In the US in recent weeks, one of the main political news stories has been something that, if everybody (except for a few mental hospital patients) was rational, would be completely unworthy of attention. I am talking of course of the lunatic fringe inspired "controversy" over President Barack Obama's birthplace. Actually, there have been two things in American political news recently that are unworthy of attention, the other being a certain loud-mouthed businessman. I refer to the guy Joe Klein calls "Trumpet" (and who he also says he generally makes a point of refusing to dignify with a mention). Even before he came out with all his wacky criticisms of Obama, he struck me as an obnoxious and somewhat sleazy character, almost an archetype of the unscrupulous businessperson, with his frequent declarations of bankruptcy, his tacky sense of style, his self-righteous moralizing about beauty show contestants, and his attempt to trademark the phrase "you're fired". How could anyone take him seriously as a candidate for president? Actually, some speculate it's all just a publicity stunt; in other words, all he wants is to get even more attention. In any case, if we all ignore him, maybe he'll go away.
But back to the question of Obama's birthplace. In polls taken before Obama obtained a waiver from Hawaii (where he was, in fact, born) to release his long-form birth certificate, close to half of Republicans, a fair number of independents, and even some Democrats expressed doubt or uncertainty as to whether Obama was born in the US. Not only had the documentation that the state of Hawaii normally provides been released publicly long ago (and it is worth repeating that Obama himself had to get a special waiver from Hawaii to get and release his long-form birth certificate -- it's not as if he could have released it whenever he wanted), but there were announcements of Obama's birth in two Honolulu newspapers at the time. There's as much or more evidence for where Obama was born than there is for a lot of Americans, including many who claimed to believe he wasn't born in the US (not everyone's birth is announced in a newspaper, for one thing). Believing that Obama was born in Kenya or some such place is the intellectual equivalent of believing that humans didn't land on the Moon, the Holocaust didn't happen, or the Earth is only 6000 years old. It's even worse (if possible) than believing that the Earth isn't getting warmer or that William Shakespeare the actor didn't write the plays that bear his name. So how is that so many Americans believe this kind of fantastic nonsense, and in some cases will even continue to believe it after Obama released his long-form birth certificate?
One simple answer might be that people are just plain stupid. In many cases, that probably is the reason, but while I doubt there are many so-called birthers who are intellectual powerhouses, they can't all be below average in intelligence, and some of the similarly nonsensical ideas mentioned above have been adopted by people who are clearly intelligent (for example, the anti-Stradfordians, as those who question Shakespeare's authorship are called, in the past included such people as Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin and Orson Wells). In part it is simply people's fondness for conspiracy theories. While clearly delusional belief in conspiracies is often a sign of schizophrenia, even people without any form of mental illness will often believe some type of pattern exists where there clearly isn't one, whether it's a conspiracy theory, a face on Mars (it's just a geological formation), or a curse like the one claimed to be on the tomb of Tutankhamen (Howard Carter, the leader of the team that discovered the tomb, lived for almost two decades afterward, dying at a respectable 64).
However, other factors can predispose people to believe in conspiracy theories, especially those having to do with politics. For instance, in Taiwan, there is a significant portion of the population who believes that the assassination attempt against former President Chen Shuibian the day before his narrow reelection victory was staged, but almost all of those people are supporters of the KMT or other parties on that end of the Taiwanese political spectrum. Likewise, most if not all of the diehard "birthers" are people who are strongly opposed to President Obama and his policies (or what they imagine to be his policies). What's more, I suspect that those who say questioning Obama's citizenship (or his academic credentials -- this being a more recent game for the conspiracy theorists) is ultimately motivated by racism are right in at least some cases. A similar motivation, though less commonly cited, is xenophobia. Many of these same people are rabidly anti-immigrant, and the idea that someone with a foreign background -- and though Obama was clearly born in America, his father really was a foreigner, and he himself did spend part of his childhood in Asia -- could be president drives them insane (even though virtually all of them are descended from relatively recent immigrants themselves). Unfortunately xenophobia is a common cancer worldwide (just look at how every country facing public protests in the past few months has tried to place some or all the blame on foreign enemies), when in truth it would do everyone in the world good to be exposed more to foreign peoples and their cultures. But just as xenophobia remains strong in many countries around the world, there are many in the US who will continue to view anyone whose background is not "all-American" as suspicious, even to the point of believing obviously nutty theories about them.
[Update (2011/05/08): The death of Osama bin Laden, as mentioned in my latest post, has given rise to a new crop of conspiracy theories. Here is an article on the topic of conspiracy theories in general from the NY Times (which mentions one I left off, the "Paul is dead" nonsense, though it also includes a link to a rather incoherent rant from conspiracy buff Alex Jones -- yes, many of the conspiracies he cites were real, but a number of them are dubious at best, and his rambling and poorly copy edited arguments don't help) and another from CNN.]
