Rationalizing torture - III

Quotable quotes from the torture memos:

Upon arrival at the site, the detainee "finds himself in complete control of Americans" and is subjected to "precise, quiet and almost clinical" procedures designed to underscore "the enormity and suddenness of the change in environment, the uncertainty about what will happen next, and the potential dread (a detainee) may have of US custody". His head and face are shaved; his physical condition is documented through photographs while he is nude; and he is given medical and psychological interviews to assess his condition and to make sure there are no contradiction to the use of any particular interrogation techniques.

Rationalizing torture - II

Andrew Sullivan says it like it is...

I do not believe that any American president has ever orchestrated, constructed or so closely monitored the torture of other human beings the way George W. Bush did. It is clear that it is pre-meditated; and it is clear that the parsing of torture techniques that you read in the report is a simply disgusting and repellent piece of dishonesty and bad faith. When you place it alongside the Red Cross' debriefing of the torture victims, the fit is almost perfect. I say "almost" because even Jay Bybee, in this unprofessional travesty of lawyering, stipulates that these techniques might be combined successively in any ways that could cumulatively become torture even in his absurd redefinition of the term. And yet the ICRC report shows, as one might imagine, that outside these specious legalisms, such distinctions never hold in practice. And they didn't. Human beings were contorted into classic stress positions used by the Gestapo; they had towels tied around their necks in order to smash their bodies against walls; they were denied of all sleep for up to eleven days and nights at a time; they were stuck in tiny suffocating boxes; they were waterboarded just as the victims of the Khmer Rouge were waterboarded. And through all this, Bush and Cheney had lawyers prepared to write elaborate memos saying that all of this was legal, constitutional, moral and not severe pain and suffering.

Rationalizing torture - I

The Bush administration's 'torture memo's' were released by the Obama administration today. The clear, cold and calculated scientific logic used in rationalizing torture methods seems almost Kafkaesque. 

Jay Bybee's memo is especially egregious. 

With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individuals face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individuals chin and bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The interrogator invades the individuals personal space.

...Cramped confinement involves the placement of the individual in a confined space, the dimensions of which restrict the individuals movement. The confined space is usually dark. The duration of confinement varies based upon the size of the container. For the larger confined space, the individual can stand up or sit down; the smaller space is large enough for the subject to sit down. 

... Wall standing is used to induce muscle fatigue. The individual stands about four to five feet from a wall, with his feet spread approximately to shoulder width. His arms are stretched out in front of him, with his fingers resting on the wall. 

... Finally, you would like to use a technique called the 'waterboard'. In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individuals feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the individuals blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of "suffocation and incipient panic" i.e. the perception of drowning. The individual does not breathe any water into his lungs. During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three to four full breathes. The sensation of drowning is immediately relieved by the removal of the cloth. The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout.

All of the memos can be downloaded here.

Painting Post

'Performance Artist', 82" (h) X 56" (w), Oil on canvas

NASA abbreviation watch

Even if Colbert did not get a room named on the international space station after him in spite of his winning an online poll (courtesy his listeners), NASA decided to name a treadmill after the comedian in a predictable NASAish fashion...

The name of the treadmill is COLBERT and stands for Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.

Teabagging chronicles

Yesterday was teabagging day for the conservatives. Yes, they teabagged themselves in support of lower taxes. This is a teabagging picture that sums up the real issues... These photos seems to have been taken in Houston, Texas (where else)... 

The news this morning was that the Lone Star state would now like to secede from the United States. It is interesting to note that while the real debate should be around healthcare, immigration, education and energy the conservatives feel that this is the time to go around teabagging each other and talking secession...

Source: Reddit and Flickr. More photos here.

Spring!

Teabagging day

Our conservative friends are teabagging today (oops, sorry! make that tea partying).

Edward Weston, Shard, 1927, Vintage gelatin silver print

Sleight of hand and orphan month based accounting - Goldman Sachs style

Goldman Sachs keeps getting better at the 'hoodwink' game... Just about everyone heard about their wondrous profits declared yesterday. Now the rest of the story...

From here: Goldman Sachs reported a profit of $1.8 billion in the first quarter, and plans to sell $5 billion in stock and get out of the government’s clutches, if it can.

How did it do that? One way was to hide a lot of losses in not-so-plain sight.

Goldman’s 2008 fiscal year ended Nov. 30. This year the company is switching to a calendar year. The leaves December as an orphan month, one that will be largely ignored. In Goldman’s earnings statement, and in most of the news reports, the quarter ended March 31 is compared to the quarter last year that ended in February.

The orphan month featured — surprise — lots of write-offs. The pretax loss was $1.3 billion, and the after-tax loss was $780 million.

Would the firm have had a profit if it had stuck to its old calendar, and had to include December and exclude March?

Note: In spite of their profits, the fact that they are blogger bullies remain...

