The Beginning of Wisdom

That's part of a quote from Bertrand Russell, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” It's how Peter Ludlow ends an op-ed, entitled "Fifty States of Fear", in the NY Times. Ludlow views the emphasis on fear as an attempt by our leaders to consolidate power. I think he makes sense. Surprisingly, Erik Prince, the founder of the private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide, also thinks he makes sense:

"America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it’s allowing the N.S.A. to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should. I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than America." 

Bruce Schneier, a security expert, has similar thoughts:

"By sowing mistrust, by stripping us of our privacy — and in many cases our dignity — by taking away our rights, by subjecting us to arbitrary and irrational rules, and by constantly reminding us that this is the only thing between us and death by the hands of terrorists, the T.S.A. and its ilk are sowing fear. And by doing so, they are playing directly into the terrorists’ hands.The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. … But terrorists can only do so much. They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror. It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us — to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them — is the greatest harm of all."

As with most sensible people, Ludlow raises issues of accidents that we ignore: 

• a giant explosion in a fertilizer plant that killed 14 and injured 160
• the West Virginia water problem
• the 4,000+ workers killed on the job every year
• the 54,000 Americans who die every year due to work-related illnesses and accidents. 

He points out that we spend more than 7 billion dollars a year on the T.S.A. but less than  $600 million per year on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Some concluding points:

• Fear is driving the United States to believe it is above the law.
• Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety. 
• But perhaps it is possible to pause and subdue our fears by carefully observing reality — just as we might advise for trying to calm and comfort a fear-stricken child. We might find that, in reality, the more immediate danger to our democratic society comes from those who lurk in the halls of power in Washington and other national capitols and manipulate our fears to their own ends.

Another important four letter word

That's FEAR. ZbigniewBrzezinski has a piece in yesterday's Washington Post on how fear has damaged this country. The thing that really got to me is the number of sites that are now included in a national database of possible terrorist targets. Congress began the database in early 2003 with 160 sites. How many do you think there are now, four years later? Would you believe 300,000? Would you believe that terrorists would be interested in the Illinois Apple and Pork Festival? Some genius believes so as it is one of the items in the database.

Here's a quote from the article that tells you how far we have come:

The culture of fear is like a genie that has been let out of its bottle. It acquires a life of its own -- and can become demoralizing. America today is not the self-confident and determined nation that responded to Pearl Harbor; nor is it the America that heard from its leader, at another moment of crisis, the powerful words "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; nor is it the calm America that waged the Cold War with quiet persistence despite the knowledge that a real war could be initiated abruptly within minutes and prompt the death of 100 million Americans within just a few hours. We are now divided, uncertain and potentially very susceptible to panic in the event of another terrorist act in the United States itself.

The really sad part about all this is that we really are no safer today than we were on September 10, 2001. There have been billions of dollars spent, but just look around you and see what you would destroy if you were a terrorist and how easily you could do it.

Making the world safe for democracy

Except that the world does not include the US of A if the latest detainee bill passes in the Senate today. If the government accuses you of being an enemy combatant or of giving material support to our enemies or allies, you're toast even if you're a legal resident here. You can't petition the courts. You'll rot in jail until the war on terror is over (which will happen at the end of the world).

Fear drove the Palmer Raids of WWI which imprisoned 'anarchists'. Fear drove the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII. And fear is driving this country's leaders. This current fear is one of not being re-elected, rather than fear that we are not being protected.

Fear in America

Alternet is running a series, entitled "Fear in America", which will look into the role that fear has played and is playing in this country. The first in the series discusses social panics. It talks about nine panics, all of which occurred in the 20th century. I wonder why they didn't go back to the early days of America when there were witches in Salem. Anyway, here is the list. How many do you remember?

1. Reds Under the Bed and Communist Hysteria

This was the first one I can remember. Senator Joe McCarthy was all over the news, but was eventually toppled by Joseph Welch, a lawyer from Boston.

2. AIDS Panic and Misinformation

This may be the most recent one I recall. Gays, whether or not they had AIDS, were stigmatized.

