The Chance for Peace

The Chance for Peace
by Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953
Washington, D.C.

President Bryan, distinguished guests of this Association, and ladies and gentlemen: I am happy to be here. I say this and I mean it very sincerely for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is the number of friends I am honored to count among you. Over the years we have seen, tanked, agreed, and argued with one another on a vast variety of subjects, under circumstances no less varied. We have met at home and in distant lands. We have been together at times when war seemed endless, at times when peace seemed near, at times when peace seemed to have eluded us again. We have met in times of battle, both military and electoral, and all these occasions mean to me memories of enduring friendships.

I am happy to be here for another reason. This occasion calls for my first formal address to the American people since assuming the office of the presidency just twelve weeks ago. It is fitting, I think, that I speak to you the editors of America. You are, in such a vital way, both representatives of and responsible to the people of our country. In great part upon you -- upon your intelligence, your integrity, your devotion to the ideals of freedom and justice themselves -- depend the understanding and the knowledge with which our people must meet the facts of twentieth-century life. Without such understanding and knowledge our people would be incapable of promoting justice; without them, they would be incapable of defending freedom.

Finally, I am happy to be here at this time before this audience because I must speak of that issue that comes first of all in the hearts and minds of all of us -- that issue which most urgently challenges and summons the wisdom and the courage of our whole people. This issue is peace.

In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chances for a just peace for all peoples. To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hopes of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world. Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chances for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hopes of 1945.

In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument -- an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.

This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.

> The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs. First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations.

Third: Every nation's right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.

This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war's wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own toil.

The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future. In the world of its design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all cost. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.

The result has been tragic for the world and, for the Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.

The amassing of Soviet power alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.

It instilled in the free nations -- and let none doubt this -- the unshakable conviction that, as long as there persists a threat to freedom, they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong, and ready for the risk of war.

It inspired them -- and let none doubt this -- to attain a unity of purpose and will beyond the power of propaganda or pressure to break, now or ever.

There remained, however, one thing essentially unchanged and unaffected by Soviet conduct. This unchanged thing was the readiness of the free world to welcome sincerely any genuine evidence of peaceful purpose enabling all peoples again to resume their common quest of just peace. And the free world still holds to that purpose.

The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have assured the Soviet Union that their firm association has never had any aggressive purpose whatsoever. Soviet leaders, however, have seemed to persuade themselves, or tried to persuade their people, otherwise.

And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.

This has been the way of life forged by 8 years of fear and force.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.

It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty.

It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?

The world knows that an era ended with the death of Joseph Stalin. The extraordinary 30-year span of his rule saw the Soviet Empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, finally to dominate 800 million souls.

The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors was born of one World War. It survived with stubborn and often amazing courage a second World War. It has lived to threaten a third.

Now a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union. Its links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.

This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as rarely in its history, by the will to stay free.

The free world knows, out of the bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.

It knows that the peace and defense of Western Europe imperatively demands the unity of purpose and action made possible by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, embracing a European Defense Community.

It knows that Western Germany deserves to be a free and equal partner in this community and that this, for Germany, is the only safe way to full, final unity.

It knows that aggression in Korea and in southeast Asia are threats to the whole free community to be met only through united action.

This is the kind of free world which the new Soviet leadership confronts. It is a world that demands and expects the fullest respect of its rights and interests. It is a world that will always accord the same respect to all others. So the new Soviet leadership now has a precious opportunity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to the point of peril reached and to help turn the tide of history.

Will it do this?

We do not yet know. Recent statements and gestures of Soviet leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment.

We welcome every honest act of peace.

We care nothing for mere rhetoric.

We care only for sincerity of peaceful purpose attested by deeds. The opportunities for such deeds are many. The performance of a great number of them waits upon no complex protocol but only upon the simple will to do them. Even a few such clear and specific acts, such as Soviet Union's signature upon an Austrian treaty or its release of thousands of prisoners still held from World War II, would be impressive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of persuasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.

This we do know: a world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive.

With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.

The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable armistice in Korea.

This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea.

