Korean Melon

Photo: Helmut

Si el migrante no es tu hermano . . .

La Señora de Chiva and I went across the border last night into Nuevo Laredo -- our first trip in more than a year to the city whose economically crippling, violent, and interminable fighting among drug cartels for control of this NAFTA port has resulted in a surprising and menacing new Mexican federal military presence along the physical border itself -- in order to spend a few hours serving dinner to migrants at the local Casa Del Migrante. One of a network of migrant shelters (in Mexico and Guatemala) administered by Scalabrinian Missionaries, this Casa regularly hosts several dozen for dinner. We dished out 85 trays of guisado de pollo last night to men, women, and kids from El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico (of those we had the opportunity to speak with for a few moments). Some were first-time migrants; others had been deported and would soon be attempting to rejoin families in Nebraska, California, and Florida.

Talking and writing about migrants has become tricky: what leads people to feel angry about immigrants in America -- for as long as we have had what is presently characterized as a “national debate” (nothing about popular and popularly-accessible discourse about immigration can really be called a “debate,” can it?) -- what seems to anger people, or to scare them, about migrants is difference. Am I wrong about this? People make all kinds of claims that sound logical: immigrants take jobs from Americans, they are a strain on health care and educational systems, they drive like crazy lunatics. The closest people will come to articulating their fear of the less-than-white Other from the South is to claim that their value systems are incompatible with American democracy, that folks capable of making two-thousand-mile continental journeys -- trips totally unimaginable, I think, for most Americans, in their sordidness and difficulty and even in their natural and human landscapes -- sustained by little more than faith in the Virgin cannot possibly be expected to understand the rich heritage of civil democracy in our country, cannot really be expected to “contribute.” Setting aside the degree to which the majority of Americans themselves fail to “contribute” (and ignoring the absurd reality that we congratulate one another for casting votes and behave as though this constitutes contribution), this concern strikes me as most worth discussion. Even (especially?) if it amounts to little more than veiled fear: it could only help all of us to talk a little more plainly about what it means to be a citizen, to take that discussion beyond simplistic claims in which taxes buy things like “education” for people like “our children.” I admit that imagining that our putative debate could ever become a discussion is crazy optimism.

In addition to the billions of dollars of material goods that flow freely back and forth through Laredo, we continue unconscionably to export -- La Señora de Chiva never tires of pointing out -- the dream. It’s still our favorite story, and it has been wonderfully mixed up since the start: is it about hard work? Yes! Is it about leisure? Yes! Is it about wealth? Of course! Is it about living modestly and responsibly? Yes! Is it about working for yourself? Yes! Is it about fencing off the land your great-grandfather worked and insisting that it is rightfully yours? Damned straight! See this gun?

Who, John Smith wanted to know,

would liue at home idly (or thinke in himselfe any worth to liue) onely to eate, drink, and sleepe, and so die? Or by consuming that carelesly, his friends got worthily? Or by vsing that miserably, that maintained vertue honestly? Or, for being descended nobly, pine with the vaine vaunt of great kindred, in penurie? Or (to maintaine a silly shewe of brauery) toyle out thy heart, soule, and time, basely, by shifts, tricks, cards, & dice? [ . . . ] But rich men for the most part are growne to that dotage, through their pride in their wealth, as though there were no accident could end it, or their life.

Seriously. Who wants to live like that, spending his inheritance carelessly, sponging off of hardworking friends? Those “men of small means” who want the satisfaction of providing for themselves should head to New England, Smith tells his readers, because

Who can desire more content, that hath small meanes; or but only his merit to aduance his fortune, then to tread, and plant that ground hee hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he haue but the taste of virtue, and magnanimitie, what to such a minde can bee more pleasant, then planting and building a foundation for his Posteritie, gotte from the rude earth, by Gods blessing & his owne industrie, without preiudice to any?

On the other hand, Smith tries the abundance angle:

Heer nature and liberty affords vs that freely, which in England we want, or it costeth vs dearely. What pleasure can be more, then (being tired with any occasion a-shore) in planting Vines, Fruits, or Hearbs, in contriuing their owne Grounds, to the pleasure of their owne mindes, their Fields, Gardens, Orchards, Buildings, Ships, and other works, &c. to recreate themselues before their owne doores, in their owne boates vpon the Sea, where man woman and childe, with a small hooke and line, by angling, may take diuerse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures ? And is it not pretty sport, to pull vp two pence, six pence, and twelue pence, as fast as you can hale and veare a line?

