FDA. Trusty Guardian of Corporate Health

Part One: "I'll have what he's having."

Now that the FDA has determined meat from cloned animals is safe to eat, all that remains to be decided is the matter of labeling: to label or not to label?

On the one hand, not labeling meat sourced from cloned animals could be seen as overly paternalistic, given that it confers the power to decide what's ok to eat to an agency of the federal government, a decidedly anti-conservative policy stance for a government run by a conservative party. Of course I mean "anti-conservative" in the old-fashioned sense, not in the nouveau, bloated-government, record-deficit sense.

On the other hand, not labeling meat sourced from cloned animals could also be seen as pro-business, which clearly is a conservative policy stance, inasmuch as it secures the ability of producers to enhance their profitability by whatever cost-savings cloned meat can provide, without the looming threat of superstition-fueled neo-commie farm-hippie protestors fire-bombing our Mickey D's. It calls to mind just how much nepotism has done to destroy the family farm, now a mere withering vestige of its Norman Rockwell heyday, perhaps even beyond the salving powers of a permanently dead death-tax.

But how about that Smithfield company? Sounds like an honorable ancient Virginia lineage of proud ham craftsman to me. Why not just leave it at that? Who needs to look under the hood if the car runs fine? Feed-lot politics, with its wearying entourage of nattering nabobs harping on antibiotics, hormones, overflowing ponds of fecal waste and E. Coli in our organic spinach, only serve to obscure the honorable image of a venerable American company spirally dissecting our holiday meal with love, care and a high-fructose corn syrup glaze.

Now, as policy, protecting the public from information has succeeded admirably in the past. The deployment of recombinant BST in the milk-supply went almost unnoticed after the FDA forbade milk-producers from making specious claims that natural BST produced by cows was any better than the recombinant version, produced by bacteria. After all, genetically-engineered bacteria are friendly bacteria. They are the microbial world's version of the golden retriever, wanting nothing more than to fetch your slippers, or in this case bovine somatotrophic growth hormone.

Sure, when rBST was introduced, there was some brouhaha about bovine mastitis and pus in the milk supply, but by now all that has faded away like a bad nightmare. Just try finding pus in your milk.

And harken back to the shining example of "country of origin" labeling for meats. Although the original law requiring such labeling was signed by President Bush in 2002, subsequent, better laws have since been signed, again and again in fact, busy beaver that he is, all serving to delay the implementation of labeling for the purpose of gathering further rounds of illuminating comments from AgriGeniuses. So don't sweat it until September 2008, at least. I'll bet the President gets a lot of comments saying "delay it some more." Think about it, why would you need to crowd more information on those tiny little labels, already over-burdened with so much nutritional gobbledygook, especially now that scientists have got the mad-cow problem all worked out.

Hello Dolly!

So, to consumers already made jittery by information-overloaded labeling, and gripped by irrational fears of things already officially deemed safe, I say:

Let's make this a time to honor the hero's journey of Dolly the cloned sheep, and her infinite-series of sisters, as they doggedly make their way onward to the dinner plates of all free Americans. Not free, in the sense of being "free to choose what's best for oneself," but free in the more symbolic sense that our enemies love to hate so much.

Superpower Failure

2007 will be the year America comes to terms with the fact that we have squandered our super powers. May the phrase "world's only superpower" find its way to the bin of failed hegemony.

Military might has always been a definer of superpower status, and the current debacle in Iraq pulls the curtain down on that particular show. As we debate numbers of humans to deploy, the very capability of our armed forces comes into doubt. Significant portions of the Americans in Iraq are private not military, and the bulk of our treasure is spent on the private companies. Yes, our military might is not owned, but leased.

If having an incapable pentagon is bothersome to war hawks, they should be especially troubled now, since the attack on Iraq was partly intended to make up for smaller but significant embarrassments like the USS Cole, Somalia, Lebanon, and of course, 9/11.

Far from making America great, the war has given us over 3000 dead, and scores more permanently damaged and now dependent on the government. Shamefully ironic, they are dependent on programs for which Republicans have systematically reduced funding. And who knows if Democrats will be able to do much better since the war has also propelled our National Debt to an all time high.

