Curiously enough, my Ten American Myths post generated some long and thoughtful comments. Some even took the trouble to address my points individually. I promised I would respond in kind, so here are people’s responses and my comments. The only codicil I would make here is the usual one, I covered a lot of ground in my original post so my writing certainly may have suffered from brevity. And that what is true for America may very well not be true elsewhere, and vice versa. And of course since I was making such broad generalizations, it goes without saying that broad generalizations are more in the realm of the figurative and the philosophical as opposed to being literally true in all cases. And lastly, I may have been wrong and will have to change my thinking. I used to think Jane Fonda should have been tried for treason. I was wrong. Now I just think she should be forced to watch her movies, what can we charge her with to make that a reality?

Moving right along…

1. Jobs vs Environment. I posit that it’s not always the case that doing things in an environmentally sound way is going to put people out of work.

John says: “Then why not just go ahead and adopt Stalin’s model?”

I wasn’t advocating Stalinist ideology, or anything like it, so I am a little mystified where this came from.

2. Regulation is Bad. Deregulation is supposed to be this great thing, I argue that industry and commerce must be regulated to some extent and failure to do so is putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

John says: “…You fail to point out the deregulation under Reagan that led to two decades of economic growth and prosperity. Balance is the key, but where is it?”

Actually, the middle class has been losing ground in the USA since about 1974, and Bush/Reagan’s “prosperity” was the largest upwards transfer of wealth in history. Not to mention their deregulation has led to an era of unbridled and unsustainable lending both private and public. Deregulation helped industry and the rich, but there was no “trickle down.” The rich getting richer while the poor and middle class lose ground is not my idea of prosperity.

3. Privatization is Good. I argue that the idea, in America, that private industry can always provide public service at a lesser cost than private industry is not supported by evidence or logic.

John says: “Not sure how you arrive at this unless you are looking at examples that are not truly privatized. Real privatization is not commissioning a privately held monopoly as some think it is, but relegating the task to a competitive market. When firms compete the consumer is generally the winner, right?”

If there is genuine competition and genuine privatization, yes, it can be a good thing. And this deserves to be discussed at length. So I stand corrected to some extent. My point was that automatically assuming that a private company can provide a service cheaper than a public one is not a given, and has been used as cover for some egregious examples of waste and corruption. Mr Priya Raju makes an interesting comment vis a vis this situation in India, but I don’t know enough about India to say:

Privatization - Perhaps you’d like to come to India & see how crappy the government laid roads are - and compare them to roads laid by Larsen & Toubro. Or, see how fugly the government-maintained airports are. This is so out-of-sync with the current economy of India.

Now finally, we have a decent aviation minister - he’s modernizing airports - by privatizing construction.

There is no incentive for improvement in a government-run enterprise. I agree that large corporations become evil, but I’m not happy with the alternative.

I’ll post more on the subject of privatization at some point.

4. Colour Blind America. The USA is still a white man’s country.

John says: “One would have to walk a mile in anothers’ shoes to understand this. Sad. Do you think this is a failing of our educational, religious or political systems? Or none of the above?”

I think politics and religion play a big role…and I theorize that human’s extreme sexual dimorphism also plays an underlaying part. Again, another topic for another post some day.

5. Protesters Lost Viet Nam/We Tied Our Own Hands. Again, I covered this one more or less in my fine and under appreciated post: “We could have won in Vietnam“

6. War Helps the Economy. No, it doesn’t.

John says: If one looks at economics in a purist sense then any expenditure (transaction) stimulates an economy. Most people don’t understand that “economy” is the tracking of movement, not statics. War would stimulate any economy as it means increased activity. The flow of funds from government to private corporations for weapons and the flow of funds from individuals and businesses to government is measurable during any war and therefore an economic stimulus. I am speaking from a purist sense here, though.

Even in a purist sense, there’s no reason this sort of wealth transfer can’t take place without a war, and of course the increase in economic activity has to be measured against the economic loss, which is usually overlooked. About one million young American males died in World War Two…and everything they would have contributed to society during their productive decades was lost. Economic statistics rarely include this sort of loss. There’s room for debate here, but my point again was the mantra “war helps the economy” should really be “war helps the war profiteers.”

7. Rural Areas are Safe. “This sort of things doesn’t happen here” is silly.

8. Punishment Works. No, punishment is the least effective way of changing an organism’s behaviour.

John says: I guess this one could be debated both ways. There seem to be natural laws (cause and effect) that may be in play that would have to be considered. For example, if there was no punishment (disincentive) for breaking a law, then why have the law? If we don’t have law, then don’t we become victim to anarchy? If someone breaks the law, then what does one do about it? This seems to be a very deep and multi-dimensional topic, and I’d look forward to further comment!

Priya Raju says: Punishments - Neurologists have found that we learn thru both positive & negative reinforcements.

While rehabilitation is important in prisons, they should be used in conjunction with some kind of punishment.

And 1 more thing. Seeking revenge is normal - I’m not justifying it, but I think that’s the way it is. If people can’t lock up the turds that hurt them - their reliance on the law & order system will weaken.

I was not advocating that we eliminate punishment or prisons, properly done there are ways of punishing people that will indeed help modify their behaviour. However, unless done in conjunction with rewards for positive behaviour, punishment usually just breeds resentment or worse. I was mostly stating that the oft heard claim “If we just make prisons harsh enough, sentences long enough, the inmates will behave themselves when they get out” is completely wrong.

I would also point out that being locked up 24/7 away from one’s friends and families or any semblance of a normal life is a pretty severe punishment in and of itself. In any event, lots of subject for further blogs and debate here. And I’m not sure that the desire for vengeance is natural, I think it’s mostly a learnt behaviour.

9. Torture Works. It will almost always get confessions, but there are far better ways to get truthful information from prisoners.

Marc André points out that the inquisition “proved” the existence of witchcraft and black magic.

Good point.