3. Satanic Ritual Abuse

This harked back to the Salem trials. The McMartin Preschool trial in California was the top story, but I can recall at least one trial in Massachusetts.

4. Superpredators

I don't remember this. Supposedly, groups of teenagers were in a rage of violent crimes, especially killing young kids.

5. The Marriage Crunch

This seems a stretch to me. Although it happened it the '80s, it was basically an article in Newsweek that supposedly excised many unmarried women as it claimed that their chances of getting married were quite slim.

6. Recovered Memory Syndrome

This phenomenon of the late 20th century led to the creation of the False Memory Foundation, which is still in business. There was a wave of people in psychotherapy suddenly recovering memories of nasty things that had been done to them as children. How widespread this panic was is questionable in my mind.

7. Crack Babies

The term was fairly widespread in the early '90s. The idea here was the children of those using crack would grow up to be very nasty people. But, like many supposedly scientific studies, the idea was based on a very small sample of 23 babies.

8. Various Disease Pandemics

Remember Mad Cow Disease? Ebola?

9. Heavy Metal, Dungeons & Dragons, Satanism and Suicide

How much fear was generated in the nation by heavy metal music, etc. is questionable.

I don't think this series is off to a good start.

Fear is the modus operandi when it comes to Muslims

The New York Police Department is so afraid of another terrorist attack that it is investigating all Muslims simply for being Muslim.  These investigations are not triggered by an indication of terrorism or criminality. The reports are essentially used to populate databases showing where Muslims work, shop and pray. It has compiled reports on Muslims in Newark and Suffolk and Nassau counties.  

Does anyone remember someone saying, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."?   How low we have sunk since Roosevelt said those words.

This I Believe

I was amazed reading "America the Resilient" in this issue of Foreign Affairs. Stephen E. Flynn, the author, echoes many of my thoughts and feelings about this country in the 21st century. Here are some quotes:

The United States is becoming a brittle nation. An increasingly urbanized and suburbanized population has embraced just-in-time lifestyles tethered to ATM machines and 24-hour stores that provide instant access to cash, food, and gas. When the power goes out and these modern conveniences fail, Americans are incapacitated. Meanwhile, two decades of taxpayer rebellion have stripped away the means necessary for government workers to provide help during emergencies.

The United States' aging infrastructure compounds the risk of destruction and disruption. One of the rationales for building the interstate highway system was to support the evacuation of major cities if the Cold War turned hot; in 2006, the year the system turned 50, Americans spent a total of 3.5 billion hours stuck in traffic. Public works departments construct "temporary" patches for dams, leaving Americans who live downstream one major storm away from having water pouring into their living rooms. Bridges are outfitted with the civil engineering equivalent of diapers. Like the occupants of a grand old mansion who elect not to do any upkeep, Americans have been neglecting the infrastructure that supports a modern society.

Since September 11, 2001, the White House has failed to draw on the legacy of American grit, volunteerism, and ingenuity in the face of adversity. Instead, it has sent a mixed message, touting terrorism as a clear and present danger while telling Americans to just go about their daily lives. Unlike during World War II, when the entire U.S. population was mobilized, much of official Washington today treats citizens as helpless targets or potential victims. This discounting of the public can be traced to the culture of secrecy and paternalism that now pervades the national defense and federal law enforcement communities.

Flynn touts the actions of the passengers on United 93 who stymied the attempt on the White House on September 11, 2001. "Americans should celebrate -- and ponder -- the reality that the legislative and executive centers of the U.S. federal government, whose constitutional duty is to "provide for the common defense," were themselves defended that day by one thing alone: an alert and heroic citizenry." He goes on to raise the issue of government secrecy in that we had intelligence that terrorists had expressed interest in using airplanes as weapons, but we kept it secret. What would have happened on 9/11 if the people knew of the possibility?

Flynn believes that we are willing and eager to serve this country, but we need leadership.

"For more then six years, however, Washington has been sounding the alarm about apocalyptic terrorist groups while providing the American people with no meaningful guidance on how to deal with the threats they pose or the consequences of a successful attack. This toxic mix of fear and helplessness jeopardizes U.S. security by increasing the risk that the U.S. government will overreact to another terrorist attack.