Fish for leisure, and get rich at it. Smith, of course, was open about the fact that he was looking for passage back to America: he was hoping for some green immigrants to shepherd to the New World. It was a pitch: pick the part of the dream you want: the honor of hard work, fish jumping into your boat, whatever. John Smith, our first coyote. Well, except he failed at that, too.

OK, even for a bloggy rumination, I can see this getting out of hand. We’ll spend more time at the Casa in coming weeks, partly in preparation to travel to Casas in Guatemala – in Guatemala City and Tecun Uman – and Chiapas in March to assist in the production of a documentary being made by a colleague. I’ll plan to post what I’m able both before and after that trip.

What's In the Oceans?

For us, of course. Article here.

More on the Skewed "Torture Debate"

Scott Horton, as always, has another good piece rounding up recent US torture news. [It occurs to me that there's enough daily "torture news" and legal and rhetorical contortions about torture in the US to publish a quotidian newspaper called The Torture News]. He points out again how the "debate" continues to be framed by certain questions that the administration has an interest in maintaining.

Questioning and discussion continues to focus on waterboarding. Alabama’s Jeff Sessions says he just doesn’t understand all this focus on waterboarding since it’s closely controlled and rarely used. The debate focuses on it for a simple reason: if Attorney General Mukasey and his sidekick Steve Bradbury can conclude that waterboarding—which is iconic torture—is lawful, then there is very little that they won’t be able to approve. In effect, the practice of waterboarding is being used to bash through the prohibition against torture altogether. But in another sense, Sessions is right. Other torture practices are far more widespread and therefore arguably still more important. I’d focus on four techniques which are plainly torture and are being used by the CIA today:

• Hypothermia

• Long-time standing

• Sleep deprivation in excess of 2 days

• Psychotropic drugs

In addition to these techniques, there are the almost ubiquitous Kubark techniques, which used a combination of sensory deprivation followed by sensory overload and which can effectively turn their subject into a vegetable. The application of the first four certainly constitute criminal acts under U.S. law. The Kubark process probably does as well. And on these points, a debate has hardly even been engaged.

That's right. The torture issue is a sly one. The administration takes two interrelated tacks: one plays out on specifically legal terrain, the other on conceptual and normative terrain. On one hand, they seek to make as precise as possible the referent of the definition of torture. The more precise or concrete the definition, the more the law might circumscribe a small area of prohibited practices, leaving vast possibilities for other techniques. If "waterboarding" is clearly defined as torture, and is thus illegal (which it is), then try "jello-boarding." The other tack is to allow some success for the administration's opponents on the question. Endless hearings on waterboarding, the slow drip of information about American use of waterboarding, the occasional outlandish claim designed to refocus the public view on a few rhetorical excesses, and a slow, delayed retreat. But then what are we left with? The acknowledgment that the US uses waterboarding? We already knew this.

Friday Dinner Party Conversation Stopper

I think it is better not to say that the liberal West is better informed about rationality and justice, and instead to say that, in making demands on non-liberal societies, it is simply being true to itself.

- Richard Rorty

Valencia Pride Mango

Photo: Ian Maguire

Romney Drops Out. Obama Wins?

An interesting point (via Sullivan).

How does Mitt Romney’s departure affect the Democratic race? Let’s look at next Tuesday. In my home state of Virginia we do not register by party, so on Tuesday Independents and Republicans can vote in either race and many will choose to vote in the Democratic contest, the only active primary. Barack Obama would seem to be the natural beneficiary of this. Independents who want to “turn the page” and Republicans who want to dispense with the Clintons may find common cause with the “Yes we can ” crowd.

Torture Nation

Lamar Smith (R-TX) holds this shopworn and rather sick fantasy,

It's not even a close call, says Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). If you've got a terrorist, and he has information that could save thousands of Americans lives, waterboarding is a no-brainer: "99% of the American people" would support such a technique, he said.

Happiness Sucks

Whatever. Like it matters....

Pakistan Is the New Chile, But a Lot Worse

U.S. military advisers are helping the Pakistanis double the size of their elite commando force in a continuing effort to blunt the rising threat of terror groups and anti-government militants operating in Pakistan's unruly tribal areas, a senior Defense Department official said.

The U.S. military presence in the country is fewer than 100 people, said the official, Mike Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and is focused on what he called "targeted training." That includes assisting Pakistan's Special Service Group and teaching specialized fighting techniques, like helicopter assaults...

