Newsrack weekend stuff
Maddie and I are in Oak Ridge now, visiting with relatives from Germany. Blogging will be sparse through the weekend.

In the meantime, check out ...

Marstonalia, especially a post on Tom DeLay:

...it would be hard to sustain the argument that Democrats in the Texas legislature took an oath to uphold the Constitution as Republicans understand it and not as Democrats understand it. Still, I don't think it's a stretch to see Delay as advancing genuine constitutional arguments here. They might not hold up in court -- unless the Republicans are able to restructure the judiciary, that is!

Off the Kuff, for all the latest Texas redistricting news -- and the mind-boggling case of the Baylor basketball coach who tried to get players to say a murdered teammate was a drug dealer. It's long since gotten to where collegiate sports seem so phony and so hypocritical that maybe I should just watch pro sports, if at all.

Southknoxbubba is all over the Knoxville, Tennessee mayor's race, Ashcroft, and more.

Speaking of Rocky Top, please check out the Rocky Top Brigade entries in my "blogroll" to the left. Three random "Rocky Top Brigade" blogs pop up each time you refresh the page; they're all worth a visit, it's always interesting to see what I find.
UPDATE, 8/26: the latest Volunteer Tailgate Party is at "damn foreigner." Sorry for the late mention.

It's been really nice meeting Brett and Tony Adragna a few times over the past several weeks; at Old Ebbitt we were shouting 'cross the barstools. Tony seems surer than I am that Al Qaeda was behind the Baghdad UN HQ bombing. But driving out the UN, if that were to succeed, would benefit die-hard Baathists and, I suppose, terrorist ideologues alike: the US would have even less help than we do now.

PS: Belated web-congratulations for your appearance on C-SPAN, Tony and Will!

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:57:00 PM -- |    

 
Bully science
Via kaisernetwork.org:

The CDC today will conduct an investigation into whether Advocates for Youth misused federally funded grants for lobbying efforts, marking the third governmental review this year of the group, which has called the audits a political effort to impose "censorship," the Washington Post reports. [...]

... Advocates for Youth spokesperson Bill Barker said the group has received CDC grants for 15 years "without any requests for reviews or audits," yet the group has been audited three times in the past year. "Advocates is concerned that it appears that the selective and political use of these audits is to intimidate organizations such as ours that support comprehensive sex education," he said, adding, "They want to impose a kind of censorship." In addition, Barker said the group "cooperated fully" in the past two reviews and that investigators were "satisfied there were no problems," the Post reports. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Friday sent a letter to Thompson protesting the audits, which he called "politically motivated," according to the Post (Washington Post, 8/16).

Given that "lifeandliberty.gov" website of Ashcroft's over at Justice, maybe he should be audited for misusing federal funds for lobbying efforts, too. (Via Marstonalia).

There's an aggressive effort to intimidate public health research and programming organizations out of even mentioning approaches other than "abstinence only" for preventing HIV transmission among young people.

Yet what if "abstinence only" simply can't work in a country like, say, Uganda*, even for young people? Girls in that country (and elsewhere in Africa) are often forced to choose between submitting to marrying or servicing a "sugar daddy" -- and his unknown viral load -- for the pittance they need to get an education, or staying celibate, poor, and a drain on their own family's resources. Not all of them will make the choice ordained for them by right-wing zealots in this country.

Does pointing that out constitute "lobbying"? Should a public health organization have to put up with thrice-annual inquisitions, wonder yet again whether its accountants and officers have finally slipped up somehow, bite their tongues and self-censor their reports just to ensure compliance with lobbying rules?

Waxman and others are right: this is harassment. It's shameful, especially for a once-respected organization like the CDC to participate in it. It is ultimately going to cost lives, as public health organizations are forced to slow the pace and diminish the scope of their HIV prevention planning and activities to avoid risking financial ruin.

It's your tax dollars at work.


