The Wondering Mind

If you’re in favour of a woman’s right to choose, you probably find the people depicted in the NY Times article not just objectionable but downright crazy. We can argue about the merits of allowing or banning abortion, although I suspect it wouldn’t be much of a debate as few people’s minds would be swayed.

What is rather sad are the people who engage in these activities. These are all broken people, in one sense or another. They may not all have obviously traumatised childhoods like Deborah Anderson, but they all clearly have some void in their lives they are desperately trying to fill by hectoring other people on how they should lead their lives. So often, people who feel something broken in their lives find it easier trying to fix what they think is wrong with other people’s lives, even if those other people see nothing that needs fixing. It’s not hard to see why: it takes less courage to face other people’s demons than to face your own.

The other thing is that they are all obviously craving attention. Desperately. I quote from one of the people in the story.

“I don’t want to say the conflict is fun, because it isn’t,” said Mr. Brewer, 40, an easygoing state pool champion with an earring high in his left ear. “But the interaction is fun, to be able to talk to people who take the time to listen to what you have to say.”

Whether you’re talking about anti-abortionists or the Fox News tea-baggers, these are people with inflated egos who cannot understand why the world is not paying them their due attention. They love being the centre of attention, even if they have to act out like cranky 5 year olds throwing a tantrum. How much more attention can you get than to have someone getting in your face and yelling at you?

The speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu was eagerly awaited to see how Israel would respond to President Obama’s insistence that Israel actually live up to the repeated commitments it has made, in writing, to stop all settlement activity. A commitment which only Israel even pretends it has not flagrantly broken even before the ink on the commitments were dry.

Well, we got our answer today. Which is to say, Netanyahu, as expected, basically flipped off the rest of the world.

Aside from using the word “state” to describe the possible status of lands occupied by Palestinians, there is nothing new in what Netanyahu said. Frankly, it’s the same double-talk and hypocrisy. Some would call them lies.

If you read the BBC article and watch the clip of the speech, it’s breathtaking the extent of confabulation Netanyahu engages in. Or it would be if it was not standard operating procedure for Israelis.

He urges talks without preconditions. Well, except Israeli preconditions. They don’t count. And of course all sides should live up to existing commitments. Except any commitments Israel has made, and consistently ignored. That doesn’t count either.

And most importantly, Israel and Israelis want peace. Except what they want isn’t peace at all. What they want is victory. What they want is to win and to dictate terms to the Palestinians. So I suppose to the extent that Israel wants to dictate peace to the rest of the Middle East, they want peace.

To be fair, it is not clear that this is what the majority of Israelis want. There are many who believe that the majority wants actual peace as much as anyone. To the extent that they are unable to reign in the extremist fringes of their polity, they are held as much captive as the rest of us. Of course, to the extent that they allow the extremists to hold the reigns of power in Israelis politics, they are not really captives at all.

Which is true of American support of Israeli policies. During Bush’s presidency, there was blind support of anything Israel wanted to do, to the detriment of everyone’s interest in true peace. Now is the time when we will see if the Obama administration will allow Israel to hold their foreign policy hostage as well.

Another inmate at Guantanamo has apparently committed suicide.

It is way past time that the Obama administration shut this place down. Congress may be balking and the American public maybe hesitant. But they are wrong. The camp is a continuing source of shame to the U.S. and does not make the country safer one iota.

We can find any number of people in American prisons who are, and would be if released, more dangerous than some of the people being held in Guantanamo. The continuing existence of this camp sends nothing by negative messages about this country to the world, and to the terrorists who want to do it harm.

It says that America is so terrified of these few criminals that they can’t stand to have them on American soil, even in some of the most secure prisons on Earth. It says that the U.S. won’t try these people because Americans themselves believe that their justice system is so weak and ineffective that they cannot stand up to a motley crew of Third World thugs. It says that Americans believe that they are above the standards that they preach to the rest of the world to abide by. That they think they are somehow special and above everyone else.

If the debacle in Iraq, the current troubles in Afghanistan, and the continuing fight with terrorists has shown us one thing, it is that even the most powerful nation needs friends. Getting rid of Guantanamo won’t dissuade those inclined to believe the worst about America, but it wont’ hurt to make everyone else more sympathetic to the American cause.

