SHAKE WELL BEFORE USING

One question that kept being asked about the public teach-ins organized to "Unwelcome Condoleezza Rice" when she spoke at CMC last week is 'why bother, given that she is no longer in office? ' An important answer to that question can be found by recalling that in February 2010, Newt Gingrich gave the fourth annual Elizabeth Hubert Malott Public Affairs lecture at Scripps College, also here in Claremont.  As with the Condoleezza Rice lecture at CMC, the talk that occured was more an instance of shallow theater than a forum for a robust dialogue across divergent political views.  And as is the case with CMC and Rice, it is misleading to suggest that Scripps "allowed Gingrich to speak"; instead, Scripps as an institution provided him a significant financial incentive to speak and, above and beyond this, performed an accreditation function for him.  For example, the College's...

The world is filled with oddities and wonders. And a small oddity, if not a wonder, is that I received an invitation to a lunch for Condoleezza Rice that was part of her November 30 th speaking engagement at Claremont McKenna College.   The lunch itself was held at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, in the hotel’s Tiffany Ballroom—rather than here in Claremont.    Though the intended invitees to the lunch were “a special group” of donors to CMC, I had received an invitation—despite not being in that “special group”—due to a connection to CMC that goes back many, many years. The lunch was, then, exclusive, but only on a limited scale.   There were, after all, some 500 other guests.   And for the record, the lunch cost $50 per person—with a signed copy of Rice’s recent memoir, No Higher Honor , included in the cost.       My reason for attending the lunch was to circulate, as widely as possible, criticisms of...

Tomorrow, the 30 th of November, Condoleezza Rice, will be speaking here at the Claremont Colleges, specifically at the invitation of Claremont McKenna College.   Before and during her talk, I will be joining the “Un-Welcome” protest for, and teach-in about, her.  I will do so because I believe Rice is responsible for crimes against democracy and crimes against humanity.   In this regard, two aspects of her government service under George W. Bush are particularly noteworthy:  ● In July of 2002, Condoleezza Rice, as National Security Advisor, conveyed authorization to waterboard to CIA Director George Tenet . [1]   Waterboarding is torture and thus a violation of international law [2] and a violation of basic human rights.    Condoleezza Rice is thus responsible for this crime against humanity. ● In late 2002 and early 2003, Condoleezza Rice, as National Security Advisor, played a central role in circulating and accrediting f...

One of the few things that seems certain about "Occupy Wall Street" and related protests is that these are the most positive and hopeful political events in the United States at this time.  Beyond that, I find myself curious and uncertain. I do believe, however, that those of us who embrace these protests should be thinking and talking about how to make them better--or more precisely, how it might be possible to build on them to foster a robust social justice movement in our time.  Such a social justice movement would work to build a society--indeed, a world--in which the pursuit of profts and pursuit of economic growth (as measured in GDP or other monetary terms) are subordinated to insuring universal access to high quality health care, high quality education, and food security. In terms of thinking and talking about how to build on the Occupy protests with this g...

I had the odd good luck about a week ago (reminder: this is a slow blog) to have a conversation with Chris Thile -- the extraordinary mandolinist and composer -- about musical transcriptions.  In January 2010, I had had the even greater good fortune to hear Thile play -- on the Mandolin -- Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor.  It was a revelatory experience; indeed, I'd say that listening to that performance was one of a small handful of the most compelling musical experiences I have had over my lifetime. Thile's comment about transcriptions last week was that he found that a succesful transcription of a musical work exposed the "music" of a source piece more clearly or fully than did different "performances" of the piece on the instrument the piece had been written for.  What for me was helpful in Thile's comment was the idea that our sense of the "music" of a piece was heightened when the comparison we had was between versio...

It is worth listening to what commentators are saying about Steve Jobs today, upon his death, for the sake of thinking about "Steve Jobs," the mythology. According to Matt Bai, "Mr. Jobs understood, intuitively, that Americans were breaking away from the last era’s large institutions and centralized decision-making..."  Really, Matt Bai?  Are Americans really breaking away from large institutions and centralized decision-making?  The last time I looked, for example, the U.S. military was an institution that has remained frighteningly large.  So too, the decisions to torture people (by the Bush-Cheney administration) and the decisions to use high tech drones to kill people (by the Obama administration)--I think those are very much cases of "centralized decision-making."  What am I missing?  And to give one more example: when oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for three months in 2010, BP (formerly Brit...