What Washington should do instead is arm Americans with greater confidence in their ability to prepare for and recover from terrorist strikes and disasters of all types. Confidence in their resilience would cap their fear and in turn undermine much of the incentives terrorists have for incurring the costs and risks of targeting the U.S. homeland.

The United States needs the kind of resilience that the British displayed during World War II when V-1 bombs were raining down on London. Volunteers put the fires out, rescued the wounded from the rubble, and then went on with their lives until the air-raid warnings were sounded again. More than a half century later, the United Kingdom showed its resilience once more after suicide bombers attacked the London Underground with the intent of crippling the city's public transportation system. That objective was foiled when resolute commuters showed up to board the trains the next morning."

"Increasing the resilience of the American people will require presidential leadership. For years, the fear of terrorism has been stoked and the federal government's ability to defeat radical jihadists has been exaggerated. This has created a passive citizenry that oscillates between fretfulness and cynicism. In his or her inaugural address, the next president will need to call on Americans to recapture their spirit of endurance and optimism. During the new administration's first hundred days, it must work with Congress to put in place programs that help Americans build robustness, achieve resourcefulness, enhance their ability to recover swiftly, and revise designs and protocols based on lessons learned from crises. Given the American tradition of self-reliance and volunteerism, the effort will strike a strong bipartisan chord."

Fear

For at least ten years I have been writing about fear in America. The government and the media have been promoting fear for quite a while. They ignore such basic statistics that more people die from bathtub accidents than are killed by terrorists. The following video does a good job satirizing the issue.

 

The only thing we have to fear...

You thought I'd be saying "is fear itself", didn't you? Well, in the 21st century we have to fear terrorists to such a degree that we can use just about any form of torture on them. That's what our peerless, but obviously not fearless, leader believes.

What have we become?

Forever Enduring Always Ready or FEAR

That's the name of the latest terrorist group. This is a hometown group comprised of soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia. They are being tried for murdering one of their former members and his girl friend. In investigating the murders, the police discovered the group. They killed their comrade because they thought he would tell on them. 

The charges are malice murder, felony murder, criminal gang activity, aggravated assault and using a firearm while committing a felony.  The group was funded by the proceeds from an insurance policy on the leader's pregnant wife.  The $500,000 proceeds enabled them to buy $87,000 worth of weapons and bomb components.  (It does seem odd that a 19-year-old would insure his wife for that kind of money.)

FEAR was thinking big:  taking over Fort Stewart, bombing a Savannah fountain, bombing a dam in Washington, poisoning the state's apple crop.  Their ultimate goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.

Regrets? He may have had a few

This is from John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Senator McCain. Was this the moment? The epiphany? The realization that stoking the flames of bigotry and fear had come home to roost?

As I watched your town hall gathering, I wondered what was going through your mind when you came face to face with the incendiary results of your campaign tactics. What did you see and feel when that elderly woman said Obama was an Arab? Or the man who said he feared an Obama presidency? And all the others?

I saw your face. I watched your body language as you took the microphone and quickly distanced yourself from that one.

At that moment, did you see your reflection in the mirror of her eyes? A reflection, not of a maverick, but a pariah? Did you see the decades of American scar tissue? Birmingham? Burning crosses? The noose? Did you see that awful year in American history when Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, cut down in the prime of their dreams for a better America?

Did you hear the echo of Dr. King's words about being "judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character," and suddenly realize that it was not your opponent's character in question - but yours? Perhaps you heard the whisper of Langston Hughes when he asked, "What happens to a dream deferred ...? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?"

Did you suddenly smell the rot and fetid acrid aroma of fear and hate, the carcass of mendacious political tactics decaying at your feet? Or did you sniff the flop-sweat of your own campaign standing in a puddle of decimating poll numbers?

I watched your mouth dry up and wondered if you could taste the bitter words like "Arab," "terrorist," "treason," "kill him," - all served up on the plate of red meat politics by your campaign. Did it make you choke and want to spit out the rancid flavor of ignorance and violence? Or did you want to savor the success of the politics of personal destruction?

