AmbivaBlog

London's Collateral Damage [UPDATED]

In a comment on this post, blogfriend Euan Semple of The Obvious? had this to say:

Poisonous nonsense like [a quote from the gun lobby] really scares me. There is a lot good about America but I fear the spread of many things about your culture - not least this bollocks about the right to carry guns....

Guns just ain't a big thing over here and I personally find the American obsession with them, especially as expressed in Hollywood movies, appaling.

I'm wondering what Euan is thinking now that British antiterror police, armed and cleared to shoot to kill suspected suicide bombers, have executed an innocent and terrified Brazilian electrician.

- amba

(On another, unrelated note from the same news article:

The sources, cited by British media, said two of the July 7 bombers attended a whitewater rafting trip at the same center in Wales as some of the July 21 bombers.

This was based on evidence discovered in rucksacks left behind by the failed bombers. Detectives believe the trip could have been used as a bonding exercise.

Jesus, the spectacle of terrorists engaging in something like Renaissance Weekend or a corporate Outward Bound retreat is the postmodern world at its most absurd.)

UPDATE: From Sunday's L.A. Times:

European police officials in touch with their counterparts at Scotland Yard said the British privately communicated a sense of unease about the incident Friday.

The officers who tailed, confronted and killed Menezes may have mistaken him for a fugitive bomber to whom he bore some resemblance, a senior European police official said. That would explain why the officers reacted violently when he fled into the subway, perhaps fearing he was about to set off a bomb concealed beneath his coat.

"The British said he was first targeted because of a physical resemblance," the official said.

The unexpected casualty drives home the new reality of this genteel capital. Police here are proud that most do not carry guns and that officers fired weapons only 20 times from 1997 to 2004, killing seven people, according to data reported by Associated Press.

Today, heavily armed teams of officers are deployed citywide, some in uniform and some undercover, with orders to intercept would-be suicide bombers such as those whose explosives failed to ignite on three trains and a bus Thursday.

Now police will face even more pressure and scrutiny in making the kind of life-or-death, split-second decisions that are grimly routine in cities such as Jerusalem, long a target of suicide bombers.

"While we accept that the police are under tremendous pressure to apprehend the criminals who are attempting to cause carnage on the streets of London, it is absolutely vital that utmost care is taken to ensure that innocent people are not killed due to overzealousness," said Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the British civil liberties group Liberty, said in an interview on Sky Television that an immediate investigation was necessary to ensure that British society did not become more divided. But she acknowledged that the police must make "knife-edge" decisions.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone blamed the bombers.

"The police acted to do what they believed necessary to protect the lives of the public," he said. "This tragedy has added another victim to the toll of deaths for which the terrorists bear responsibility."

UPDATE II: Mark Steyn, as tough on terror as they come, who's not so quick to excuse the mistaken shooting of de Menezes:

I can understand why a Brazilian might find 61 and overcast no reason to eschew a heavy jacket. So a man in a suspiciously warm coat refuses to stop for the police. Well, they were a plain-clothes unit - ie, a gang - and confronted by unidentified men brandishing weapons in south London I'd scram, too. . . .

I doubt whether many Bulgars or Croats or Mauritians or Quebeckers or many of the rest of the vast tide of humanity sweeping through London every day would be sufficiently familiar with the Met's new policy to prostrate themselves quickly enough before plain-clothes marksmen.

If the defence of what happened to Mr de Menezes is that it was the right treatment but the wrong patient and we'd better get used to it, perhaps the British Tourist Board could post signs at Terminal Four: "BIENVENUE A LONDRES! WE SHOOT TO KILL!"

"Deep With the First Dead Lies London's Daughter . . . "

Pay your respects to the dead of July 7 here. If you can't look at them all, choose one to remember and mourn.

Alan Carl of The Yellow Line writes:

Some say it is morbid to view such a site. To me, it is essential. It’s essential to remember those who were lost. To see for ourselves how indiscriminate the terrorists are. How they will kill anyone and everyone just because they can. The young, the old, Christian, Muslim, Jew, black, white, asian, they don’t care.

And that’s the point. We look at these names, read the 100 or so words devoted to their complex and important lives and we can’t help but hurt. The terrorists feel nothing. Or worse, they feel proud of their carnage.

Like the New York Times' Portraits of Grief, these photos and brief bios allow us -- compel us -- to know that these were individuals like us, with faces, with smiles, with families, with interrupted lives. This is a crucial part of defying the terrorists, who want to reduce these living people to faceless sacrifices.

After September 11, a lot of people quoted Yeats, Auden, and Larkin. Yes; but it was this poem of Dylan Thomas, especially the incantatory last stanza, that I kept hearing. It's all the more resonant now:

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

What's a Moderate?

