holocaust are not entirely out of place...

Kakutani is writing mainly about literature. She fails to use the most glaring example however: that the world is enthralled by the claims of the Da Vinci Code, which rewrites history in a perfect Bushite template, and, instead of being roundly denounced by the "reality-based community", people's (subjective) disdain for Catholicism leads them to an (objective) disdain for truth, as they note "well, it raises some interesting questions.."

It's all part of the same story. A society that disdains the notion of objective truth is a society in trouble. And the right keeps pointing to Europe? Weigel needs to take a long hard look at his own country before lobbing mortars across the Atlantic...

More on the Justness (Or Not) of the Israeli War

Let's go back to the Catechism, which looks at the precise conditions under which a war can be just:

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must
be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily
in evaluating this condition.These are the traditional elements enumerated in
what is called the "just war" doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

And now let's go step by step in the context of the current conflict, focusing on the different principles enunciated in the Catechism.

(1) The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.

Score one for Israel. Hezbollah's actions against civilians were and are unjustifiable, and should be considered war crimes. Even Juan Cole, whose sympathies lean in the Arab direction, argued that Nasrallah should be dragged before the Hague for ordering attacks on non-combatants.

(2) All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

For a start, Israel did not even bother to seek a diplomatic solution. But a counter argument would be that the very nature of Hezbollah-- including its glorification of violence and so-called martyrdom, its fundamentalist eschatology, its disdain for life (especially Israeli life), and its general lack of respect for Lebanese civil life and democracy-- renders a diplomatic solution useless, given that it would merely postpone and not solve the problem. But remember the point made by moralist Germain Grizes (see earlier post) that terrorism cannot be defeated by military means alone. You must address the root cause of the problem. Bush and Cheney seem to have learned this lesson the hard way (actually, whether they have learned anything at all after six disastrous years is very much open to question). The cowboy mentality is destined to fail.

(3) There must be serious prospects of success.

What is the aim of Israel in this war? Israel seems intent on eliminating Hezbollah, a political party supported by half the Lebanese population. Given this support, and deeply embedded Hezbollah is with the Shia population, the elimination seems pretty impossible. Again, you cannot defeat terrorism by military means alone.

(4) the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

Now we come to the crux of the matter, the proportionality condition. Straight away, the Catechism cautions us that the decks are already stacked against the pro-war position when it comes to modern weaponry. What is the evil to be eliminated? It is not just the threat from Hezbollah rockets today, but as Michael Walzer noted in the New Republic, "also against what they are (and what they say they are) trying to do." Proportionality is not just stacking up bodies on either side. We need to look at the totality of "evils and disorders" created by Israel's response. I think there are at least four.

First, the bombing of civilian areas. The words of Israel's military strategists are quite damning in this regard. General Dan Halutz basically said that retaliation is the name of the game, giving "the order to the air force destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa". He also declared that since the aim is to win, "nothing is safe." And don't forget the threat made during the early stages of the war to turn the clock back to the days of the civil war. And remember that the southern suburbs of Beirut, basically densely-populated Shia slums, have reduced to rubble.

Second, Israel has destroyed the Lebanese economy and infrastructure, punishing an entire nation for the crimes of one militia. Note also that Israeli sources threatened that "if Tel Aviv is attacked, Lebanese national infrastructure will be destroyed." More recently, the Israeli army announced it would "hit strategic civilian infrastructure". Here, the war party seem to indict the Lebanese government for allowing Hezbollah such a free reign. In fact, The cedar coalition (Christian-Sunni-Druze) would like nothing better than to disarm Hezbollah, especially after their cynical backing of Syria after Hariri's murder. But they are also fully aware that Hezbollah has the support of the Shia (remember their huge pro-Syrian demonstration in Beirut last year), and any move to disarm them could re-ignite the civil war. Indeed, all sides recognized that the way forward was to "normalize" Hezbollah by integrating them into Lebanese government and civil life. Even Maronite politician Michel Aoun, the author of the extremely costly "war of liberation" against Syria in the last phases of the civil war, did a deal with Hezbollah.