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Two Anniversaries
Anniversaries of two major historical events took place during the past week. The first of these was the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. This anniversary is naturally of greatest significance to Americans, but considering the influence the United States has had on world events for the past century, there is no question that the Civil War ultimately had an effect that reached far beyond American borders. If the Confederacy had managed to win independence, the world would certainly be a very different place.
When the causes of the war are discussed, many southerners assert that the Confederacy was mainly fighting for states' rights and against tyranny by the federal government, and to preserve the Southern way of life. They also focus on the major disadvantages the South had in manpower and industrial development and the devastation caused in the South by invading Union armies. In other words, in their view, the South was fighting in a just cause against great odds.
Unfortunately, while it is true that the South faced great odds and, after holding out much longer than might have been expected, suffered great hardships in the last years of the war, the argument that the cause was just doesn't hold water. I say this in spite of the fact that a large number of my ancestors were Southerners (certainly more than were Northerners) and several fought for the Confederacy, and in spite of my support for the principle of self-determination. The truth is, the South was fighting to maintain the institution of slavery. All this talk about states' rights and the Southern way of life is just another way of saying the Confederates were fighting to ensure that slavery could continue in their territories. This is obvious if one looks at the history of the years before the war. All of the major political disputes that divided the North and South in the decades before the war had to do with slavery, including the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision and more. The Southern states seceded because they saw that the balance of power in the US was shifting to pro-abolition forces, and the election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the abolitionist Republican party, was the final straw.
As I said, I do in principle support the right of self-determination, including the right of regions to secede from larger nations for reasons such as having a distinct language or culture that is in danger of being swamped by the majority. But if their reason for secession is because they want to maintain or put in place a system that oppresses minority groups, then I cannot support them. If a part of some nation wanted to secede in order to institute or maintain capital punishment for homosexuals, genital mutilation of girls, repression of religious minorities or laws that forbid women from working or going to school, then I would certainly be against it. Suppose, for example, a part of South Africa had attempted to secede in order to maintain apartheid in its territory; that would have been completely different from the much more reasonable aspirations of the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Quebecois, the Chechens, the Acehnese, or the Puerto Ricans. As a look at the history shows that the main issue for the South was maintaining slavery, it is impossible to view their cause as just.
This is not to say that the North was necessarily much better. Many Northerners, including Lincoln himself, held arguably racist views, and the Lincoln administration virtually suspended the Bill of Rights during the war. The destruction caused by the Northern armies as they invaded the South was in many cases completely unjustifiable, and there is no doubt that many Union soldiers were guilty of cruel and brutal behavior, as were some Confederate soldiers, though at the same time there was also chivalrous behavior displayed by people on both sides. But none of that changes the basic point that the South was fighting to maintain a oppressive system, and so it is hard to feel much regret over its defeat.
Last week was also the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Since then, hundreds of people have flown in space, and a dozen have even walked on the Moon. There has been a continual human presence in space for more than 10 years on the International Space Station. However, while much more has been accomplished in terms of human spaceflight than could have been imagined before Gagarin's flight, expectations raised by the rapid progress in the 1960s have not been met. While humans landed on the Moon less than 10 years after Gagarin orbited the Earth, it has been almost 40 years since the last lunar landing, and Mars remains a distant goal. The development in the past few years of numerous promising private spaceflight programs is encouraging, but I also hope in the next 50 years humans will travel much further than they have done yet, going to Mars and back to the Moon and taking steps to establish a permanent human presence in both of those places. I hope we will also see landings on near-Earth asteroids, for research and possible resource extraction (though some regulations should also be put in place, to prevent the sort of unrestrained exploitation that has caused so many problems on Earth). As I have argued before, spending what amounts to a small fraction of our resources on space exploration will be, in the long term, of great value to humanity as a species. Human spaceflight has been worth every penny that has been spent on it, and I only hope that there are enough far-sighted people to ensure that it continues to achieve new things in the decades to come.
When the causes of the war are discussed, many southerners assert that the Confederacy was mainly fighting for states' rights and against tyranny by the federal government, and to preserve the Southern way of life. They also focus on the major disadvantages the South had in manpower and industrial development and the devastation caused in the South by invading Union armies. In other words, in their view, the South was fighting in a just cause against great odds.