Photo

Today's front page photo on the Times included a factoid that caught me by surprise... "Houston, the capital of Texas has more than 1500 licensed gun dealers..." - but then, what else would one expect from the great state of Texas.

Although federal agents say licensed dealers are the source of most guns going to Mexico, some come from private sellers at gun shows, where even noncitizens can buy guns. Dozens of shows are held each year across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. At a recent show in Pharr, Tex., another border town, a college freshman with a wispy beard arrived with two AR-15 rifles strapped to his body, spidery black guns designed for combat, tricked out with features that soldiers prize: collapsible stocks, pistol grips, extra long magazines. The student, who asked to be identified only as Shane, was asking $1,900 for one of his rifles. As for paper work, he wanted only a handwritten receipt with the buyer’s name and address. He was not worried, he said, about the gun’s falling into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico.

“They are going to get their guns either way,” he said. “The only thing that a ban is going to stop is good people being able to get a gun.”

Piracy prattle and Obama

I actually like to watch this video after the fact...

Monday Morning Music...

Connections

Frederick Soddy, a chemistry Nobel laureate on the economy and laws of thermodynamics.

He offered a perspective on economics rooted in physics — the laws of thermodynamics, in particular. An economy is often likened to a machine, though few economists follow the parallel to its logical conclusion: like any machine the economy must draw energy from outside itself. The first and second laws of thermodynamics forbid perpetual motion, schemes in which machines create energy out of nothing or recycle it forever. Soddy criticized the prevailing belief of the economy as a perpetual motion machine, capable of generating infinite wealth — a criticism echoed by his intellectual heirs in the now emergent field of ecological economics.

... Soddy would not have been surprised at our current state of affairs. The problem isn’t simply greed, isn’t simply ignorance, isn’t a failure of regulatory diligence, but a systemic flaw in how our economy finances itself. As long as growth in claims on wealth outstrips the economy’s capacity to increase its wealth, market capitalism creates a niche for entrepreneurs who are all too willing to invent instruments of debt that will someday be repudiated. There will always be a Bernard Madoff or a subprime mortgage repackager willing to set us up for catastrophe. To stop them, we must balance claims on future wealth with the economy’s power to produce that wealth. How can that be done?

Soddy distilled his eccentric vision into five policy prescriptions, each of which was taken at the time as evidence that his theories were unworkable: The first four were to abandon the gold standard, let international exchange rates float, use federal surpluses and deficits as macroeconomic policy tools that could counter cyclical trends, and establish bureaus of economic statistics (including a consumer price index) in order to facilitate this effort. All of these are now conventional practice. Soddy’s fifth proposal, the only one that remains outside the bounds of conventional wisdom, was to stop banks from creating money (and debt) out of nothing. Banks do this by lending out most of their depositors’ money at interest — making loans that the borrower soon puts in a demand deposit (checking) account, where it will soon be lent out again to create more debt and demand deposits, and so on, almost ad infinitum.

Weekend Pictures

Goldman Sachs - a blogger bully?

New lows for the supposedly 'venerable Wall Street institution'...

Goldman Sachs has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website. Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled "Facts about Goldman Sachs" – the web address for which isgoldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago. In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled "Does Goldman Sachs run the world?". However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues. According to Chadbourne & Parke's letter, dated April 8, the bank is rattled because the site "violates several of Goldman Sachs' intellectual property rights" and also "implies a relationship" with the bank itself. ... He claims he has followed all legal requirements to own and operate the website – and that the header of the site clearly states that the content has not been approved by the bank.

Photo from a recent exhibition of Barry Le Va's works at Mary Boone Gallery titled “Hands, Handles, Blades: Cleaver Configurations 1969-2009”, an exhibition curated by Klaus Kertess. From the press release: Le Va has said that these and other sculptures similarly fraught with danger and created between 1968 and 197l, such as Within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts created by shattering sheets of glass on the floor, were more about exploring mathematical givens in relation to time and space than about threat of danger. In the case of the Cleaver pieces, those givens are the artist’s height and the fixed radius of the arc of his arm’s thrust. Of course, these works were originally created during a time of great violence in our culture.

On the recent TEA party fracas

A very helpful deconstruction of the recent tea party antics (tea for Taxes Enough Already) tried out by the conservatives (from a reader on the Andrew Sullivan blog). 

I live in Kansas and have several family members who fit the mold of these Tea Partiers. The sense I get from them is much like what I felt after the 2004 election - absolute disbelief that this country could make such a decision. The reason that my relatives are so concerned is that Bush stood for everything they truly believed in - US primacy, nationalism, God (the Christianist version), guns, no gays, no illegals, where criminals get a fair trial before we hang them. In their mind, Obama repudiates all of that. These rallies are an effort by a group that feels highly marginalized to find some comfort in the company of others with similar beliefs, and to express their fear and frustration over what they see happening to their country. At least, that's why my uncles and grandparents will be there.