10. Prohibition Works. In most things, it’s a cure worse than the disease.

John says: This seems to be a hard one too. For example, in terms of death and enforcement, do we have just as many if not more as a result of the repeal of prohibition? I understand that a person dies from a drunk driver every 31 minutes and the deaths as a result since the repeal have been staggering. The cost of law enforcement on the streets to combat drunk driving, the alcohol related violent crimes, the cost of regulation, the cost to society as a whole could be far more than what we experienced during prohibition.

The only drug whose usage has been seriously cut back in the USA in recent decades is tobacco, and it is perfectly legal. Despite a three decade “war on drugs” the use and availability of drugs is undiminished, criminal gangs have been enriched beyond belief, and we have created a police/prison/war-on-drugs industry and lobby that has warped public debate on prohibition to justify its own existence and expansion.

I don’t know if alcohol prohibition would have “succeeded” if we had only kept it up, but judging from the “success” of drug prohibition, I have my doubts. I also think “if we had just kept at it, it would have worked out eventually” is a logically weak argument at best.

In any event, at least several of these topics should be explored more at length. As always I appreciate all the comments. Esteemed reader Marc André also left a number of thoughtful comments, but since he was mostly agreeing with me and refuting John’s arguments, I mostly didn’t include them here in what has already become a rather long post.

(The above painting of Atlantis is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law, it is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. Damned if I could find the author/artist, if anyone knows please let me know so I can properly attribute it. Atlantis is the ultimate myth, despite the complete and utter absence of any documentary evidence other than Plato’s writings, people continue to believe that he must have been discussing a real place. So does this mean a few thousand years from now expeditions will be setting out to find the ruins of “Emerald City” from the Wizard of Oz? Heck, wiki lists tons of fictional cities and towns, enjoy!)

One sad thing about the paranormal wonders of my youth is that under the bright light of adult analysis…many fade away like dew in the sun. The Bermuda Triangle, Ghosts, Nessie, UFOs and a host of others are little more than shadows when it comes to empirical evidence. There are exceptions though. Exactly 100 years ago today, there was a 5-30 megaton explosion in a remote spot in central Siberia.

Did that register? This isn’t a rumour, fuzzy film, or footprint in the mud. This is fact, in 1908 there was an explosion some 1000 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb in the sky above uninhabited wilderness near the Tunguska River in remote Siberia. It knocked over some 80 million trees and would have registered as a 5.0 earthquake had the Richter Scale existed. Windows hundreds of miles away were broken, and people thrown to the ground. Had this event happened over a major metropolitan area, it would have been completely destroyed with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

This was a remote part of the world, and it took awhile for news to filter out. Europeans knew something had happened. The primitive seismographic stations of the time registered the event, and fluctuations in air pressure were noted as far away as England. Most noticeable was the fact that in Europe there was enough dust kicked into the high atmosphere to glow and make reading at night possible for some days; while astronomers noted that the skies were dimmed for some months by this dust. Some Russian newspapers carried reports of distant eyewitnesses to the explosion, but this was a hard to reach part of the world at the time so scientists soon lost interest. Then World War One and the Russian revolution made Russia virtually inaccessible to western science, and the mysterious event was basically forgotten.

It wasn’t until 1927, nearly two decades after the event, that a Russian scientific expedition led by Leonid Kulik reached the site. He made several expeditions over the next decade, mapping the downed trees and collecting eyewitness accounts. Kulik had the area photographed from the air, showing the downed trees formed a huge “butterfly” pattern radiating outwards from the centre, while the trees at the very centre remained standing, though sheared of their branches. While he theorized that the explosion was caused by a meteor event, he was frustrated by not being able to find either a crater nor fragments of the meteor.

Later expeditions discovered microscopic glass beads in the soil and downed/dead trees at the site that are consistent with asteroidal material. While the site is still being studied and there is much left to learn, today’s science thinks it has the basic answer. It’s conjectured that a stony asteroid 50-60m in diameter exploded in the air 4-6 miles above the ground, such explosion caused by the huge amount of heat generated when the extremely fast moving rock entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The Russians have even been able to replicate the butterfly pattern of fallen trees by experimenting with explosives sliding down wires amid matchstick forests, showing the original object struck earth at about a 30% angle.

We know now in fact that explosions in the atmosphere are surprisingly common, with small nuclear sized explosions occurring regularly. Usually in remote areas and high altitudes, so they go unnoticed. Mostly unnoticed, scientists are catching more of them with modern instruments and satellites. There was a 25 kiloton event over the Mediterranean Sea in 2002 fo example. Events the size of Tunguska probably only happen every few centuries on average. These events are all believed to be caused by chunks of rock and comet striking the Earth, and are considered impact events even though all that makes it to the ground is pulverized microscopic dust.

Of course with such a fascinating and not fully understood event, some folks have engaged in enthusiastic speculation. One theory is that it was an exploding alien spaceship…but nuclear powered anythings shouldn’t explode, and we find microscopic asteroid dust, not pulverized alien spaceship dust. A black hole can be ruled out because there was no exit event on the opposite side of the Earth. And so on. Currently all of the exotic possibilities are ruled out by serious inconsistencies between their conjecture and scientific understanding of the physics involved. There’s at least a bit more realistic scientific conjecture that Tunguska was some sort of volcanic or otherwise Earth generated event, but even that seems to mostly involve a lot of creative interpretation of eyewitness accounts. There’s even a rumour that Nikolaus Tesla was testing a “death ray” and that this device misfiring is what caused the Tunguska event. Right. It doesn’t seem particularly supported by contemporary evidence, the story doesn’t appear until long after the fact, and scientists (and me) are not impressed with Tesla’s death ray theories.

In any event, there is one clear thing that we can learn from the study of eyewitness accounts to the Tunguska event. If one should happen to see a bright light or column of light (as bright as the sun) slowly heading toward the ground…Take Cover! This advice provided as a public service by Doug’s Darkworld.

(The image above is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is a heavily modified grey scale version of the original image. Credit and copyright: William K Hartman. It’s a hypothetical view of the Tunguska event from 400k (250 miles) away about 2 seconds before the explosion. The title quote is from the testimony of Testimony of S. Semenov, collected by the Kulik expeditions. For You-Tube footage that includes much original Kulik footage, and a lot of other nonsense, click here. For the University of Bologna’s Tunguska page, click here. They are at the centre of modern Tunguska research.)

