The Breaking Time

A farewell to the People's Historian

My tribute to the recently departed Howard Zinn is up at Coilhouse:

Activist academics are a dime a dozen, but what set Zinn far above most was the balance of a deep commitment to his ideals with both humility and perspective. He refused to replace old dogma with new and resisted the easy mythologizing of the oppressed. While he did not pretend that A People’s History (or any other) was objective, he meticulously researched his facts and readily admitted mistakes and oversights.

The result was a history that could be cheered and argued with, but never ignored.

Zinn did not rest on his laurels. A People’s History went through five new versions, as he constantly incorporated new events and discoveries into the narrative. Tireless in his activism, he fought against new wars and injustices that he saw as part of an ancient pattern. In his final interview, he spoke eloquently of the nigh-total ignorance of America’s long history of involvement in Haiti, and how it shapes our public discourse today.

In 2005, he returned to Spelman College, from whence he’d been expelled in the ’60s for his rabble-rousing, and delivered a passionate speech calling on the next generation to resist the easy urge of apathy. There is one line in particular that stands out, a sharp point on his decades-long struggle to make us more aware of the tales that shape our lives:

“The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies.”

Also, this. A thousand times.

The Great Recession? Not for all nations

A woman leaves flowers at the feet of the bull statue in front of the Bombay Stock Exchange. Couldn't find the photographer on this one. if you know, let me know.

An interesting article by Zachary Karabell dissects the "Great Recession." It turns out said economic bust might not be as massive as we thought, but has still produced a massive shift:

First of all, it’s a stretch to rank the recent meltdown in the top five worst downturns in American history. During the Great Depression, unemployment in the United States was 25%, and that was a low-ball estimate at best. Equity markets lost more than 80% of their value, and thousands of banks collapsed. When you lost your home in the 1930s, you likely became homeless, hence the sight of “Hoovervilles,” those tent cities that popped up in New York and throughout the country. Or take the 1973-1974 downturn, which was followed by years of double-digit inflation, the near bankruptcy of New York City, and a sharp rise in crime and urban decay. The economic crises of the 19th century were worse: the Panic of 1873 led to years when as much as half the American labor force lost their jobs.

Outside the United States, the Great Recession wasn’t nearly as great. Unlike prior economic crises, when governments fell and mobs assaulted the centers of power, there has been little political upheaval and almost no violence. In fact, large swaths of the world – China most notably, but followed closely by Brazil and India – emerged with their relative position enhanced as a result of the crisis. China has $2.4 trillion in reserves and a larger share of world trade than before the crisis, and India—by virtue of having an insulated and partly closed financial system – suffered far less and has emerged much stronger. In fact, what is termed the worst crisis since the Great Depression in the United States and Europe is actually the greatest boon since decolonization for much of the rest of the world.

In that respect, the world has changed. The locus of financial and economic activity has moved away from the United States and become dispersed throughout the world. No one center has replaced the United States, and indeed, the U.S. remains pivotal, large and absolutely central to the economic vitality of the globe. But the crisis did put an exclamation point on what had been happening in the decade before, namely the emergence of multiple regions as viable and vital economic powerhouses, especially Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong but also Mumbai, Abu Dhabi and Dubai (even a hobbled Dubai), Rio and Sao Paulo, and even Toronto.

Interesting part there about India's semi-closed financial system helping to immunize its economy: autarky has its place.

This sort of shift is exactly the reason I gave this blog its name: upheaval, especially dramatic as of late, is breaking up old structures with no clear successor in their wake. Likewise, this exemplifies another important point about the Breaking Time we live in: it could end up as a golden age as easily as a dark one. In fact, it might have aspects of both (the Renaissance was, after all, a shit time to be an Aztec).

So now we see that the recession that has everyone in Europe and the US freaking out is a nascent boom for much of the rest of the world. This is, naturally, awesome news if you're an Indian or Brazilian, not so much if you're a manufacturing worker in the U.S. or an unemployed youth in Germany.