... And when you (and others) dismiss these concerns as "adolescent, unserious hysteria," it only hardens their resolve. What will make this go away is time, and the realization that America has "survived" the threat posed by a President who represents so much that they find threatening.

The Boston Tea Party--destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, 1773. From the NYPL archives.

Housing bubbles - a contrarian viewpoint

An interesting way of segmenting the housing markets...

George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki's research has revealed three distinct types of housing markets--and only one of the three shows real signs of distress. Even then, that distress is only in a limited number of areas.

The first type of market behaves the way markets are supposed to behave, with smooth adjustments between supply and demand. When prices rose in places such as Dallas and Charlotte, builders constructed new houses. When prices softened, builders stopped. "Prices in these markets rose gradually," Zywicki says, "and now they're settling back to earth. There hasn't been any tragedy."

The second type of market, which appears in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., demonstrates a long history of price volatility. "The housing stock in these markets is constrained," Zywicki says, "either by geography--San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, for example--or land use controls." When demand in such a market increases, prices soar. And when demand weakens, prices plummet.

"But the people who live in these markets expect big price swings," Zywicki says. "They've learned to live with them. They're holding onto their homes because they're confident prices will eventually recover. Again, there hasn't been any tragedy."

The third type of market displays both the ability to expand the supply of houses that characterizes the first type of market and the price swings that characterize the second type. "Type three markets," Zywicki says, "are concentrated in the Sun Belt. Ordinary investors seem to have calculated that a lot of people would either retire or buy second homes in these places. And when prices went up, speculators moved in. Pure bubbles developed."

In type three markets, hundreds of thousands of new homes went up. This oversupply will now keep prices low for years. "Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa--those are the places you'll find the tragedies," Zywicki says.

Instead of frightening people by talking about the end of the American dream, Zywicki argues, the Obama administration should offer reassurance, stressing the specific, limited nature of the foreclosure problem. "Heck," Zywicki says, "41 out of the 50 states have foreclosure rates below the national mean."

Weekend photo

Friday Miscellany

There are several varieties of the mango, but the most delicious is the "mango d'or," originally imported into the island from Cayenne, and greatly improved by generous cultivation. The fruit weighs from twelve to sixteen ounces; the seed is thin, small, and corrugated, without the stringy threads which mar the pleasure of eating some varieties of the mango; the pulp is deep yellow in color, of the consistency of ice-cream and a delicious aroma exhales from it. To partake of the mango in full perfection is one of the indescribable luxuries of tropical life. ..Look at the large tree opposite, its spreading branches bending down under the weight of its delicious burden. What a lovely contrast of the golden globes with the dark green foliage! The gardener, who comes to bring us some of the fruit, says that a tree of this size bears from two thousand to three thousand mangoes. Ah, here is the fruit! If you have never eaten a mango, you must be instructed in the art. Roll up your sleeves, pin a napkin under your chin, and have a basin of water close at hand; strip the peel from the mango, revealing the delicious, golden-hued, creamy pulp; seize the fruit by the ends with both hands, and bite tenderly into it. Be as careful as you will, the abundant juice will overflow from your lips and run over your hands and wrists. But you rinse face and hands in the water beside you, and repeat the operation until the appetite is sated. Excerpted from 'Rambles in Martinique' published in Harpers (January 1874)...

Photo

A retrospective of Satyajit Ray films titled “First Light: Satyajit Ray From the Apu Trilogy to the Calcutta Trilogy” opens Wednesday and runs through April 30 at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center. Image above from the movie 'Charulata' (1964). Simply magical.

Texas legislator is winner of dumb racist comment of the week!

A North Texas legislator (Representative Betty Brown) during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” From here.

Reality check

From here. The number of Americans killed in mass shootings in the last month is greater than the number of soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan this year. 54 innocents dead in nine shootings over the past four weeks. In Iraq, 45 U.S. soldiers died in 2009. In Afghanistan, 43 soldiers were killed in 2009.

Of course, even after the shooting incident in Binghamton, NY last Friday, both senators from that state (Schumer and Gillibrand) said it was too early to comment on whether gun control laws should be strengthened as a result of this case.

Wonder what kind of a catastrophe will get them to think about strengthening gun control laws...

On unpuckering

One woman’s quest to understand plastic surgery and its practitioners...

In 2007 alone, Americans spent $13 billion on 11.7 million cosmetic procedures (both surgical and nonsurgical). An ongoing controversy over what qualifies as “cosmetic” makes it difficult to determine the number of treatments that were purely restorative, necessitated by third-degree burns, mastectomies, and other medical issues. But what’s clear is that the overall number of men and women undergoing cosmetic procedures in the U.S. has increased by 457 percent since 1997, when relevant statistical data was first collected. As many as one in 20 people today reportedly suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (B.D.D.), a sort of “imagined ugly” syndrome. While difficult to diagnose, plastic-surgery addiction is often linked to B.D.D. Dr. Barry Eppley, who writes a blog titled “Explore Plastic Surgery,” estimates that one-third of plastic-surgery patients will eventually return to have additional work done.