Yes, that’s an assault rifle. What’s going on here? Where was this picture taken? How would you react if you came across this fellow a local convenience store? (As always, image is explained at end of post.)

In America guns are in the news today. In an historic ruling yesterday the Supreme Court revisited the Constitution’s Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The court ruled that this amendment does indeed mean that citizens have the right to have a weapon in their home, and that local governments cannot prohibit people from exercising that right. Every other pundit on the planet is going to be writing about this, not to mention every gun control advocate and every NRA supporter. As a former NRA member yet a staunch advocate of the right to bear arms, I thought I’d toss my two cents in. (I’m also a former Boy Scout, hell, I’m a former lots of things.)

First off, I find the extreme positions on both sides of this issue ridiculous and counter productive. The NRA fights even the most reasonable efforts to control gun violence and often distorts the facts and endorses positions that are indefensible. I left them when their magazine ran an ad for a Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle that included words to the effect of “This is the perfect gun to use when BATF armoured vehicles are coming up your driveway.” I’m sorry, but advertising a purely military weapon to civilians by touting its potential use against law enforcement is just as disgusting as cop killing rap songs. On the other side, gun prohibitionists, like almost all prohibitionists, are blind to the fact that prohibition creates as many or more problems than it solves. In the case of gun prohibition, there’s no evidence it solves a damn thing. Gun prohibition punishes the innocent, wastes police resources, and means nothing to criminals except more profit.

I’m very happy about this ruling for a number of reasons. The main one being that it clearly and finally establishes the ownership of a weapon in one’s home as a individual right. This clause was put into the Constitution because the British were confiscating colonist’s weapons, and the colonists wanted to make damn sure no government they set up could ever do the same. People are not cattle owned by the government, people are the government, and ultimately they have the right to disarm the government, not vice versa. And note that the Supreme Court also made clear yesterday, while the government can’t prohibit the possession of weapons in one’s home, it can most certainly regulate their use and sale. The second amendment does state a “well regulated militia,” the Constitution’s authors did intend for communities to be able to have reasonable restrictions on gun use. I mean, guns are dangerous for God’s sake!

I’m also happy about this because if we are lucky, this will give impetus to reasonable and workable methods of reducing gun violence in America. Because as even the gun right’s supporters must admit, there is way too much senseless gun violence in the USA. And now that banning guns is off the table, maybe we can all work together on this problem? And in that light here is what I think can be done to become a civilized gun toting nation:

1. Local Background Checks. It should be a no brainer that local authorities should vet gun purchases. None of us wants criminals, the mentally unstable, and people with restraining orders sworn out against them getting guns. And a recent study showed that local background checks reduced homicide and suicide rates by some 25%. I could live with that. Some may object that they don’t trust their local authorities. No problem, they should move to a county where they do trust the local authorities or work to get new authorities in their county. Most of us do respect the local authorities, that’s why we have them.
2. Time limits and gun limits. I’m sorry, but if someone drives up to a rural gun store and wants to buy a trunk full of 9mm handguns…they’re up to no good. A person can only use one gun at a time, so there’s no good reason why someone would want to buy more than one at a time. I’m not sure what the limit should be, but the aforementioned scenario does occur and it needs to be stopped.
3. Gun buyback programs. Anyone anywhere should be encouraged to turn in a gun and get money/food/sports tickets/whatever. The reason these programs are so effective is they tend to mostly collect old, cheap, unsafe guns in the hands of people who don’t want them and know nothing about them. IE the old rusty revolver in Aunt Millie’s top drawer that her husband left her when he died, a gun she neither knows how to use or store safely. Why is it so important to get these guns? Because these are precisely the guns that get stolen and used by criminals…or found by children with tragic result.
4. The media. Sigh. I know it’s complicated, but gun violence is a social and cultural thing. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, in almost every master bedroom there is an assault rifle. And yet Switzerland has an extremely low gun violence rate. The mere availability of guns is only part of the problem, it’s the attitude toward them that has to change. And that’s where the media comes in. There’s not any question that the media plays a great role in the justification and even glorification of gun violence in America. I’m not advocating censorship, I’m advocating people do everything in their power to pressure advertisers and the media not to support/produce shows that glorify gun violence.

Have a great weekend everyone! Practise safe, sane, and responsible gun use!

(The above image is more or less public domain and I think I’m using it legally: This work is free software; you can redistribute it or modify it under the terms of the CeCILL. Credit: Rama. This is a picture taken in a civilized gun toting nation, Switzerland. It’s a guy on his way home from his annual gun qualification test stopping for some smokes and Pepsi. He does have to have a permit to do this, the millions of assault rifles in Swiss homes are owned by people who have received military training with them and qualify for their use every year. Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I bet home invasion is a rare crime indeed in Switzerland.)

]]> http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/the-right-to-bear-arms/feed/ unitedcats http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/ten-american-myths/ http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/ten-american-myths/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:08:39 +0000 unitedcats http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/?p=1183

I suppose it would be more accurate to say ten common myths, but since I’m an American and I see these in various guises in the media, not too mention spouted by my friends and acquaintances, I’m calling it as I see it. Myths may not be the might word either, misconceptions might be more accurate. Though since some of these misconceptions have driven American policy for decades or longer, often a terrible financial and personal cost to the nation, misconception seems too weak a word. With that in mind, maybe delusion or nightmare would be more accurate for some of them. In any event, these are some commonly held beliefs that I think are inaccurate at best, and my reasoning behind why I think so. So here, in no particular order, ten American delusions:

1. Jobs vs Environment. This one always gets me. The reality is it’s jobs vs corporate profits. Logging is a great example, most environmentalists don’t have a problem with logging, they just want it done in an environmentally sensitive way. In fact doing things in an environmentally sensitive way can create jobs, because environmentalists think the environment should be treated as capital, not profit. In any event when some corporate entity claims that some environmental policy will cost jobs, they usually mean it will reduce top end profits. And considering how much richer the rich have gotten the past few decades in America, I don’t really have a problem if top end profits are hurt some.