It should mean, no less importantly, an end to the direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Indochina and Malaya. For any armistice in Korea that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be a fraud. We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a peace that is true and total.

Out of this can grow a still wider task -- the achieving of just political settlements for the other serious and specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.

None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble -- given only the will to respect the rights of all nations. Again we say: the United States is ready to assume its just part.

We have already done all within our power to speed conclusion of a treaty with Austria, which will free that country from economic exploitation and from occupation by foreign troops.

We are ready not only to press forward with the present plans for closer unity of the nations of Western Europe but also, upon that foundation, to strive to foster a broader European community, conducive to the free movement of persons, of trade, and of ideas.

This community would include a free and united Germany, with a government based upon free and secret ballot. This free community and the full independence of the East European nations could mean the end of the present unnatural division of Europe.

As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work -- the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:

1. The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.

2. A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes.

3. International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.

4. A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness.

5. The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safeguards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.

The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex.

Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith -- the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively.

The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need.

The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.

This idea of a just and peaceful world is not new or strange to us. It inspired the people of the United States to initiate the European Recovery Program in 1947. That program was prepared to treat, with equal concern, the needs of Eastern and Western Europe.

We are prepared to reaffirm, with the most concrete evidence, our readiness to help build a world in which all peoples can be productive and prosperous.

This Government is ready to ask its people to join with all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of any savings achieved by real disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction. The purposes of this great work would be to help other peoples to develop the undeveloped areas of the world, to stimulate profitable and fair world trade, to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom.

The monuments to this new war would be roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.

We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world.

I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere purposes of the United States.

I know of no course, other than that marked by these and similar actions, that can be called the highway of peace.

I know of only one question upon which progress waits. It is this: What is the Soviet Union ready to do?

Whatever the answer is, let it be plainly spoken.

Again we say: the hunger for peace is too great, the hour in history too late, for any government to mock men's hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.

Is the new leadership of the Soviet Union prepared to use its decisive influence in the Communist world, including control of the flow of arms, to bring not merely an expedient truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?

Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those in Eastern Europe, the free choice of their own form of government?

Is it prepared to act in concert with others upon serious disarmament proposals?

If not, where then is the concrete evidence of the Soviet Union's concern for peace?

There is, before all peoples, a precarious chance to turn the black tide of events.

If we failed to strive to seize this chance, the judgment of future ages will be harsh and just.

If we strive but fail and the world remains armed against itself, it at least would need be divided no longer in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this fate.

The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple. These proposals spring, without ulterior motive or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all people -- those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.

They conform to our firm faith that God created man to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.

They aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace.

Thank you.

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html

Evangelicalism and urbanism

Excerpt from Soldiers of Christ I (Harpers.org)

Linda Burton was “specifically called by God” to Colorado Springs seventeen years ago, though at the time she thought that she was only running from a crack-addicted man who beat her. Linda was not a Christian at the time. She had married young and moved west; after her divorce, there had been many men, an abortion. With the man who beat her she fathered a son, whom she named Aaron Michael, the “strong right hand of God.” Linda took the baby and fled to Colorado Springs, which she remembered as pure and clean from a vacation she and the ex had once taken. She worked two jobs, one waiting tables at the best hotel in town, the other at Red Lobster. A friend at the hotel invited her to New Life, where she learned how her troubles were the result of demons and how to cast them out. Now Linda is an insurance agent, and she and Aaron Michael live in a suburban home. She hears voices, but they do not disturb her. “The Holy Spirit is a gentleman,” she told me one morning over a basket of cinnamon muffins still warm from the oven.

Sitting across from me in her kitchen, she closed her big brown eyes and shushed herself. “I'm listening,” she said quietly.

“To the TV?” I asked. In the next room, Aaron Michael was watching an action movie; the house was filled with the sound of explosions.

“No,” said Linda. “To my Spirit.” She opened her eyes and explained the process she had undergone to reach her refined state. She called it “spiritual restoration.” Anyone can do it, she promised, “even a gay activist.” Linda had seen with her own eyes the sex demons that make homosexuals rebel against God, and she said they are gruesome; but she did not name them, for she would not “give demons glory.” They are all the same, she said.[3] “It's radicalism.”

