Some Anthropologists believe that humans are descended from two or more related populations of Ape-like ancestors. This is entirely possible. Gorillas and Chimps are very similar biologically, and it turns out that Chimpanzees divide into geographic sub-populations that are very different from one another. Bonobo's have even been classified as a seperate species. The same is true for the Orangutangs. Biologists are having trouble dealing with the complexity of populations that are different from one another and yet can interbreed, but that was the probable case with our ancestors some 3 million years ago.
At any rate, one hypothesis is that there was a primarily vegetarian line of hominids that first began to evolve living on the ground, and that these interbred with a more culturally variable and omnivorous "cousin line" and produced the line that eventually evolved into Humans. The vegetarian line lasted a long time ago and died out years later. They would have resembled long legged Gorillas, or big-foot. They were initially well adapted to living on the ground but could also take to the trees. They had evolved "locking knees" which allowed them to stand up a long time. Their cousins hadn't. Those cousins evolved into Chimps.
Chimps are the smartest apes out there [other than us]. They are omnivores, behaviorally variable, learn from experience, use tools, have complex communication, and make war on each other. It's no wonder that anthropologists think we might have borrowed something from an offshoot of that stem. We are way more like Chimps than we like to admit. If they could sing and talk we'd be in trouble -- or they would.
We humans have legs for walking, a digestive system designed for omnivorous eating, and are very clever. Making war on one another seems to be part of our territorial instinct and mating ritual. Can we get past this? Can we survive?
Chris
To create a better society, we have to engage in collaboration. No one person has a wide enough span of view to embrace everything needed to make the world better. Even the most enlightened and wisest leaders can do no more than to give a broad vision with some deep detailing.
If we engage in collaboration we can fashion a better world. If we choose to fight we will only create fighting and failure. The Pilgrims would not have survived had they not made peace with their neighboring Indians. It wasn't that the Indians or the Pilgrims were either superior to the other, but that when their ideas were shared both did better.
This is the lesson of America. This is the real lesson of Thanksgiving, and it is something we can be thankful for. The world is neither so brutal that only the strong survive, nor is it so easy that we have no reason to be excited by life.
Chris
The people who can take an idea or concept and make it a reality are known as "architects." An architect is adept at taking general principles and concepts, and then using his imagination to envision a reality. A great architect is adept at taking this one step further, and that is to envision the steps necessary to go from concept to reality. The greatest architects are able to inspire people to flesh out that reality and are able to come up with visions that are not only possible but durable.
Life is our existence. Religion is how we use our imaginations to knit ourselves together into communities of story and vision. Architecture is how we go from such visions to reality. The material world is like any field of stones and wood. The same stones that can build ugly and forbidding fortresses, or be thrown against the walls of a fortress, or used to create something beautiful like a Cathedral. Bad architects fail to see that. They build edifices that are missing something important from the vision. Those edifices, composed too much of idea or composed too much of debased vision, fail. Missing the foundation stones of reality they collapse, or missing the soaring imagination of principle and noble ideation, they sink into the mud. History is built on the bones of limited imaginations.
Ideas are like the stones. They can be used to rebuild reality into something beautiful, or they can be used to box in minds, to build prisons. The prisons built by ideas are as forbidding and insurmountable, in the hands of an evil architect, as any prison built of cement or stone.
This going from concept to reality is where most ideas reveal their weaknesses. This confusing of "present state" with what must be, is where people lock themselves into their own prisons. History, religion, experience, are meant to guide us, not imprison us. All through history there have been many architects, with visions of a reality that "could be" or that should be. Often those visions have involved ruthlessly tearing apart theold structures of reality. Yet, pull down the stones, and even the mightiest of people, like Samson, will perish in the edifice of their own destruction. It seems that each time people try to envision a better reality it involves either imposing ideals on this reality or taking the present reality as if it is what has to be.