Because of our massive debt, the US Dollar is in the tank. So much so that oil producing countries are making a slow but definite shift away from the dollar as their standard currency for trade. This money we use is losing its value. And so who actually finances our global folly? Foreign nations, like China.

Maybe it's not important who owns our debt, or that London will overtake New York as the financial capital of the world, but when you put it all together, along with the largest ever trade deficit with China, record breaking energy prices, and rising domestic poverty rates, you don't see an America ascending, but rather a nation in steep decline.

The people of the world recognize our slip. They saw New Orleans drown on live TV. They see us weakened by foreign policy ineptitude while Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and China have all strengthened their global positions, and done so without bloodshed.

Where our slip is most significant are the places we've abandoned, or shirked responsibility to uphold moral principle. Remember George W. Bush's initial offer of $15 million as relief for the 2004 Tsunami? (After other world leaders embarrassed us that went to $350 million.) America also embarrassed itself by fighting tooth and nail to deny global climate change, and then sending a bully to the UN as our version of 'diplomat'.

Now, when we speak of human rights to other nations of the world, we are worthy only of mockery. I'm not just referring the torture and detention of innocent people, but also about local cops falsifying evidence to harass protesters and the killing of unarmed African-Americans.

I suppose some will accuse me of blaming or hating America (which is a rhetorical technique intended to shift attention away from my critique and onto my patriotism). I do blame America, however, and I do so because it is America and our policies that continue to bring so much woe to the world. Being a superpower carries many responsibilities, and frankly, we blew it.

Speak No Ill of the Dead (except Saddam)

I know we all want to feel good about Gerald Ford, especially now that he has died. And why not? He was a war hero, a reliable legislator, an athlete, an Ivy Leaguer, a steadying influence for a nervous and unsettled nation, a loyal and devoted husband, and by all accounts a really nice guy.

Let's go ahead and feel good about him.

But why does this preclude, seemingly, any widespread questioning of his decision to pardon Richard Nixon? Especially in light of the fact that the imperial administration of George W. Bush has been presiding over an unprecedented usurpation of power for the executive branch, championed in large part by none other than Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff at the time.

So far, the prevailing winds blowing in from the punditry sound like mere variations on the theme of Ford's own view that the pardon meant, simply, that "our long national nightmare is over."

But really, couldn't it be that the nightmare was just beginning?

If there is a major current of opinion in the popular press that has mounted an argument against the pardon, I have missed it. Jake Tapper said something in his blog, "Political Punch", on ABCnews.com, but where is the widespread analysis that might serve to better elucidate the national sentiment regarding the limits of Presidential power, at a time when this issue is of historically consequential relevance?

As Vladimir Nabokov said, "at every moment there is a thus and otherwise." No one really knows where "otherwise" leads. It might have turned out that a trial and perhaps eventual imprisonment of Richard Nixon would have made the nation not weaker, but stronger, both by meting out justice, and thereby lending some credence to the maxim that "in America, no one is above the law," and also by firming-up some of the mushier questions regarding our Constitutional separation of powers. The question can't be answered definitively, but why isn't it being asked?

Apocalypse Soon: The Trouble With Space

The feat of knocking a golf ball into orbit got me reminiscing about a joke I tried out a few months ago. Nobody thought it was funny, and because I couldn't figure out why, I decided to provide a detailed explanation to go along with it. Here's what I came up with-

JOKE:

The first European lunar mission, SMART-1, ended today in a dazzling success when it crashed into the moon’s surface after a three-year journey.

Leading European space scientists hope to crash men into the moon in a future mission. 

EXPLANATION: 

Forty years ago the US landed Surveyor 1 on the moon and it didn't crash. It made a soft landing and sent back data, and that, justifiably, was considered to be a success. Could it be that the European Space Agency set their sites a bit low?  Was a crash landing the only successful outcome they could guarantee? Has some cabalistic recalibration brought about a situation where zero is the new +1? Maybe they are so SMART they will crash spacemen into the moon next. Keep in mind this is supposed to be a joke.