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “I have to tell you, the spiritual battle is very real.” We are surrounded by demons, she explained, reciting the lessons she had learned in her small-group studies at New Life. The demons are cold, they need bodies, they long to come inside. People let them in in two different ways. One is to be sinned against. “Molested,” suggested Linda. The other is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could walk by sin—a murder, a homosexual act—and a demon will leap onto your bones. Cities, therefore, are especially dangerous.

It is not so much the large populations, with their uneasy mix of sinner and saved, that make Christian conservatives leery of urban areas. Even downtown Colorado Springs, presumably as godly as any big town in America, struck the New Lifers I met as unclean. Whenever I asked where to eat, they would warn me away from downtown's neat little grid of cafés and ethnic joints. Stick to Academy, they'd tell me, referring to the vein of superstores and prepackaged eateries—P. F. Chang's, California Pizza Kitchen, et al.—that bypasses the city. Downtown, they said, is “confusing.”

Part of their antipathy is literally biblical: the Hebrew Bible is the scripture of a provincial desert people, suspicious of the cosmopolitan powers that threatened to destroy them, and fundamentalists read the New Testament as a catalogue of urban ills—sophistication, cynicism, lust—so deadly that one would be better off putting out one's own eye than partaking in their alleged pleasures. But the anti-urban sentiments of modern fundamentalists are also more specific to the moment in which they find themselves.

Three years ago, in the 2002 elections, Christian conservatives swept Georgia, the last Democratic bastion in the South. They toppled an incumbent Democratic governor, a war-hero Democratic senator, the state House speaker, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, and his son, the Democratic candidate for Congress in a majority black district that state Democrats had drawn up especially for him. The new Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss, and the new governor, Sonny Perdue, both conservatives and Christian, won not on “moral values” but on an exurban platform. The mastermind behind the coup was Ralph Reed, once of the Christian Coalition, who had been reborn as Georgia's Republican chairman. Reed remains a fundamentalist, the same man who once tested employees' commitment to “Christian values” by asking them if they supported the death penalty for adultery, but he was too canny to talk like that in public. The term “Christian,” he'd learned, is a “divider,” not a “unifier,” so he had left overt faith behind. He backed candidates who ran under the mantra of the exurbs: “Shorter commutes. More time with family. Lower mortgages.”

This troika of exurban ambition worked on multiple levels. Just as Nixon used marijuana and heroin in the 1960s as code for hippies and blacks, Reed devised a platform that conflated ordinary personal goals with fundamentalist values. “Shorter commutes” is a ploy that any old-time ward heeler would recognize. It means: let's move the good jobs out of the city. Atlanta, like Colorado Springs, has an urban core that Christian conservatives would just as soon see wither. “More time with family,” of course, extends that promise of exurban jobs but also speaks in code to the fundamentalist preoccupation with “family”—that is, with defining it, with excluding not just gay couples but any combination not organized around “biblical” principles of “male headship.”

As for “lower mortgages,” they are lower in exurbs because cities subsidize them. The city pays the taxes that build the sewers and the roads for the exurbs. The city provides the organization that makes it possible. Exurbs are parasites. And what else does “lower mortgages” mean? More land. More space between you and your neighbors. And this, too, is necessary for Christian conservatism, which depends on the absence of conflict as one of its main selling points. For all its talk of community, it is wary of community's main asset: the conflict, and the resulting cultural innovation, born of proximity. But such cultural innovation is death to today's Christian conservatism, which tosses a gauzy veil of tradition over the big-box consumerism of its megachurches.

As contemporary fundamentalism has become an exurban movement, it has reframed the question of theodicy—if God is good, then why does He allow suffering?—as a matter of geography. Some places are simply more blessed than others. Cities equal more fallen souls equal more demons equal more temptation, which, of course, leads to more fallen souls. The threats that suffuse urban centers have forced Christian conservatives to flee—to Cobb County, Georgia, to Colorado Springs. Hounded by the sins they see as rampant in the cities (homosexuality, atheistic schoolteaching, ungodly imagery), they imagine themselves to be outcasts in their own land. They are the “persecuted church”—just as Jesus promised, and just as their cell-group leaders teach them.