Third, Israel has threatened a democracy that has finally thrown out the Syrian occupiers (after almost 30 years), and is creating the conditions for a return to full-scale civil war. What often gets lots in the equation is that Lebanon is a full democracy, no longer under occupation. Sure, it has some confessional quirks, and lots of gerrymandering, but it is a democracy nonetheless. And, like it or not, Hezbollah plays a major role in that democracy. The nature of a long civil war means that many current players have less-than-perfect histories. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, regarded as a brave statesman for facing down Syrian death threats, was trying to ethnically cleanse the Chouf mountains in the 1980s. And the Christians were also no stranger to atrocities: the extremely popular Samir Geagea was recently released from prison for killing numerous rivals (plus their entire families) during the war. Compared with this cast of characters, Nasrallah does not seem so out of place!

Fourth, Israel's actions have boosted the popularity and strength of Hezbollah (and by extension, Iran and Syria) at a time when were being integrated into the normal political process (not not doing too well, for that matter). This has implications not only for Lebanon, bit the entire Middle East, and beyond.

But where is the Catholic voice in the United States? Week after week, Pope Benedict calls for a ceasefire, and it gets basically ignored by the Bush-worshipping Catholics on the American right, the same group who were driven into a frenzy by the death of Terry Schiavo (were the issues were every bit as complicated and nuanced as they are in the current conditions), but seem unmoved by the suffering of the Lebanese people.

The Klimt Exhibition at the Neue Galerie

At the risk of really diluting this blog’s political tint, today I will write a bit about my recent visit to the Neue Galerie at New York City. This tiny museum, prominently located at Fifth Avenue and 86th street, boasts excellent Austrian and German modern art in its collection. The elegant Louis XIII-style mansion that houses the museum has been restored very successfully for its operation as a complex consisting of galleries, shops, and restaurants.

The museum is currently enjoying great popularity thanks to its latest exhibition, “Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings from the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer.” It is a curious and technically inaccurate title, as just a couple of months ago, one of those five paintings was purchased by none other than the owner of Neue Galerie, Ronald S. Lauder. Mr. Lauder’s purchase was significant for two reasons: first, the Bloch-Bauer estate fought the Austrian government for many decades before having these paintings returned to them earlier this year (see the July 24 New Yorker for details on the story). Second, the purchase price of the painting, Adele Bloch Bauer I, at 135 million dolalrs, is the most on record for a work of art.

I don’t recall ever going to a special exhibition comprising of just five paintings, but this was actually remarkably satisfying. These are large, imposing, magnificent oil paintings, each representing distinct and significant parts of Klimt’s career. The contrast between Klimt’s portraits and paintings of forests and towns is stunning. His rendering of Houses at Unterach on the Attersee is a living, shimmering piece of Bavarian scenery, as vibrant as a Cézanne. The portraits, Adele I and Adele II, on the other hand, are idiosyncratic works from an ultra-modern perspective.





Now, about that most expensive painting in the world: the first thing that went through my mind was that Adele looks like Frida Kahlo! Both ladies, in my eyes, have the same dark hair and strikingly expressive eyes. Am I the only one who sees the resemblance? Anyway, the painting is unlike any other for sure; the exquisite use of gold elements on the work is quite unforgettable (apparently, Klimt was influenced toward this direction during his visit to the Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna, Italy in 1903). Is it better than Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, which previously held the world record as the most expensive painting? Not to me, but clearly to Mr. Lauder!

In addition to the ongoing Klimt exhibition, the Neue Galerie has a fantastic permanent collection. There are terrific early works of Kandinsky, as well as haunting sketches by Egon Schiele. Also, a whole room is devoted to very cool objects of modern art from the early 1900s: furniture, silverware, flower vases, etc. This museum is a great example of the virtues of a small, but carefully chosen collection.

P.S. No visit to the Neue Galerie is complete without a stop at Café Sabarski, which transports one instantly to the elegant coffee houses of Vienna. There is often a long wait to get in, however, and the service can be slow. Nevertheless, the excellent pastries, coffees, and respectable entrees have the signature of the highly accomplished chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, making the wait worthwhile.

Are SUVs Really Evil?