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* Uganda is where the famous but often misunderstood "ABC" approach -- abstinence/be faithful/condoms -- was developed and used with great success. ABC is basically a stripped-down way to cover all the bases in preventing HIV transmission in a sexually active population; it's what Uganda could do, and it did it. As I've written before, "ABC" is now in danger of being whittled down to "AB" by Bush administration foreign aid policies.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:49:00 AM -- |    

 
15 years worth of deforestation in Bolivia

These images from 1986 and 2001 are for an area of tropical dry forest lying east of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Since the mid-1980s, the resettlement of people from the Altiplano (the Andean high plains) and a large agricultural development effort (the Tierras Baja project) has lead to this area’s deforestation. Soybean production began in earnest in the early 1970s following a substantial increase in the crop’s world price. The pie or radial patterned fields are part of the San Javier resettlement scheme. At the center of each unit is a small community that includes a church, bar/café, school, and soccer field. The rectangular, light colored areas are fields of soybeans cultivated for export, mostly funded by foreign loans. The dark strips running through the fields are windbreaks, which are advantageous because the soils in this area are fine and prone to wind erosion. ...

Click through to check out the side-by-side before and after photos, via NASA Earth Observatory.

Yes, it's just one little piece of the world, and yes, it's also "15 years worth of agricultural and community development in Bolivia." But the photos are still sobering. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:33:00 AM -- |    

 
Can you hear me now?
Following on the "fair and balanced" nonsense by Fox, Brett Marston is on a anti-trademark-abuse crusade, and came across a new case by Verizon, the phone company with the fairly famous "Can you hear me now?" advertising schtick. They're in the middle of a looming labor dispute with the Communications Workers Union (CWU), who had been using "Can you hear me now?" as a rallying cry in an antilayoff campaign last year -- a nice touch, until a November lawsuit convinced them to agree not to use the phrase.

Now, according to the New York Times,

Verizon Wireless, the cellphone company, in which Verizon holds a majority stake, asserted in court papers filed late on Monday that union officials violated the company's trademark by using the "Can you hear me now?" phrase last week during a conference call with journalists. In turn, the Communications Workers of America, one of the two unions representing Verizon workers, filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday, accusing two Verizon executives of violating federal wiretap rules by listening to the conference call.

The original lawsuit is still pending, but a December interim agreement stipulated that the CWU wouldn't use the phrase unless it gave 30 days notice. CWU quite reasonably believed that a private conference call was not part of that deal.

So what we have is Verizon compounding a stupid, petty, frivolous November 2002 lawsuit with a stupid, petty, frivolous August 2003 lawsuit discerning nonexistent violations of an agreement that the CWU should not have had to make. As Brett writes:

If these kinds of suits have any merit to them, then they bespeak a serious problem with trademark law. If they have no merit, then they're frivolous attempts by corporations to put financial pressure on their critics -- in other words, a grave misuse of the legal system.

Republican abuses of power and process (the Texas redistricting fight, the FAA and AMICC involvement in that state political dispute, arguably the California recall, Florida 2000, Westar, RAGA) plus corporate abuses of power (Enron, Fox, Verizon) could turn into a gathering political storm.

At least, I think it ought to. Consistently widen the attack from Bush to Bush/DeLay/Enron/Fox, and you've got a campaign that reminds Americans that whatever security gains there have been under the Bush presidency, they've come with heaping portions of bruising, bullying, undemocratic behavior by the Bush administration, the Republican leadership, and their financial and media supporters.





... posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:11:00 AM -- |    

 

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |    

 
More on Article 87a!
Thanks to a reader's comment, I had a look at a Die Zeit article by Robert Leicht, Expedition to No Man's Land: Why a war powers act for the Bundeswehr is long overdue. It is good background for me about Article 87a of the German constitution, which governs deployment of the German military, or "Bundeswehr," as I mentioned below.

I'll try to summarize it here as accurately as I can. In 1994, the German Supreme Court at Karlsruhe handed down a 4-4 decision in a case concerning deployment of German AWACS planes which thereby did not strike down German participation in expanded NATO activities -- despite the lack of formal ratification by the German Bundestag (parliament) of what was arguably a de facto treaty change.

At the same time, the 4-4 decision apparently sufficed to set new principles for future military deployments. Either the Bundestag was to ratify concrete and detailed rules of deployment in treaties, or the deployment itself would have to be ratified in some detail. The principle of a "parliamentary army" -- laid out for the first time in this decision -- was that "parliament was to give its constitutive approval, not just a simple blessing of an [executive] government decision.". The German Supreme Court then invited the Bundestag to formulate the details of a war powers act meeting these criteria.

Which the Bundestag has thus far failed to do. As Leicht points out, the Afghanistan deployment showed how hard the job was:

Should one call parliament out of recess if one suddenly needs five reconnaissance tanks somewhere instead of six? On the other hand: how simplified may the resolution be, without becoming vulnerable to the criticism that one was trying to defang parliamentary control with a bunch of boilerplate?

