Farewell to glory, plus stuff on the economy, fear, and whales

Statue of the death of Achilles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is all about the Odyssey of Homer these days, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this stuff, click back on earlier posts.

The visit Odysseus makes to the underworld is a turning point in the story. It can be seen as a kind of initiation, marking the end of Odysseus the warrior and the beginning of his return (although he ain't there yet).

He meets many people in the underworld. There's a sad encounter with the shade of his mother Anticlea, who died of grief after despairing of her son's return. There's a failed meeting with the ghost of Ajax, a mighty Greek warrior who went mad and committed suicide at Troy largely through the actions of Odysseus. Odysseus wants to make up but Ajax refuses to speak.

Lots of veterans--of war and peace--have lost people after having let them down in life and experience regret and survivor's guilt.

But one of the most important encounters is with the ghost of the warrior Achilles, who was given a choice between long life without fame and an early death but enduring fame. The Homeric term for fame or glory was kleos, which meant in part living on in song after one's death. Since the underworld was pretty grim, that was often regarded as the only meaningful form of immortality.

He did get fame--we're still talking about him today. But kleos turns out to have been an empty promise.

Odysseus, thinking him the most fortunate of men, greets him thus:

...Achilles,
there's not a man in the world more blest than you--
there never has been, never will be one.
Time was, when you were alive, we Argives
honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,
you lord it over the dead in all your power.
So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.

He's not buying it. In a shocking renunciation of the cult of glory, Achilles replies

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive--
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

I think this farewell to and disparagement of glory--coming from someone who got more of it than anyone else--marks the key difference between the Iliad as a poem of kleos to the Odyssey as a poem of nostos or homecoming.

One last word: Achilles' renunciation of the "glory" of war calls to mind a saying of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB? Job seekers outnumber jobs about about three to one, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot. Here's a related issue brief on the subject.

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, FREE ENTERPRISE FOR THE POOR. That pretty well sums up Wall Street bailouts while millions of American families are feeling the squeeze. I can't claim originality on this one, but free enterprisers in a recession are kind of like the proverbial atheists in foxholes.

ON A RELATED NOTE, this item argues that gouging the poor lies at the root of the credit/housing meltdown.

WITHOUT A NET. As the economy tanks, millions of workers are watching the value of their 401(k)s evaporate. This McClatchy article suggests that the economic crisis may lead Americans to re-evaluate the current social contract.

THE FIX. Here's Paul Krugman on what the bailout might look like.

THE FEAR FACTOR. A new study finds some interesting connections between political views and the response to fear.

URGENT ANCIENT WHALE UPDATE. The early ones used their back legs to swim--a feature missing on more recent models. El Cabrero doesn't know about y'all but I find the evolution of aquatic mammals fascinating.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DON'T EVEN ASK

MORAL DISTANCE

The ghost of Hamlet Sr. urges revenge, courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately Goat Rope has been exploring violence in warfare and other settings. If this is your first visit, please consider clicking on earlier posts.

While most normal people have a strong resistance to hurting or killing others at close range, distance—physical or emotional—makes it easier. Yesterday’s post looked at how perceived cultural distance or seeing the opponent as the Other does this. Another kind of distance that facilitates violence is moral distance.

As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman writes in On Killing,

Moral distance involves legitimizing oneself and one’s cause. It can generally be divided into two components. The first component usually is the determination and condemnation of the enemy’s guilt, which, of course, must be punished or avenged. The other is an affirmation of the legality and legitimacy of one’s own cause.

It’s easier to kill people when they are seen as evil. In such cases violence can be rationalized as simple justice. Revenge for past acts of aggression, real or imagined, is often a component of moral distance. But as psychologist Roy F. Baumeister noted in his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (search this blog for more on that), revenge is often out of proportion to the original act of provocation.

The reason for this is what he called “the magnitude gap.” Simply put, this means that acts of aggression seem worse to the victims than the original perpetrators. Retaliation, therefore, tends to escalate the violence. And sadly, given that much of world history is a game of Got You Last, it’s not usually that hard to come up with some kind of slight to avenge.