Of course, much of the last decade's prosperity was a bubble, based on unsustainable levels of debt and hyper-inflated prices for certain commodities. That's not going to come back, and it probably shouldn't. While the economic measures taken by many countries have largely prevented the economy from bleeding out, and this is a far cry from the Great Depression, rebuilding prosperity into something more durable is going to be a long road.

Which brings up another point about changing times: they're invigorating in retrospect but often terrifying to live through.

Of toxic water and imminent threats

Activists pepper health study author Sandy Mort with questions at last Thursday's meeting. Photo by Jonathan Welch for Mountain Xpress

My article on the clash between activists and bureaucrats over the "imminent threat" of contamination at the former CTS of Asheville plant is in this week's Mountain Xpress:

It was a tense moment in the T.C. Roberson High School theater on the evening of Jan. 21. Sandy Mort of the state Department of Health and Human Services, the author of a recent study on the health effects of contamination near the former CTS of Asheville site (see sidebar), had just told the audience that a bus stop near the site posed no hazard. For the better part of three hours, the HHS staffer had heard a litany of neighboring residents' tales of personal pain, criticisms of the study and calls to clean up the source of the trichloroethylene contamination.

"Do you have a heart? Do you hear what these people are saying?" one woman shouted.

Holding the microphone close to her mouth, Mort gave a slight sigh and said, "We work with the information we have; that's reality."

---

Residents repeatedly questioned the study's finding that although there were 64 cases in the study area of types of cancer that could be related to TCE exposure, there was no elevated cancer rate. Mort acknowledged that the study's methods do have limitations but added that her agency would continue to update its studies.

Residents, however, countered with tales of cancer and maladies that they believe are linked to the tainted ground water they unknowingly consumed for many years. Although the first EPA tests were conducted in 1991, the first wells weren't capped until 1999.

"We've had a lot of medical problems in our family," said Becky Robinson, whose home was among the first to be put on city water. "We have had no medical recommendations, no guidance, nothing. We had to get our own medical testing. My two grandchildren's immune systems came back compromised. Nothing has been done; nobody has contacted us. My daughter's had lots of medical problems. Her liver started failing, she had a total hysterectomy at 23, seizures, multiple knee operations for cysts. We drank the water for nine years; we fixed our children's bottles with this water. All of them have health problems."

Mort said she thought public-health professionals had been in touch, but Dot Rice, whose well was also capped in 1999, said she hadn't heard from any public doctors until last week.

"We've got staff that can talk to your physicians," said Dr. Doug Campbell, who heads the state agency's Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch.

"Great — what about my medical bills?" asked Robinson.

"Well, we cannot offer that," responded Campbell.

States. Who needs 'em?

Neil Freeman's reformed map of the United States. Larger version here

Above is a brilliant cartographical thought experiment by artist and urban planner Neil Freeman. Responding to the wonky electoral college and the fact that sparsely populated regions have a disproportionate political power, while highly prosperous urban areas wield relatively little, he redrew the state boundaries along population and geographical boundaries. Each has (as of the 2000 census figures) roughly 5.6 million people.

It's particularly fascinating because it offers a snapshot of how an industrial society has changed and how some of the most important administrative divisions (states here or in Australia, provinces in Canada, etc.) fail to reflect that.  

This would seem to be a trivial difference, but it's not. Witness how New York, a city with the GDP and population of a small country, feels stifled by the legislature in Albany. Witness how different the needs and views of the many different parts of California are (would LA or SF Bay states have a Prop 8?). I've heard more than one urban Canadian grouse about how much power remains in the hands of clueless provincial governments.

State governments were drawn up in the days when slower technology made quick administration over a nation difficult, and thus a middle layer of government was more essential. Today, the boundaries are essentially arbitrary, and state governments complicate a whole range of policies on important issues such as transportation and the environment. Even many smart people still (mistakenly) peg cultural qualities to certain states, whether dividing them into Red or Blue or swearing to boycott/move away from a particular one when the electorate votes the wrong way.

Freeman's map shows a country organized closer to how it actually functions: large rural swaths, clusters of medium-sized cities and a few super-dense city-states.