Perhaps the ultimate definition, to my mind -- FREEDOM OF INQUIRY, UNFETTERED BY IDEOLOGY -- is wearily but feistily defended by one of its premier practitioners, Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice. I hope all moderate blogs will link to this post. It's the maypole we spin around.

- amba

John Roberts on Judicial Restraint (?)

Wave Maker posts this impressive and reassuring statement, previously posted by Tim Chapman at Townhall.com:

My own judicial philosophy begins with an appreciation of the limited role of a judge in our system of divided powers. Judges are not to legislate and are not to execute the laws. . . . My judicial philosophy accordingly insists upon some rigor in ensuring that judges properly confine themselves to the adjudication of the case before them, and seek neither to legislate broadly not to administer the law generally in deciding that case.

Deciding the case . . . . requires an essential humility grounded in the properly limited role of an undemocratic judiciary in a democratic republic, a humility reflected in doctrines of deference to legislative policy judgments and embodied in the often misunderstood term “judicial restraint.” That restraint does not mean that judges should not act against the popular will. . . . [T]he framers expected them to be discerning the law, not shaping policy. That means the judges should not look to their own personal views or preferences in deciding the cases before them. Their commission is no license to impose those preferences from the bench. [Emphasis added]

Chapman says this is from a statement made by Roberts to Senator Chuck Schumer, but inexcusably, Chapman does not provide a source link. I was unable to find the quote in the lengthy PDF file of Roberts' 1993 Appeals Court confirmation hearings in the Senate, either by searching "restraint" or by skimming Schumer's questioning of Roberts. A Google search finds the exact same unattributed quote with the exact same celebratory lead-in ("Bush did it! He nominated a rock solid conservative and fulfilled his pledge") on From the Bleachers, both on July 19, so it appears to be some sort of conservative press release or talking points. Since this statement attributed to Roberts is so reassuring to moderates like Wave Maker and me, it seems important to know where it comes from. Stay tuned, as I've asked Chapman, Bleachers, and Chuck Schumer for the source!

- amba

Everything is Connected!

The Washington Note says John Bolton testified before the Plame-Retardant grand jury about that State Deparment memo with the "Top Secret" paragraph about Valerie Wilson. Also that "John Bolton was a regular source for Judith Miller's New York Times WMD and national security reports."

Random? No, This is . . . Quantum!

Rachel links to an amazing WIRED Magazine article (oops! her link's bad, so I'm linking it) on a study that showed that people may be able to affect the performance of computers with their minds, simpy by forming an intent. The effect was small but measurable and statistically significant. (The lab's masters are careful to say they've only shown a correlation, not proven an effect.)

It doesn't matter if participants are in or outside the room or across the country. And they don't have to put in a lot of mental effort, straining and grunting. Just form the intent, then read a book. It still happens.

Men and women seem to affect the outcome differently. The most powerful effect emanates from "pairs of the opposite sex who are romantically involved" -- "often seven times greater than when the same individuals are tested alone." (Note: try this with gay people.)

Environmental conditions -- such as room temperature -- also don't matter, but the tester's mood and attitude do. It helps, for example, if the participant believes he or she can affect the machine.

Sound too-too woo-woo? The lab, called PEAR, for Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, is directed by Princeton professor emeritus Robert Jahn, a physicist and former dean of the university's engineering school. It isn't funded by the University, but by private donors --

like James S. McDonnell, founder of McDonnell Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas and now part of Boeing), Laurance Rockefeller and John Fetzer, former owner of the Detroit Tigers baseball team and CEO of Fetzer broadcasting.

Jahn said McDonnell was concerned with how critical electronic systems could be vulnerable to the mindset of human operators under stress.

"McDonnell said he couldn't in good conscience put a young man in the cockpit of an F-18 and assume that all of the highly sophisticated equipment was totally invulnerable to the stress that the pilot would be under in combat or other emergencies," Jahn recalled. "He wanted some research to judge how much he needed to harden that equipment to make it invulnerable to that influence."

Government intelligence, defense and space agencies also have shown interest in the lab's research, which Jahn said he has freely shared.

I don't know about you, but my mind is blown. There's some evidence that people can do this with other people, but with machines?? Yow.

Of course there are skeptics:

The lab has many detractors who have found fault with Pear's methodologies and dismiss the work as entertainment, comparing the results to motorists who wish for a red light to turn green and think that because the light changes they caused it.

See what you think! (Hey, could this be why my car has starter trouble only when I'm really stressed out and in a hurry?)

- amba

What If "Age Before Beauty" . . .

. . . meant you have to age before your true beauty reveals itself?

Why should we be surprised that she hightailed it out of Beverly Hills and straight back to Europe where people were allowed to get older without feeling as if they were committing a heinous crime?

From Danny Miller's paean to the naturally 66-year-old face of Liv Ullman, as seen in Ingmar Bergman's "last" film, Saraband. Priceless.

