In the reexamination of the German history surrounding the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler (and help promote the new Tom Cruise movie,) I find there is a curious spin to enhance the virtue, to sanctify, the motives for eliminating the Fuhrer. What is submerged or eliminated in examining the motives of von Stauffenberg and the other conspirators is that they were all serving senior army officers whose only concern was to secure an "honorable" and less harsh conclusion to W.W.II than the one they anticipated since they saw the end in sight and Hitler as unrelenting. They were not repudiating history of German ambitions since the 1930's, not rejecting Hitler's war of conquest and territorial expansion, not rejecting the German sense of inherent superiority, the abuses of their occupation nor brutality of the "final solution ."
Rather, they were motivated to soften the Allies insistence on unconditional surrender and secure a "soft landing" for the German state. German "honor" was to be preserved - their concern with humanity but recently resurrected by the results of Stalingrad rather than some spiritual awaking. As long as nationalism trumps humanity it is still lipstick on a pig.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sex and Intelligent Design
An examination of the biology and sexual equipment of mammals is at least some indication of the existence of intelligent design, the fact that some careful consideration went into the design and function of the relevant apparatus. In essence, the penis is a delivery system, primarily intended to transport sperm from the factory in the testes through the vagina to the assembly point in the uterus. This, in its simplest form is how procreation occurs, how babies are made. But nature did not leave this process to random encounter, NO ! By intelligent design, motivation and urgency were added to the process to insure an insistence to deliver and an enthusiastic acceptance of receipt by the clever (and intelligently designed) inclusion of a system of neurologic and biochemical processes intended to add pleasure and excitement to the process, “hard wiring” as it were, the mammals to pursue and participate (with repetition when possible) in the urgent process of procreation. Thus, witness the hand of the creator at work, intelligently designing.
The Economy
The root cause of our current economic disaster is very rich people continually getting much richer at the expense of nearly everyone else. While some of this is attributable to recognizing and exploiting legitimate opportunities, much is a result of stacking the deck. Years of deregulation crippled government oversight while Congress rewarded the rich with generous tax cuts while the deficit and the debt soared. Hedge funds, totally unregulated leveraged markets providing astronomic profits for their investors. Wall streeters and CEO's rewarded themselves with multimillion salaries and bonuses while the rest of us lost ground. Privatizing and the Iraq war created opportunities for lavishing government funds on favored private entities, all accomplished under the aegis of the Republican Congress and the Bush White house.
In crisis mode, billions were lavished on Wall Street and the banks, without oversight or accountability. Now however, with a Democratic President about to be sworn in and Republican power reduced to threats of filibuster in the Senate, the Neocons, led by Senator McConnell, have morphed into champions of fiscal responsibility and transparency, questioning every Democratic program to repair the economy and threatening scorched earth (unless some advantages for the wealthy are sandwiched into the proposal. )
Disowning their share of the responsibility for our financial morass, they now stand proudly as the rear guard of fiscal responsibility, the thin red line (pardon the color) dedicated to saving the country from dangerous liberal excesses likely in their attempts to repair the economy. You may laugh if it feels appropriate.
In crisis mode, billions were lavished on Wall Street and the banks, without oversight or accountability. Now however, with a Democratic President about to be sworn in and Republican power reduced to threats of filibuster in the Senate, the Neocons, led by Senator McConnell, have morphed into champions of fiscal responsibility and transparency, questioning every Democratic program to repair the economy and threatening scorched earth (unless some advantages for the wealthy are sandwiched into the proposal. )
Disowning their share of the responsibility for our financial morass, they now stand proudly as the rear guard of fiscal responsibility, the thin red line (pardon the color) dedicated to saving the country from dangerous liberal excesses likely in their attempts to repair the economy. You may laugh if it feels appropriate.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Second Hand Parachutes
The conflict between freedom and benign governmental protectionism on occasion meet in strange ways.