... I’ll show you if you like,” says Maria, the svelte, well-dressed 42-year-old manager of Dr. Elliot Heller’s office, when I ask if she’s had her boobs done.
I nod and, without hesitation, Maria approaches me from behind the dark wooden desk, beige cowl-neck sweater peeled from her torso to reveal two perky, C-cup breasts.
“Can I touch?,” I ask, inspired by acute curiosity.
“Go ahead.”
I stand and place a palm on Maria’s left breast, then poke it the way a child would a large block of jell-o. It feels not like human flesh, but like a compressed sack of the pink ectoplasm from Ghostbusters II resting behind a thin layer of skin. All the while, Maria gazes at me with a prideful expression. I have to admire her. Perhaps it’s more arrogant to deny one’s vanity than to embrace it.

Dominic Crouse, 'Ecce Homo' 2003, Toned silver gelatin print, 24" X 20"

Readings

From the book 'When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood' by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh.

On one occasion, I mustered the courage to ask my mother to buy me a skateboard (they were all the rage at the time) and she took me to Sears to have a look. In the middle of the sports department was a bin filled with skateboards in bright bubblegum colors. A sign read $10.99.
"Once the revolution comes,' my mother said to me, 'everyone will have a skateboard, because all skateboards will be free.' Then she took me by the hand and led me out of the store. I pictured a world of long rolling grassy hills, where it was always summertime and boys skateboarded up and down the slopes.
One Christmas a tree was donated to us by a local charity.
'When the revolution comes everyone will have a Christmas tree,' my mother said.
'Will we have them year-round then?' I asked.
'When the revolution comes no one will want a Christmas tree because no one will believe in God.'
Then we spent the afternoon decorating our tree together, stringing popcorn and kumquats, hanging lights from the branches, and when we were done we cut a moon out of cardboard, wrapped it in aluminum foil and placed it on the top.
The difference between our family and other poor families was that my mother actively chose to be poor.

Ruth Bernhard, In the Box, Horizontal, 1961. Gelatin Silver Print, 16” X 20”

Subtext

A brief tour on the origins of anti-Americanism from a book review of 'In Defense of America', by Bronwen Maddox.

A widely held belief among the liberal intelligentsia, both in the states and in Europe, is that anti-Americanism began under the second President Bush. History tells a different story. Take France, for example. Charles de Gaulle, the most popular political figure in recent French history, staked his presidency on driving a wedge into the American-led NATO alliance during the Cold War’s early years (it was only last month that France finally rejoined NATO’s military command structure). Anti-Americanism goes back to before the founding of the United States; it’s not just a political disposition, but also a theoretical premise based upon deep-seated feelings of historical envy and opposition to capitalism—not to mention cultural snobbery. Another cause, Maddox notes, is the simultaneous decline of Europe alongside America’s international ascendance. No matter what America does, she suggests, it’s unlikely completely to eradicate this inherent European mindset.

From here.

Image shows David Choe's artwork. He is a muralist and graphic artist whose solo show at the Chaoyang Liquor Factory Gallery in Beijing China titled “Death Blossom”, opened April 4th.

Spring

Quotable

“If I were they, I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole.” - Philippe Sands, a British based lawyer talking about the plight of six senior Bush administration officials who were recently implicated in acts of torture by a Spanish Court. From here.

Gonzalo Boye, the Chilean-born Spanish lawyer who recently filed the criminal complaint against the Bush officials was influenced by Philippe Sands' book 'Torture Team'.

The 'six in a fix' are as follows:

• Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy
• Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General
• John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer
• David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney
• William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense
• Jay Bybee, Yoo's former boss at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel
  

Peter Saul, 'Stuck', 67" X 59", Acrylic on canvas, 2007. Image from a recent visit to Mary Boone Gallery who had on show 'IMAGE MATTER', an exhibition curated by Klaus Kertess.

The Shameless I post

'Rendile' 72" (h) X 101" (w), an oil done by me last year was among the artworks recently chosen by Ugallery.com for a show titled "Urban Canvas". The show is to be held on the evening of April 21st at the Openhouse Gallery in NoLIta, NYC. The event, a team effort made possible by the UJA Federation of New York and the online gallery Ugallery.com is to raise awareness for art therapy. I am happy.

Dumb and Dumber

According to Gawker, at least someone seems to finally be making some money over this inane thing called Twitter - the prostitutes.

Simple joys

On poetry by rote.