I truly believe she is more beautiful now than she was during her smooth-skinned Henry Kissinger-dating days. Not that there’s anything wrong with youthful beauty, but don’t you agree that the lines and textures on Liv Ullmann’s face today allow for greater expression as an actress and a person than the blank slate of her once perfect complexion? Am I guilty of reverse prejudice here? I just know that if I were given a choice of spending time with an actress I’d vastly prefer Liv Ullmann to Liv Tyler. Keep your Maggie Gyllenhaal and give me Maggie Smith. Katie Holmes, please send in the ghost of Katie Hepburn on your way out. It’s not that I have some kind of wrinkle fetish (well, I DO think wrinkles around the eyes and mouths of women are extremely sexy even though the women in my life never seem that pleased when I point theirs out!), it's just that I find the combination of a lived-in face and body and a lifetime of experiences so much more appealing. Did I mention that in “Saraband” Liv Ullmann and 82-year-old Erland Josephson who plays Johan have a nude scene together? In American films even Liv Tyler is getting too old to appear nude. . . .

Even though as a man I’m given much greater leeway . . . I still find myself occasionally greeting my reflection in the mirror with shock and horror. Who the hell is that fat old bald man and what has he done with the 23-year-old version of myself . . . ? It’s only when I see people like Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson that I realize how few images we ever get in the media of people over 60. I actually came home from the movie last night and felt better about myself when I looked in the mirror. Oh, look, I’m getting older…less hair, thicker all over, some skin discolorations here and there…how interesting! I believe that our country’s obsession with youth is fucking all of us up . . .

Oh, Danny. We who are about to sag salute you. (How would that go in Latin?)

This is creepy!!

I just read these words at The Reaction, about the Roberts nomination: "Bush could have gone a number of different ways, but this one's clearly for the base." Who ever thinks twice about this locution? We're all talking constantly about "the base." And it suddenly hit me that the Arabic translation of those words is . . . Al Qaeda.

Surprise! Roberts No Friend of Environment

Chris Clarke at Creek Running North links to the evidence that Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. is a good buddy of the extractive industries, a determined weakener of endangered-species protections, and an underminer of environmental groups' standing to bring lawsuits on behalf of imperiled creatures and/or habitats. (Hat tip: Dave of Via Negativa.)

This makes him pretty much a middle-of-the road Bush-Cheney Administration appointee.

As a virtually religious lover of the wilderness, Chris asserts that it's important to go on the record as outraged and mourning advocates of the rest of creation, even though Roberts' confirmation is looking virtually inevitable.

This is one of those unbridgeable chasms in American culture. Big profits for the big and small jobs for the small versus the torn and sacred web of life. All I can do is sigh. And quote George Carlin, on the certainty that nature will survive our attempts both to exploit and to protect her:

The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. And it will heal itself, because that's what the planet does; it's a self-correcting system. The air and water will recover and be renewed. And if plastic is really not degradable, well, most likely the planet will incorporate it into a new paradigm: The Earth Plus Plastic. Earth doesn't share our prejudice against plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. She probably sees it as one of her many children.

In fact, it could be the reason the earth allowed us to be spawned in the first place; it wanted plastic and didn't know how to make it. It needed us. That could be the answer to our age-old question: "Why are we here?" "Plastic, assholes!"

-- Napalm and Silly Putty

UPDATE: It's not that I don't care. Emotionally and spiritually, I lean much more towards Chris's side of this issue than Bush/Cheney/Roberts'. But I live in a city, and I drive a car, and all that is both good and bad about my life as a 21st-century American -- my relative security, my affluence by planetary standards, the variety of foods I can afford to buy at the supermarket and cannot afford to buy regularly at the local organic farmers' market, my good nutrition and the carcinogenic toxins embedded in my body tissues, the laptop on which I am writing this -- all is hopelessly enmeshed in big corporations' exploitation of the natural world. If I or half a million like me were to secede from this culture at laborious inconvenience to ourselves, it would make not a whit of difference.

The only hope is to try to create a viable -- not an ideal -- political alternative to the big-oil Republicans and vote them the hell out. And then, work with corporations more than against them. Penalize blatant violations, harshly, but provide incentives, and find the enlightened people within corporations who want to find innovative ways to make their workings cleaner and more benign.

And try to foster a culture of "enough." What's enough compensation for the CEO of a successful company? What's enough stuff for an average suburban family? What are the intangible riches the enjoyment of which can soothe human greed? And how do you introduce people to them? This is the wildest frontier.

- amba

Democrat Stupidity Reaches Astounding New Depths

This is just beyond belief. You couldn't make this up.

We're talking about starting CRAWLOFFANDDIEDEMS.ORG. Any contributors? Funds will go towards the founding of a new party. With a pulse. And some brainwaves.