This article in the NY Times seems to encapsulate all the reasons why the Israeli people are doing themselves no favours by having elected in the current coalition headed by extremists. It’s probably why president Obama will not make much progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in his first term (assuming he will have a second).

The article says that there are two reasons why the world view of the new Israeli administration will be a hard sell to the rest of the world.

First, even though the standard approaches have not yielded success, no alternative has emerged.

Second, the Obama administration has repeatedly backed the two-state solution, as have the Europeans. In other ways, too, this White House has seemed to be closer in outlook to Europe than the past administration was.

They omit the most obvious third reason why it would be a hard sell: The new Israeli story is completely self-serving of the new administration’s own extremist views and policies.

Unlike just about every other country, the new Israeli world view is that the real problem is that Arab countries don’t accept Israel, and as the growing power of Iran. Under this alternate reality vision of the issue, Iran is the real problem because they support Hamas and Hezbollah.

Even if you accept this view (I can’t bring myself to even call it an “analysis”), it is completely one-sided and self-serving. This view is really advocating the elimination of the single most active and powerful source of military, if not financial, source of support for Palestinian resistance of Israel. The Israelis policy in this case, as is apparent in all other cases, is not for peace but victory over the Palestinians, by eliminating any means of leverage the Palestinians might have over Israel.

You can see the flimsiness of the Israeli position. On the one hand, they would have you believe that the real problem is the Iranians because they are causing all the problems. All of them. But Israel will not work on trying to resolve the Palestinian issue to help with the Iranian issue because the two are not linked. So they are linked, but not linked?

According to the article, Israel would like to argue that this is all moot, because the Palestinians aren’t ready to govern themselves. From Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman,

But it is expected that he would say that such a state was far in the future because Palestinian institutions and economic development required a great deal of work — as well as investment from Arab states — and that Palestinian education and public discourse needed to be more oriented toward coexistence.

Putting aside the naked colonial language, which is frankly hard to swallow, it doesn’t take an astute observer to note that “Palestinian institutions and economic development required a great deal of work” mainly because Israel actively destroys all and any Palestinian progress on either front on a regular basis. Usually with the liberal use of tanks, missiles, guns, and assassins. Which is also why “Palestinian education and public discourse needed to be more oriented toward coexistence.”

Fact of the matter is that before there can be real peace, Palestinians will have to put a stop to violence against Israel. But if Israel is serious about wanting peace, as opposed to trying to dictate peace (which is, of course, not the same thing), then it has to make concessions and compromises too. And so far it hasn’t.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks Israel hasn’t been doing much in the way of compromising or contributing.

The American, European and Arab response is that for Iran to be checked, every nation needs to do its part, and Israel’s part is to work toward ending the occupation, stopping settlement construction and fostering the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israeli negotiating tactic is most reminiscent of North Korean dealings with the rest of the world. They act out like a spoiled child. Then they eventually come whining to negotiations and sign a deal. The rest of the world starts to deliver, but North Korea doesn’t, so the world demands the North do so. They scream and yell they have been insulted, tear up the deal publicly, and demand another deal while trying to keep the benefits they already received in bad faith.

Israel keeps promising they’ll give back other people’s land (the Golan Heights), but only if they get something too. (Kind of like a thief offering to return your car, but only if you pay for it.) They say they’ll stop expanding settlements, and don’t. They say they’ll slow the expansion from their current levels, while accelerating the rate of “current” expansions.

While the world may not like what Hamas and Hezbollah have to say, at least they deal in (relative) good faith.

So someone actually published a study on something I’ve always wondered about when watching The Colbert Report. Specifically, when I watch some conservative guests, I wonder if they realise that they are sometimes being mocked, and usually being challenged, on their conservative views. You really get the feeling that some of these people just don’t realise they are not on a conservative show.

Well, there appears to be plenty of evidence that there are conservatives who don’t get it. An observation now backed up by the study.

I don’t have access to the full article so I don’t know if the researchers reached any conclusions beyond the observation that the viewer’s opinion of the show’s political leanings appears to be influenced by the viewer’s own political sympathies. But I’m more interested in exactly how and why the viewer’s political sympathies would colour their perspective of the show.