This exurban exile is not an escape to easy living, to barbecue and lawn care. “We [Christians] have lost every major city in North America,” Pastor Ted writes in his 1995 book Primary Purpose, but he believes they can be reclaimed through prayer—“violent, confrontive prayer.”[4] He encourages believers to obtain maps of cities and to identify “power points” that “strengthen the demonic activities.” He suggests especially popular bars, as well as “cult-type” churches. “Sometimes,” he writes, “particular government buildings . . . are power points.” The exurban position is one of strategic retreat, where believers are to “plant” their churches as strategic outposts encircling the enemy.

* * *

It's about time

Looks like we're finally taking the war of ideas seriously.

US 'losing media war to al-Qaeda'
The US is losing the propaganda war against al-Qaeda and other enemies, defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has said.

It must modernise its methods to win the minds of Muslims in the "war on terror", as "enemies had skilfully adapted" to the media age, he said.

Washington and the army must respond faster to events and learn to exploit the internet and satellite TV, he said.

Separately, President Bush said the US should not be discouraged by setbacks in Iraq and must realise it is at war.

"We shouldn't be discouraged... because we've seen democracy change the world in the past," George W Bush said.

However, he also used his speech in Florida to claim progress in the war on al-Qaeda.

Mr Bush said that slowly but surely the US was finding terrorists where they hid.

'Newsroom battles'

Correspondents say that in recent months victory in the battle for public opinion has become a new front for the Bush administration.

In a speech to the Council of Foreign Relations, Mr Rumsfeld said some of the US' most critical battles were now in the "newsrooms".

"Our enemies have skilfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but... our country has not," he said.

Mr Rumsfeld said al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists were bombarding Muslims with negative images of the West, which had poisoned the public view of the US.

The US must fight back by operating a more effective, 24-hour propaganda machine, or risk a "dangerous deficiency," he said.

Government communications planning must be "a central component of every aspect of this struggle", he added.

"The longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4725992.stm

Published: 2006/02/17 21:41:36 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Hopefully this isn't just an attempt to dress up press releases for the American public. Rather, it needs to be an honest campaign to highlight the benefits of open democracy and racial/ethnic/religious tolerance. It needs to be backed up by good example and good deeds. It needs to be diplomacy on a grand scale, and it needs to be optimistic, and it needs to be truthful.

Doesn't need to be torture to screw us

Cribbed from the Atlantic Online, which pulled it from National Journal. Clive Crook:

Harsh treatment of captives—anything that goes much beyond what we would regard as acceptable for criminal suspects, let alone torture—will harden the resolve of the country's enemies. This may not be true of the suicide bombers and other madmen and death-cultists of the jihadist cause, but it is surely true of the great majority of the less-than-pathologically committed, and of the millions more who sympathize with their cause. America needs to demoralize and deradicalize its opponents. It needs spies and defectors. On the battlefield, it needs enemies who are unafraid to surrender. Cruel treatment of prisoners conspires against all of these military and intelligence-gathering objectives. Ask yourself this: When Americans read of Al Qaeda abusing its captives, or beheading a hostage for the video cameras, does that weaken their desire to fight back?

Coffee and TV

I just finished my Fulbright application to study in Korea next year, so things are beginning to relax a bit. ZBT Fall Rush went quite well, and the new Beta Beta class is a bunch of very cool guys. The rest of the semester should be a lot of fun.