AFTERMATH:

The billion-dollar "International Space Station", which seems primarily to have served as a research platform for determining the best ways to ferry garbage back to Mother Earth, has now become the ultimate 18th hole. Slice it to Venus or hook it to Mars. If you've got the twenty million, you've got your tee time. A new crop of space-golf tourists is certain to pump up the flagging space exploration coffers.

Think of the payoff to Mankind. Maybe we'll find a cheaper way to  produce Polonium-210. Who knows when the possibilities are endless?

Perhaps the notion of "technology transfer", which had previously found its most perfect expression in the form of Tang, the powdered orange breakfast drink, could now be applied to the thorny problem of, say, trash removal in New York City, which has vexed mayors from Thomas Willett to Michael Bloomberg.

 This latest development comes on the heels of a giant copper spheroid hurled at a comet, the meanest beebee ever, the high aspiration of the pocket-protector set: the World-Crushing BeeBee. I know there is a compelling need to study the ensuing dust plumes, but the resemblance to conceptual art is hard to efface.

The Fading Rubric of Mankind's Curiosity

Meanwhile back on Earth, ideologies grate on one another, producing conflict with no apparent end.  Among the greater community of faith, the transcendent belief that God has divinely authorized the destruction of non-believers has served to perpetuate war, even as the means for nuclear devastation proliferate.

Here all paths cross. The scientific method perfects ever-deadlier weapons of war faster than blind Nature can raise a pond full of amoebas. From brilliant pebbles to smart bombs, proof of innovative prowess is proudly stenciled on ordinance to be lobbed amongst the seamy nests of the enemy.

Neo-apoclayptists are lapping it up. Milleniallists transform themselves effortlessly into peri-milleniallsts and wait fretting for the next significant date. Could it be 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar? What about the Doomsday Clock, which stands at 17 minutes before midnight and keeps on ticking, hastening forward and falling back ever more infrequently?

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe he can hasten the coming of God's dominion on Earth by obliterating Israel with a freshly-minted Islamic bomb? Does President Bush study the Book of Revelations? We shall see.

Recall that science too has its myth of an end time, expressed in the avatar of the Doomsday Asteroid, aloof now and roaming the Kuiper belt with impunity, but always on the look-out for that one perfect trajectory which leads imperturbably to Earth and the subsequent annihilation of all of its living inhabitants. Anyone doubting this proposition need only examine the fossil record.

So I Lied?

"What's the big deal?
There was a campaign going on."

That's how I read the president's testy answer during questioning at his post-election press conference. When asked "why did you tell us just last week that Rumsfeld would stay on?," his rambling reply included this: "the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer."

The subtext, and in large part, the theme of the press conference, was basically "hey, everyone knows that campaign messages are a pack of lies, but now the campaign is finished, so just get over it."

This is not new, of course. Aside from the practice of doing one thing and calling it another, which has been a hallmark of the Bush administration, there is also a marked tendency to lie outright, even when the lie will surely be discovered.

Twice the President has slipped surreptitiously out of the country for visits to Iraq. The second, his secret departure to meet with Prime Minister al-Maliki came complete with a false press release. As quoted in the Washington Post, White House communications director Nicolle Wallace said: "Nothing was done with the goal of duping anyone. The purpose of the secrecy was security." Plausible, but still, we were duped.

Lies by omission are one thing, and certainly there are circumstances that may require the president not to 'show all of his cards,' but to issue a statement that is exactly the opposite of the true situation seems a notch or two worse to me. As a matter of fact, I am greatly understating my abhorrence, so as not to undermine my credibity by seeming to be radically liberal. At any rate, you get the drift.

So is this the pragmatism required of realpolitik, or is it rather a pathological reliance on the lie as but one more tool in the political toolkit, fully equal to the practice of telling the truth?

Nuclear Weapons For Dummies

Classified information suddenly has nowhere to hide. It's out on the web, unchaperoned by any net nanny. Now the nation-state has become just one more player in the marketplace of ideas.