Unfortunately, while it is true that the South faced great odds and, after holding out much longer than might have been expected, suffered great hardships in the last years of the war, the argument that the cause was just doesn't hold water. I say this in spite of the fact that a large number of my ancestors were Southerners (certainly more than were Northerners) and several fought for the Confederacy, and in spite of my support for the principle of self-determination. The truth is, the South was fighting to maintain the institution of slavery. All this talk about states' rights and the Southern way of life is just another way of saying the Confederates were fighting to ensure that slavery could continue in their territories. This is obvious if one looks at the history of the years before the war. All of the major political disputes that divided the North and South in the decades before the war had to do with slavery, including the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision and more. The Southern states seceded because they saw that the balance of power in the US was shifting to pro-abolition forces, and the election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the abolitionist Republican party, was the final straw.
As I said, I do in principle support the right of self-determination, including the right of regions to secede from larger nations for reasons such as having a distinct language or culture that is in danger of being swamped by the majority. But if their reason for secession is because they want to maintain or put in place a system that oppresses minority groups, then I cannot support them. If a part of some nation wanted to secede in order to institute or maintain capital punishment for homosexuals, genital mutilation of girls, repression of religious minorities or laws that forbid women from working or going to school, then I would certainly be against it. Suppose, for example, a part of South Africa had attempted to secede in order to maintain apartheid in its territory; that would have been completely different from the much more reasonable aspirations of the Tibetans, the Kurds, the Quebecois, the Chechens, the Acehnese, or the Puerto Ricans. As a look at the history shows that the main issue for the South was maintaining slavery, it is impossible to view their cause as just.
This is not to say that the North was necessarily much better. Many Northerners, including Lincoln himself, held arguably racist views, and the Lincoln administration virtually suspended the Bill of Rights during the war. The destruction caused by the Northern armies as they invaded the South was in many cases completely unjustifiable, and there is no doubt that many Union soldiers were guilty of cruel and brutal behavior, as were some Confederate soldiers, though at the same time there was also chivalrous behavior displayed by people on both sides. But none of that changes the basic point that the South was fighting to maintain a oppressive system, and so it is hard to feel much regret over its defeat.
Last week was also the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Since then, hundreds of people have flown in space, and a dozen have even walked on the Moon. There has been a continual human presence in space for more than 10 years on the International Space Station. However, while much more has been accomplished in terms of human spaceflight than could have been imagined before Gagarin's flight, expectations raised by the rapid progress in the 1960s have not been met. While humans landed on the Moon less than 10 years after Gagarin orbited the Earth, it has been almost 40 years since the last lunar landing, and Mars remains a distant goal. The development in the past few years of numerous promising private spaceflight programs is encouraging, but I also hope in the next 50 years humans will travel much further than they have done yet, going to Mars and back to the Moon and taking steps to establish a permanent human presence in both of those places. I hope we will also see landings on near-Earth asteroids, for research and possible resource extraction (though some regulations should also be put in place, to prevent the sort of unrestrained exploitation that has caused so many problems on Earth). As I have argued before, spending what amounts to a small fraction of our resources on space exploration will be, in the long term, of great value to humanity as a species. Human spaceflight has been worth every penny that has been spent on it, and I only hope that there are enough far-sighted people to ensure that it continues to achieve new things in the decades to come.
Labels:
Astronomy and Space Exploration
Sunday, April 10, 2011
World News Briefs
Here's a quick look at a few of the things that have been happening around the world. The Arab revolution is continuing with varying success. I haven't seen much news on Bahrain lately, so I'm not sure what's happening there, though I think the US should be speaking out much more forcefully against its ally's crackdown (with Saudi help) on the protesters. Though a few critical statements were made, they weren't really enough, which opens the US up to charges of hypocrisy considering its stronger statements and even direct actions elsewhere. The same applies in Yemen, where US ally Saleh is still hanging on, despite many defections, including by a leading general and the head of his tribe. The US only recently finally suggested Saleh should step down, and it hasn't seemed inclined to pressure him much. True, there is reason to worry about who (if anyone) will take his place, but helping him cling to power when so much of the country is against him seems as much a recipe for chaos as pushing him to leave could be.
Syria has gotten a fair amount of attention, as protests there have been large and there has been large amount of violence. Unfortunately the Assad regime doesn't seem inclined to give much ground, and it's hard to say whether the protesters will be able to keep up the pressure in the face of a government crackdown and attacks by pro-Assad demonstrators. In this case the US has limited influence, though if the crackdown became a lot more murderous, people might start asking why Syria shouldn't be treated like Libya (though there are quite a few differences between the two).
Unfortunately the Libyan situation seems to be deteriorating into a stalemate (as I feared). The question of whether the military actions taken by the Obama administration and its European and Arab allies were legitimate and appropriate continue to be debated, with some saying it is too little too late and others saying it is far too much. I don't want to get into all the various issues here, but I will say I'm inclined to say what has been done has been for the most part appropriate, though there are still a number of points I have problems with.