2. Regulation is Bad. This one is easy. There was a golden era in America where industry was almost completely unregulated. The late nineteenth century. It was a golden age for the ultra rich, the rest of us got screwed. Other recent highlights in deregulation history include the Enron scandal, the Savings and Loan scandal of the nineties, and the current mortgage meltdown. Deregulation is putting the fox in charge of the hen house, it’s not a great idea. I’m not saying that regulation doesn’t sometimes go to far, but when it doesn’t go far enough we all pay the price.

3. Privatization is Good. This one always makes me blink. Let’s see, an organization whose purpose in life is to syphon off profits is going to be able to perform a task more economically than an organization simply charged with performing the task? How’s that again? There’s so many examples where privatization has cost oodles of money compared to the alternative it’s not funny. The contractors (IE mercenaries) we are hiring in Iraq cost VASTLY more than having the Army do it. Yeah, that’s a good idea. And there’s other down sides as well. A privatized school system locally was a complete failure because the corporate owners worked assiduously to get rid of under-performing or (God forbid) special needs students.

4. Colour Blind America. Yes, after the Civil Rights movement the problem has all been fixed, in fact minorities enjoy all sorts of advantages now. I have a friend of Indian birth who recently moved back to Berkeley from Oregon because he got tired of everyone staring at him when he walked into restaurants/stores…and he got real tired of people picking fights with him in bars because they thought he was Mexican. America is still a white man’s country in a million subtle and not so subtle ways, and white men who say otherwise are the among the most pathetic whiners in history.

5. Protesters Lost Viet Nam/We Tied Our Own Hands. I covered this one more or less in my fine and under appreciated post: “We could have won in Vietnam“

6. War Helps the Economy. I was even taught this in school. Yes, in some magical sense blowing things up and building stuff whose only purpose is to destroy things is good for the economy. I’m not exactly sure how this one got so popular, since it seems self evident that ploughing a field or mining coal with a bayonet would be terribly inefficient. And war is definitely not good for the economy of people who are killed or maimed in the war, not to mention those who simply have their homes and livelihood destroyed. One has to wonder just whose economy benefits from war for this to be true, I have an idea though. I leave it to the gentle reader to “follow the money” as it were.

7. Rural Areas are Safe. This one makes me want to scream. A terrible crime happens in some rural area or small town, and people immediately wail that “This sort of this doesn’t happen here.” Aside from the prima facie absurdity of claiming that this sort of thing doesn’t happen…right after it happens…this is basically a poor understanding of statistics. Yes, there are more crimes in cities…because more people live in cities. But, but, but, even statistically cities are more dangerous! Yes, but that’s because cities have “bad areas” aka slums/projects where crime rates are through the roof. If one doesn’t live in one of those, cities are as safe or even safer than rural areas. The East Bay hills for example are practically crime free, except for the occasional burglary and car break-in. I have no rural living friends who can make that claim about their neighbourhoods.

8. Punishment Works. Another slam dunk basically. Scientists showed in the 1920s what humanitarians had known forever, punishment might be very emotionally satisfying to the punisher, but it’s a really bad way to get people to change their behaviour. In fact punishment and threat of punishment is the least effective way to change an organism’s behaviour. Yet almost daily I read some letter to the editor about how if we just make the prisons harsh enough, why, the prisoners will be sure to behave themselves when released for fear of going back! In reality, where I’m stuck co-existing with idiots like this, the more one “punishes” prisoners, the less they will be able to cope with normal society when released. Yeah, that’s a good idea.

9. Torture Works. Yes, torture works just fine. If you torture someone long enough, they will confess to anything and tell you whatever they think you want to hear. Will it be accurate? Probably not. Are there much better and more reliable ways to get accurate information from suspects? Absolutely. Has there ever been a situation in history where torture was the only option to find a ticking time bomb or what not? Outside of movies, I’ve never heard of one. And would torture even work in those cases? Of course not, people have resisted torture for years, if one knew there was a time limit almost anyone could simply keep lying.

10. Prohibition Works. The sad thing about this one is that as a society we realized in the thirties that alcohol prohibition was causing more problems than it fixed. I mean, rum-running armed gangs were shooting each other in the streets! And enormous police resources were being spent fighting these gangs, not to mention rounding up perfectly law abiding citizens whose only crime was to have some booze or wine in their homes. And hell, the law was routinely ignored by tens of millions of Americans who just kept their drinking private. Yet here we are a few generations later completely ignoring an utterly failed drug prohibition policy, locking up millions of Americans, and accomplishing nothing…while heavily armed gangs control entire neighbourhoods. Our grandparents were a lot smarter than us I guess, or at least able to see the writing on the wall. Or the blood on the street.

There’s more than ten of these myths, but this will do for now. And yes, each of my above points have has codicils and exceptions. And I suppose I come off sounding like we live in a vast sea of ignorance. Well, yes. Prove me wrong.

There is now a follow-up post where I answer many of the comments left below: Ten American Myths Revisited.

(Re image above: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation license“. It is an image of the famous Belgian statue Manneken Pis. I selected it to illustrate another American Myth…the “trickle down theory.” When the rich get ever richer it ain’t money that trickles down.)

Zimbabwe. Sigh. OK, Morgan Tsvangirai, the main opposition leader who pulled out of the run-off election there has called for an international force to invade Zimbabwe and ensure fair elections. IE elections where he will likely win. I’ve held off mentioning anything about Zimbabwe since it is so depressing. However, someone calling for an invasion of their homeland can’t be ignored, especially since it hit CNN. So let’s deconstruct this event and shoot for some revisionist analysis, our forte here at Doug’s Darkworld.

So…where the heck is Zimbabwe? It’s in the middle of nowhere in Africa, in wilderness just north of South Africa. It was only colonized in the 1890s, when white settlers were given huge tracts of lowland agricultural land to settle and a government was set up. And I mean, quite literally, bands of white settlers in covered waggons took possession of the finest land while the natives were relegated to the hills. Rhodesia (as it was called then) declared itself a country in 1965, a thoroughly white dominated and run country, and a long bloody insurgency followed. In 1980 the whites basically gave up and Robert Mugabe came into power. The same Robert Mugabe who is running the country today.