The unimpeded flow of information, and its evil twin disinformation, comes with unforeseeable consequences. Imperfect security, indigestible lumps of data in the form of large electronic documents, compounded with the inherent perfect nature of the digital copy mean that there will be a continuing trickle of sensitive and accurate information bleeding out of all but the most well-bandaged regimes. Will those seeking perfect protection only serve to insure their own mummification?

Here is an example of a waveform representation of an audio file that has been sanitized by the US government:



In this case the excision of information was well done. I put it to test and there is no intelligible sound to be recovered from the official silence. But what about the image below? Does this tell us nothing about that old stand-by of the US nuclear arsenal, the B-61?


Don't ask me. I don't want one.

The examples of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs show that there remain prominent barriers to the creation of nuclear weapons. Metallurgy, precision machining, and acquisition of fissile materials all involve complex processes that take time and lots of money to master, even when the textbooks are at hand, even if you have blueprints from A.Q. Khan.


Nuclear weapons for dummies? Buy a suitcase nuke and don't waste your time on a nuclear program. After all, even if you are an army of one, you can still capitalize on all of the hard work done by big-budget governments.

Whether you're looking to hasten end-times, or simply to annihilate an enemy, this little baby will make the perfect traveling companion.

Identity Theft and the Meta-You

For many years I have wrestled with the central conundrum of identity theft: how can you steal something that can’t be given away?

My attempt to limn an answer has brought me to advocate the legal construction of a new business entity. This entity would be established with the creation of a publicly-disclosed contract stipulating the details of a temporary transferal of identity from one person to another. (Prize for a name! Golem is taken.)

Think of the practical utility of, say, conferring your identity upon a tax expert with great bone structure and glowing skin to argue the merits of your defense to an IRS agent, appearing, not merely as your representative, but with the full legal and emotional impact of the actual you, as decreed by statute.

To put this idea into practice in advance of its widespread acceptance, I have resorted to a logical artifice that I call “James A. Friendly.” James A. Friendly shares every trait with me except one: James A. Friendly is not me. Ask him and he will assuredly agree, “I am most certainly NOT him!”, for this too is a trait we share.

Before James A. Friendly applies for a Discover card, I am issuing an open call to anyone with any special creative prowess in the areas of contract law or the establishment of offshore companies, in the interest of canonizing this most important tenet of the Information Age, won’t YOU step forward and BE the next James A. Friendly?

We both thank you.

Bodies In Motion

In another time, Micheal J. Fox is Terri Schiavo, Rush Limbaugh is Bill Frist, and Washington is where God does His work. So again we're shown the body politic. Only this time it's the left asking us to look at this body, interpret its movements, and take a position.

The media have long been a branch of government, and nothing heals better than television, but these phenomena make way for new versions, inversions, and perversions of politics, celebrity, religion, and medicine. The Great Mashup continues. Get ready for more celebrity victims, suffering sinners, pundit policy makers, and global baby snatching.

Electrons for Jesus

An old friend recently marshaled untold billions of electrons for the purpose of delivering this chain email:

[begin inane block-headed chain email]

Do you believe in God?

NBC this morning had a poll on this question. …
86% to keep the words, “In God We Trust” and “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
14% against.

That is a pretty 'commanding' public response. …

Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such
a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having
God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why is the world catering to this 14%?
AMEN!

If you agree pass this on, if not, simply delete.

-In God We Trust

[end inane block-headed chain email]

I was shocked and dismayed. It used to be that, in America, there was the notion that God created all people equally. Even the people that don’t believe in Him. He’s God, He doesn’t need to have an ego trip about having everyone believe in Him. So here is a chain email that characterizes the belief that God endowed each of us with the unalienable right to believe in His non-existence as something they can’t condescend to.

“Cater to”? Oh please! The Constitution protects the rights of the minority because God gave the minority the same rights as the majority and it’s not for the majority to say what those rights are. It is up to God. If you trust God you simply must not force others to proclaim the same, because that is tantamount to trying to take away a right granted by the Creator.

OK, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. IN GOD WE TRUST. Are you telling me you are a better judge of rights than God? I don’t think so.