"We have certain capabilities that we can do in a low-visibility manner that can enhance the operations of Pakistani forces," Vickers said.

Is It a War Crime Yet?

Jack Balkin has an important question for John McCain.

The White House has now admitted that the United States has waterboarded, that President Bush believes the practice is not torture, and that it violates neither the anti-torture statute, the McCain Amendment (which you sponsored) nor the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (which you voted for).

Will you condemn the White House for its latest admission? Will you say to the President what you said to Rudy Giuliani back in October?

"All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today," Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.

Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: "They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture."

And if that is so, Senator McCain, do you agree that the Administration is subject to criminal liability under the torture statute and the War Crimes statute? Do you agree that the United States, under the leadership of George W. Bush, has committed war crimes and has stated that it sees no obstacle to doing so again?

And from the Toronto Star, "The alarming consequences of two John McCains."

Sentences Removed, Links Remain

Life intrudes.... Here are a few links worth your while.

* Thomas Pogge, in Dissent, on the spinning of economic growth indicators, and the reality of poverty.

Most of the massive severe poverty persisting in the world today is avoidable through more equitable institutions that would entail minuscule opportunity costs for the affluent. It is for the sake of trivial economic gains that national and global elites are keeping billions of human beings in life-threatening poverty with all its attendant evils such as hunger and communicable diseases, child labor and prostitution, trafficking, and premature death. Considering this situation from a moral standpoint, we must now assess growth—both globally and within most countries—in terms of its effect on the economic position of the poor.

Designing economic institutions and policies by this standard may well entail a sacrifice in aggregate economic growth. But this sacrifice is morally imperative. It is also highly desirable for ecological reasons. To be sure, the consumption expenditure of the poor may be slightly more resource- and pollution-intensive on a per-$ basis. This would detract from the short-term ecological benefits of slowing aggregate growth for the sake of poverty avoidance. The long-term ecological benefit, however, would be massive, as poverty eradication would retard population growth and thus lead to an earlier leveling-off of the human population at a much lower level.

* The world's rubbish dump - on the massive plastic "soup" drifting in the Pacific Ocean.

* The Nature of Walls. A nice little essay on walls in Orion Magazine.

What possibilities await if we consider that we are the “other” as we are “us”?

* A new website, conceived by a friend, that estimates the carbon footprint of a given conference or meeting: HubCalc.

* And... a little comment on my present inabilities, courtesy of VVORK.

Sentence Removed (O’s Remain), 2000 by Jonathan Monk

Canteloupe

Photo: Helmut

Tepid Tuesday

The Obama campaign is pre-spinning tomorrow's primaries one way; Hillary the other. The polls have been wild over the past couple of days (different late polls show California, for example, ranging from a four-point lead for Obama to an eight-point lead for Clinton) and seem to say one basic thing: it's all going to be very close and nothing is going to be finished come Wednesday morning. That said, state polls generally show Hillary winning handily where she is ahead, and Obama winning by a hair in states in which he's ahead. This suggests that, given the narrowing gap in the national polls, an overall win for Obama, albeit unlikely, would say something quite devastating.

In the meantime, let's see what the Republicans are up to:

Bob Dole tells Rush that McCain is as conservative as Jesse Helms.

Torture Architecture

Flaco sent this Guardian piece by email.

An architectural school was at the centre of a row last night after it emerged that students were required to design a fully operational torture device.

The project, part of a masters course aimed at first-year students of the University of Kent's School of Architecture, was described as "sick". One student has lodged a complaint on the grounds that he was uncomfortable about carrying out the brief. Illustrated by a skull and a view of a Gestapo electric torture chamber, the brief handed to a class of students at the school was to "design, construct and draw a fully operational prototype torture device based on ergonomic principles".

The pedagogical value is obviously suspect, perhaps especially as the article ends with this: "The two-week project was designed by course tutor Mike Richards, in advance of a project to design a new headquarters for Amnesty International." But it's perfectly consistent with a Bush-Cheney program of institutionalized torture. They would need lawyers, data analysts, and janitors too.

Minister of Ideas

Jim at Politics, Theory and Photography posts this news item about Roberto Unger, the Brazilian philosopher.