The process of memorizing a poem is fairly mechanical at first. You cling to the meter and rhyme scheme (if there is one), declaiming the lines in a sort of sing-songy way without worrying too much about what they mean. But then something organic starts to happen. Mere memorization gives way to performance. You begin to feel the tension between the abstract meter of the poem — the “duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA” of iambic pentameter, say — and the rhythms arising from the actual sense of the words. (Part of the genius of Yeats or Pope is the way they intensify meaning by bucking against the meter.) It’s a physical feeling, and it’s a deeply pleasurable one. You can get something like it by reading the poem out loud off the page, but the sensation is far more powerful when the words come from within. (The act of reading tends to spoil physical pleasure.) It’s the difference between sight-reading a Beethoven piano sonata and playing it from memory — doing the latter, you somehow feel you come closer to channeling the composer’s emotions. And with poetry you don’t need a piano. That’s my case for learning poetry by heart. It’s all about pleasure. And it’s a cheap pleasure. Between the covers of any decent anthology you have an entire sea to swim in.

Please...

Just read this on CNN... 

Wearing body armor and carrying two weapons, Jiverly Wong blocked the back door of the American Civic Association with his car on Friday, then went inside and fatally shot 13 people before apparently turning the gun on himself, police said. "Whatever drove this individual to do what he did I cannot possibly fathom," said Angela Leach, a representative of the association. "He must have been a coward," 

No, it was really because he had easy access to guns... Like a majority of Americans... 

Image from here.

Weekend photo

Stock markets are rising: reasons...

An obscure accounting rule that infuriated banks was changed Thursday to give banks more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities

During the financial crisis, the market prices of many securities, particularly those backed by subprime home mortgages, have plunged to fractions of their original prices. That has forced banks to report hundreds of billions of dollars in losses over the last year, because some of those securities must be reported at market value each three months, with the bank showing a profit or loss based on the change. Bankers bitterly complained that the current market prices were the result of distressed sales and that they should be allowed to ignore those prices and value the securities instead at their value in a normal market. At first FASB, resisted making changes, but that changed within a few days of a Congressional hearing at which legislators from both parties demanded the board act.

The change seems likely to allow banks to report higher profits by assuming that the securities are worth more than anyone is now willing to pay for them. But critics objected that the change could further damage the credibility of financial institutions by enabling them to avoid recognizing losses from bad loans they have made.

Read on more here. James Kwak analyzes the rule change in detail here.

Notes to a coddled generation

The Fashion supplement of the Times had this bit of advice for us regarding the show American Idol...

Critics may complain that the show does little more than manufacture mass-market mediocrity. Who cares? It’s wildly entertaining, maybe the last bit of our culture that requires us to sit in the same room at the same time and stare at the same shared screen. Best of all, “American Idol” provides an antidote to the idea that anyone can be a star. The truth is, you probably can’t be a star, which is bracing to hear. Further, you can’t reach the top without an enormous amount of hard work and, possibly, being willing to sing an entire song in falsetto.
This is not always the message my generation sends its kids. The show counteracts the stance that the world owes you whatever you want, even a living as a rock star, just because you happen to want it.

'The Bumble Bee Girl'. Illustration by Karen Santry, oil on rosewood, mounted on rice paper, 2007. Image from here.

Stipulating that men can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights"

The laws coming out of Karzai's Afghanistan seem bizarre even by Taliban standards. Here are some new rules to abide by... No, this is not an April Fool's joke.

• Women can only seek work, education or doctor's appointments with their husband's permission.
• Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when traveling, unless they are ill. This in effect is said to legalize rape within a marriage negating any need for sexual consent between married couples.
• Only fathers and grandfathers are granted custody of children.

One has got to love the logic behind some of this warped thinking...

"Men and women have equal rights under Islam but there are differences in the way men and women are created. Men are stronger and women are a little bit weaker; even in the west you do not see women working as firefighters."

- Ustad Mohammad Akbari, an MP and the leader of a Hazara political party. The Hazara party is being courted by Mr. Karzai in a bid to win the upcoming elections. From here.

A digital appropriation of Piet van den Boog's oil paintings at Mike Weiss

David Foster Wallace - tributes

Memories and tributes to DFW here. Reproduced below is Mr K. B. Dixon's revealing memory.

I had a chance to see David Foster Wallace onstage at a Portland Arts and Lectures event about 10 years ago. He appeared with Sherman Alexie, Gish Jen, and Cristina García as part of a panel discussion on what it meant to be a young writer in America. The event was a large one—probably 1,500 people. It was held in one of those elaborately refurbished downtown movie palaces. Everyone onstage and in the audience was, to some degree, gussied up for the occasion—everyone except Dave, that is. He arrived wearing a pair of big blond work boots, ratty jeans, and some sort of long-sleeve, waffle-weave undershirt. He looked like a down-on-his-luck logger.
There was little reading that night; it was mostly a Q&A. Something Dave said about his nervousness and the peculiarity of the affair made me think of an old Kurt Vonnegut anecdote. Vonnegut was giving a speech he was nervous about. He didn't think it was any good. He mentioned this sotto voce to the eminence sitting on the dais beside him and this man told him, by way of reassurance, that he, KV, shouldn't worry about it—nobody really cared anything about what he had to say; they were just there because they wanted to see if he was an honest man.
When I got home, I wrote Dave a note, passing this little story on. I introduced myself and explained that I had just seen him "flamboyantly underdressed" at the Arts and Lectures event in Portland. A few weeks later, Dave wrote back. He used a small thank-you card (Expressions from Hallmark). He said he understood Vonnegut's unease. "These 'writerly' forums are a priori impossible to be honest at." In a postscript, he replied good-naturedly to my comment about his appearance. He wrote, "I was not underdressed. The lady said casual—the other three were overdressed."
Given the demands on his time and for his attention, this thoughtful, funny little note to a complete stranger struck me as a surprising and generous thing. From reading these posts, it is obvious that it was not unusual.