This is the kind of thing that really gets my hackles up. Maybe the person who created it was being deliberately provocative and scored a point on my naïveté, but I know for certain that lots of people pollute their minds with these ideas, which amount to false maxims signifying intolerance and which cannot withstand even the most casual scrutiny.

Please see US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer’s moving explication of the tyranny of the minority at in an interview with CNN correspondent Jeffrey Toobin at this link:

http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1965499598&pt=Y

Upload and Downsize

The recently announced layoff's at NBC Universal make it clear that TV content from now on, has got to come cheap. We've seen this coming for a while, but for people making television, we must stop talking about the future of media, and accept that the future has arrived.

By "doing away with scripted programming" in prime time (8-11 pm), NBC sends a message to all of those who produce that old media. If you are among those who write it, light it, act in it, or make any kind of money from it, your jig is up.

NBC will put 700 employes on the street, and they'll be joining 400 axed by Warner Bros.,150 by Paramount, 1100 by MGM, and 650 by Disney, all within the past year. Since Disney reported a 40% jump in quarterly profits after cutting personnel, its hard to argue this is merely a lean time bound to cycle back.

I'm all for studying film history in film schools, but looking backwards is only half the picture. After screening Citizen Kane, let's take a look at some webisodes, mobisodes, and then upload to YouTube.

Empowered Thumb for Suckers

They have interactive television in the UK. Audiences send text messages (SMS) to support contestants, request music videos, express an opinion, or test their quiz smarts. This audience participation also allows a show's presenters to collect money from viewers directly, as opposed to relying solely on commercials.

While multiple time zones make it harder for this trend to fly in the US, more than 500,000 txts, at 49 cents each, were sent to "Big Brother" in a two day period last summer. NBC's "Deal or No Deal" earned enough via SMS to cover the more than $1 million prize money it offers. While voting on the internet is often free of charge, txting via phone means a participant need not leave the couch.

The strangest part of this is that many of those who text message TV shows don't even believe their messages are being counted or read by anybody. There's no verification or regulation, and some I spoke to say the videos they request never come on. It's all just a thumb charade, another illusion of the digital utopia.

Melts in Your Mouth

The most exquisite part of the Mark Foley/Dennis Hastert Sex Scandal is the way it has held the front page like a serial drama. Because House Speaker Hastert reacted with as much courage and honor as can be expected of the Republican leadership — he lied, denied it, tried to cover it up — the truth is dissolving his party like so much cotton candy on a lustful tongue.

Poor Little Predator

It doesn't get more cynical then Mark Foley playing the victim role.

We've seen since 9/11 how victimhood has become extra special in our society. Before 9/11, the only similar status was that of those who exited Nazi death camps. But in the postmodern era, (not like when those "displaced persons" became "survivors") victim is a new sort of star. Whether you're voted off the cast of a realityTV show, or preying on those over whom you lord power, victimhood is far from your last gasp.

To PLAY the victim has little to do with actually BEING a victim, however. The sympathy that Foley hopes to elicit is nothing like that hoped for by an actual victim, like say a dead Iraqi's family, a nomadic New Orleanean, or a disfigured or dismembered, or brain-damaged soldier.

But there's something about this Republican ploy that just may work. If you've never been in a war zone, nor hurricane, nor paid for supper with food stamps, but you have had lust for someone a mere internet connection away, you may just find it in your heart to forgive someone like Mark Foley.

Torture: What Not to Say

The question of torture, an absurd discussion through most of the 20th century, has become a mainstream debate. The reason for this, like so many other reprehensible things, is that the morally hollow White House is framing the issue.

Everyone seems to accept this frame. When Bush says Common Article 3 of the Geneva Accords contains vague wording, no one points out that those words are a legal standard, and that they have never been challenged by anyone else in the world. Or maybe you've heard the "ticking time bomb argument," a hypothetical that's so full of fantasy and presumption that it wouldn't make the grade of a high school debate team.

The preferred argument against defining ourselves as torturers is one based on American self-centeredness: If we do it to others, others will do it to us. When the pundits talk of this angle, they often get even more parochial by pointing out that anti-torture White House-hopeful, John McCain was tortured himself as a POW in Vietnam. This bit of trivia diminishes McCain's opposition, as if it's just his personal peeve, something for which he must be indulged because of his status as a victim.