In 1998, a group of base jumpers (people who parachute from tall buildings, bridges and other tall stationary objects) were protesting a National Parks Service prohibition which proscribed parachuting from El Capitan, a particularly tall rock in Yosemite National Park. Aware that violators would have their parachutes confiscated, one particularly resourceful jumper, a lady named Jan Davis, borrowed a used, second hand parachute so that her new, state of the art canopy would not be taken. Jumping in violation of the prohibition, the borrowed chute failed to deploy and Ms. Davis was killed but her pricey new parachute was spared being confiscated.
After years of campaigning and lobbying Florida’s motorcyclists were able to secure a repeal of a mandatory helmet law. Which now only mandates helmet- wearing for those under 21 years of age or persons with less than $10,000 in medical insurance. The rest are free to ride with the wind in their hair and concuss themselves to their hearts content.
On the other hand there are limits. On one occasion a potential suicide in Key West was threatening to blow his brains out and was holding a pistol to his head. A police swat team was summoned and after unsuccessfully trying to talk the man to a more reasonable position, shot him dead. After all there are some aspects of self-destructive behavior that government simply cannot condone or tolerate. Life is a cabaret, old chum !
In 1998, a group of base jumpers (people who parachute from tall buildings, bridges and other tall stationary objects) were protesting a National Parks Service prohibition which proscribed parachuting from El Capitan, a particularly tall rock in Yosemite National Park. Aware that violators would have their parachutes confiscated, one particularly resourceful jumper, a lady named Jan Davis, borrowed a used, second hand parachute so that her new, state of the art canopy would not be taken. Jumping in violation of the prohibition, the borrowed chute failed to deploy and Ms. Davis was killed but her pricey new parachute was spared being confiscated.
After years of campaigning and lobbying Florida’s motorcyclists were able to secure a repeal of a mandatory helmet law. Which now only mandates helmet- wearing for those under 21 years of age or persons with less than $10,000 in medical insurance. The rest are free to ride with the wind in their hair and concuss themselves to their hearts content.
On the other hand there are limits. On one occasion a potential suicide in Key West was threatening to blow his brains out and was holding a pistol to his head. A police swat team was summoned and after unsuccessfully trying to talk the man to a more reasonable position, shot him dead. After all there are some aspects of self-destructive behavior that government simply cannot condone or tolerate. Life is a cabaret, old chum !
War and Winning
Recent observations concerning whether we lost or won a given war suggest that we have begun to perceive war and its consequences by the same standards that apply to sporting events. The score board is the final arbiter of results and there must be a winner and a loser. Contests which formerly could end in a tie are now resolved by overtime, shoot outs, or extra innings in order to achieve the necessary determination.
War is not a contest which lends itself to the scoreboard mentality although there have been times in conflicts where something as mundane as the “body count”, the number of persons killed in a given engagement is the measure. Although the massive slaughter achieved in specific battles, from our own Civil War through World War I should have persuaded the experts as to the unreliability of this statistic as a true measure of winning or losing, this mentality persisted into the Vietnam War, ignoring the fact that disproportionate size of forces and a tendency to exaggerate reporting to enhance resupply distorted the importance and accuracy of these numbers. Although the wiser heads, like Clauwitz had long ago sagely observed that war was the pursuit of those same objectives which a nation had sought through diplomatic means, some historians and politicians still focus on the extent of destruction and the numbers of the dead.
I was recently told by an ex-military man that we lost the Korean War because the termination of hostilities was ended by a cease fire. When I pointed out that the war began by an invasion of South Korea by North Korea and that at the time of the cease fire South Korea was free of the invader, he shrugged, a symbolic so-what ? Yet the evil genie was back in the bottle, South Korea now prospers and there has been no active combat since 1953. Despite the fact that we maintain a token force in South Korea still and North Korea, despite its standing army, is a state in perpetual difficulty, this old soldier was incapable of conceding that we had achieved our initial objective of expelling the invader and had therefore won, his scoreboard mentality demanded more as evidence of successful termination.