The focus of my Fulbright project is on how urban design must adapt to the needs of the elderly in cities. Developed nations across the world are about to face a major population shift towards persons aged 65 and over, which creates new demands for infrastructure and societal welfare programs to support them. Nursing homes and resort living are only options for those of considerable means. Luxury suites and personal caretakers are beyond the grasp of many soon-to-be-retired baby boomers.
We've mostly fixated on entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, but we should also look at what the elderly need to live fulfilling lives. This means mobility and access: access to public transportation, public amenities, shopping, recreation, medical care, family, friends, places of worship, etc. Our cities are not built with the mobility-challenged in mind; we've made great strides with ADA-established building codes, but there has been little creativity in melding accessibility into attractive urban design. What good is a wheelchair ramp if it only leads to high-priced condos? Improvements to the public realm, to subway stations and public parks and the streetscape, benefit seniors regardless of economic status, and often directly benefit the rest of society as well.
Sounds Marxist? Keep in mind that Social Security, which most Americans would agree is one hallmark of what a responsible democratic society can achieve, was founded on the premise that improving the quality of life for the elderly (among the most vulnerable members of society of their time) would ultimately benefit everyone else and preserve civil society.

I'm really excited for the next couple weeks; the IM Bowling season begins Saturday, Adam1 gets married on the following Saturday, and somewhere in between we'll be throwing a 90's room party in Red Room and Brewery at ZBT.

The Wrens @ Middle East Downstairs

Killer show at the Middle East Downstairs last night, my third Wrens concert in as many years. They opened with a new song, presumably from their upcoming album, then launch into some Meadowlands goodness. "This Boy is Exhausted" kicks off the set, then followed up with "Happy", "Per Second Second", "Built-in Girls" and "Won't Get Too Far" (from Secaucus), "Everyone Chooses Sides", "Hopeless", and finishing with a frenetic "Faster Gun". Highlights: a hushed duet on "The House That Guilt Built" in between songs; a whooping, sweaty Kevin Whelan hopping around stage and licking the face of guitarist Charles Bissell (somewhat to Charles' dismay); the big audience-sing-along for the beginning of "Everyone Chooses Sides"; the band pulling up about 20 people from the front row to play various percussion parts and sing along to "Boys You Won't" and then allowing them to stay for the rest of the show; some random drunk guy (who may or may not have known the band) invited up between songs to give a shoutout to Dan Bayer, and his girlfriend who should "just fucking call me".
They tore the place up, it was amazing. They're the greatest thing to come out of New Jersey.

Moral and intellectual confusion

Rummy sounds pretty fed up...

In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral and intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security.

...

He said, for example, that more media attention was given to U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib than to the fact that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith received the Medal of Honor.

We have thousands of "foreign combatants" incarcerated on island prison camps in Guantanamo Bay, held without trial and often without just cause (some were picked up on random tips while traveling internationally, others innocent but simply at the wrong place at the wrong time). They are stripped, searched, interrogated, and to an unknown extent, beaten and tortured. Often their families have no idea they have even been arrested, only hearing about it through a secret note from a sympathetic soldier. Lawyers are made to jump through numerous hoops to speak with their clients, and sometimes are blocked entirely. There are known cases of DHS officials posing as lawyers and pretending that the detainees have no legal recourse. When an actual lawyer does get through, s/he must present anecdotal evidence of meeting with the prisoner's family so as to gain the trust of the detainee.
If you're thought to hold information, you may end up (a) in a freezing cold isolation cell, (b) forced to stand up with arms stretched out in front of you, (c) placed on the ground naked and kicked in the sides, or (d) who knows what, as not even Red Cross has been allowed access to the whole camp. The few prisoners with the courage to demand better conditions and an end to beatings have threatened to hunger strike, their final and only means of non-violent protest. They had plastic tubes jammed up their noses and down their throat, and force-fed food in an excrutiatingly painful and humiliating manner. Sometimes they are fed too much and vomit or defecate themselves. This is just on the threat of not eating, even before they show any signs of thinning.
If you are released (which may take three to four years, without contact with your family), it is only after you sign a statement, announcing your shame at having performed acts against the US, and a promise not to do so again, thus confessing to a crime you may or may not have committed. Those who sign this document laminate it and carry it with them at all times, in case they are picked up by roving vigilantes in their home country again. Fifteen Uyghur detainees were determined to not have been enemy combatants after all. Five of them pursued habeas corpus, but at the last minute were transferred to an Albanian refugee camp, so as to avoid answering to a courtroom challenge.
Almost all of our allies, the UN, and the Geneva convention want us to shut down this gulag. Mistreatment is not the stain of an ugly few, it is standard procedure. Our government is frantically trying to open satellite prison camps in places around the world where international law will not apply.