Completely absent in the discussion are two important elements. First one is that torture does not yield quality intelligence, according to military interrogators. Even the info beaten out of Al Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi was untrue, and that coerced testimony became the centerpiece of Colin Powell's lies to the UN that ginned up the invasion of Iraq.

A second vital, but missing element is the presumption of innocence. To be innocent until proven guilty has been the bedrock of our justice system for centuries. But in this debate it's often said, 'these guys are terrorists, they aren't really human beings.' To say this is to ignore the fact that the vast majority of those held at Gitmo, rendered to and tortured at secret CIA prisons (and Abu Ghraib before that) are guilty of nothing.

Making (Up) History

There are many ways to make up truth. The most effective technique requires multiple sources that reference and reinforce each other. For this to work, disparate authorities make seemingly small contortions of fact, and then others refer to these aggregated authorities to make the case that a falsehood is true.

This is what a Committee of the US House of Rep's was doing when the UN's Atomic Energy Agency (IAEC) busted their work. The House committee wrote a report exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Iran, but the IAEC called that report, "incorrect and misleading," as well as "outrageous and dishonest."

The intended purpose of the report was to give the White House and other war mongers an illusion of evidence to support an attack on Iran. Once the lies had the imprimatur of a "government study," they could then be used as a tool of persuasion. The task of anyone disagreeing with the report would then be to disprove the multiple inaccuracies. In this way the debate becomes a level removed from the question at hand. This technique puts layers of questions into the discussion, making it more difficult for facts to separate themselves from the fiction.

The full effect can be seen by reviewing the work of the White House Iraq Group, and Judith Miller, former "journalist" for the New York Times. In this scam, White House officials led Miller to sources for stories that made their case for the invasion of Iraq, and then those same officials would refer to the New York Times to support their arguments. Much of that reporting was later discredited by the NYT editors, but long after the war had started, and with little public notice.

This technique is tried and true. We've seen it used effectively to cast doubt on the existence of global climate change, the probability of evolution, and the hazards of smoking.

It can also be employed locally as well. To dismiss an employee, for example, supervisors might place small and questionable concerns into an employee's file. When these one-sided anecdotes are taken together, they seem to add up to a larger issue. The employee, to defend herself, must then pick apart and dispute all the smaller complaints. These layers of fallacy are usually too much to overcome.

Remem Boring

Five years on, it's time to remember the 9/11 victims. These memories have filled columns, airwaves, and moments of silence all this past week, but starting tomorrow, for the next 364 days we can return to forgetting.

Remembering the victims of 9/11 is often a way to make a point, like when we disagree about art, history, or real estate. The victims also come in handy for sentencing convicted terrorists.

In time, perhaps September 11 will become a day like Memorial Day, which means more about barbecues than dead veterans.

Fear Campaign, Once Again

When two news items showed up next to each other on my Google News, I thought, 'hey, maybe these stories are related …' -duh.

But, talk about a desperately slow news day, or the lame state of our passive journalism. I guess we're all tired of that same old Death-in-Iraq-Rising-Poverty-Corrupt-Government-Katrina-Anniversary story. These were Google's top stories:

The Few, The Proud… Homeless and Handicapped

Maybe it's not so new, but if the US didn't invade Iraq, a new category of American would not be appearing on our streets. Vets of the Iraq war are more wounded than ever due to the advanced state of weapons (RPG's, IED's, etc.) and business-as-usual DoD. In a previous conflict, like Vietnam, Central America, or Somalia, there might have been some shrapnel in a leg, but in this war, that leg is blown clear off. Less obvious are the brain injuries.

While the brain is still a part of the body, soldiers with mental and emotional damage are also returning to a home incapable of dealing with them.

It is our inability to deal with these messed up heroes that will put many of them on the street. And the free market is stepping in to capitalize on America's bravest.

How does the White House support the troops? By cutting $910 million from the Veterans Administration budget.

ps - Speaking of the VA, that's an organization that works well, and proves single-payer healthcare can work in America.