And today the opposition leader has called for the UN to use force to ensure a fair election in Zimbabwe. Well, that certainly settles it, if an opposition leader calls for foreign intervention in the name of democracy, clearly a humanitarian intervention is justified. That is what the people who are gung ho to intervene all over the world will say. Sigh. Maybe it’s belabouring the obvious, but if a member of my neighbour’s family invites me to set fire to his house, this would not justify setting fire to his house. Nor would it be an excuse or defence for the consequences of my action. “He told me to do it” doesn’t justify a toddler’s action in a pre-school, it didn’t save the Nuremberg defendants, and it isn’t a justification for sending armies into sovereign countries.

Now of course the case will be made that we are not talking about setting a fire, and maybe a better analogy would be is it justified to me to run over to my neighbour’s yard and help him fight a fire? Of course. But we damn well better be sure there is a fire, and we damn well better know what we’re doing. The current situation in Zimbabwe is vastly more complicated than my simple analogies, which is why we need to err on the side of caution. Which of course is why Tsvangirai’s call for foreign intervention is not in and of itself a justification for foreign intervention.

Moving right along, three points. First of all, Mugabe is not some foreign conquerer who took over Zimbabwe by force, he is a native of Zimbabwe with a large following of fanatical supporters. How large is impossible to say, but dictators require at least some base of support. While a dictator doesn’t have to win elections, it’s not like he can simply ignore popular opinion. If a dictator loses all support, his days become very numbered indeed. My point here is that people often ignore this fact and convince themselves that “no one” supports a dictator or that the people will unilaterally “rejoice” if a foreign army removes the dictator from power. Both are incorrect assumptions in almost all cases.

Secondly, the history of humanitarian interventions has been pretty grim indeed. (In fact a good case can be made that “humanitarian intervention” is an oxymoron.) The USA has invaded Haiti four times in the past century to set things right, and it is still impoverished and undemocratic in the extreme. Somalia is still a mess despite several attempts to “intervene” and fix things. Iraq and Afghanistan are not anywhere near the glowing predictions made before their turn to be humanitized by UN sanctioned armies. In fact a recent study of 20th century humanitarian invasions showed maybe a 33% success rate at best. That’s low odds considering the terrible cost, and especially since some of these humanitarian invasions have spawned human catastrophes of epic scale. Iraq is the worst humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since the partition of Palestine for example.

Lastly, I should point out that having a few local leaders who call for foreign armies is the oldest trick in the book. Almost every conquerer in history has cultivated support among some faction in lands he invades or occupies, it just makes things go so much easier. In fact in almost all cases invaders justify their invasion on humanitarian grounds. Bush’s efforts to democratize Iraq and Afghanistan are not really much different than Alexander the Great’s efforts to spread Greek civilization in the region, it is just the latest in a long bloody history of humanitarian invasions. The Romans, the Crusaders, the British, and others too numerous to mention have justified their conquests on humanartatian grounds. The words change, their meaning doesn’t.

In other words, “humanitarian invasion” is just another euphemism for the same old word, colonialism. Tsvangirai’s call for invasion is part of the problem, not a solution.

(The above image of 19th century Rhodesian settlers is public domain under US copyright law. Credit: Unknown. Imagine, as late as the nineteenth century self styled “settlers” stole land from native peoples on the pretext that the natives weren’t making good use of it. In fact, this is still happening today in some parts of the world! Stay tuned…)

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the rise in gas prices, painful though it may be to some, is actually a good thing from many perspectives. This is because gas prices haven’t really been going to unnatural highs, it’s more accurate to say that they have been unnaturally low for decades and are finally reaching a long overdue correction. In a very real way we’ve been spoilt by low gas prices and have developed some very bad habits as a result. And with any bad habit, the sooner it is dealt with, the easier the cure in the long run.

The first bad habit is driving everywhere. Americans are finally waking up to the fact that driving to the store to get a pack of smokes is ridiculous, especially now that the drive costs more than the smokes. So traffic is measurably down across the country, a nice bonus for people (like me) living in urban areas where congestion on the freeways was a huge problem. It’s like the eighties again, I can head out to the freeway and actually drive where I want to go without sitting in traffic. WooHoo! And of course, less traffic means less air pollution. Less traffic and less air pollution are good things by any standard, and these are a direct and immediate result of rising gas prices. Less pollution also means fewer pollution related health problems. And less driving coupled with more walking and more bicycle riding is also going to lead to an immediate health benefit for millions of people. If people really understood how much health care costs them in the USA through their taxes, they would be even happier to see less driving.

There are also all sorts of indirect ways that the rise in gas prices is going to help. It’s going to encourage a lot of research into alternative energy supplies. From converting biowaste to fuel, to electric cars, to hydrogen cars…there are a lot of technological solutions that have been waiting in the wings for decades because cheap oil made them uneconomical. Now industry and individuals have an incentive to develop these alternatives, and as a general rule that’s good all around. The dominance of gasoline has been like the old “cotton is king” thinking, when forced to diversify people are finding out that they are better off not being enslaved by a single commodity! The very same way the South’s cotton based economy really only benefited the rich while impoverishing the rest is mirrored by gasoline dependency. I don’t think anyone will be dedicating any statues commemorating high gas prices in the near future, but stranger things have happenned.

Another indirect benefit is that we can start building our cities for people again instead of for cars. Bedroom communities have always been silly, now they are both silly and uneconomical. The day of the suburb is numbered, and none too soon. More emphasis on public transit and development that puts people close to work, play, shopping, and other amenities is going to make our cities far more pleasant places to live and work in. Most people I know like to live where they can walk out to get a cup of coffee or buy a quart of milk. It will take awhile, but we may see the return of the neighbourhood grocery store. I could live with that, I find these modern mega grocery stores with whole villages inside them kind of creepy, and I know many of my friends do too.