Modern architects realized a long time ago that to create a live-able reality, we need the inputs from many architects. We need to broaden the model of architecture to include the realization that nobody does architecture alone. A great Cathedral is not built by a single man, no matter that we often give one person credit in hindsight. It requires the inputs and views of many people to flesh out the reality needed to go from vision to reality. We need to be able to envision what we want from scientific, engineering, and common man views. So when i talk about the "architectures" of a better reality, I am also talking about a reality that is designed to look at itself from multiple points of view. The best, the smartest, the most brilliant person, may not be the one who warns that there is a weakness in a supporting arch or that there is an easier way to do something. From the front-man to the humble janitor, in great architecture all the players are important. The key is that someone has to articulate a vision that others can embrace, fall in love with. Then, all involved see the same end goal. A Cathedral, or a Pyramid, whatever that structure, that central imagination comes to be fleshed out and articulated from all sides.
I was in the store looking at pictures from Masonic history, and what struck me was the notion of "architecture" that is conveyed there. Pure principles are pure because they can be applied rationally to improve the process. The rules and theorums of the triangle can be applied to building buildings, or to controlling radio waves (sines and cosines). Likewise moral principles can be used to guide our efforts to create a better society. If we design a better world we can design in better ways to achieve better results.
The greatest sources of principles for guiding the US, are our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The architects of the Constitution had a vision for our world. That vision was imperfect, but perfectable. To build this vision into reality, we have to be architects of a 'more perfect union.' It's a nice vision isn't it? Why not make it a reality. The stones can be used for good or ill. Their good is not in the stones, it is in the hearts and minds that guide them.
Chris
Well the elections turned out better than I feared. Most of the efforts at dirty tricks backfired, and most of the real meatballs were turned out.
Time to get to work. Core Democrats need to articulate a core vision and lay out that vision. Suggestions:
1. Universal health insurance
2. Universal access to education
3. Cooperative foreign policy
4. Respect for Human Rights
5. Win/Win Business policies
6. Serious Anti-Trust and playing field leveling
7. Genuine competition
8. Protect Social Security
9. Good, honest, transparent, and accountable government
Lately I've been getting the Washington Post delivered on Sunday, which means I get part of the paper Saturday. For that reason, if I hadn't gone out for breakfast I might have missed the headline. The Washington Post Carries an article today which should be shocking to anyone raised on the notion that the US is a nation of laws governed by a constitution:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301793.html (or http://tinyurl.com/yz2z27)
The article details the perfidy of the Administrations pilot program to create a totalitarian apparatus in the United States. It seeks to classify the use of torture so that detainees are forbidden to talk about their experiences. In the process it seeks to deny international law (Geneva Convention) and US Law. To do this they selected "high value" detainees who nobody should have much sympathy for as human beings, knowing that this will let them justify ignoring or shutting down the first amendment, the second amendment, and the fourth amendment. They trumpet this as a success knowing that the other 90-1000 secret detainees will never see the light of day because of this.
More....
The Washington Post Staff writers, Saturday, November 4, 2006; Page A01, write:
"The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk."
Alternative interrogation methods is code for "torture lite" which is code for torture that has been developed by behavioral psychologists with the goal of breaking down prisoners sense of self and destroying their sense of independence. Part of the method involves the certainty that unless they cooperate they will never see the light of day again. The methods aren't secret.
I don't know why they claim these methods are secret. Any World War II movie can apprise people of the methods. The book "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler details the rationale behind them. I'm sure they learned this wonderful psychology from some German refugees after the war. Since then they've perfected the techniques. Now they are doing a pilot program to see if they can get them implemented here at home. They are using "enemy combattants" for the pilot, but history shows us they aren't likely to stop there.
The so called "experts" claim:
"The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26."
This is the same sort of logic used to justify torture and disapearances everywhere. Yet somehow the "enemy" always finds out about these techniques, and most of the time they can guess them anyway. The real target for such laws is the populace. It just wouldn't due for the testimony from those 12 detainees to include how the government broke them and got them to violate their own fifth amendment right against self-incrimination during an actual trial.