So without the benefit of any empirical evidence, I would like to speculate on a few hypotheses of my own. In no particular order, they are:

1. They just don’t watch the show that often. If they did, it would be rather difficult for intelligent and educated viewers not to catch onto the biting sarcasm of some of the “bits”, especially some of the “The Word” pieces. I’ve often wondered if this is the case with some of the politicians interviewed for “Better Know a District”. To be fair to these people, if you are only an occasional, or even sporadic, viewer and you don’t know much about Stephen Colbert, you could easily be confused as to whether he’s serious or not. To be even more fair, these people can, and probably should, do more research before they go on the show. Or answering a study.
2. The conservative brain is different. Conservatives may genuinely perceive the world differently. I don’t mean to imply there’s anything necessarily defective about that. I just mean that it’s entirely conceivable that at least part of the reason conservatives hold a different world view to more left-wing people might be that their minds work differently.
3. Some conservatives, just like some left-wingers, are just idiots. There’s no way around it. People like Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage (“NOM”), are clearly stupid. How else would anyone who actually saw the bit Colbert did on the NOM advert think it was serious? At least Brian Brown, NOM’s Executive Director, seemed to realise in the same press release that the bit was not serious and not at all complementary, thanking Colbert only for the free playing of the ridiculous advert. (I don’t fully understand, though, why he or anyone else at NOM didn’t think to tell Maggie Gallagher.)

As I said, these are pure speculation and conjecture, since I have nothing more than annecdotal evidence, at best, to support them.

But they are an attempt to answer what is the most interesting aspect of the study. Not that some conservatives don’t get The Colbert Show, but why they don’t get it.

The on-going saga at AIG is a drama in the ridiculous, the outrageous, and (for the taxpayers) the tragic. The public outrage that came about from the news of the “retention” bonuses did not have long on the news cycle before the media outlets and the Obama administration started a concerted campaign to convince us that it was over the top and misdirected, so that the masses would not get in the way of the continuing bailout.

I’ve blogged before about why I don’t believe the public anger is misplaced or over the top. I’ve also written about what many believe is an arrogant sense of entitlement among these Wall Street types.

Well, just to  make my point for me even more clearly, this idiot wrote an op-ed in the NY Times. You can read some of the reasons why at least one of my friends hoped the author would get hit by a bus.

The letter is so outrageously self-righteous, self-satisfied, and self-entitled, that it literally took my breath away. I also could not believe someone would be quite so stupid as to publicise the biggest “kick me” sign on his back I have ever seen.

The amazing thing is that this fool is not alone. Just read here and here for more whining from the gilded set.

It’s not surprising that these people may feel put-upon. And that, seen in isolation, their treatment in the last year or so by various parties has been harsh, if not outright unfair. But they can’t be that stupid.

You can’t see the treatment of these people in isolation from what they did for years. The anonymous author of the supposed letter from within AIG rightly holds the system and the politicians responsible. But there is absolutely no recognition of the fact that he/she, and others like them at AIG, played within that system. Played by that system’s rules, played with the politicians, for profit which was completely dissociated from any benefit they may have conferred on society at large. If you participate in what you yourself describe as a corrupt system, why would be expect a happy ending for yourself?

There is also a complete lack of solidarity with the millions of others who have been victims of the financial crisis. They too worked hard and they had even less, if any, involvement with creating, running, and perpetuating the system which caused the current crisis. And yet they find themselves in straits even more dire than many at AIG. Why are those at AIG owed more than the rest of us?

You really have to look to the Middle Ages, or the Dark Ages, for this sort of sense of entitlement. When people were taught that kings and lords were somehow entitled because God must have ordained it. Maybe DeSantis and others believe that God ordained their bonuses.

For the rest of us who don’t believe that kind of rubbish, we need to let our politicians know that it is now beyond time they threw out the corrupt system of finance and the crooked actors who have profited from it once and for all. If they want to put a failed system on life-support with our hard-earned money so that this self-appointed new class of gentry can live in $10,000 a month flats, then we need new politicians.

I’ve long been a critic of Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians, and of America’s slavish support of those policies. I think they regularly violate international law and are a source (although far from being the only source) of violence and instability in the Middle East. I also believe that the conflict with the Palestinians has had, and continues to have, a corrosive effect on the Israeli society and its institutions such as its armed forces. None of these things are good for the U.S.