Moral and intellectual confusion?
No, Rummy, I'm pretty sure you're a fuckwad.

Gerrymander? But I hardly know her!

Check out the shape of congressional districts in many key states, warped and distorted from decades of unscrupulous gerrymandering from both major parties. Funny, bleak, and entirely true.

http://www.rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html

District 2 in Arizona is a beautiful sight.

Restaurantics

I have this recurring idea for a buffet restaurant that charges proportionally to how much you eat. Except, to measure this, you get weighed as you enter the restaurant and as you exit. The novelty factor alone could sustain this!

Of course, you'd have to be weighed in the buff, and there would be no bathrooms.

In the month of July 2006...

Cribbed from Harpers.org:

Estimated change since 2001 in the total number of U.S. private-sector jobs: +1,900,000 [Economic Policy Institute (Washington)]

Estimated number of new private-sector jobs created by government spending during that time: 2,800,000 [Economic Policy Institute (Washington)]

Percentage of U.S. workers who say they are confident that they will be able to live comfortably after retirement: 68 [Employee Benefit Research Institute (Washington)]

Percentage who have saved less than $25,000 toward retirement: 53 [Employee Benefit Research Institute (Washington)]

Percentage of Americans who believe that most Americans are too fat: 90 [Pew Research Center (Washington)]

Percentage who believe that they themselves are too fat: 39 [Pew Research Center (Washington)]

Average number of extra calories children consume for every hour of television they watch: 167 [Jean Wiecha, Harvard Prevention Research Center (Boston)]

Size, in inches, of Panasonic’s new top-of-the-line plasma TV: 103 [Panasonic Corporation of North America (Secaucus, N.J.)]

Factor by which Hummer sales in April exceeded those a year earlier: 3 [General Motors Corporation (Detroit)]

Percentage change in average U.S. gas prices over that year: +80 [U.S. Energy Information Administration]

Volume of new reserves added by major oil companies in 2005, expressed as a percentage of oil pumped that year: 51 [Sanford C. Bernstein Limited (London)]

Ratio of the amount of energy used in producing corn ethanol to the amount yielded when it is burned in gasoline: 1:1 [Alexander Farrell, University of California, Berkeley]

Ratio of the amount of energy used in producing gasoline itself to the amount yielded when it is burned: 6:5 [Alexander Farrell, University of California, Berkeley]

Amount it costs the U.S. Treasury to manufacture and distribute a penny: 1.4¢ [U.S. Mint]

Amount that insects add to the U.S. economy each year, according to one invertebrate advocacy group: $57,000,000,000 [The Xerces Society (Portland, Oreg.)]

Percentage of this total attributed to insects’ value as a food source for larger animals: 88 [ The Xerces Society (Portland, Oreg.)]

Ratio of the average U.S. import of Mexican lettuce each year to the average Mexican import of U.S. lettuce: 1:1 [Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau]

Number of players that Brazilian soccer teams have sold to teams overseas since 1993: 6,700 [Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (Rio de Janeiro)]

Amount the Brazilian teams have earned from these sales: $918,819,900 [Revista Superinteressante (Sâo Paulo)/Harper’s research]

Percentage of Peruvians who say their nation needs leaders who “impose order” and “authority”: 74 [U.N. Development Programme (Lima)]

Number of U.S. residents the FBI investigated last year using Patriot Act powers that waive the need for a warrant: 3,501 [U.S. Department of Justice]

Number of times that President Bush’s “signing statements” have exempted his administration from provisions of new laws: 750 [Phillip Cooper, Portland State University (Portland, Oreg.)/Charlie Savage, Boston Globe]

Total number of times for all other presidents since Washington: 568 [Christopher Kelley, Miami University of Ohio (Oxford)/Christopher May, Loyola Law School (Los Angeles) ]