The kicker is that the higher price of gas is actually going to benefit American manufacturing in many sectors. This is because the cost of shipping, especially across the Pacific, is becoming prohibitive. American concerns can now compete with cheap Chinese goods. The American steel industry is already seeing a renaissance as imports of Chinese steel drop. More manufacturing means more jobs for Americans. By the same token, firms will be relocating manufacturing in Mexico from Southeast Asia. And more factories in Mexico means fewer Mexicans trying to get into the USA. Yes, higher gas prices are going to help with the illegal immigrant problem in the long run. Who knew? Most would agree that’s a god thing.

Shipping by rail is also booming, while trucking suffers. I’m sorry about the truckers losing their livelihood, but they were one of the unnatural industries created by cheap oil, and ultimately we will be better off if they become a shadow of their former self. More products produced locally again means less pollution, and while long haul trucking will suffer, short haul trucking should prosper. And fewer big trucks on the highways will wildly extend the lifetime of the highways, since big trucks do most of the wear and tear on them. Considering the sad state of America’s roads and highways, fewer big trucks will save us all money in the long run.

It’s not going to be easy weaning ourself from our national addiction to cheap gas, but in the long run and in many ways the short run, this is a very good thing for America. I know it’s going to be hard for some people to admit that maybe the “greenies” were right about this, but it’s hard to feel superior at the gas pump in your Canyonero while maxing out a credit card to fill up…next to the smug hippie with the hybrid topping up using his pocket change. Yes, it’s time to stop whining and change our lifestyles.

Of course this is America, so likely we will rush out and elect a president who promises he can “fix” the high price of gas so we can all go back to living in never never land. Then we will be stuck with a liar for a president and high gas prices as well, fun times ahead folks.

(The above image of the Canyonero is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and its use here in no conceivable way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. Arguably the opposite. Credit and copyright: Matt Groening/Fox Network. To listen to the Canyonero song and other fine Simpson’s audio clips click here.)

Another Friday, another week gone. It’s been hot and dry here in Berkeley. And it’s going to get drier. The locals managed to cut back on water use some 4% in May, and we needed to cut back 19% to make it to the fall. So late summer and fall are going to be interesting indeed. Voluntary methods rarely achieve much I am afraid, we’re not exactly a nation of “I’m happy to sacrifice for the common good” types. In fact most Americans are pretty much programmed the opposite: “It’s someone else’s fault, let them make the sacrifices.” How one of the greatest pioneer/do-it-yourself cultures on Earth tuned into the “me first” generation is quite the mystery. Oh well, I’ll let someone else figure it out.

There has been a positive developments in the world this week. Israel has negotiated a cease-fire with Hamas and is negotiating with Syria. It never hurts to negotiate, so this is a good thing. I’ve heard people claim “How can Israel negotiate with people who have sworn to destroy them?” My answer to that is “Well then, they can’t harden their position any more than that, so negotiation can only improve things.” I suspect this is mostly realpolitik emerging else. Most Americans are only dimly aware of it, but the American Empire has crested and our influence is on the wane everywhere. And without infinite American backing, Israel is in a much more vulnerable position and would be best served making peace. So I’m cautiously optimistic about the Palestinian problem, in some ways it was another Cold War relic.

And with the retreat of America, the last Cold War relicss around the world are going to change. Cuba and North Korea would be the other two big ones. Well, NATO, but NATO is no longer a relic. It’s morphed into a cancerous growth that knows no bounds. Damned if I know what’s going to happen with that. Europeans have the most wonderful veneer of civilization, but they are the ones that conquered the world in the name of God and greed…not to mention fighting two of the bloodiest most genocidal wars in history. We just need a new Napoleon or Hitler to get things rolling again. Fun times.

And while on a roll here, a new study has come out claiming that the war deaths in 13 countries since 1955 has been wildly underestimated. According to the study, typically war deaths are two or three times higher than official figures would indicate. Nearly four million dead in Vietnam for example, compared to the usual figure given of about 2 million. Sadly, it’s probably a pretty accurate study. Previous methods for estimating war deaths were petty crude and relied a lot on media reports and government figures. The media is obviously going to miss a lot of deaths, especially the small scale events, and governments generally are highly motivated to undercount and underestimate war deaths. Go figure.

In space exploration news scientists have apparently found ice on Mars. They were hoping to, they expected to, and now they have. No luck yet getting any of it into the lander’s lab for analysis yet, but in time no doubt. In other space news Google has announced a 20 million dollar prize for the first private team to get a rover to the Moon by 2012. Team Italia’s concept rover is pictured above. The rover has to land, travel at least 500 metres, and send back data, images, and video. It is doable, but it’s not going to be easy. Coolness, the era of private space exploration may be upon us. While the teams are private, I do wonder if some big corporate sponsors might get into this. It would seem to make sense, think of the publicity. Corporations are paying millions for the naming rights to stadiums, surely they could afford to bankroll “naming rights” to the Moon.

In a final bit of good news, lest people claim there’s nothing but bad news in Doug’s Darkworld, the two women hikers who went missing in Alaska have been found alive and well. As I explain frequently, Doug’s Darworld isn’t depressing, it’s the world that’s depressing.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image of the Team Italia Moon rover concept is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit, and its use here not only does not harm or interfere with the copyright holder’s use of the image, arguably it benefits it. Credit and copyright: Team Italia/Google Lunar X Prize. If anyone would like to sponsor Doug’s Darkworld to the tune of twenty million, I’ll gladly build a rover and send it to the Moon. Serious enquiries only.)

Unlike oil and water, oil and politics mix so well they can be indistinguishable at times. Now is one of those times. President Bush has proposed relaxing restrictions on off-shore drilling and opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling as a solution the the soaring price of gasoline. Presidential candidate McCain also called for the ban on off-shore drilling to be lifted, a complete departure from his previous position. Gas prices are high, it seems to make sense that drilling for more oil is a solution. Are Bush and McCain simply suggesting an obvious and sensible course of action?