Next, he asserted that we had lost in Vietnam. Our entry into war in Vietnam had more complicated motives; assisting France in keeping its colony, avenging an attack on our ships (which proved untrue) and preventing the domino theory from becoming a reality, the then prevailing view that if Vietnam became totally communist and within the domination of the Soviet Union and Red China, then all of Southeast Asia, would fall; Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, the lot. Yet although we abandoned our participation and permitted the regime in the South to fall, the “ parade of the horribles” never occurred. Communist Vietnam is essentially independent, neither Russia nor China had any particular sway and the rest of Southeast Asia is not part of any monolithic communist entente yet we lament a “war” lost.
Now viewing our entanglement in Iraq; a war we entered to protect the U.S. from Saddam’s WMD, or to extinguish the evils of his oppressive regime, or more recently to establish an outpost of democracy in the region, even with the perpetual moving of the goal posts, ( the definition and redefinition of winning ) the “experts” harbor a secret view that there must be a clear scoreboard result.
Logic and history demonstrate that when the initial objectives for entering into a war has been achieved; that this, Q.E.D. is a victory, a win. Contemporary conflicts have become too complicated, too multi-issued to be judged by the standards of the playing field and we would all be better off if our politicians and pundits would learn to read the message of history more thoughtfully.
War is not a contest which lends itself to the scoreboard mentality although there have been times in conflicts where something as mundane as the “body count”, the number of persons killed in a given engagement is the measure. Although the massive slaughter achieved in specific battles, from our own Civil War through World War I should have persuaded the experts as to the unreliability of this statistic as a true measure of winning or losing, this mentality persisted into the Vietnam War, ignoring the fact that disproportionate size of forces and a tendency to exaggerate reporting to enhance resupply distorted the importance and accuracy of these numbers. Although the wiser heads, like Clauwitz had long ago sagely observed that war was the pursuit of those same objectives which a nation had sought through diplomatic means, some historians and politicians still focus on the extent of destruction and the numbers of the dead.
I was recently told by an ex-military man that we lost the Korean War because the termination of hostilities was ended by a cease fire. When I pointed out that the war began by an invasion of South Korea by North Korea and that at the time of the cease fire South Korea was free of the invader, he shrugged, a symbolic so-what ? Yet the evil genie was back in the bottle, South Korea now prospers and there has been no active combat since 1953. Despite the fact that we maintain a token force in South Korea still and North Korea, despite its standing army, is a state in perpetual difficulty, this old soldier was incapable of conceding that we had achieved our initial objective of expelling the invader and had therefore won, his scoreboard mentality demanded more as evidence of successful termination.
Next, he asserted that we had lost in Vietnam. Our entry into war in Vietnam had more complicated motives; assisting France in keeping its colony, avenging an attack on our ships (which proved untrue) and preventing the domino theory from becoming a reality, the then prevailing view that if Vietnam became totally communist and within the domination of the Soviet Union and Red China, then all of Southeast Asia, would fall; Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, the lot. Yet although we abandoned our participation and permitted the regime in the South to fall, the “ parade of the horribles” never occurred. Communist Vietnam is essentially independent, neither Russia nor China had any particular sway and the rest of Southeast Asia is not part of any monolithic communist entente yet we lament a “war” lost.
Now viewing our entanglement in Iraq; a war we entered to protect the U.S. from Saddam’s WMD, or to extinguish the evils of his oppressive regime, or more recently to establish an outpost of democracy in the region, even with the perpetual moving of the goal posts, ( the definition and redefinition of winning ) the “experts” harbor a secret view that there must be a clear scoreboard result.
Logic and history demonstrate that when the initial objectives for entering into a war has been achieved; that this, Q.E.D. is a victory, a win. Contemporary conflicts have become too complicated, too multi-issued to be judged by the standards of the playing field and we would all be better off if our politicians and pundits would learn to read the message of history more thoughtfully.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Cuban Americans - Isn’t it Time ?