The key issue here is that, at least as things appeared, immediate action was necessary to avert a massacre of Gaddafi opponents in the east. I agree with the view taken by Obama (and stated by him even in his Nobel acceptance speech) and members of his administration such as Samantha Power that international intervention for humanitarian reasons is justified in some situations. The problem of what situations is a bit trickier. It's easy to say after a horrendous massacre such as the one in Rwanda that international community could have done something (guilt at failure to act there seems to have driven Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to also urge Obama to act in Libya), but it's harder to be sure when the massacre hasn't taken place yet and you want to prevent it. And how big a massacre calls for intervention? Perhaps I will attempt to address these questions at another time, but I do think there is at least a fair argument that Libya fit the criteria for intervention. Certainly it did so far more than Iraq, where the time to intervene was when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering Kurds or Shiite rebels in the south, not years afterward. There was no urgent need to act in the case of Iraq, and the failure to convince a majority of the international community to support action was another reason Bush's invasion of Iraq was much less justified than Obama's attack on Libya.
Perhaps a better reason for questioning Obama's actions is the lack of congressional approval (though it's worth remembering that the Senate passed a resolution calling for establishment of a no fly zone, which meant they were calling for US military action). The problem here, again, was the urgent nature of the situation. There really may not have been time to get congressional approval, as the rebels were collapsing faster than anyone expected. Of course if the administration had made its decision to act earlier, then approval could have been obtained in time. Acting without explicit approval does look bad, as Obama himself once said the president should only act without approval in the case of a direct threat to the nation. However, I would say this should be revised to include emergency actions in a humanitarian cause, whether or not a threat to the US is involved (though again there is the tricky question of defining what situations this applies to).
Speaking of such things, there is some hope that the situation in the Ivory Coast will be resolved soon, though it doesn't look as certain as it did a few days ago. Ouattara's forces have driven Gbagbo out of most of the country, though in the capital Abidjan itself Gbagbo seems to have regained some ground, and he is still refusing to give up power. The UN and the French have both taken action against Gbagbo's forces, which as some have noted may reflect a new trend toward more forceful action by the UN in the wake of Libya. Unfortunately, Gbagbo's intransigence may create another stalemate in Abidjan, which will cause an even greater humanitarian disaster than has already taken place. Also, Ouattara's forces may have committed a few massacres of their own. Ouattara's pledge to cooperate with investigations is at least reassuring, and regardless it is clearly Gbagbo who is most responsible for the problems, though of course any on either side who massacred civilians should be prosecuted.
China continues its efforts to silence anyone who dares speak out against the government, with its arrest of the artist Ai Weiwei, who had been the most outspoken critic of the government to remain free. The government had held back from arresting him before because of his prominence in his own right (he helped design the stadium used in the 2008 Olympics, among other things) and because he is the son of a respected poet. But I had previously wondered how long he could get away with his often strong statements on the dictatorial nature of the government and the lack of free speech in China, so in some ways I'm not surprised to hear he was arrested. Still, it's yet more evidence that China's government remains one of the most oppressive in the world, and it is all the more dangerous because of its growing economic and military power. Other countries should consider the latter a reason to stand up more strongly to China, as it will just get more difficult to do so in the future. Unfortunately, few governments seem to have the nerve to do much more than issue the occasional critical statement, and many don't even do that; some even seem to go along with some of China's more outrageous arguments on human rights (as we saw with the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony recently).
In the US, a government shutdown was averted, which is a good thing, as was the fact that Obama and the Democrats seem to have blocked some of the Republican's more extreme efforts, such as weakening the EPA or cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. I haven't had the opportunity to look in any detail at the final budget, though, so I'm not sure what outrageous cuts did get through. I can at least be sure that the more sensible steps toward cutting the deficit (eliminating corporate tax breaks, cutting military spending, and so forth) were not taken. Also, Obama regrettably caved to his opponents on another issue, namely what kind of trial to give accused 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Why this was a mistake is pointed out in a piece from the Daily Beast and another from Slate (the latter writer, incidentally, also wrote an article on an absurd decision from a Supreme Court majority led by Thomas and Scalia).
Syria has gotten a fair amount of attention, as protests there have been large and there has been large amount of violence. Unfortunately the Assad regime doesn't seem inclined to give much ground, and it's hard to say whether the protesters will be able to keep up the pressure in the face of a government crackdown and attacks by pro-Assad demonstrators. In this case the US has limited influence, though if the crackdown became a lot more murderous, people might start asking why Syria shouldn't be treated like Libya (though there are quite a few differences between the two).