No. There’s two main points that make the “more domestic drilling” proposal suspect. The first is one that should be obvious, but apparently isn’t considering how many people claim we need to drill for domestic oil now because of the rise in the price of gas. If the USA started massive drilling tomorrow both off-shore and in Alaska, and building refineries for the new oil, it would be years or decades before it made any difference in the price of gas. And even then, we would be talking about maybe 5 to 8 cents per gallon. This isn’t even particularly debatable, no reputable source or study says anything else. The bottom line is that there really isn’t all that much oil left untapped in the USA, so even if fully exploited it simply isn’t going to increase the supply much. Drilling for domestic oil isn’t going to make $4 a gallon gas go away.

So why propose it as a solution to the price of gasoline? Politics 101 illustrated, when people are upset, propose solutions that benefit your corporate sponsors while paying lip service to solving the problem. The oil companies would profit immensely by drilling in these areas, and the environmental costs would be passed on to the USA taxpayer. In other words, Bush and McCain’s calls for more drilling is a cynically taking advantage of American’s gas pump pains to agitate for what their corporate donors want. And please note I’m not saying that drilling in these regions is out of the question, a case can be made for further exploitation of our domestic oil reserves. It would reduce our dependence on foreign oil some, and it would move some manufacturing jobs back to the USA. Such decisions need to be made on the basis of realistic factors though and the long term benefits and risks weighed carefully, not simply as a knee-jerk politically expedient reaction to the rise in gas prices.

I’ve also been amazed by “time travel” arguments that are being used in some quarters. Some people, cognisant of the fact that it will take decades for more drilling to drop prices, are now making the claim that “if only the liberals/Democrats” hadn’t stopped domestic oil exploration decades ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. *blinks rapidly* There are at least three fatal flaws in this line of argument. The first is that even in the best case scenario the price would only be a few cents per gallon lower than it is now, so this would only make a marginal change in the current situation. Secondly, it simply assumes that such drilling wouldn’t come with costly environmental damage, after Exxon Valdez hardly a slam-dunk assumption. Thirdly, and most ridiculously, if we are going to play “what if” time travel games, what if Reagan hadn’t gutted fuel economy standards and research into alternate energy sources? A much stronger case can be made that this would have done far more to prevent the current situation. At the very least millions of Americans wouldn’t be stuck with gas guzzling SUVs.

It’s sad to see politicians playing their games no matter what, and Bush and McCain’s call for more drilling shows they are indeed politicians to the bone, not leaders. The jury is still out on Obama, but so far his response to McCain hits the mark nicely: “His decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades,” If Obama sticks to his guns here my opinion of him will go up.

As a final absurd note to this whole gas price “crisis,” a strong case can be made that the rise in the price of oil is a good thing. It’s helping the American steel industry for example. There’s less traffic every day, that’s a big plus in my book. More on this line of thinking to follow.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post. And the image is so common that a claim can be made that it is iconic, and it might very well be public domain. Credit: Unknown. I chose it because it illustrates that oil and the environment are also inextricably interwoven, though not necessarily incompatible.)

I hear a lot of griping these days about the price of gas, often accompanied by insistence that our leaders should “do something” about the problem. Since it’s our leaders who got us into this situation in the first place, that’s a hell of a thing to expect them to do. The oil companies should just return their earnings and the politicians who have accepted millions in oil company money should just give it back? I don’t think so. The salad days are over, the post World War Two unparallelled boom of oil wealth, cheap gas, and store shelves full of cheap food and goods is coming to a close. I mean really, how long did people think that cutting taxes, unlimited government/consumer credit, and unlimited government/consumer spending could last? Not to mention the upward transfer of wealth that has been a hallmark of the USA since the Bush/Reagan administration?

Fortunately, here at Doug’s Darkworld, something is being done. Yes, there is something that can be done about gasoline that costs almost as much per gallon as Perrier. In fact a lot of things that can be done, some passive and some active. And they all involve doing it ourselves instead of whining for the government to bail us out. Our grandparents (or great grandparents for the whippersnappers) managed to have good lives without cheap gas and cheap goods. They did it by being careful and frugal. Granted this is going to be a tough transition for those who think a swipe of a credit card painlessly solves all of life’s problem’s and meets all of our needs. Americans were once a tough proud people, we can do it again if we have to.

And in that spirit, here is how to use less gas. Some of these methods are passive, some of them require changing habits, all of them added up can yield significant increases in fuel economy. The only codicil here is use common sense, I’m not suggesting turning off your engine while in traffic or anything like that, and some of these suggestions will involve a mechanic if one isn’t a big do-it-yourselfer. Some of them may not be appropriate to every vehicle, again, use common sense. Here, gleaned from hypermilers and other sources, is how to stretch the gas dollar:

1. Keep the vehicle tuned and in good running condition. Of course people should be doing this anyhow since a car is a major investment and keeping it in good running order will extend its lifetime geatly, now there’s even more reason to stop putting off that tune up.
2. Inflate the tires to the maximum or even a few pounds beyond. A bumpier ride is a small price to pay for a significant increase in mileage.
3. Idling is deadly. The single largest factor that lowers gas mileage is running the engine while the car is stationery…getting zero mpg lowers average mileage very fast. And this is just a matter of leaning new habits. Don’t turn the car on until everyone is buckled in, traffic is clear, and it’s safe to proceed. Turn the car off the second it is safely parked and stopped. Park the car and walk into MacDonald’s instead of sitting in the drive thru line. Etc.
4. Weight is bad. Every extra pound carted around hurts mileage. Don’t carry around a bunch of junk in the trunk or back seat. Pull out the floor mats. Leave the spare windshield washer fluid in the garage, not the trunk. Remove roof racks or roof cargo carriers. In older cars, if one can live without an air conditioner, it may be possible to have a mechanic remove the air conditioning system. Go on a diet.
5. Speed kills…mileage. Most cars get their best mileage right after they shift into high gear, typically around 40-50 mph. So drive as slow as is safely possible on the freeway and significant gas savings will result.
6. Run the vehicle on the lowest viscosity oil it can safely use, and keep the oil level near the bottom of the normal range.
7. Drive carefully. Every time the brake or gas pedal is hit unnecessarily hurts mileage. Look ahead and ease off on the throttle if a light or stop sign is coming up. Coast wherever safely possible. (Do not turn the engine off and coast in traffic.) Easy does it basically.
8. Use regular fuel if at all possible, most modern cars run just fine on it. If there is no engine ping while using regular and your car manual says you can use regular…use regular.
9. Some vehicles have a power setting switch, a Lexus I drive does for example. In one position the car has more power, in the other it gets better mileage. If one has always wondered what some switch or setting does on the dashboard, now is the time to get out the manual and figure it out. In the same vein, some cars actually display the current mpg on the dash, pay attention to it.
10. And lastly, drive less. Car pool. Get a bicycle. Do all of the errands in one fell swoop instead of several trips.