It must be apparent that after 50 years of the embargo that you have only succeeded in inflicting poverty and pain on several generations of the poor people of Cuba. The Castro brothers have never missed a meal yet the vengeful attitude generated by the failure of the Bay of Pigs continued to be the core philosophy behind our economic embargo which only punishes people born long after 1958 and the fall of the Batista regime. Representatives Ros-Lehtnen and the Balart brothers have labored to inflict these policies, not with any real hope of bringing down the Castros, but rather due to a refusal to recognize that it is over, that Cuba would be a happier place, all eleven million of its citizens, if the revenge and punishment were abandoned. The irrepressible, bouncy, spirit of the Cuban people, the “snap” remains, despite the grinding poverty and the difficulty of the day to day life. The music in the Cuban soul, the warmth of the Cuban smile is still very present in today’s Havana.
Meanwhile the Cuban American has embraced American citizenship and participated in this country’s society for 50 years and prospered. Some years ago I had a young man of Cuban descent, who had never been to Cuba, but shared the poison of the émigrés, discuss with me his family’s house in the Miramar district of Havana. He said he would hope to live there one day and when I asked him what about the people who had lived there since his family left in 1960 ? HIs answer was “They can go back to being servants like they used to be.” If this is the purpose of the embargo, to turn back the clocks to the Batista era, where the exploitation of the poor was customary and accepted, then it is time to recognize that it is over, that time has long passed.
For better or worse, the Cuba is a different place, populated by poor but proud people who accept their hardship, who smile and sing and dance. They deserve better. It is now their Cuba, the Cuban-American is a hyphenated American like so many of the rest of us. Stop punishing the people of a country which you left years ago. You may share a language, customs and even a history but the reality is Cuban-Americans are now Americans, and no longer Cuban, and old animosities should not be visited on the next and succeeding generations.
The United States has closed the book on it’s loses in Korea and Vietnam. The veterans of those eras accept the fact that the world changes and old animosities must eventually be put in the past. We build bridges and build new understanding. We now have both diplomatic relations and normalized trade with both of those countries.
It is time for the Cuban-American community to come to the same realization and stop punishing the children and grandchildren of those who remained, when you left . It is their Cuba, they have paid for it with 50 years of suffering and hardship. The Castros will soon be gone and you should ask for forgiveness from those innocents that you have inflicted such cruelty upon for so many years. End the embargo.
Meanwhile the Cuban American has embraced American citizenship and participated in this country’s society for 50 years and prospered. Some years ago I had a young man of Cuban descent, who had never been to Cuba, but shared the poison of the émigrés, discuss with me his family’s house in the Miramar district of Havana. He said he would hope to live there one day and when I asked him what about the people who had lived there since his family left in 1960 ? HIs answer was “They can go back to being servants like they used to be.” If this is the purpose of the embargo, to turn back the clocks to the Batista era, where the exploitation of the poor was customary and accepted, then it is time to recognize that it is over, that time has long passed.
For better or worse, the Cuba is a different place, populated by poor but proud people who accept their hardship, who smile and sing and dance. They deserve better. It is now their Cuba, the Cuban-American is a hyphenated American like so many of the rest of us. Stop punishing the people of a country which you left years ago. You may share a language, customs and even a history but the reality is Cuban-Americans are now Americans, and no longer Cuban, and old animosities should not be visited on the next and succeeding generations.
The United States has closed the book on it’s loses in Korea and Vietnam. The veterans of those eras accept the fact that the world changes and old animosities must eventually be put in the past. We build bridges and build new understanding. We now have both diplomatic relations and normalized trade with both of those countries.
It is time for the Cuban-American community to come to the same realization and stop punishing the children and grandchildren of those who remained, when you left . It is their Cuba, they have paid for it with 50 years of suffering and hardship. The Castros will soon be gone and you should ask for forgiveness from those innocents that you have inflicted such cruelty upon for so many years. End the embargo.
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