Poetry

OF THE MILLENIAL AQUARIUM BUILT NEXT TO THE OCEAN VIEW SEAFOOD RESTAURANT

The seafood is so fresh it is alive. The new aquarium is so realistic it looks like a glass tunnel suspended inside the ocean. The parents and child stand on a moving walkway and gawk at a narwhal rapping its tusk against their shoes, a stingray casting a vampiric shadow above their heads, and vermillion ballooned plankton drifting down around them like celestial matter. Then all is dark and the only source of light is the blind-man eyes of an ancient-faced angler fish. Afterwards, the parents bring the child to the restaurant and suck out the eggs of a dancing shrimp or offer the distressed child to drink from a cold soup of live darting minnows. Everyday, the restaurant offers challenging specials. A man tried to devour a whole writhing octopus as it suctioned around his face and head, his teeth struggling to masticate this all-too-living body, but he gave up in exhaustion.

From 'Adventures in Shangdu' by Cathy Park Hong (More here)

Late afternoon. Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Brooklyn, NY

A twit on Twitter nitwits

Fine bit of news here.

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication. The move, described as "epochal" by media commentators, will see all Guardian content tailored to fit the format of Twitter's brief text messages, known as "tweets", which are limited to 140 characters each.
...For example, Martin Luther King's legendary 1963 speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial appears in the Guardian's Twitterised archive as "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by", eliminating the waffle and bluster of the original.

Quotable

An "I pray for world peace" moment from Miss Universe 2008 who talks about Guantánamo Bay after a visit there.

"It was a loooot of fun!, we visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the(y) recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting, I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful" - Dayana Sabrina Mendoza Moncada is Miss Venezuela 2007 and Miss Universe 2008.

Detainees upon arrival at Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, Cuba in January 2002. Photo from here.

Happy Financial Fools day

That's right, rather than today be called April Fools day, it might be more appropriate if the day is labeled Financial Fools day. At least that is what the Treasury Secretary hopes that we all are: 'financial fools'. Economics Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz's analysis of the bad asset bailout plan unveiled late last week by the Obama administration calls it a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.

From here: Consider an asset that has a 50-50 chance of being worth either zero or $200 in a year’s time. The average “value” of the asset is $100. Ignoring interest, this is what the asset would sell for in a competitive market. It is what the asset is “worth.” Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only 50 percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership! Assume that one of the public-private partnerships the Treasury has promised to create is willing to pay $150 for the asset. That’s 50 percent more than its true value, and the bank is more than happy to sell. So the private partner puts up $12, and the government supplies the rest — $12 in “equity” plus $126 in the form of a guaranteed loan. If, in a year’s time, it turns out that the true value of the asset is zero, the private partner loses the $12, and the government loses $138. If the true value is $200, the government and the private partner split the $74 that’s left over after paying back the $126 loan. In that rosy scenario, the private partner more than triples his $12 investment. But the taxpayer, having risked $138, gains a mere $37.

Even the Wall Street Journal, long a voluptuous cheerleader for capitalism does not like what it sees in this plan.

We have no idea if Treasury is playing favorites, but it certainly doesn't look good. All the more so given that some of these big players may have consulted informally with the Obama Administration as it was writing the plan. Not to mention that the big asset management companies that are most likely to land plum fund-management jobs are also the ones that have been most vocally praising the Treasury plan.

Recent photographs from a visit to see Barnaby Whitfield's pastel works in an exhibition titled 'Ah For A Man to Arise in Me / That the Man I Am May Cease to Be' currently on view at the Stefan Stux Gallery, Chelsea. More information here.

Painting Post

'Tandava', 67" (w) X 85" (h), oil on canvas

Ho Hum - it's about time...

Finally, the Hummer is dying!!

From here: Sales of Hummers over all have fallen so far — 51 percent last year, the worst drop in the industry — that General Motors is trying to find a buyer for the brand. Without one, the company might close Hummer.