I know, some of these are pretty obvious, but for the sake of completeness I wanted to cover all the bases. And by the way, I know a lot of people are using this situation to blame the liberals…but let’s be real. It was the Reagan administration that gutted efforts to mandate fuel economy standards and cancelled other initiatives to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, not the liberals. Sheesh.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and it is central to illustrating the post. I have no clue who to attribute it to, if anyone knows I will properly credit it. “President Bush said I wish I could wave a magic wand and lower gas prices. And then he said I wish I could wave a magic wand and bring the troops home. And he said I wish I could wave a magic wand and fix health care. And I was thinking this guy waves his wand more than Clinton.” –David Letterman That bon mot and others can be read here. Drive safe everyone.)

An update on what’s going on in the three new colonies set up by the Bush administration in his efforts to make the world a better place. (Of course making the world a better place means installing pro-American administrations in resource rich areas of the world.) I am of course talking about Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. And by colonies and colonial wars, I mean just that. In all three cases Bush decreed that the locals had no right to run their own affairs, and with the blessing of the UN had them invaded and occupied. And of course after the “objectionable” governments were removed from power, western approved “governments” were set up. This is just plain old fashioned colonialism, dressed up a bit in modern propaganda. Us civilized westerners are showing those poor brown people how to run their countries for their own good.

There’s many amazing things about this situation to rant about The first is the media’s almost complete cooperation in this process. In all three cases the media routinely uses colonial propaganda if it were describing fact. In all cases the original local governments of these countries are referred to as “taking over” their nations, as if they were some sort of hostile invading force. This is quite literally akin to saying George Washington “took over” the United States. Most would find fault with that statement, but have no problem seeing the Taliban or the Islamic Courts or Saddam portrayed as hostile malevolent conquerers. Now granted I am not saying Saddam was a Washington, far from it, but I am saying that in all three cases the country in question was more or less unified with the support of large segments of the population…something that can’t be claimed about any of our subsequent “liberated” governments.

And as an aside, for those who would make the point about the American Revolution being about human rights and democracy…it wasn’t exactly a model democracy for the millions of slaves whose sub human status was written right into the US Constitution. And hundreds of thousands of Americans whose only crime was supporting their legal King, had everything they owned confiscated and were run out of the country. Many were simply lynched. More on the dark side of the American Revolution in a subsequent post, and on the positive side of it as well. The main point here is that George Washington’s United States was a legitimate government because it had the support of the lion’s share of the local population…a legitimacy we deny in the case of Saddam’s Baath party, the Taliban, and the Islamic Courts.

In fact the USA has gone so far now as to officially designate which of the world’s governments are legitimate or not, as if we have some God-like power to translate our vision into reality. The reality is that for the people of the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia…the American and American sponsored liberating armies are regarded about as highly as the typical American colonist regarded the Redcoats. Which of course explains why insurgencies are raging in all three lands. And which of course leads to the quick update the title promised. Hopefully in a more accurate way than what little appears about these tragic lands in the news:

Iraq: Well, Iraq is complicated, as I have said before. The insurgency is at a low ebb, for a number of reasons, the least of which is that the surge is working or that we are “winning.” In fact our chosen government of Iraq is more aligned with Iran now than the USA, has refused to sign a long term agreement with us, and may even ask us to leave. In any event our UN mandate to be in Iraq expires at the end of the year, so it’s anyone’s guess what will happen until then. Most factions are hunkering down to see what happens, Iraq is still a terribly fractured and violent land by any accounting. It should also be pointed out that the violence is down because most of Iraq’s neighbourhoods have now been ethnically cleansed. That’s victory?

Afghanistan: Not good. In fact the monthly casualties in Afghanistan just exceeded those of Iraq for the first time. The Taliban never really went away, and are more or less waiting in the shadows to step forward when the coast is clear. They recently “took over” a number of villages near Khandalar, their historic stronghold, for example. What the media invariably fails to mention is that the Taliban “taking over” of a village is almost always bloodless and even welcomed by the locals. Since of course the Taliban fighters and officials are locals. Yet when we “liberate” a village from the Taliban, it involves air strikes, artillery, and lots of dead locals. Again, something people should think about more, because the implications are hard to weasel-word out of. Which is why it’s never mentioned in the media.

Somalia: The forgotten bastard child in Bush’s colonial triple play. In fact Somalia is so low on our priority list that we didn’t even “liberate” it ourselves, we hired an army of black soldiers to do the dirty work. Again, isn’t that delicious in a historical ironical sort of way? The Confederates would be proud…the Union hiring a black army to subjugate an even lesser regarded people, Arabs. Are Arabs are the new niggers?

To recap, the Islamic Courts, a local politcal movement in Somalia, quickly and almost bloodlessly assumed control over much of Somalia including the capitol Mogadishu a few years back. They established peace and law and order for the first time in a decade or more, forcing local warlords to stand down from their endless internecine clan wars. The west’s (Bush’s) response was to sponsor an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install the UN approved “transitional” government. The result has been predictable, the Ethiopians are bogged down in a bloody insurgency. And almost none of this makes the western news.

Except here. Tomorrow, the American Revolution…the good, the bad, and the ugly.

(The above image of Boer troops is public domain under US copyright law. I chose it because the British suppression of the Boers is little different than the USA’s current colonial wars. Plus it’s another cool old photo, click here to see the full size version.)

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