"The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him."
The Government wants show trials, they don't want inconveniences. And Cheney, Bush and senior officials are afraid that if the truth came out they might find themselves forced to confront the fact that they've become worse than their enemies. I don't think they are afraid of the remote posibility that they'd be frogmarched out of the White-house for high crimes and treason, but if there really is an All-mighty they should be.
"Because Khan "was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention, and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level," an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states, using the acronym for 'sensitive compartmented information.'"
In other words, this is the department of the CIA where the operational thinking is that "If I told you I'd have to kill you." And they mean it. And the CIA justifies that the classification system is superior to any law that Congress might put on the books, superior to the constitution as well.
"Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document yesterday that there is no evidence that Khan had top-secret information. "Rather," she said, 'the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority . . . to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct.'"
The classification law needs to be reformed. It increasingly is being used to protect "secrets" not because they'd be damaging to "national security" but because their disclosure might put some senior administration official in jail or get a President impeached. The "enemy" here isn't Al Qaeda, it is the US public that they want to keep in the dark. They think we are stupid and that if we don't know about it we'll trust them to only use these methods on "rag-heads" or other undesirables.
"Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' ""
To put it more accurately this is the Queen of Hearts court. "Off with her head she said!"
"Kathleen Blomquist, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said yesterday that details of the CIA program must be protected from disclosure. She said the lawyer's proposal for talking with Khan "is inadequate to protect unique and potentially highly classified information that is vital to our country's ability to fight terrorism."'
This is BS. The real fear is that the way that Khan was water-boarded and otherwise tortured would get out to the general public before this election on Tuesday. And it is working.
"Government lawyers also argue in court papers that detainees such as Khan previously held in CIA sites have no automatic right to speak to lawyers because the new Military Commissions Act, signed by President Bush last month, stripped them of access to U.S. courts. That law established separate military trials for terrorism suspects."
The law is probably unconstitutional, but it is just what the Administration needs to try to protect itself from embarrassment and to give Kangaroo Court trials to those 14 'High value' detainees so it can look like it is following the law and that that program actually produces useful intelligence.
"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is considering whether Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their imprisonment in U.S. courts. The government urged Walton to defer any decision on access to lawyers until the higher court rules."
In other words, whether they have any due process rights at all.
"The government filing expresses concern that detainee attorneys will provide their clients with information about the outside world and relay information about detainees to others. In an affidavit, Guantanamo's staff judge advocate, Cmdr. Patrick M. McCarthy, said that in one case a detainee's attorney took questions from a BBC reporter with him into a meeting with a detainee at the camp. Such indirect interviews are "inconsistent with the purpose of counsel access" at the prison, McCarthy wrote."
I'm not even sure if the Government has a case against all of these people. Under the old rules, the evidence against them would probably be thrown out as hopelessly tainted. Evidence obtained by torture is notorious for being unreliable. People will tell a torturer anything.
"Dorn said in the court papers that for lawyers to speak to former CIA detainees under the security protocol used for other Guantanamo detainees "poses an unacceptable risk of disclosure." But detainee attorneys said they have followed the protocol to the letter, and none has been accused of releasing information without government clearance."
What is unacceptable is that these people should be railroaded and not get their day in court. How many of them are genuinely guilty? What are they genuinely guilty of? Some of them are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Captives who have spent time in the secret prisons, and their advocates, have said the detainees were sometimes treated harshly with techniques that included "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. Bush has declared that the administration will not tolerate the use of torture but has pressed to retain the use of unspecified "alternative" interrogation methods."
Torture
"The government argues that once rules are set for the new military commissions, the high-value detainees will have military lawyers and "unprecedented" rights to challenge charges against them in that venue."
Yeah right.
"U.S. officials say Khan, a Pakistani national who lived in the United States for seven years, took orders from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mohammed allegedly asked Khan to research poisoning U.S. reservoirs and considered him for an operation to assassinate the Pakistani president."