...I want to call your attention to this profile of Roberto Mangabeira Unger from The New York Times yesterday. As I have noted here repeatedly [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], I think Unger is quite interesting insofar as he is trying to export a quite radical version of American pragmatism to Brazil. I do not agree with Unger in all the details, but his views on institutional experimentation, radicalizing democracy and disentangling systemic political-economic reform from crisis all are crucially important.

Can you imagine a U.S. Presidential candidate who promised to appoint a 'minister of ideas' or a council of intellectual advisors who were not narrow-minded economists? Lula has appointed Unger in Brazil. And, in a similarly remarkable move, in France the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy has solicited the views of Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz [1] on what might be included in a plausible metric for economic growth only to be ridiculed by the anti-intellecctuals at The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times. It is astounding how fearsome ideas and inquiry can be. In a country where we are hostage to neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues, this is a fear I wish we could overcome.

If you're a regular reader of Phron, you know I agree. Tell me, who among the US presidential candidates could you see creating a cabinet position (or any space) for Philosophical Ideas?

Sausage Tree Fruit

Mp3 Find of the Day

Some early Willie Nelson, courtesy of Jamie's Runout Groove.

The Republican "Islamofascism" Campaign

Juan Cole in Salon:

Giuliani complained that during their debates, Democratic rivals "never mentioned the word 'Islamic terrorist,' 'Islamic extremist,' 'Islamic fascist,' 'terrorist,' whatever combination of those words you want to use, [the] words never came up." He added, "I can't imagine who you insult if you say 'Islamic terrorist.' You don't insult anyone who is Islamic who isn't a terrorist."

But people are not "Islamic," they are Muslim. And one most certainly does insult Muslims by tying their religion to movements such as terrorism or fascism. Muslims perceive a double standard in this regard: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols would never be called "Christian terrorists" even though they were in close contact with the Christian Identity Movement. No one would speak of Christofascism or Judeofascism as the Republican candidates speak of Islamofascism. Muslims point out that persons of Christian heritage invented fascism, not Muslims, and deny that Muslim movements have any link to the mass politics of the 1930s in Europe...

Current GOP front-runner John McCain has been prone to hyperbole and has let some bigoted statements escape his lips as well. He has said that the threat from Islamic extremism is greater than the one presented by the Soviet Union. Recently, McCain proclaimed, "I'm not interested in trading with al-Qaida. All they want to trade is burqas... " The senator seemed to be relating the Muslim custom of veiling to terrorism. The Detroit Free Press, whose city has one of the largest Muslim populations, reported on Jan. 12 that McCain's remarks were hurtful to American Muslims. "Local Muslims say that criticizing al-Qaida is legitimate, but wonder why he would make a snide remark about a dress? The remark was especially bothersome, some said, considering that McCain's adopted daughter, Bridget McCain, is from one of the biggest Muslim countries, Bangladesh." One would think that raising a daughter from the Muslim world in the United States today would be difficult enough, even without the adoptive father's denigrating the customs of the women from that culture.

On another occasion, asked whether a Muslim candidate for president would be acceptable, McCain replied, "I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles ... personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn't mean that I'm sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president. I don't say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would -- I just feel that that's an important part of our qualifications to lead."

But according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Secularists and Jews joined American Muslims in condemning McCain's assertion that the United States was founded on Christian principles, and that Christian faith could be a key determinate for taking the Oval Office.

Exxon and the Free Market

The new site, The Washington Independent, reports briefly on Exxon's record 2007 profits.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s filled the station wagon recently, but ExxonMobil announced today that its 2007 net earnings totaled $40.6 billion—the single largest annual profit, not only in the company’s history, but in the country’s. (That $40.6 billion is not income, mind you, but profits after all expenses and taxes have been paid out.)...

These profits are made possible, of course, with the help of federal subsidies, which total anywhere between $15 billion and $35 billion a year, according to independent estimates. (In 2005, President Bush—himself a former oilman—signed into law an energy bill which, by itself, granted more than $14 billion in tax breaks and incentives to the industry.)

Total subsidies are difficult to pin down because they take so many different forms. For example, Washington props up the industry by issuing tax-free or low interest construction bonds, assuming the legal risk for development projects, or lending money to international institutions like the World Bank, which in turn subsidize international oil production.

What a deal! And if you're wondering about how the worrisome "dependence on foreign oil" is going, note that the DOE has the US increasing imports by about 7.5% throughout the Bush years.

And for the peak oil freaks out there, check out DC Velocity's "End of Cheap Oil." [GM apparently gets the peak oil idea].