Good questions, of course -- and ones Germany has not needed to solve until now. On August 8, the center-right FDP party brought suit to force further clarification of the need for an "Entsendegesetz." From the party's web site:

Party chief Guido Westerwelle declared that the German Supreme Court must have the chance to confirm that the Bundeswehr would remain a parliamentary army and not a government one. [...]

The head of the FDP Bundestag delegation, Wolfgang Gerhardt, explained in a dpa interview on Friday, that the FDP would have preferred a political solution. "But the hesitant behavior" of the other parliamentary parties had forced the FDP to take this measure. While there had been assents by the other parties to pass a war powers act, the "political will of the other parties to come to a consensus about a war powers act has become unrecognizable." [...]

Especially in view of the new debate about expanding the Afghanistan deployment of the Bundeswehr [one saw] "how important a clear legal basis in this area" was, Gerhardt said. ... "The political objectives must be renewed, this is not just about shuffling soldiers," [said] the delegation chief.

The FDP's lawsuit has not been welcomed, not even by the Green Party. Via Yahoo!, AFP (Agence France Presse) reports that

[Green Bundestag party leader] Volker Beck, spoke of "embarrassing procedural hairsplitting." ... It was clear that the Bundestag's confirmation of AWACS reconnaissance flights over Turkey would only be necessary if the deployment had crossed the threshold to armed conflict. Beck rejected the charge by the FDP, that the war powers act was stalled. It was being worked on in a "most constructive way." A draft could be expected soon.

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TRANSLATION NOTES: I'm translating "Entsendegesetz" pretty freely as "war powers act." It literally means "sending-out law," i.e., "dispatch law," i.e., a law governing troop deployment." Simplified: pauschal, lit. flat rate. Clauses couched in generalities: Generalklauseln, lit. general clauses.
EDIT, 8/20: "Boilerplate" for "clauses couched in generalities." "[one saw]" improves grammar somewhat. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:22:00 AM -- |    

 
Sahara hostages free; should have planned better, suggests Schroeder
New York Times: Militants Release 14 European Tourists in Mali

Die Welt: Sahara hostages on their way to Bamako (capital of Mali):

Schroeder said nothing about the circumstances of their release and a ransom payment. "The German government makes no comment about such questions for good reason," the chancellor said. He appealed to Germans to plan their trips abroad more carefully, to take heed of travel advisories from the German Foreign Ministry, and to avoid taking risks. He wanted to make no further statements. Furthergoing discussions were inappropriate at this time. There had been demands to have rescue operations abroad by the government partly paid by the victims.
[link to 8/3 post]

I'm guessing no ticker tape parades then? posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:13:00 PM -- |    

 
Schroeder supports wider German role in Afghanistan
The German Foreign Ministry's "Deutschland Nachrichten" (Germany News) reports that Chancellor Schroeder supports deploying German troops beyond the confines of Kabul:

"...[T]he chancellor supported tying engagement beyond Kabul to the international peacekeeping force ISAF mandate. A decision would have to be debated in the UN Security Council, the chancellor said. Schroeder also made clear that a connection to the ISAF mandate would not be a precondition for German participation. Another Bundeswehr reconnaissance team slated to depart for Afghanistan in the coming week, will now find out whether development work can take place in Kunduz under the protection of the Bundeswehr.

A possible deployment to Herat had been ruled out by a prior team. Schroeder pointed out that

so-called nation building would be at the forefront ... This would have to be accompanied by military protection. Therefore one should not discuss one without the other. He thus had "the heartfelt plea, not to always just see the question in its military aspect."

Schroeder may be referring to the debate fanned by Defense Minister Struck's comment late last year that "Germany's security is now defended in the Hindukush, too." Some Germans are bitterly pointing out that German troop deployments -- the Balkans, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa -- nearly rival the Third Reich's in geographic scope. It's a point that resonates in a country reared on anti-militarism -- and one whose constitution requires that its troops only be used in defense.* Struck's comment was thus not just a figure of speech, but a statement of policy that has not gone unchallenged.

Schroeder's and Struck's positions are reasonable; I can only hope that the Bush administration won't find a way to help them regret it. There's room and need both for taking the fight to Al Qaeda and its ilk, and for making anti-Western, terrorist Islamism less attractive to Muslim peoples everywhere. Any help from any quarter in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere in the world is to be welcomed.