Did you feel the cold chill of defeat? Did your heart pound with the all-encompassing realization that you would never be president? Could you sense that the America you appeal to is stale and dying out and being replaced by the freshness of hope and tolerance and a rainbow of change?

No doubt, the media will genuflect before your image and be pushed by your campaign spinners to reanoint you as a maverick and honorable man in rising to the defense of your opponent. But your ads still sully the airwaves. Your surrogates still spew their venom. After all, this is just politics. People need to understand that. Nothing personal - it is just politics.

But here was this moment. And you know it, regardless of whether or not you were reading from cue cards or just looking down to avoid having to face the ugliness before you - you know.

And when the crowd booed as you struggled to use words about decency and honorable character to defuse the situation you created, you must have recalled the words from Proverbs, "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind ..."

This is not a moment for you to be proud of in this campaign. Garnering credit for coming to the defense of Senator Obama is like an arsonist claiming heroism for saving lives after having set fire to the building in the first place.

It does not matter how the media or your advisers and consultants spin this moment because it can only reflect badly on you. If it is tossed off as politics as usual, your campaign appears shallow and less interested in what's best for America than what is best for John McCain. If it is said that there is no room for this kind of rhetoric in a presidential campaign, then you look weak and unable to control your own staff that continue to push these messages. If it is about leadership and going against the flow, then we see that a McCain presidency will be divisive and reinforce the meme of "two Americas." We have already had eight years of a divided country from the man who ran as a "Uniter not a divider."

This was a defining moment.

And you, sir, lost.

12 years and counting

Most of us know what we were doing, where we were, who we were with and so on on Sept. 11, 2001.  How many of us knew that this was the day when once more we became a nation driven by fear?  Roosevelt was able to get us out of that trough back in the '30s.  WWII finished the job.  When we stopped fearing everyday life, our economy grew, equality grew, freedom grew.

Now, our economy, our equality, our freedom are on the wane, largely the result of our leadership in the 21st century which  has striven to make us a nation driven by fear. Who or what will get us out of this trough? 

Words from Joe Galloway

These Republicans arrived with a strange combination of contempt for government and hunger for its power, and during their time in the saddle they've done everything they could to destroy the government and the Constitution that our forefathers so carefully constructed to check and balance any self-anointed monarchs' ability to do evil or accumulate dangerous and excessive power.

Where were we the people while this evil was being unleashed on us? Remember the fable of the grasshopper and the ant? We were, with the encouragement of our president, busy playing grasshopper. In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, our president urged us to go to the shopping mall. Go be grasshoppers. Consume everything, save nothing, live like there’s no tomorrow, like winter will never come.

Guess what? Winter has arrived.

In the name of national security, of homeland security, our right to privacy has been whittled away, legally and illegally. Big Brother has been listening, but only for our own good.

With the arrogance common to those who are ignorant of both history and the world, these people threw away our standing in that world, declaring that everyone must either be with us or against us. We hardly noticed as the world paid attention to what we did, not what we said, and then quietly chose the latter option.

In pursuit of our newfound civic duty as consumers, we hardly noticed that nearly everything we bought was marked "Made in China."

Made in China and bought on credit, our credit and our country's. Made in China and made with lead paint and poisonous plastics that threatened the lives of our children and killed our dogs, substances that escaped notice until far too late because the rabid deregulators had pulled our watchdogs' teeth.

They demanded unfettered capitalism, and in the hands of the Wall Street robber barons that was turned into pure evil, pure greed and pure folly. Now millions of Americans are losing their homes in the mortgage meltdown, and millions more have seen their life savings, their 401ks and IRAs, their hopes of a comfortable retirement, blow away like so many leaves on a cruel Texas norther.

They played on our fears like a mighty Wurlitzer Organ, frightening us with lies into an unnecessary war in Iraq. Frightening us into re-electing George Bush, even after we knew that he was anything but presidential, anything but intelligent, anything but a worthy, effective leader.

They frightened us so badly that we voluntarily surrendered the precious rights that a million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and others bought for us with their lives during two centuries of freedom and democracy.