Image from http://www.ihumpedyourhummer.com

Penitent poetry watch

It is indeed ironic that Douglas Feith, an arch neoconservative who had previously served as the Under Secretary of US Defense Policy under George W. Bush and additionally responsible for the assertion that there were definite ties between the Iraqi government and the Al Qaeda terrorist network is now quoting poetry from Pashto Sufi poet Rahman Baba (who must be shifting uncomfortably in his grave) in the op-ed page of the Times today.

Most recently, he is one of the six named individuals who are part of a criminal investigation by a Spanish Court for having violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Here is the poetry he quoted...

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.
Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall.
You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.

Poetic indeed...

Photographs of three of Yale trained Tom Gregg's oil paintings taken on a recent visit to George Billis Gallery, Chelsea. For more of his great work and a background writeup, see here.

From the Lone Star Looney bin

The great state of Texas that gave us the honorable President George Bush and a renewed focus on teaching creationism to schoolchildren is insisting on staying in the news with their latest idea:

Texas Considers Allowing Guns on Campuses

Considering their recent offerings, I could see this fitting into their grand strategic policy planning roadmap!

Julian Schnabel, 'St Francis in Ecstasy', 96" X 84", oil, plates, wood and puttywood, 1980. Photograph from a recent visit to the Mary Boone Gallery showing 'Image Matter', an exhibition curated by Klaus Kertess.

Genes, environment and IQ

Explaining the environmental underpinnings behind disparities in average I.Q. between Americans of European and of African descent (from a book review of Intelligence and how to get it: Why Schools and Culture Count by Richard E. Nisbett).

Even if genes play some role in determining I.Q. differences within a population, which Nisbett grants, that implies nothing about average differences between populations. The classic example is corn seed planted on two plots of land, one with rich soil and the other with poor soil. Within each plot, differences in the height of the corn plants are completely genetic. Yet the average difference between the two plots is entirely environmental. Could the same logic explain the disparity in average I.Q. between Americans of European and of African descent? Nisbett thinks so. The racial I.Q. gap, he argues, is “purely environmental.” For one thing, it’s been shrinking: over the last 30 years, the measured I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped from 15 points to 9.5 points. Among his more direct evidence, Nisbett cites impressive studies in population genetics. African-Americans have on average about 20 percent European genes, largely as a legacy of slavery. But the proportion of European genes ranges widely among individuals, from near zero to more than 80 percent. If the racial gap is mostly genetic, then blacks with more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s on average. In fact, they don’t. Nisbett is similarly skeptical that genetics could account for the intellectual prowess of Ashkenazi Jews, whose average I.Q. measures somewhere between 110 and 115. As for the alleged I.Q. superiority of East Asians over American whites, that turns out to be an artifact of sloppy comparisons; when I.Q. tests are properly normed, Americans actually score slightly higher than East Asians.

If I.Q. differences are indeed largely environmental, what might help eliminate group disparities? The most dramatic results come from adoption. When poor children are adopted by upper-middle-class families, they show an I.Q. gain of 12 to 16 points. Upper-class parents talk to their children more than working-class parents do. And there are subtler differences. In poorer black families, for example, children are rarely asked “known-answer questions” — that is, questions where the parents already know the right answer. (“What color is the elephant, Billy?”) Consequently, as Nisbett observes, the children are nonplussed by such questions at school. (“If the teacher doesn’t know this, then I sure don’t.”)

Cleaning up Wall Street Oligarchy

Interesting ideas from the Atlantic on cleaning up the detritus of large banks looming over on Wall Street.

Cleaning up the megabanks will be complex. And it will be expensive for the taxpayer; according to the latest IMF numbers, the cleanup of the banking system would probably cost close to $1.5trillion (or 10percent of our GDP) in the long term. But only decisive government action—exposing the full extent of the financial rot and restoring some set of banks to publicly verifiable health—can cure the financial sector as a whole. This may seem like strong medicine. But in fact, while necessary, it is insufficient. The second problem the U.S. faces—the power of the oligarchy—is just as important as the immediate crisis of lending. And the advice from the IMF on this front would again be simple: break the oligarchy. Oversize institutions disproportionately influence public policy; the major banks we have today draw much of their power from being too big to fail. Nationalization and re-privatization would not change that; while the replacement of the bank executives who got us into this crisis would be just and sensible, ultimately, the swapping-out of one set of powerful managers for another would change only the names of the oligarchs.

Ideally, big banks should be sold in medium-size pieces, divided regionally or by type of business. Where this proves impractical—since we’ll want to sell the banks quickly—they could be sold whole, but with the requirement of being broken up within a short time. Banks that remain in private hands should also be subject to size limitations. This may seem like a crude and arbitrary step, but it is the best way to limit the power of individual institutions in a sector that is essential to the economy as a whole. Of course, some people will complain about the “efficiency costs” of a more fragmented banking system, and these costs are real. But so are the costs when a bank that is too big to fail—a financial weapon of mass self-destruction—explodes. Anything that is too big to fail is too big to exist.