So it was disappointing, but perhaps wholly predictable, when a nominee for a top intelligence post in the Obama administration was essentially ousted from the nomination by the “pro-Israeli” lobby. Their opposition seems to be based on the fact that the nominee does not have a history of rubber-stamping whatever Israel does, no matter how outrageous or ill-advised its actions. This resulted in a concerted effort to cripple the nomination, resulting in the nominee’s withdrawal.

Having said all this, the BBC had a more nuanced analysis, which seems to suggest that the candidate may have been undone not only by the opposition of the Israel lobby, but also by other qualities which proved controversial.

Since I am not already versed in the minutia of the history of this man, it would take me hours and hours to sift through records to figure out whose story is the more accurate portrayal. It’s time I don’t really have. So it’s hard for me to say if the man really did say things which put him in a poor light, or whether his opponents have misrepresented his record for their own purposes.

One thing does seem clear, however. While I don’t know that I necessarily agree with the concluding analysis of the BBC piece about the Arab-Israeli issue being a zero-sum game, it does make a very good point about diplomacy and analysis.

Even if this candidate is accurate in his portrayal of his past statements, it seems clear that he had been, and continues to be, somewhat tone-deaf politically. As an adviser, his jobs have been, and would have been in intelligence, one that is not only objective, but also political. He should have been mindful of the profile of his audience and couched his analyses accordingly.

More broadly, people should be mindful of the greater goals of what they are doing. People sometime lose sight of what their goal should be, instead focusing on making a point or about “being right”. In this case, the person’s job wasn’t to be right (well, actually it was, but that wasn’t the point of his jobs); it was to convey the correct analysis and to get his point across to his audience.

A while ago, I had an experience where a co-worker got into an argument with our boss. He was trying to get our boss to do something which we all knew he did not want to do. The co-worker finally said something which, while he had a point, caused the boss to yell at him. As I said, the co-worker had a valid point, but he was missing the bigger picture. The point wasn’t to be in the right, the point was to get our boss to do this thing, and at that he failed. So really, he got yelled at for no gain or good reason on his part.

A lot of the time, that old cliche that, “you should work smarter, not harder,” is a load of condescending bollocks. You would be working “smarter” if you knew how! Most of the time, you have no choice but to work harder. But sometimes, you really can, and should, work smarter.

Well pretty much everyone not in cryogenic stasis has heard of the farce at AIG by now. There are so many things I want to shout about this, I barely know where to begin. So I thought I would rant about one thing that bothered me about this from the start. And it’s the idea that AIG needed to offer retention bonuses to these people.

Really?

We are now in an economy where talented people are getting laid off all over the place. It is far from clear for anyone except the politicians and the bankers, including the ones at Treasury, why we couldn’t get equally “competent” people without any incentive beyond something called a “paycheck”.

If we really, really need to hold onto the existing employees, as Liddy and Geithner have claimed, I still see no reason for a bonus. These are the scumbag idiots who brought down AIG; who the hell is going to hire these toxic bankers? Anyone fool enough to hire these clowns, well, you’re welcome to them. Unless it’s a bank with government TARP money, in which case the government should promptly close that bank down.

The whole idea of incentive pay like retention bonuses and golden parachutes, etc. have never made any sense to me. The whole premise for such schemes were so transparently fraudulent it’s a disgrace that supposedly intelligent and ethical adults buy that rubbish, especially at a time like this.

The people at AIG were either fools who did not know what they were doing, or they were reckless and arrogant in their self-esteem. If the former, no one will hire them. If the latter, Wall Street will probably welcome them with open arms. But in the current climate, it is hard to see what other employer will have an opening for them. They’re busy laying off their own bankers; why would they hire ones so tainted?

Similar slight of hand has been used by bankers, executives, and the like arguing for their bonuses in the past. “If you don’t pay, they’ll go some where else.” But where?

“Oh well, China would hire them.” Or “Dubai or Singapore would love these guys.” Really?