They used fear to violate international law, to torture and imprison thousands of suspected enemies without charges or trials. They used fear and invoked national security to suspend the right of habeas corpus, the foundation of our freedoms.

For these and far too many other sins and transgressions to list in so short a space as this, we the people have every right, and perhaps a duty, to cast them aside, and with them their only hope of avoiding justice and judgment — John McCain, who voted with them 90 percent of the time.

We're right to toss them all aside, and to hope and pray that it's not too late to start repairing the damage they've done to a nation that once was the last, best hope of mankind.

Telling it like it is

Here are a couple of excerpts from an interview with Vicente Fox, ex-president of Mexico, in today's NY Times:


Are you saying America has become less tolerant? 
Yes, yes. And maybe the best way to qualify it is “fear.” That fear has been promoted by those who want to go back to the past, to nationalistic attitudes, to building walls and isolating themselves from the rest of the world.
You think the United States is causing Mexico’s crime wave? 
Absolutely, yes. The cartel gangs are nourished through the drug consumption in the United States. That’s why my position is that we should move as fast as possible into legalizing drug consumption.

Safety above all

As I've said more than once, we are well on the road to believing that safety is the most important thing in life and we fear being deprived of safety most of all.  The money we spend, the people we kill, the wars we wage, the time expended - it's all worth it if we prevent another 9/11.  It all sounds so out of place in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  But, then, we are becoming a nation of talkers, not doers.

The commotion over "Benghazi" is another manifestation of our fears.  McCain and company believe that we should never lose an ambassador to terrorists; protection is the sine qua non of diplomacy.  Daniel Drezner has the perfect response to the senator:

In a world of real-time diplomacy, a fundamental truth has to be acknowledged in Washington:  being a foreign service officer carries risks with it. While, all else equal, those risks should be minimized, the U.S. needs to live with some degree of risk rather than sacrifice the ability of its diplomats to interact and engage with counterparts and locals in foreign countries.  

Rather than the simple mantra of "never again" when reacting to the death of Ambassador Stevens, the life and mission he desired should be valorized a bit more. Stevens knew that the best way to advance U.S. interests in Libya was to be on the ground. Doing that from embassies that resemble Orwell's Ministry of Truth is a difficult task.  

There is a tradeoff between protecting U.S. officials overseas and promoting their ability to advance the national interest. I fear the pendulum has swung way too far towards the protection side, and Stevens' death will only exacerbate that shift. The cruel irony is that Stevens, of all people, would have abhorred that shift. Better that we openly acknowledge the risk that foreign service officers face in overseas postings, recognize the bravery and loyalty that their service entails, and let them do their f***king jobs.  

Obama's Inaugural Address

Tom Engelhardt muses on presidential inaugural addresses and hopes that Obama reverts to an address whose tone is similar to that of our first presidents - modest and realistic. Engelhardt has taken a shot at a suitable Obama address and it's pretty good. See for yourself.

In a Dark Valley

Barack Obama's Inaugural Address

In my lifetime, presidents have regularly come before you, the American people, proclaiming new dawns or hailing this country as a shining city upon a hill, an example to the rest of the world. But on this cold, wintry day, I hardly need tell you that we seem to have joined much of the rest of the world in an increasingly shadowy, sunless valley.

We -- not just we Americans but all of us -- are living in a world in peril, one in which we have far more to fear than fear itself. And don't imagine, having just taken the oath of office on the Bible Abraham Lincoln laid his hand on in an earlier moment of national crisis, that I don't have my own fears about the task ahead. I can't help but worry whether my abilities are up to challenges, which would surely have been daunting even to a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt.

Nonetheless, you elected me. You have, I know, invested your hopes in me in these trying times. And fortunately, I sense that you are at my side now and will, I hope, remain there, encouraging and criticizing, praising or chiding as you see fit, through the worst and, with luck, the best of times. I'm thankful for that. Without your support, your wisdom, what could I hope to accomplish? We -- and in this presidency, when I use that word, I will mean you and me, not the royal "we" to which American presidents have become far too attached -- we can, I think, hope to accomplish much, but only if we're honest with ourselves.