Theoretical, hypothetical charges. His main problem is association.
"In a separate court document filed last night, Khan's attorneys offered declarations from Khaled al-Masri, a released detainee who said he was held with Khan in a dingy CIA prison called "the salt pit" in Afghanistan. There, prisoners slept on the floor, wore diapers and were given tainted water that made them vomit, Masri said. American interrogators treated him roughly, he said, and told him he "was in a land where there were no laws."
Like I said the goal of these techniques is to convince the prisoner he has no rights. It's not the disclosure that would damage the program. It is the disclosure that the CIA is breaking every moral and ethical rule of the US Constitution and the Geneva Convention by even trying to do this.
More chillingly, this is exactly the same technique used in S and Central America during the dirty wars of the 70's through 90's. This is "disapearing people:"
"Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized in Pakistan."
And if the Bush administration didn't have the fantasy of putting these people on show trial they'd never be heard from again.
"The family said Khan was staying with a brother in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 when men, who were not in uniform, burst into the apartment late one night and put hoods over the heads of Khan, his brother Mohammad and his brother's wife. The couple's 1-month-old son was also seized."
Dirty wars.
"Another brother, Mahmood Khan, who has lived in the United States since 1989, said in an interview this week that the four were hustled into police vehicles and taken to an undisclosed location, where they were separated and held in windowless rooms. His sister-in-law and her baby remained together, he said."
Disapearances.
"According to Mahmood, Mohammad said they were questioned repeatedly by men who identified themselves as members of Pakistan's intelligence service and others who identified themselves as U.S. officials. Mohammad's wife was released after seven days, and he was released after three months, without charge. He was left on a street corner without explanation, Mahmood said."
"torture lite."
"Periodically, he said, people who identified themselves as Pakistani officials contacted Mohammad and assured him that his brother would soon be released and that they ought not contact a lawyer or speak with the news media."
Extra-legal, means illegal.
"We had no way of knowing who had him or where he was," Mahmood Khan said this week at the family home outside Baltimore. He said they complied with the requests because they believed anything else could delay his brother's release."
And this is going on with people from this country.
"In Maryland, Khan's family was under constant FBI surveillance from the moment of his arrest, his brother said. The FBI raided their house the day after the arrest , removing computer equipment, papers and videos. Each family member was questioned extensively and shown photographs of terrorism suspects that Mahmood Khan said none of them recognized. For much of the next year, he said, they were followed everywhere."
"Pretty much we were scared," he said. "We live in this country. We have everything here."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Pretty grim stuff.
Shame on you McCain.
Frog march them out of there!
Chris
This election is a critical one. This country is moving towards some pretty dark territory, and the only way to avoid it going even further down that path -- is for people to participate in it. Republicans would suppress your vote. They put out the word that American's don't participate. They are putting obstacles in the way of your vote. But it turns out that among those eligable to vote, more than half participate in major elections despite those obstacles. Unfortunately only a third of people participate in minor elections and primaries -- so if you don't like the results of past elections....
That means vote!
If you don't like liberals or liberal ideas, vote anyway!
But vote!
We've had to fight for the right to be members of a free society and if we choose slavery because it is more comfortable than doing something, shame on us!
If you trust your leaders to always do the right thing, then you neither understand Democracy nor have been paying attention to history or current events!
If you feel that your vote makes no difference, well individually it might not! But like naturalists have demonstrated, reality drives democracy. Leaders can get stubborn or think it is about their own needs and desires, but democracy is about reminding them that decisions are about reality.
If you don't like the way things are going! Vote! If enough people agree with you then we can "throw the bums out!"
If you don't think that your leaders are doing what you asked them to do. Ask two questions,
1. did you really ask them? -- petition congress
2. did you vote? That means primaries, that means your local organizations!
Did you fund a candidate? Are you paying attention? As long as candidates are in a system where we are so stupid as to give them our votes and not pay attention to the fact that they give their votes to the highest bidder -- shame on us!
But Vote!!!!!