When will someone say something?

From 1974-1976, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheyney and Paul Wolfowitz were part of what was called Team B (ref). Their task was to make the Soviet Union into a fearful enemy that wanted us all dead. They built up a story (based on no facts) that the Soviet Union had weapons we could not detect. The CIA's comment on this is 'Team B is moving into a fantasy world'.

This is a mirror image of what was happening when we are told there is a global conspiracy of terror. It is a lie. Do not buy into it. Yes there are terrorists but, no, there is no global network organized against 'us' withsecret weapons we cannot see.

Now today, some 30 years later the leaders are refering to the past lie to give support for the new lie? When will someone in a position of power say something about this? What of all those senators and house speakers who sat through the hearing in 1975 listening to Rumsfeld contsruct a case based on nothing? I can accept that at the time they might have been scared but now with 30 years of hindsight and the fact that the events from 1975 are textbook history. Why doesn't anybody at least take Rumsfeld aside and tell him to cut it out?

Bush Likens War on Terror to Cold War, LA Times.

If you have not seen the Powers Of Nighmares, please do. You can download it for free here. Just read the first paragraph of the transcript below, I cannot have empathy for Rumsfeld, my conclusion is that he is (1) mentally deranged (2) an evil man (3) thinks he can shape the world into what he wants?

The following is taken from an unoficial transcript of the BBC special, The Power of Nightmares:

"The Soviet Union has been busy," Defense Secretary Rumsfeld explained to America in 1976. "They've been busy in terms of their level of effort; they've been busy in terms of the actual weapons they 've been producing; they've been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they've been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they've been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they've been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They're purposeful about what they're doing."

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

According to Curtis' BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. The BBC's documentarians asked Dr. Anne Cahn of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during that time, her thoughts on Rumsfeld's, Cheney's, and Wolfowitz's 1976 story of the secret Soviet WMDs. Here's a clip from a transcript of that BBC documentary:

"Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They're saying, 'we can't find evidence that they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

"INTERVIEWER: So they're saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn't exist.

"CAHN: Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that we haven't found it."

The moderator of the BBC documentary then notes:

"What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn't found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world."

Nonetheless, as Melvin Goodman, head of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs, 1976-87, noted in the BBC documentary,

"Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war."

Another Transportation Strike in France

Today there was another transportation strike in France. Read about it here. I am waiting for the strikers to step up to the plate and block the highways. Stop all traffic, that would be a good one. Forget us poor folks who rely on the bus, they would let us through in my scenario as the drivers are workers (that makes no sense).

Tomorrow I have to sign in on a sheet as to why I was out of work today. It will be passed on to the government which pays me my salery. Not sure what excuse I am going to give. I am tempted to say I was on strike. But really, the buses just weren't running. Effective strike?

Well anyway ... I walked around a bit, worked from home, did some dishes and wrote this blog.

Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS)

I love how they do their indexing for the conference, check it out here.

I can't paste it into the blog, formatting get screwed up, so go check it out...

There was a partial solar eclipse today over many parts of Europe and some experienced total. Thanks for telling me google.news, I guess I will have to actually read the local papers. I would have loved to sit outside with some of those light blocking glasses and just watched it happen. Luckily people in my new office settlement gave me the heads up. Pictures will follow in a day.

Bus strike tomorrow. General workers strike for more pay and more benefits. It will begin with the buses, might spread to the subways and trains, maybe then to the boats. Most probably just a bus strike? It is ironic as I want to go into work to write a grant to try and get more time on the job?

It is a bit humiliating as I have to call the boss in the morning to catch a ride to work because the buses are on strike. But I only need to go to work to write a grant to ask for more money from the French government. Maybe I should go on stike?

Maybe I will strike?

Bush science is dangerous slope

An article with the above title appeared on August 18, 2005 in Indian Country Today. Full text can be found here.

The article is very well done, browsing through their editorial report section is a good read.

Here is the first paragraph and some excerpts:

The level of distortion of science is becoming quite high. The game of pushing a Christian agenda through public institutions is both terribly disingenuous and yet front and center. President Bush is seemingly sincere that his religious conversion and perspective is the right one. His born-again experience is public knowledge, as is his policy of breaking the barriers to religious influence in governmental programs. In Bush, the evangelical political movement got just the partner it wanted in the Oval Office.

... No one can doubt that evolutionary science is complicated and at times difficult to absorb, given its calculus of biological changes and developments played out over vast stretches of time...

In the context of creation stories, again, there are many from this hemisphere that are quite compelling. Just the wonderful narrative that names North America the great Turtle Island, from the eastern woodlands, proposes that the first human being was actually a pregnant female who fell from the Skyworld. The teachings of that story in the context of humans and the natural world are worth considering in these ecologically treacherous times.

Indian Country Today Columnist John Mohawk this year published a succinctly edited book, ''Iroquois Creation Story: Myth of the Earthgrasper,'' which inspires with its clarity from ancient America. In fact, the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) creation story is the living basis of the ceremonial cycles in the longhouses of several reservations, source of origin and the truth of existence for traditional Haudenosaunee. Yet, no one here is suggesting that it be taught as ''science'' in the public schools.

Correlating a nations religiousness with indicators of social morality

An article has appeared in The Journal of Religion and Society, the title of the article is:

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

The full text can be found here here

I am not going to comment on the validity of the data, the anlysis or the interpretation except to say that I don't buy it, the US looks like an outlier and is less moral on the measures used for other reasons.

But, I do want to say that if this came out the other way, if 'the US had more moral fabric and more religion' what do you think the right wing religious politicians would do? They would freaking run with it and push the ideas down our throats until we didn't know where the original data or ideas came from (and how they are to not really be taken as fact) and collectively the nation would stand behind the greater truth that the US is again superior to all ... and we have our religious background to thank.

Well the study doesn't come out that way. The paper reports that the US is the most religious and also the most devoid of moral fabric. Again, this is the conclusion of the authors.

Now the political other side, the non religious others do nothing with it. Maybe they should use right wing tactics like those used with the false ideas 1) Saddam Hussein HAS weapons of mass destruction or 2) there IS an organized global terror network that wants to kill us all or 3) back in the 80 (spearheaded by Rumsfeld) the idea that there IS this looming evil entity in the USSR and they all wanted us dead as well.

Maybe the left should mimic these tactics with this report? Push it down our throats until we all think it is true. Then we can successfully scrap religion mixing with politics because it would be the moral thing to do and would promote moral family values.

Here are some of the graphs:


Note: Figures were taken without permission.

Marseille is burning

Now that the wildfires are burning in California, I have a strange sensation that I missed out because when I was there (only for six months) I didn't see any. Well at least I got some action in Marseille

[Link]

And my first mosaic, kinda crappy job.