This nation was founded in the immodest modesty of experimentation by men who hoped for much but were aware that they did not always know what might work. They were ready to falter, to fall on their faces, to fail, and yet not to quit. We -- you and I -- must be willing to do the same. In this difficult moment, we must be willing to acknowledge our limits, to admit our mistakes, and to welcome all others who care to join us, or want us to join them, on the path of experimentation in a needy world.

Let me, then, start -- not simply as your new president but as a human being, a proud American, and the father of two children who deserve a better future, not a thoroughly degraded world -- with two simple words: I'm sorry.

In the last eight years, we Americans have in no way lived up to our better natures. Our country has, in fact, repeatedly caused grievous damage to others and to ourselves. The mistakes, the misguided policies, have been legion. We -- you and I -- must do our best to correct them and make amends. For Americans, at home and abroad, there must be a better way.

The kidnapping of people off the streets of global cities, the disappearing of suspects who have no chance to face judge or jury, the torture, abuse, and killing of prisoners, these are wounds inflicted on the world and on ourselves. There must be a better way.

Shock-and-awe assaults on other nations, whether by ourselves or allies we've green-lighted, lead -- it should be clear enough by now -- to horrors beyond measure visited on civilians. There must be a better way.

The repeated firing of missiles at, and the bombing of, villages halfway across the globe, the repeated killing of innocent farm families while on missions to protect ourselves, constitutes a global war for terror, not against it. There must be a better way.

The twisting of our Constitution into whatever shape a president (and his lawyers) find useful or power-enhancing constitutes a body blow to this nation. There must be a better way.

The offering of vast bailouts, without strings or oversight, to the most profligate and greediest among us, while ignoring the daily suffering of ordinary Americans inflicts grievous harm on our society. There must be a better way.

The turning of our government -- your government -- into a surveillance state, a spy society, meant to eternally watch you cannot represent the fulfillment of the dreams of Washington or Jefferson. There must be a better way.

Transforming the heavens into a storage depot for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is like passing a death sentence on humanity. There must be a better way.

Considering war and military action the solution of first, not last, resort whenever a difficult or painful problem arises represents a disastrous path. There must be a better way.

Of all times, this is no time to be at war. For our recent wars, all of us have paid a heavy price, not just in lives that should never have been lost, but in distraction from what truly matters.

We were once proudly a can do nation. For the last eight years, we have been a can't do nation, incapable of rebuilding great cities or small towns, replacing failing bridges or shoring up our systems of levees. And yet we've had the presumption to believe that we, who had lost the knack for rebuilding at home, had a special ability to rebuild other societies far from home. All of this has to end now. We need to do better.

Everywhere on this shaky planet people feel insecure and unsafe -- and we have only sharpened such feelings in these last years. To feel secure and safe should be the most basic of rights. It is, however, far past time for us to give the very idea of security new meaning. Yes, we must protect ourselves. Any country must do that for its citizens, but you, the American people, must also hear a truth that has not been said in these last eight years. It is a fantasy to believe that, in the long run, we can make ourselves secure to the detriment of everyone else. On that path lies only insecurity for all. We need to do better.

In policy terms, tomorrow is the day to roll up our sleeves and begin, but today I want to say to you: Don't despair. Yes, the news is grim. Yes, as Americans and as citizens of this world we should know our limits and the increasingly apparent limits of our small planet, but we should also dream, and struggle, and plan, and innovate.

I repeated one phrase many times during the long presidential campaign, and I emphatically repeat it today: Yes, we can!

And when we do, we have to reach out to the world with our discoveries and ideas, but without the sense that those discoveries, those ideas, are the be-all and end-all. We have to learn how to listen as well as teach.

Our planet will either be an ark, which will carry us, and our children and grandchildren, through time and space, or it will be our grave. This is a stark choice that seems no choice at all. But believe me, to choose the ark, not the grave, is the hardest thing of all. Nonetheless, may that be the choice to which we Americans consecrate ourselves on this day and in all the days to come.

Thank you and God bless us all.