It's often said that the future is local. To some extent I think this is true: there's certainly a need for active, powerful local government along with a more self-sufficient economy. I also think that a grander-scale government entity is absolutely necessary to have a hope of tackling more massive problems. However, to fulfill that, a far larger structure than the traditional state/province is needed.

The larger question then, is where the state, history's political middle-man, fits in the future. Does it have one at all?

P.S. - Freeman's map also abolishes South Carolina. The official Breaking Time stance on this is Yes.

The Robot Wars

Johann Hari has an excellent article on the rapidly increasing use of robot soldiers, disturbing implications and all. Worth quoting at length:

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they had no robots as part of their force. By the end of 2005, they had 2400. Today, they have 12,000, carrying out 33,000 missions a year. A report by the US Joint Forces Command says autonomous robots will be the norm on the battlefield within twenty years.

The NATO forces now depend on a range of killer-robots, largely designed by the British Ministry of Defence labs privatized by Tony Blair in 2001. Every time you hear about a “drone attack” against Afghanistan or Pakistan, that’s an unmanned robot dropping bombs on human beings. Push a button and it flies away, kills, and comes home. Its robot-cousin on the battlefields below is called SWORDS: a human-sized robot that can see 360 degrees around it and fire its machine-guns at any target it “chooses.” Fox News proudly calls it “the G.I. of the twenty-first century.” And billions are being spent on the next generation of warbots, who will leave these models looking like a ZX Spectrum or the bulky box on which you used to play Pong.

---

The military say this is a safer model of combat. Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command says of the warbots: “They’re not afraid. They don’t forget their orders. They don’t care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.” Why take a risk with your soldier’s life, if he can stay in Arlington and kill in Kandahar? Think of it as War 4.0. There are proposals to bring this model home into domestic law enforcement too: the Department of Homeland Security recently requested money to buy eighteen drone planes to patrol the US-Mexico border.

But the evidence punctures this techno-optimism. We know the programming of robots will regularly go wrong – because all technological programming regularly goes wrong. Look at the place where robots are used most frequently today: factories. Some 4 percent of US factories have “major robotics accidents” every year – a man having molten allunimium poured over him, or a woman picked up and placed on a conveyor belt to be smashed into the shape of a car. The former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was nearly killed a few years ago after a robot attacked him on a tour of a factory. And remember: these are robots that aren’t designed to kill.

On its first public outing in 2007, one of South Africa’s first warbots went haywire  and began firing explosive shells all around it at the rate of 550 a minute. Nine soldiers died. Think about how maddening it is to deal with a robot on the telephone when you want to pay your phone bill. Now imagine that robot had a machine gun pointed at your chest.

Robots find it almost impossible to distinguish an apple from a tomato: how will they distinguish a combatant from a civilian? You can’t appeal to a robot for mercy; you can’t activate its empathy. And afterwards, who do you punish? Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch says: “War crimes need a violation and an intent. A machine has no capacity to want to kill civilians … If they are incapable of intent, are they incapable of war crimes?”

My, that's a brainful. Hari ends up concluding that the use of robot soldiers needs to be banned, the same way most countries agreed to stop the use of chemical weapons. He's not alone in that thought, though others aren't going quite as far: calling for international regulation instead of an outright ban.

For all their firepower and the lack of human risk, the record of robot soldiers isn't really that promising. Drones kill about 50 civilians for every militant (compare that to bayonet charges, whose record in Iraq is 20 dead militants, 0 dead civilians, 0 dead soldiers), cost $15 million a pop and are vulnerable to hackers.

However, the concept is extremely appealing to military commanders and politicians needing the appearance of victories when facing a public wary of military casualties. It also speaks to the societal technophilia that has one of its most hubris-filled manifestations in much Western military thinking of the past 50 years. Governments with a need for mechanized warriors are often facing conflicts where they have a definite edge in technology and cash, so a machine that kills more effectively seems appealing: it avoids a wholesale reworking of military thinking while allowing for a flashy demonstration. Plus they're expensive as hell, so someone's going to make bank.