This post is based on a couple of reviews of an excellent book published in 2002, Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty-- The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. The reviews are by Gregg Easterbrook in the New Republic and Stephanie Mencimer in the Washington Monthly. This is clearly the best and most comprehensive book written on the SUV phenomenon.

First, the notion that SUVs are gas-guzzling monstrosities that contribute to global warming is true. By law, SUVs are allowed to emit more pollutants than ordinary cars. In the 1990s, when the SUV boom really took off, the official average "fleet" standard (the average of all new models by each manufacturer) was 20.7 miles per gallon for SUVs and 27.5 miles per gallon for cars. And some of the worst offenders get only 10-12 miles per gallon. And even here, there are loopholes for SUVs: declare that they can run on ethanol and you are exempt. Bush promised to raise efficiency standards to a piddling 22.2 miles per gallon by 2007. It's not that the technology is not there. It is. It's just that car manufacturers would rather focus on power and acceleration, making SUVs even more dangerous (more on that later). Consider also that SUVs spew 30 percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and 75 percent more nitrogen oxides in the air than passenger cars. It also adds to the well-known oil addiction, a boon to Saudi Arabia and Iran. Indeed, Arianna Huffington claimed SUV drivers supported terrorism. A provocative claim with a kernal of truth. And some evangelicals asked: what would Jesus drive? Indeed.

Second, SUVs are dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. This is indeed the crux of Bradsher's book. He notes that vehicles on truck frames tend to handle poorly, and the body and frame may separate in an accident, something that would not happen in an ordinary car (all that metal does not make you safer). And occupant deaths are higher in SUVs than cars. Also, the notion that front-wheel drive systems make SUVS safer is fallacious. Since practically no SUVs are actually driven off-road (despite the vapid commercials), all this adds is weight and lowered fuel economy. The main reason why SUVs are so dangerous is the rollover risk, arising from the high center of gravity, the overloaded tires, and truck-like steering. Rollover deaths are about 1000 a year. In 2004, after the book was written, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) showed that SUV drivers were 11% more likely to die in an accident than people in cars. Many who buy SUVS think sitting high makes them safer, whereas it fact it magnifies the danger. This got so bad that members of Congress (from both parties) put pressure on the NHTSA not even to test for rollover risk, and the manufacturers refuse to list the safe load.

What's even worse is the risk SUVs pose to other drivers and pedestrians. In an accident with a car, SUVs are likely to mount the car and crush the occupants. Bradsher believes SUVs cause about 2000 deaths a year from accidents with ordinary cars. He also shows that, despite lower drunk driving incidence and the development of new safety features, the reduction in automobile deaths came to a standstill because of SUVs. Here's a chilling fact: if a car hits another car in the side, the driver of the hit car is 6.6 times more likely to die than the hitting driver. If the hitter is an SUV, it rises to 30 to 1. Also, a pedestrian is twice as likely to die when hit by an SUV than a car.

If SUVs are so polluting, and so dangerous, why are they so popular? Well, one thing is the safety myth. But it's much more than that. According to market research by the manufacturers, SUV drivers tend to be "insecure and vain.... self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities". They also don't care about anybody's kids but their own, and are very concerned with their image. They are noted by their "willingness to endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety."

Who could these people possibly be? Well, how about baby-boomers, the most selfish and narcissistic generation of all time? And these are indeed the biggest customers for SUVs. It's no coincidence that road rage incidents tracked the SUV boom. SUVs take up 1.4 parking spots. If they are behind you, they will blind you with huge headlights. If they are on front of you, they will obscure your vision. Because they feel so high above the road, and so safe, they drive menacingly and cut people off at a whim.

With the SUV, image is key. Marketed as outdoors vehicles, they rarely leave the confines of middle-class suburbs. Many models are engineered to look as threatening as possible-- the manufacturers know their market! After all, it's easier to cut somebody off when you are big and threatening! One example quoted by Bradsher is the "grill guard" which has no purpose in an urban environment. The worst offender here, of course, is the Hummer, which is all the bad traits of the SUV combined and put on steroids steroids.

It reminds me of something Cardinal George of Chicago once said: American culture is fundamentally Calvinist, lauding individualism and disdaining the notion community. SUVs are the worst embodiment of such a tendency.