They have to act fast

Goldman Sachs has made a big deal about their willingness - nay, eagerness - to pay back the $10 billion they got from the TARP. That's $10 billion they got directly; they got another $10 billion or more from the TARP's payout to AIG and hold $28 billion of bonds backed by the FDIC. Nothing has been said about returning these latter funds. Nor have they said that they would refuse to be saved by us once more should they have a reversal of fortune.

It looks like Goldman is pushing this now because they have a fear of new regulations which may further impact their ability to pay outrageous sums to their honchos. They've already started to stock the bonus pool. In the first quarter half of their revenues went into the pool. But why they fear that Geithner might do the right thing is beyond me as he has shown little inclination to join the new world; he prefers to try to rebuild the old.

The Pandemic's Effect on Seniors

The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has released a survey of adults aged 50-80  that it held in January 2021. The survey was designed to assess changes in health behaviors (worsened physical activity and less daily time spent on feet), social isolation (lack of companionship and perceived isolation), physical function (mobility and physical conditioning), and falls (falls and fear of falling) since March 2020.

The results were not very good. 36.9% reported reduced physical activity levels, 35.1% reported reduced daily time spent on their feet since March 2020, 37.1% reported lack of companionship, and 45.9% social isolation. These findings were associated with greater risks of worsened physical conditioning, greater risk of falling, and worsened fear of falling.

The War on Drugs Kills People

We've seen that Colombia and Mexico are still a prime battlefields in our War on Drugs. But, as these countries try to build more pressure against the drug cartels, the cartels simple move their bases of operations. The upcoming crime meccas are in the "Northern Triangle" of Central America - Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Almost 17,000 people were murdered there last year, most of them by the drug cartels, which have subverted the police forces of these countries so that the people fear the police as much as they fear the cartels.

We've all heard how dangerous Ciudad Juarez in Mexico is. Well, a city in Honduras has overtaken Cuidad Juarez in its violence; 1,148 people were killed in San Pedro Sula last year, about 158 per 100,000 citizens. Things are so bad in Honduras that we evacuated all of our Peace Corps volunteers from the country last week.

Would the Northern Triangle be better off if we legalized drugs in the U.S.A.

Some more quotations

This time from some comments by Charles Freeman, formerly Assistant Secretary of Defense and ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

To many now in power in Washington and in much of the country, it is perilously unpatriotic to ask why we were struck on 9/11 or who we're fighting or whether attempting forcibly to pacify various parts of the realm of Islam will reduce the number of our enemies or increase them.

How can we win a war with an enemy so ill-understood that we must invent a nonexistent ideology of "Islamofascism" for it? And how can a war with no clear objectives ever accomplish its mission and end?

As force protection becomes our major preoccupation, we find we must pacify the countries we occupy so that we can continue to station troops in them to fight the terrorists our occupation is creating.

Rather than consider the possibility that the witless application to foreign societies of military pressure, no matter how immense and irresistible it may be, is more likely to generate resistance than to make states of them, we prefer to blame the inhabitants of these societies for their ingratitude and internal divisions. So we threaten to withdraw our political and economic support from them, while piling on more American troops. Asked when our soldiers may be able to declare their mission accomplished and to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, our Commander-in-Chief replies that this is a policy question that the generals in the field should decide, and that he's not going to decide for them. Think about that for a minute. Since when are generals responsible for making policy decisions? They are conditioned to focus on implementing policy and to avoid making it. Whatever happened to civilian control of the military or "the buck stops here?" Why should our military be left to hold the bag in this way?

In most countries, politicians now see public spats with the United States as the easiest way to rally their people and enhance their prestige. The result is the progressive displacement of our previously indispensable influence and leadership in more and more areas of the world.