If you’re some Anglo-Saxon in your 40’s, or so, then there is a high transaction costs involved with going to China, Dubai, or Singapore because they will pay that much. (And it’s never clear that such high pay is available abroad.) Your family who may not want to move to some place with no family or friends, for a start.

There’s a price to pay for living in places where the air quality is so bad scientists believe it shortens your life expectancy, or living in a place where you are fined for chewing gum.

And then there’s the cost of the move, there and back. Not only the financial costs involved, but also the disruption to life, the adjustments needed, etc. I’ve lived in several countries and many more cities, so I can say from experience that it is not an easy adjustment, especially moving to a place where they speak another language.

There are some people who love that kind of stuff, but most people don’t. And even among people who do like it, they like it much less as they grow older and have more ties and commitments.

So why do so many companies apparently buy this fairy tale? Because the people who are in charge have a stake in the game themselves. They are the same coterie who populate all the boards of each other’s companies. Or they’re “HR consultants” who are hired by the very people whose pay they advise on.

Which is why it is so sad to see the Obama administration toe the line on this. For an administration which is supposed to break away from the cronyism of the Bush era, they seem far too ready to buy into the established traditions of corruption.

This is the primary danger for the administration. It is not so much that they are squandering goodwill, although they are. It is that the people will lose faith in the idea of change. When you pass up such obvious opportunities for much needed change, people are going to wonder if you have the competence or the will to make truly meaningful change.

There is a desperate need for change in health care and education, to name only two areas. And these changes will require painful compromises and sacrifices. They will also be opposed by powerful vested interests. The only way these changes happen will be with the broad and unstinting support of the people. But you will not have such support if the people doubt your competence or your motives.

Yesterday, it was bombing two separate UN schools. Now, we hear that Israel is targeting the Red Cross as well. And I mean target. As I write this, I have heard a John Gain, Director of Operations for the UN in Gaza, on radio state categorically that all UN and Red Cross targets hit by Israel were all identified to and cleared by Israel for safety.

The Red Cross, which is ordinarily diplomatic to a fault in such matters, has practically accused the Israelis of deliberately causing humanitarian tragedies.

In a rare and sharply critical statement, it said it believed that “the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded.”

It’s not hard to understand the Red Cross’ logic when you consider that Israel claims to have killed about 130 Hamas fighters. The last independent tally I saw claimed at least 400 plus fatalities among the Palestinians. That’s a ratio of about one Hamas fighter for every 3 civilians killed. Either the IDF just doesn’t care about civilian casualties, or they are bizarrely incompetent. I say bizarre, because with that kind of incompetence, you would expect the IDF to have killed hundreds of Israelis by mistake too. Strange how the mistakes almost always seems to kill just the Palestinians…

To be fair, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel. While I don’t buy the Israeli line that Hamas is deliberately targeting civilians, that’s only because I don’t believe their rockets have that kind of accuracy. Of course, firing rockets indiscriminately is no better than deliberately targeting civilians.

Unfortunately, I can understand Hamas’ reasons for their rockets.

…claiming that rockets were the only way to respond to their imprisonment and to dramatize their humanitarian plight.

The quote from an op-ed by President Carter is not hard to understand. I don’t think it justifies terrorist acts, but I am not sure that I wouldn’t support it if I was a Palestinian. I’m pretty damned sure that under the same treatment that Israel would do much worse. I’ve just seen Israel kill over 400 people for a few terrorists firing rockets.

What are the circumstances?  Well, a Vatican Cardinal recently had this to say.

The worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza led Cardinal Renato Martino, the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Peace and Justice, to comment in an online interview published Wednesday, “Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp.”

The cardinal defended his comments on Thursday in the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica, and said the situation in Gaza was “horrific” and “against human dignity.”

The Israelis are running a concentration camp. And if Israel find the term emotional and offensive; good. They should. The horrific tragedy the European Jews suffered in WWII does not give the state of Israel a free pass in how it acts towards other people.

More to the point, acting this way is not helping anyone, least of all the Israelis. And America is not helping Israel any by enabling such counterproductive behaviour.

Oh, and if you believe that Israel cares about the civilian casualties or about the humanitarian efforts to help Palestinians, other than on the PR front, they apparently have a bridge they want to sell you. Just ignore the reports that it’s in Gaza and they just bombed it.