A recent news story that has gotten too little attention is that in September, Mitt Romney's campaign announced that Professor Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University had signed on to lead candidate Mitt Romney's economic policy team.   Hubbard is one of the "anti-stars" of Charles Ferguson's searing polemic, Inside Job .  The most surprising section of that movie is its revelation that disciplinary economics has a problem akin to that of medical school faculty who have take unacknowledged payments from Big Pharma for medical "research" they publish.  In his interview in the film, Hubbard stands out for his resistance to transparency about his financial connections to the financial service industry, despite the fact that he was a prominent academic advocate of the deregulation of derivitives, and other highly complex financial products, prior to the Great Recession that began in 2008.  Now Hubb...

The killing last week of Anwar al-Awlaki by a high-tech drone makes abundantly clear what was not, in fact, stated clearly enough when President Obama ran for president in 2008--which is that the Obama alternative to the type of wars waged, with gusto, by G. W. Bush is to greatly expand the use of drones to kill persons identified as US "enemies."  In this context, I do not find myself overly moved by the idea that the rightness or wrongness of such a killing hinges on the citizenship of the person killed.  I get that there is some value in holding up the ideal of the rule of law, but there is also a risk that this concern with the rule of law will take the place of--rather than bolster--a commitment to act ethically (and not merely "legally"). One point that does seem crucial to me is to note just how willing both the Obama administration and the media have been to replace asking whether such ...

In "Australian Aborigine Hair Tells a Story of Human Migration" (published on September 22), Nicholas Wade of the NY Times once again treats his personal judgment that races are biological phenomena as if this understanding of race is an established scientific fact, even though the overwhelming judgment of anthropologists is that human races are solely social constructions.  Wade writes, for example, that Australian "Aborigines are without any genetic mixture from other races."  This phrasing assumes, and conveys to the reader, that there are distinct human races as a matter of genetic (rather than social) fact.  Wade thus abandons his role of journalist by inserting his personal commitment to race and racial distinctions into his reporting. This is a violation of journalistic principles that the Times should not permit. In the same story, Wade provides a striking illustration of his biological understanding of human races: "Europeans and Asians," he ...

The headline on September 12 read: “Fatherhood Cuts Testosterone, Study Finds, for Good of the Family.”   The article – on the front page of the NY Times – told of a recent study that found that becoming a father and engaging in childcare decreases a man’s testosterone levels. For the scientists who produced the study, and for the newspaper’s science reporter alike, there is but a single, inevitable (and thus extra-cultural) consequence of this reported drop in testosterone levels: it makes men, on their view, less likely to seek multiple sex partners and more likely to be monogamous.  The decrease in testosterone is thus “adaptive” to parenting, by virtue of it leading a man to be more anchored to a child’s mother—with the presumption (in the study and news report alike) being that the child in question is indeed the father’s genetic child (as well as the mother’s). What these scientists and the NY Times's science journalist are entirely blind to is the possibi...

Back on May 7th, the headline in the NY Times read: "Pitzer College in California Adds Major in Secularism." The problem is that this headline was simply false.  No major was proposed; and none was approved. The NY Times article also reported the founding of a "department of secular studies" at Pitzer College (along with the major).  The truth or falsity of this second claim is more complex than the claim about the major--but this claim too is largely misleading.   To start, Pitzer prides itself on not having any "departments."  The closest analog to "departments" at Pitzer are odd beasts known as "Field Groups," and these "Field Groups" come in two kinds at the College.  The kind that is most like a department at other colleges are known as "Type A" field groups; there are also "Type B" field groups (which I will explain in a moment).  And the grain of truth in the NY Times story was that Pitzer Colle...

In a speech today that is not getting the recognition it deserves for exhibiting political-surrealism, Sarah Palin said, "I want all of our GOP candidates to take the opportunity to kill corporate capitalism..."   One obvious observation, in response, is that if there is a place in U.S. politics for right-wing attacks on "corporate capitalism," then there would seem to be a place for left-wing attacks on "corporate capitalism"--ones free of Palin's bizarre cynicism and awful demagoguery.  This, in turn, suggests that the reason the Democratic party has, for decades, failed to provide any serious left-wing criticism of the harms done by "corporate capitalism" is not that this would not be politically viable, but that the leading figures of the Democratic party are fundamentally intent on protecting corporate capitalism.   Attacks from the right--as history shows us--really are not a threat to corporate capitalism, so from Palin and her ilk,...

All of the Republican presidential candidates, save John Huntsman, have positioned themselves as "skeptics" about both biological evolution and anthropogenic climate change.   And Rick Perry—perhaps the Republican frontrunner—has been particularly vociferous on these topics.   Attacks on the teaching of biological evolution in the U.S. have historically been linked to religion, specifically to "Christian Fundamentalism."   Yet, that climate change, along with biological evolution, is now a target of these attacks suggests that religion is not the whole story.   What, then, is it that makes attacks on "science" appealing for much of the Republican base at this time?   The answer, I think, is that in these attacks, "science" represents professional-managerial expertise and, by association, the professional-managerial classes themselves.   In this regard, it is crucial that science is generally taught in K-12 schools through appeals to authority. ...