Unfortunately the Libyan situation seems to be deteriorating into a stalemate (as I feared). The question of whether the military actions taken by the Obama administration and its European and Arab allies were legitimate and appropriate continue to be debated, with some saying it is too little too late and others saying it is far too much. I don't want to get into all the various issues here, but I will say I'm inclined to say what has been done has been for the most part appropriate, though there are still a number of points I have problems with.
The key issue here is that, at least as things appeared, immediate action was necessary to avert a massacre of Gaddafi opponents in the east. I agree with the view taken by Obama (and stated by him even in his Nobel acceptance speech) and members of his administration such as Samantha Power that international intervention for humanitarian reasons is justified in some situations. The problem of what situations is a bit trickier. It's easy to say after a horrendous massacre such as the one in Rwanda that international community could have done something (guilt at failure to act there seems to have driven Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to also urge Obama to act in Libya), but it's harder to be sure when the massacre hasn't taken place yet and you want to prevent it. And how big a massacre calls for intervention? Perhaps I will attempt to address these questions at another time, but I do think there is at least a fair argument that Libya fit the criteria for intervention. Certainly it did so far more than Iraq, where the time to intervene was when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering Kurds or Shiite rebels in the south, not years afterward. There was no urgent need to act in the case of Iraq, and the failure to convince a majority of the international community to support action was another reason Bush's invasion of Iraq was much less justified than Obama's attack on Libya.
Perhaps a better reason for questioning Obama's actions is the lack of congressional approval (though it's worth remembering that the Senate passed a resolution calling for establishment of a no fly zone, which meant they were calling for US military action). The problem here, again, was the urgent nature of the situation. There really may not have been time to get congressional approval, as the rebels were collapsing faster than anyone expected. Of course if the administration had made its decision to act earlier, then approval could have been obtained in time. Acting without explicit approval does look bad, as Obama himself once said the president should only act without approval in the case of a direct threat to the nation. However, I would say this should be revised to include emergency actions in a humanitarian cause, whether or not a threat to the US is involved (though again there is the tricky question of defining what situations this applies to).
Speaking of such things, there is some hope that the situation in the Ivory Coast will be resolved soon, though it doesn't look as certain as it did a few days ago. Ouattara's forces have driven Gbagbo out of most of the country, though in the capital Abidjan itself Gbagbo seems to have regained some ground, and he is still refusing to give up power. The UN and the French have both taken action against Gbagbo's forces, which as some have noted may reflect a new trend toward more forceful action by the UN in the wake of Libya. Unfortunately, Gbagbo's intransigence may create another stalemate in Abidjan, which will cause an even greater humanitarian disaster than has already taken place. Also, Ouattara's forces may have committed a few massacres of their own. Ouattara's pledge to cooperate with investigations is at least reassuring, and regardless it is clearly Gbagbo who is most responsible for the problems, though of course any on either side who massacred civilians should be prosecuted.
China continues its efforts to silence anyone who dares speak out against the government, with its arrest of the artist Ai Weiwei, who had been the most outspoken critic of the government to remain free. The government had held back from arresting him before because of his prominence in his own right (he helped design the stadium used in the 2008 Olympics, among other things) and because he is the son of a respected poet. But I had previously wondered how long he could get away with his often strong statements on the dictatorial nature of the government and the lack of free speech in China, so in some ways I'm not surprised to hear he was arrested. Still, it's yet more evidence that China's government remains one of the most oppressive in the world, and it is all the more dangerous because of its growing economic and military power. Other countries should consider the latter a reason to stand up more strongly to China, as it will just get more difficult to do so in the future. Unfortunately, few governments seem to have the nerve to do much more than issue the occasional critical statement, and many don't even do that; some even seem to go along with some of China's more outrageous arguments on human rights (as we saw with the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony recently).
In the US, a government shutdown was averted, which is a good thing, as was the fact that Obama and the Democrats seem to have blocked some of the Republican's more extreme efforts, such as weakening the EPA or cutting funding for Planned Parenthood. I haven't had the opportunity to look in any detail at the final budget, though, so I'm not sure what outrageous cuts did get through. I can at least be sure that the more sensible steps toward cutting the deficit (eliminating corporate tax breaks, cutting military spending, and so forth) were not taken. Also, Obama regrettably caved to his opponents on another issue, namely what kind of trial to give accused 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Why this was a mistake is pointed out in a piece from the Daily Beast and another from Slate (the latter writer, incidentally, also wrote an article on an absurd decision from a Supreme Court majority led by Thomas and Scalia).
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