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* Actually, Article 87a of the German constitution seems, on its face, open to Struck's interpretation: the operative word is simply "Verteidigung" -- defense. The word has the same narrow and broad connotations in German that it does in English; the German constitution does not appear to further define or limit the meaning of the word one way or another. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:03:00 AM -- |    

 
Sayyid Qutb's French connection
Sayyid Qutb is widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of 20th century radical Islamism. I've read about him in Paul Berman's fine book Terror and Liberalism, and in an informative series of essays* by "Ideofact" blogger Bill Allison, who has this "boilerplate" description of Qutb:

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian Islamist, an early theoretician for the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been described by some as the brains of bin Laden. He died in 1966 in an Egyptian prison.

Allison goes on to write:

[I]n Qutb's version of the ideal Islamic society, the ruler would have absolute authority over education and legislation, over property and natural resources, who would preside over a society permanently on a war footing, even at times of peace. The legislation is dressed up with Islamic elements, but essentially what Qutb is arguing for is a fascist or totalitarian state after the 1920s and 1930s European model.

Berman makes similar points, and notes in particular what motivated Qutb -- a fear that Islam was facing a battle "to exterminate this religion as even a basic creed, and to replace it with secular conceptions..." Berman then adds the provocative point that Qutb's response actually comes from the apocalyptic tradition underlying -- Berman argues -- all totalitarian ideologies:

[I]n twentieth century Europe each of the totalitarian movements entertained a grand vision of modern civilization and of despeerate predicaments and utopian destines. Each of the totalitarian doctirnes of Europe expressed that vision by telling a version of the ur-myth, the myth of Armageddon. So did Qutb.

With him, too, there was a people of God. They happened to be the Muslims. The people of God had come under insidious attack from within their own society, by the forces of corruption and pollution. ... There was going to be a terrible war against them, led by the Muslim vanguard. ... [The reign of God] was going to create a perfect society, cleansed of its impurities and corruptions -- as always in the totalitarian mythologies. (p. 98-99)*

Alexis Carrel
It turns out that Qutb had a more direct connection to a variety of European mysticism and nascent totalitarianism in the writings and philosophy of one Alexis Carrel -- Nobel Prize in Medicine winner for his work on circulatory surgery and transplants, arch-conservative Catholic, Vichy regime supporter, and, in the end, apologist for Nazi euthanasia and eugenics programs.

Rudolph Walther, a historian living in Frankfurt, recently wrote a piece for the German newsweekly Die Zeit that discusses the Qutb-Carrel connection, "The strange teachings of Doctor Carrel: how a French Catholic doctor became a spiritual forefather of the radical Islamists." Excerpts:

The superficial commonalities between Carrel and Qutb are plain: we meet the medical man's elite in a "scientific monastery" as Qutb's "avant garde," and the Carrel's "biological classes" are Qutb's "belief classes." Whether "civilization" (Carrel) or "barbarism" (Qutb) -- neither are "worthy of us," because they contradict "our true nature" (Carrel) or Qutb's "good, healthy nature." Both are quite in agreement in their goal to reconcile knowledge and belief.

The decisive affinities lie deeper, though. Qutb cites no author aside from the Koran as often and as extensively as Carrel. What fascinated Qutb about Carrel was, as Islamic Studies scholar Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi wrote in his 1996 book "Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence," first of all his view of humanity "which he relies on more than the Koran." Second, Qutb follows Carrel's method. The pious doctor complains that "man, this whole," this unique, complex being, is being subdivided and torn apart by social reality and science... The exclusive concentration on the material nature of man had the effect of repressing his spiritual side. [...]

Qutb follows Carrel in making "human nature" the condition and measure of all thought and action. Because "human nature" is simultaneously posited as God-given, both immunize "human nature" against criticism, because God answers queries as little as "nature" does objections. The core of Qutb's supposed Middle Eastern Islamism is formed by a naturalistic logical error that is deeply rooted in European philosophy... Carrel writes: "The goal of life is to follow the laws of life. We decipher these laws from our bodies and our souls, not from philosophical systems and concepts." Thus ethical norms ("laws of life") are derived directly from biological facts and psychological diagnoses. Translated to Qutb's language, human freedom and thus a free, varied society are not possible, only obedience to the law of God. [...]