Minimum number of close-up photographs of President Bush’s hands owned by his new chief of staff, Josh Bolten: 4 [Office of Management and Budget (Washington)]

Percentage of Republicans who viewed “Hillary Clinton” favorably in an April poll: 16 [CNN (Washington)]

Percentage who viewed “Hillary Rodham Clinton” favorably: 23 [CNN (Washington)]

Rank of atheists among minorities whom Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry: 1 [Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)]

Rank of Muslims and African Americans, respectively: 2, 3 [Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)]

Number of “peace walls” that divided Protestant and Catholic communities in Belfast at the time of the 1994 ceasefire: 30 [Institute for Conflict Research (Belfast)]

Number today: 41 [Institute for Conflict Research (Belfast)]

Percentage of Irish Catholics who think that priests should not have to be celibate: 76 [Sunday Independent (Dublin)]

Percentage by which Britain’s The Independent outsold its daily average on May 16, the day U2’s Bono was guest editor: 30 [The Independent (London)]

Last date on which the newspaper sold as many copies: 9/12/01 [The Independent (London)]

Number of books that Art Garfunkel has read since June 1968, according to a comprehensive list on his website: 948 [Donald McCarthy, www.artgarfunkel.com (N.Y.C.)]

Length, in hours, of a book appearance that author Lawrence Lessig made in January inside an online fantasy world: 2 [Wagner James Au (San Francisco)]

Minimum number of different characters who showed up: 100 [Wagner James Au (San Francisco)]

Number of MySpace.com users featured by Playboy in its June “Girls of MySpace” photo spread: 9 [Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (Chicago)]

Minimum number who sent pictures to try out: 2,000 [Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (Chicago)]

Estimated number of hot dogs that will be eaten in the United States over the Fourth of July weekend: 150,000,000 [National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (Washington)]

Tons of mud a Mongolian girl has eaten since 1994, because she finds it “delicious”: 1.7 [Bao Bao (Xinxiang, China)]

Just throw strikes

Boston lost three straight games to the Yankees in a five-game series, and New York has just tied it up 5-5 in the 9th. It's 1am, Papelbon has already thrown 42 pitches, there's one game tomorrow and then a West Coast series trip the next day, and no bullpen to speak of at this point. This is too depressing to watch.

Swept through the Hirschhorn, Sackler, and Freer galleries yesterday; they're a lot more fun than the National Gallery of Art. In particular, the Hirschhorn has an exhibition on Anselm Kiefer, powerful stuff, and Freer has some beautiful Asian art and calligraphy. Definitely worth checking out.

Recent time-wasters:

• F.E.A.R. Combat
• Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• How Few Remain by Harry Turtledove
• Survival Mode in Advance Wars DS
• Tooling around with Photoshop CS2
  

I wish our Chief Justice wrote opinions in verse

"Fear of cancer from asbestos, fuzzy science manifestos."

"Guilty
or not guilty,
past convictions frustrate
the judge who wonders should your fate
abate."

"I say this denial is not fit for trial."

Volcanoes

Blogger is in beta now, so the look of this site might be changing soon.

Top 5 restaurants/bars in Boston:

1. Brown Sugar Cafe, Commonwealth Ave
   
2. Sunset Bar and Grille, Allston (not the cantina)
   
3. La Summa, North End
4. Boca Grande Taqueria, Coolidge Corner
5. India Quality, Kenmore Square

Can't wait to be back!

Sparks

I have vivid memories of my first winter at MIT. Skipping class on the day of the first snow to walk around Harvard Yard. Vainly trying to piece together a decent snowman. Riding a commuter rail train out to Needham for a jazz concert report. Nearly freezing to death because the heat didn't work in my Next House dorm room, and practically living in a sleeping bag. Spending evenings gaming in the ZBT basement throughout IAP. Listening to Coldplay's Parachutes album on the Saferide late at night (it came up randomly on my playlist tonight, triggering all these memories). Getting trapped at ZBT during the blizzard, then celebrating when MIT announced that classes were cancelled. Having to gear up with a hat, scarf, oversized headphones (as earmuffs), gloves, fleece, long underwear, snow pants, and hiking boots to get to class.