(via James Kwak of Baseline Scenario)

Whatever goes around comes around

From here: A high-level Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, on whether they violated international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.

... Judge Garzón, however, has built an international reputation by bringing high-profile cases against human rights violators as well as international terrorist networks like Al Qaeda. The arrest warrant for General Pinochet led to his detention in Britain, although he never faced a trial. The judge has also been outspoken about the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Spain can claim jurisdiction in the case because five citizens or residents of Spain who were prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have said they were tortured there.

Quotable

"We go to zero emissions in this country, and if China doesn't follow us, we're nowhere. We've just ruined our economy, and we're nowhere. We make mistakes here, and we have a real problem. We talk about that we should lead, then people will follow, but that's kind of silly. China's not going to follow us because we're the United States. . . . You say, 'Shut down your plants' -- well, that's going to be a short conversation. They've got $2 trillion invested in their plants and they still aren't feeding all their people. If we were China, we wouldn't shut our plants down either." 

-- J. Wayne Leonard, chairman and CEO of Entergy Corp., one of the largest U.S. energy companies and the No. 2 generator of nuclear power. From here. 

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Religion and science fiction

The religious angles behind major science fiction movie productions:

There is a young man, different from other young men. Ancient prophecies foretell his coming, and he performs miraculous feats. Eventually, confronted by his enemies, he must sacrifice his own life—an act that saves mankind from calamity—but in a mystery as great as that of his origin, he is reborn, to preside in glory over a world redeemed. Tell this story to one of the world’s 2 billion Christians, and he’ll recognize it instantly. Tell it to a science-fiction and fantasy fan, and he’ll ask why you’re making minor alterations to the plot of The Matrix or Superman Returns. For reasons that have as much to do with global politics as with our cultural moment, some of this generation’s most successful sci-fi and fantasy movie franchises follow an essentially Christian plotline.

Quotable

Black historian John Hope Franklin died yesterday. The following quote from former slave Frederick Douglass is in order.

"In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... your interference is doing him positive injury." From Frederick Douglass' speech in Boston, Massachusetts on 26 January 1865

Group of "contrabands" photographed by James F. Gibson at Cumberland Landing, VA during May-August 1862. Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, The Peninsular Campaign. Picture ripped from the Library of Congress

From here on the word 'contraband' as applied to African American slaves: The federal government had a harder time deciding what to do about escaping slaves during the Civil War. Because there was no consistent federal policy regarding fugitives, individual commanders made their own decisions. Some put them to work for the Union forces; others wanted to return them to their owners. Finally, on August 6, 1861, fugitive slaves were declared to be "contraband of war" if their labor had been used to aid the Confederacy in any way. And if found to be contraband, they were declared free.

Thus Spake Sarahthustra - V

"So I'm looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra, and the McCain campaign, love 'em, you know, they're a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray." - Sarah Palin, the lipsticked pitbull 'speeching' in Anchorage last week.

More of her memorable quotes here, here and here.

Zeitgeist’s parlance

A new blog by Ben Schott exploring the vocabulary of current events. Below is the entry for 'corrective rape'. Other memorable ones include McSaint and Guo Jin Min Tui. Not sure how many of this will make it into the OED...

Corrective Rape:
The use of sexual assault to “cure” lesbians in South Africa. In a disturbing report entitled “Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa,” the NGO Action Aid said: In South Africa, no woman is safe from violence. The country’s war against its women continues unabated, with an estimated 500,000 rapes, hundreds of murders and countless beatings inflicted every year. For every 25 men accused of rape in South Africa, 24 walk free. This shameful record has resulted in an increasingly brutal and oppressive culture of male violence, in which women are forced to conform or suffer the consequences. As part of this oppression, the country is now witnessing a backlash of crimes targeted specifically at lesbian women, who are perceived as representing a direct threat to a male-dominated society.
… Support groups say that rape is fast becoming the most widespread hate crime targeted against gay women in townships across South Africa. One lesbian and gay support group says it is dealing with 10 new cases of lesbian women being targeted for “corrective” rape every week in Cape Town alone.

Photo

‘We came from the place where the sun is hid at night, over great plains where the buffaloes live, until we reached the big river. There we fought the Alligewi, till the ground was red with their blood. From the banks of the big river to the shores of the salt lake, there was none to meet us. The Maquas followed at a distance. We said the country should be ours from the place where the water runs up no longer on this stream, to a river twenty sun’s journey toward the summer. We drove the Maquas into the woods with the bears. They only tasted salt at the licks; they drew no fish from the great lake; we threw them the bones.’ - from The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper.

Note

Watching a documentary 10 trillion and counting on PBS last night, I was reminded of an essay on spiritual trusteeship by Eknath Easwaran in which the author hones in on an oft repeated but barely practiced refrain: "How will this affect our grandchildren?"

South African peace conference called off

Good.