What Qutb calls "the Islamic method," the integration of education, ethics, economics and politics to a unified system of "divine uniqueness," matches Carrel's "unification of all capabilities and their coordination to a single belief," the "super-science" in every detail ...*** [emphasis added]

In every detail, of course, but the underlying faith, but the similiarities do seem very strong. It's also interesting to speculate about the degree to which Carrel's field -- the "parts is parts" world of organ transplants, coupled with the tissue rejection issues that bedeviled his efforts -- influenced his philosophy. At any rate, an online biography records that in 1935,

Carrel published MAN, THE UNKNOWN, a work written upon the recommendation of a loose-knit group of intellectuals that he often dined with at the Century Club. In MAN, THE UNKNOWN, Carrel posed highly philosophical questions about mankind, and theorized that mankind could reach perfection through selective reproduction and the leadership of an intellectual aristocracy. The book, a worldwide best-seller and translated into nineteen languages, brought Carrel international attention. Carrel's speculations about the need for a council of superior individuals to guide the future of mankind was seen by many as anti-democratic. ****

From Carrel's introduction to "Man the Unknown":

To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage, he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer.

Carrel doubtless didn't see himself in need of remaking, he saw himself as wielding the hammer. From the final chapter of the same book:

We need, therefore, an institution capable of providing for the uninterrupted pursuit for at least a century of the investigations concerning man. Modern society should be given an intellectual focus, an immortal brain, capable of conceiving and planning its future, and of promoting and pushing forward fundamental researches, in spite of the death of the individual researchers, or the bankruptcy of the research institutes. Such an organization would be the salvation of the white races in their staggering advance toward civilization. This thinking center would consist, as does the Supreme Court of the United States, of a few individuals; the latter being trained in the knowledge of man by many years of study. It should perpetuate itself automatically, in such a manner as to radiate ever young ideas. Democratic rulers, as well as dictators, could receive from this source of scientific truth the information that they need in order to develop a civilization really suitable to man.

Carrel's ideas, conflated as they were with others about diet, nutrition, and purity, have remained attractive -- or at least not disqualifying -- to certain subspecies of "ecological" thinking, as evidenced by the site providing the text above, "soilandhealth.org," and other such enterprises.

So What
In one way, I'm not sure whether any of this was worth learning. An Islamist thinker, obscure to most of us, seems to have found support for his views in the writings of a right-wing European surgeon and mystic who is equally deservedly obscure to most of us.

On the other hand: know thy enemy. Qutb was bad enough, and Bin Laden and Zawahiri have taken his writings to the next murderous level. Understanding (or at least cataloguing) Qutb's views and motives can help make sense of (or at least predict) those of his followers.

It may also be worthwhile to see that an apparently foreign and mysterious ideology like Qutb's has analogues and even ancestry in certain cul-de-sacs of Western thought -- which were for their part considered progressive, scientific, and forward-looking at one time, and still seem to beguile some people today.

Mainly, I just mean to point out the Qutb-Carrel connection as a kind of footnote to the more extensive and informed discussions of Qutb at "Ideofact" and elsewhere. The connection is more direct than the general "apocalypticism" that Berman sees Qutb's ideas sharing with other totalitarian world views, so it may interest those of you who have read or will read Berman's book. At any rate, if you've had the patience to bear with me, thank you!


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* Mr. Allison's posts are organized by the chapters of one of Qutb's main works, "Social Justice In Islam":1 ... 8:1, 8:2, 8:3, 8:4, 8:5, 8:4:1, 8:6. For a complete archive of the earlier chapter reviews, see Aziz Poonawalla's ongoing archive of Allison's posts about Qutb.
** Berman also points out that Bin Laden and Zawahiri notwithstanding, Qutb's version of jihad was not terror pure and simple, but bound by Islamic tradition and the Qur'an:"Do not kill women and children" ... "Fight for the cause of God those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression. God does not love aggressors."
*** Spiritual forefather: "Vordenker," lit. fore-thinker. View of humanity: Menschenbild, lit. "human image." "Middle Eastern" translated from "orientalisch", lit. oriental(istic), a more loaded term in English than in German, I think. "Matches in every detail" translated from "gleicht aufs Haar," lit. "matches down to the hairs,"
**** The "loose knit group" at least overlapped with an organization called the Twilight Club, which still exists today, primarily as a vehicle for the metaphysical speculations of deceased member Walter Russell. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:08:00 PM -- |