State security without proof

"I assert, he said with a calm and low voice, I assert that Mr. Colomban has responsibility for an act that has put our country within two fingers of its loss. The case of Pyrot is secret and must remain secret. If disclosed, the most cruel wars, pillage, devastation, fires, massacres evils, epidemics, will be brought immediately on Penguinia.  I would consider myself guilty of high treason if I uttered one word more." - General Greatauk, "L'Île des Pingouins", Anatole France, 1908, my translation with help from Google Translate

Colomban is Emile Zola who strongly defended Dreyfuss (Pyrot) in the press.  For more on the Dreyfuss affair, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair.

Does this sound familiar a century after the Dreyfuss affair?  At that time there was extreme anti-semitism.  Are we now in a time of extreme anti-muslim paranoia?

The original French:

Je laisse, dit-il avec calme et d'une voix peu élevée, je laisse à monsieur Colomban la responsabilité d'un acte qui a mis notre pays à deux doigts de sa perte. L'affaire Pyrot est secrète; elle doit rester secrète. Si elle était divulguée, les maux les plus cruels, guerres, pillages, ravages, incendies, massacres, épidémies, fondraient immédiatement sur la Pingouinie. Je m'estimerais coupable de haute trahison si je prononçais un mot de plus.
- EBook #8524, Project Gutenberg

This world cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free

I find it very interesting that some members of the party of Lincoln do not believe the above paraphrase of a statement by Lincoln.

They would have some of the world be slaves to dictators in the interest of our national security.  For example, Tim Pawlenty said we need to "get tough on our enemies, not our friends." ("At CPAC, Egypt appears to be an afterthought", Washington Post, 2011-02-11)

Come on, Tim, with friends like Mubarak we create enemies, like the Egyptian Mohamed Atta.

A little thing to help the Egyptian people

On June 23, 2009, President Obama made a strong statement in support of the Iranian people protesting against the official election results.

His concluding remark was:

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion. That's what Iran's own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/06/23/presidents-opening-remarks-iran-with-persian-translation

What you can do is send web-form email to the president asking him to speak out more strongly about Egypt in the same way.  You'll find a "contact us" button in the upper right hand corner of most White House pages.

My own message was

Please make strong remarks about the situation in Egypt similar to those you made about Iran on June 23, 2009.

Our quest for "national security" has made us more insecure.

Give Democracy a Chance

After reading of the popular uprising in Tunisia, I can't help but give this entry a parallel title to my previous entry.

The chance I hope for any democracies that arise in the Arab world by popular demand is that the U. S. stays out of the way.  Almost anything the U.S. does, be it some support for the existing rulers or some support to the people is bound to backfire in one way or another.

The only thing the U. S. should do is to listen to whoever is in power, but promise nothing.

But, I'm pessimistic.  Somewhere in the vast U.S. military-intelligence complex will be those who call for intervention in our national interest.  Our only national interest is to help any U. S. citizens who want to leave countries in turmoil.

National Security? The emperor and his clothes

This morning at coffee, various wars came up in the conversation.

I mentioned Andrew Bacevich and his books, especially "Washington Rules, America's Path to Permanent War".  I said that the Department of Defense has become a vast bureaucracy where few question many of the assumptions.  It's another case of nobody noticing the emperor has no clothes.

A World War II veteran, shot down over France, hidden by the Resistance, and smuggled out through Spain, said, "Department of Defense!  It should be called the Department of Offense!"

Later, another person who comes up with many good puns, which unfortunately we soon forget, asked, "Does an immortal emperor have no closure?"

If the national security bureaucracy thinks it is immortal in its path to permanent war, we certainly will have no closure.

I may never fly again

Where have the friendly skies gone? Well, skies are still friendly, at least staff-wise. Counter personnel and cabin attendants do their best to be friendly to all. Even the security inspectors do their best to be friendly and helpful, even when you forget that liquid in your carry-on luggage.

But the security inspection is the middle of the hassle that flying has become. The parking and drop-off areas are more and more crowded. The lines are long at check-in. Then you have to stand in a long line at security, empty your pockets of keys, change, and other paraphernalia (you did leave your pocket knife at home, didn't you?), take off your shoes and belt, and put your cell phone, PDA, camera, and laptop in the box. Because of the long lines, you feel rushed doing all of this.

You've successfully gotten through security without forgetting anything or without having anything confiscated, and now you can relax, sort of. You still have to find a seat in the lounge, hopefully enough together for all in your group. Thank goodness that airports are now smoke-free.

Finally your plane is ready to board. There's no hurry because they won't leave the gate until everybody is buckled in. Still, it is a pain to wait for somebody with their butt in the aisle while they put their stuff in the overhead bin. Then of course you have a middle or window seat and the person in the aisle seat is already in place, You finally manage to sidle into your seat, find the seat belt ends, and buckle up. If you're lucky the plane takes off in the next fifteen minutes.

The plane finally gets to cruising altitude and you open a book to read. But suddenly the seat in front of you comes practically in your face. The person in front wants to nap and doesn't even consider how close the seat top comes to you. It's even worse if you were hoping to work on your laptop.

If the flight is more than a couple of hours of long, you start to get tense in your legs because you can't move them much. It is almost too much effort to get out, even if you have an aisle seat. If you are on a transoceanic flight, the airline will run a video about exercise. The trim young lady is shown doing all of her stretches without a seat in front of her or any other passengers by her side. If you try any of these exercises, you bump your shin against the seat in front of you or put your elbow in your neighbor's eye.

Finally, after much fidgeting and catnapping, you land at your destination airport. As soon as the plane stops, half the passengers pop up and start getting their belongings from the overhead bins. If you have other luggage it doesn't matter how fast you get off the plane. Even if you're the last person off and walk very slowly to baggage claim, your baggage won't be ready.

When you get to baggage claim, half the passengers are jammed right up the the carousel, even if their bag is nowhere in sight. You have to watch carefully between heads or arms for yours. If it comes, you bowl three or four people over as you try to right your moving bag, get a good grip on it, and heave it over the lip of the carousel. On the other hand, in some ridiculously high percentage of the time, one or more of your bags may not arrive at all. This is especially true if you had connecting flights, even on the same airline.

Matters are more complicated if your flight crosses some man-made line, referred to as an international border. You have to stand in one or two more lines, one to prove who you are and where you live, and another to prove you aren't smuggling in any prohibited material. Generally the second is perfunctory; you just walk on by. Again, the people who staff these barriers are generally friendly, or at least courteous. But the system is a great nuisance. If you live in the United States, aren't you glad each state isn't a separate country?

After our trip to Japan last year I said I never wanted to fly again. The U.S-Japan leg was bad enough, but we made it a three-day, three leg trip each way. We were accompanying my 92-year-old mother-in-law who lived outside Toronto. Our trip was Minneapolis-Toronto, Toronto-Chicago, Chicago-Tokyo and the reverse. If I couldn't drive to a place, I wouldn't travel again.

So, for Christmas, our daughter and son-in-law gave us a trip to Heavenly Valley. How could we say no? It was only a three-hour plane trip to Las Vegas and an eight-hour drive to Lake Tahoe, but still that three hours felt like eight. I renewed my vow to never fly again. And I so want to visit Europe, Iceland, and Japan again, but...

Honor the veterans but...

We should honor those who fought in our government's wars. Unfortunately, such honor rubs off on those who initiated the wars, often initiated by means of false or misleading statements. These same government officials further justify their actions as "defending our freedoms", even as they themselves stifle freedom in the name of national security.

With this in mind, how do we honor the warriors without honoring the war?