Of course, it's the over-emphasis on technology (as compared to the socio-economic and strategic parts of war), that's helped create this situation in the first place. Many wars today are against stateless groups who have the guerilla problem on their side. More effective indiscriminate killing is simply going to increase the power of the grievances on which insurgent groups thrive.

It's easy to see Hari's call for a ban on the killbots as naivete, but restrictions on weaponry have worked before, albeit haphazardly. The ban on chemical weapons dates back to the end of World War I, and while it hasn't completely stopped their usage, it has made the deployment of those weapons much more rare. So Hari's proposal is at least worth considering.

Of course, no super-weapon of the past has proved to give its owners the magic key to ultimate victory they'd hoped. Machine guns, chemical warfare, tanks, nuclear weapons all ended up producing a world just as conflict-filled as before. Those weapons' drawbacks sometimes proved so significant that widespread use was impossible. If that didn't occur, the sides lacking them were quickly able to reproduce the new device or develop counter-measures.

So the military has robot soldiers? Somewhere out there an insurgent's figuring out how to rig up a cheap EMP. We continue to live in interesting times.

P.S. - In an interesting coincidence, today also marks the annivesary of the first human death caused by a robot.

Werner Herzog reads Curious George

'Nuff said.

Poems for Friday: Tourist

Photo by Ruth Fremson

The recent devastation in Haiti brought this poem back to my mind, though it took me some time to track it down. Felix Morriseau-Leroy was one of Haiti's greatest poets, and this blunt smack to the face perfectly illustrates the desperation and foreign gawking his land has become all too familiar with. 

Worth a read, during these weeks. Catastrophes aren't built in a day.

Tourist, don't take my picture

Don't take my picture, tourist

I'm too ugly

Too dirty

Too skinny

Don't take my picture, white man

Mr. Eastman won't be happy

I'm too ugly

Your camera will break

I'm too dirty

Too black

Whites like you won't be content

I'm too ugly

I'm gonna crack your kodak

Don't take my picture, tourist

Leave me be, white man

Don't take a picture of my burro

My burro's load's too heavy

And he's too small

And he has no food here

Don't take a picture of my animal

Tourist, don't take a picture of the house

My house is of straw

Don't take a picture of my hut

My hut's made of earth

The house already smashed up

Go shoot a picture of the Palace

Or the Bicentennial grounds

Don't take a picture of my garden

I have no plow

No truck

No tractor

Don't take a picture of my tree

Tourist, I'm barefoot

My clothes are torn as well

Poor people don't look at whites

But look at my hair, tourist

Your kodak's not used to my color

Your barber's not used to my hair

Tourist, don't take my picture

You don't understand my position

You don't understand anything

About my business, tourist

"Gimme fie cents"

And then, be on your way, tourist.

The Five Stages of Political Grief

Now Panic and Freak Out, by Olly Moss

In the wake of Martha Coakley's shocking defeat in Massachusetts last night, an ancient cycle has re-asserted itself. This psychological pattern is present in tense electoral moments throughout history and manifests prominently among the emotionally impressionable (which happens to be most of the electorate on any side). With apologies to the late Dr. Kübler-Ross, it goes something like this:

Denial Oh my shitting shit, that did not just happen?! How the fuck does a Republican win in Massachusetts? In Ted Kennedy's seat?! This can't be right. The votes haven't all been counted yet! Oh, wait...

Anger Fuck this. Fuck you, Massachusetts. You bastards just ruined everything. Gah, this is worse than when Bush won. I'm going to move away from the damn state. Oh wait, I don't live there. Well I'm moving to Canada; I don't even want to be in the same country with fucking Massholes.

Bargaining Just let the health care bill pass, please. I can deal with Ted Kennedy's seat being occupied by a hunter-shirt sporting former nude model, but please just let the Democrats hold it together long enough to get something done...

Depression *Sob* Health care's screwed, everything's screwed. Everyone's gonna blame each other and we're all gonna fall back into the pit. *Weep, gnash* Cheney will be President in 2012 *Rend garments* OH fuckkkkkkkk *Long, long swig from whiskey bottle*

Acceptance Hey, maybe it won't be so bad. I mean, Republicans have been in government before. Besides, it's not like politics matters any...