Sagging demand for our leadership may be a good thing to the extent it relieves us of the burdens of our much-proclaimed status as the sole remaining superpower. But we're clearly bothered by being seen as less relevant. Our answer to this seems to be to build an even more powerful military. Some of you will recall newspaper reports that our defense spending is only about 3.6 percent of GDP, reflecting a defense budget of only – I emphasize – only $499.4 billion. But a lot of defense-related spending is outside the Defense Department's budget. This fiscal year we will actually spend at least $934.9 billion (or about 6.8 percent of our GDP) on our military. Outside DoD, the Department of Energy will spend $16.6 billion on nuclear weapons. The State Department will disburse $25.3 billion in foreign military assistance. We will spend $69.1 billion on defense-related homeland security programs and $69.8 billion for treatment of wounded veterans. The Treasury will spend $38.5 billion on unfunded military retirements. We will pay $206.7 billion in interest on war debt. Other bits and pieces, including satellite launches, will add another $8.5 billion. Altogether, I repeat, that's about $935 billion. But there's no sign that all this military spending – though it is vastly more than the rest of the world combined – and the power projection capabilities it buys are regaining international leadership for us.

These regional powers distrust our purposes, fear our militarism, and reject our leadership. Distrust drives them to reaffirm the principles of international law we have now abandoned. Fear drives them to pursue the development or acquisition of weapons with which to deter the policies of preemptive attack and forcible regime change we now espouse.

But what are we for? Whatever happened to American optimism and idealism? To be able to lead the world again we must once again exemplify aspirations for a higher standard of freedom and justice at home and abroad. We cannot compel – but must persuade – others to work with us. And to lead a team, we must rediscover how to be a team player.

We face perplexing choices in every region of the world. But the policies that have brought discredit upon us center on one region – the Middle East. To restore our reputation we must correct these policies. And the problem of terrorism that now bedevils us has its origins in one region – the Middle East. To end this terrorism we must address the issues in the region that give rise to it.

Principal among these is the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending. Arab identification with Palestinian suffering, once variable in its intensity, is now total. American identification with Israeli policy has also become total. Those in the region and beyond it who detest Israeli behavior, which is to say almost everyone, now naturally extend their loathing to Americans. This has had the effect of universalizing anti-Americanism, legitimizing radical Islamism, and gaining Iran a foothold among Sunni as well as Shiite Arabs. For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel's American backers as against Israel itself. Under the circumstances, such retaliation – whatever form it takes – will have the support or at least the sympathy of most people in the region and many outside it. This makes the long-term escalation of terrorism against the United States a certainty, not a matter of conjecture.

The Palestine problem cannot be solved by the use of force; it requires much more than the diplomacy-free foreign policy we have practiced since 9/11. Israel is not only not managing this problem; it is severely aggravating it. Denial born of political correctness will not cure this fact. Israel has shown – not surprisingly – that, if we offer nothing but unquestioning support and political protection for whatever it does, it will feel no incentive to pay attention to either our interests or our advice. Hamas is showing that if we offer it nothing but unreasoning hostility and condemnation, it will only stiffen its position and seek allies among our enemies. In both cases, we forfeit our influence for no gain.

There will be no negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, no peace, and no reconciliation between them – and there will be no reduction in anti-American terrorism – until we have the courage to act on our interests. These are not the same as those of any party in the region, including Israel, and we must talk with all parties, whatever we think of them or their means of struggle. Refusal to reason with those whose actions threaten injury to oneself, one's friends, and one's interests is foolish, feckless, and self-defeating. That is why we it is past time for an active and honest discussion with both Israel and the government Palestinians have elected, which – in an irony that escapes few abroad – is the only democratically elected government in the Arab world.

But to restore our reputation in the region and the world, given all that has happened, and to eliminate terrorism against Americans, it is no longer enough just to go through the motions of trying to make peace between Israelis and Arabs. We must succeed in actually doing so. Nothing should be a more urgent task for American diplomacy.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself

This post from 2010 shows that you are more likely to die in an auto accident or be murdered than die from a terrorist attack.  Yet, we are being fed the line that terrorism presents us with unbelievable risks.  Yes, there have been people who have been victims of terrorists. But, as Steve Walt writes, "Terrorism often succeeds when its targets overreact, thereby confirming the extremists' narrative and helping tilt opinion toward their cause. Thus, a key lesson in dealing with these (modest) dangers is not to exaggerate them or attribute to enemies advantages that they do not possess."