Two news stories from US cities over the last week are worthy of  notice.  New York City announced that it would require sex-education in both middle schools and high schools, in an effort to reduce both teeange pregnancies and STD rates.  And Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced that his city would no longer participate in the Federal government's so-called "Secure Communities" program, arguing that this program (which ostensibly targets undocumented persons who commit crimes) has "negatively impacting public safety."  These are just two data points, but together they suggest that it is our cities -- far more than either the Federal or state goverments -- that are a source of informed and responsible public policy-making in the United States at this moment.  Other examples one might cite include the impressive long-term planning that has been started by Chicago to deal with the impact of climate change and the slow...

The composition of the bipartisan Debt Ceiling Panel bodes ill for there being serious cuts in the U.S. military budget as part of any "second phase" deal to reduce the U.S. deficit.  Put simply, the states with large military contractors are fully, if not overly, represented on the Panel.   Of particular note on the Democratic side is Senator Patty Murray of Washington.   Progressive commentators have generally responded favorably to her appointment (and conservative voices have singled it out for criticism), but Boeing is a major employer in Washington (with some 30,000 workers in the state) and its PAC is a major source of campaign funds for Murray.  Almost certainly, for example, the cuts in military spending that would be triggered if the panel reaches no compromise would hit, and perhaps eliminate, the 35 billion dollar contract awarded to Boeing this past February ...

I spent Saturday evening at the renovated  Fox Theater in Pomona watching (for a second time) the very good new documentary, "The Desert of Forbidden Art ," and then moderating a panel discussion with its co-directors, Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev. The movie tells an extraordinary story about an eccentric art lover, Igor Savitsky, who, during the Soviet era, managed to establish a museum of "forbidden" art in the very-out-of-the-way desert city of Nukus ( check the map ! ). Along with providing a nuanced and appreciative portrait of Savitsky's defiance and commitment to art, the film explores the relationship between aesthetic value and the processes that transpose aesthetic value into monetary value (or to invoke an old-fashioned Marxist term, into exchange value ).  In addition -- like Herzog's recent film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams -- this is a film in which the camera both appreciates and guides our appreciation of wo...

The debt ceiling deal has rightfully been criticized by progressive commentators.  One problem with the deal is its content: its deep cuts in spending on health care and other valuable domestic programs; its lack of additional revenues through progressive taxation; and finally, its movement away from providing a Keynesian stimulus, even as the Great Recession (or "Lesser Depression") continues.  A second major problem with the deal is that it so greatly rewards, and thereby encourages, the "extortion politics" of Republican leaders who, throughout the negotiations, based their positions on delusional--even idiotic--claims ( tax cuts always increase tax revenues,  to cite just one example). Yet, while progressive commentators did a good job pointing out these serious failings in the deal Obama accepted, it concerns me that, in many cases, they encouraged Obama and the Democrats ...

I am always curious about large industrial objects travelling on the same road as cars; what makes it impossible for me not to look is the public visibility of something that, for most of us, is otherwise unseen and even a tad esoteric.  This big pipe was seen in July. That we could get photos had everything to do with the recent ubiquity of "cameras"; these were taken by a "phone." The shot below was taken a few weeks later, in August; we had trouble identifying the object; we considered an aircraft wing (there were two of them, carried separately on their own trucks) and a propeller for a wind turbine.  As the object moved on its truck-bed, it seemed too flimsy or too flexible for the former--but what do I really know about aircraft wings? Oh, the photos were taken by my son (Nathaniel Shrage); I was driving.

So it’s the early 1940s, and the United States is entering WWII to fight evil; and there’s this would-be heroic guy, but he happens to be physically weak.   So instead of being a hero on the frontlines, he keeps being refused entry into the army.   But then he gets super powers! And he’s called "Captain America"! But what makes it really o.k. that he has superpowers—what makes it really o.k. that America is a superpower—is that unlike Evil Others, Captain America is good and caring and all that.   Oh, and the Evil Others (aka, the Bad Guys), they have been desperately plotting to obtain superpowers, while Captain America just did the right thing, even when he was weak, and he got his superpowers without asking. It’s all there in this movie, called Captain America . Which means we should ask, just what is this movie’s relation to, or stance on, the myth of America as the exceptional hero/nation that can safely possess the ...