Y'know what, fuck that. If you're involved in politics, as a citizen or an activist, and your causes mean a damn thing to you, then acceptance has no place in your vocabulary. One election should not make you throw up your hands in despair. Roll with the punches, compromise if necessary, but never, ever bow down. So let's have ourselves a new fifth stage.

Defiance There we go. I believe this attitude is best summed up by political mastermind Al Swearengen:

Now pound a shot and quit whining.

Recommended Bible verses for Jesus Guns

A USMC sergeant holds up an M-4 equipped with the ACOG scope, now found to be inscribed with secret codes for Bible verses. Photo from ABC News' slideshow.

By now you've probably heard the news that many of the Marine Corps' gun sights are engraved with code for Bible verses. Mostly it's Christian triumphialism like "then spake Jesus again unto them, saying "I am the light of the world" and similar stuff. Naturally, the fact that weapons used by an ostensibly secular military in combat among Muslim populations bear religious inscriptions proclaiming the superiority of another religion probably isn't going to go over well. Just like that time Bible verses decorated Iraq war briefings. That was an awesome moment in strategic subtlety.

So perhaps it's time to consider some different Bible verses gracing our high-tech weaponry. There's the obvious choice, of course, John 11:35; "Jesus wept." This reflects the probable reaction of a Semitic pacifist mystic by that name, were he to suddenly reappear in the Middle East today and witness these weapons in use.

But ideally, I think the military is better off going farther back, to the Old Testament, in particular the Book of Ecclesiastes, a particularly harsh view on life that predates the Abrahamic creeds' development of an afterlife. I haven't been Christian for many a moon, but these stark little nuggets of wisdom continue hold a place in my heart, partly because the odd variety of existential stoicism is so out of synch with much of the rest of the book into which accident and history have placed them.

Let's inscribe these on some guns, they describe war (and much of life) far better than trumpeting the bringing of light (a muzzle-flash, perhaps) to the world:

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.

---

for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

---

yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

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Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

And my personal favorite:

the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Jodorowsky, Dali, and the Dune that never was

Moebius' concept sketches for Duke Leto Atreides, Sardaukar soldier. More here.

After reading an interesting article on Alejandro Jodorowsky's art in Coilhouse 4, I decided to refresh my knowledge of the man, limited mostly to his films and Metal Hurlant work.

So I'm poking around his wikipedia article when I find this:

In December 1974, a French consortium led by Jean-Paul Gibon purchased the film rights to Dune from Arthur P. Jacobs. Jodorowsky was set to direct. In 1975, Jodorowsky planned to film the story as a ten hour feature, in collaboration with Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Alain Delon, Hervé Villechaize and Mick Jagger. The music would be composed by Pink Floyd, Magma, Henry Cow and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Jodorowsky set up a pre-production unit in Paris consisting of Chris Foss, a British artist who designed covers for science fiction periodicals, Jean Giraud (Moebius), a French illustrator who created and also wrote and drew for Metal Hurlant magazine, and H. R. Giger. Moebius began designing creatures and characters for the film, while Foss was brought in to design the film's space ships and hardware. Giger began designing the Harkonnen Castle based on Moebius' storyboards, and Dali was cast as the Emperor with a reported salary of $100,000 an hour. His son Brontis Jodorowsky was to play Paul. Dan O'Bannon was to head the special effects department.

Dali and Jodorowsky began quarreling over money, and just as the storyboards, designs, and script were finished, the financial backing dried up. Frank Herbert travelled to Europe in 1976 to find that $2 million of the $9.5 million budget had already been spent in pre-production, and that Jodorowsky's script would result in a 14-hour movie ("It was the size of a phonebook", Herbert later recalled). Jodorowsky took creative liberties with the source material, but Herbert said that he and Jodorowsky had an amicable relationship.

I believe "holy awesome bat-shit" is the correct expression. The tale only gets stranger from there.