Truth be told, there are few albums better suited to reveling in loneliness with than Parachutes.

Hold On To Your Genre

From TIME.com:

"Ironically, al-Qaeda finds itself substantially weaker organizationally at the very moment where the political conditions for its existence may never have been better. Muslims around the world are far more enraged by the U.S. today than they had been five years ago, fueled by shooting wars in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. Even if Bin Laden arguably helped provoke the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not managed to capitalize on the resultant outrage. In fact, it is among the active jihadists on some of those battlefronts that his isolation is most palpable." - Tony Karon

I'll buy that.

Looking ahead towards 2008, I'm reminded of a great West Wing quote:
"Because I'm tired of it year after year after year after year having to chose between the lesser of who cares? Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low, I can hardly look at it. They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that, do you?" - Leo McGarry

Dukakis and Gore ran as fixers, as sensible, efficiency-minded technocrats who failed to capture the public imagination, much less the presidency. Kerry and Bush ran as visionaries, though Kerry ultimately could not be taken very seriously, and Bush's visions were marred by general incompetence and a failure to engage opponents intellectually. When will we find our happy balance? A candidate with nuance and inspiration?
I once looked with hope towards the centrists, McCain and Lieberman. But after a year of averting my eyes at the sight of them lustily photo-op-ing while publicly defending the worst mistakes of the Administration, and sanding down their edges to appeal to the center that apparently above all else hates to be challenged or satirized, that hope is dwindling quickly. Even Hillary is actively vanilla-izing her political views for the masses. When did we decide that the American public could not be convinced of anything, that candidates could not change peoples' minds?

The ones I'll be watching in the next couple years: Russ Feingold, Joe Biden, Rudolph Giuliani.

Pilot

Watched the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip pilot episode last night, which NBC released on Netflix earlier this month. Unfortunately, only the one pilot episode was on the disc; the other content was a pilot from another new show called "Kidnapped", about which I could hardly care less. Not sure why NBC decided to put the Studio 60 pilot out on DVD, maybe just to generate buzz? I've watched it and I'm pretty excited for the regular season.

It's a bit more Sports Night than West Wing, though it seems to borrow from both. Like Sports Night, it revolves around producing a television show, with executive decisions, control room banter, and personal/ethical issues at the forefront. The ensemble cast is huge and full of well-established and rising actors, and the dialogue and drama are similar in style to Sports Night, if not slightly better paced. Other similarities:

To Sports Night:

• The two-tiered control room looks very similar to the one in Sports Night
• Felicity Huffman makes a cameo appearance at the beginning of the show
• Matt and Danny (played by Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, respectively) interact a lot like Casey and Dan, the hosts of Sports Night
• The "woman in power" character; this time it's Amanda Peet playing the president of the network
• A rigid network hierarchy, with a media group executive at the top, network chairman above the president, and the unfortunate Standards and Practice guy acting as middleman without much respect from anyone around him.

To The West Wing:

• Timothy Busfield and Bradley Whitford return in prominent roles
• The opening sketch from the show-within-the-show is an Oval Office address, both homage to The West Wing and parody of a common SNL skit
• Lots of walking and talking in corridors, and at least one collision
• Danny's drug-relapse backstory, playing a similar role to Leo's alcoholism
• Matt's not-a-druggie-but-happened-to-be-on-medication stint is reminiscent of two hilarious scenes from the West Wing, one with President Bartlett and one with Miss Federer.

Unlike Sports Night and The West Wing, however, Studio 60 doesn't have an overarching father figure who grounds the various moral dilemmas and protects the younger staff (Sports Night had Isaac Jaffe, The West Wing had Leo). There also isn't as much humor or rapid-fire dialogue, though they might be underplaying that aspect for the purposes of the pilot (pilot episodes tend to appear pretty lame and overreaching in hindsight, even in past Sorkin shows). Finally, I'm wondering if there will be an equivalent of the Sports Night control-room-nerds or, of course, Ed and Larry.