Grossman comments that the danger of this kind of rationalization is that “every nation seems to think that God is on its side”—and as Dylan sang, you don’t count the dead when that is the case.

MORE THOUGHTS ON TAX DAY. Here's a good op-ed by Holly Sklar on the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy over the last several years. Here's the beginning:

WHEN IT COMES to cutting taxes for the rich, President Bush can truly say, “Mission accomplished.” The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That’s nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China — $493 billion — in the form of Treasury securities.

HOUSING MESS. The credit/housing crisis is causing serious problems for millions of Americans. Here's economist Dean Baker on the problem and some suggestions for solutions.

SPEAKING OF PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS, here's a new paper by the Center for Law and Social Policy about how the current recession is hitting low income workers and families and what could be done to improve the situation.

"FREE" TRADE, UNFREE WORKERS. Labor and human rights groups in the US and Colombia are joining to oppose a proposed Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Here's more on the subject from the American Friends Service Committee.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOOD SONG, BAD ADVICE

Caption: This man went down by the riverside but didn't know when to quit.

On the fifth anniversary of President Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq, like thousands of other Americans, I attended an anti-war gathering. It was a good event. The previously threatening skies cleared up and the weather was warm. At one point, someone sang "Down by the Riverside."

As you no doubt recall, Gentle Reader, the chorus says "I ain't gonna study war no more." It's catchy, easy to sing and easy to plunk out on a guitar for those so inclined.

The only problem is this: if you take it at face value and think about it, it's really bad advice for people who want to make the world less violent and more just.

I've ridden this hobby horse before here, but here goes again. I suspect that many people involved in peace or anti-war movements have felt this way: war and violence are bad and therefore not to be studied. That may be Reason # 59385 that such movements haven't exactly set the woods on fire (metaphorically speaking).

Again, can you imagine what the current state of medicine or public health would be if people didn't study diseases and injuries because they are "bad"?

That is one of two kinds of popular magical thinking. It involves ignoring things we think are bad and don't like. The other kind, as in The Secret, a New Age idea taken up by Oprah a while back, holds that if we think about things we want, we just might get them.

(Note: the second of these is preferred by the animals at Goat Rope Farm. When they want something they stare at it--and sometimes it works.)

Both kinds of magical thinking have their problems, but at least the second one might actually work every once in a while. At least if you think something is possible you might be more aware of opportunities for making it happen. But ignoring unpleasant realities has a much worse track record.

One of the best chances we have for reducing violence, warfare, killing and the conditions that contribute to them is to try to learn as much as we can about them and creatively apply that knowledge as we seek their reduction and--one can dream--eventual elimination.

BREAKING THE BANK.James Surowiecki, financial writer for the New Yorker, has some interesting things to say about the credit crisis and ill-advised changes in bankruptcy laws.

JOBS TANK. Dean Baker analyses federal data on the drop in employment here.

STRESSED OUT. The stress of repeated tours of duty in Iraq is causing concern in the Army.

OH GOOD. Blackwater got its Iraq contract renewed. That should win some hearts and minds.

EVERY MOUNTAIN SHALL BE BROUGHT DOWN. The United Mine Workers of America may be open to the long term goal of ending mountaintop removal, according to this article by Ken Ward.

COURT FIASCO. Here's the Wall Street Journal legal blog on the Blankenship/Benjamin WV supreme court mess. Also, check out ABC News today. At last word, they were planning on showing the video of a scuffle between a reporter and supreme court I mean Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

CHIP. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on the need to expand the Children's Health Insurance Program.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PUBLIC DREAMS?

Heracles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) is probably the most popular interpreter of myths today. Campbell was the author of The Masks of God, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and many other works. His works also inspired Star Wars creator George Lucas.

Campbell's public following grew by leaps and bounds with PBS's broadcast of The Power of Myth, a series of interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers. Strongly influenced by Jung, he believed that all myths worldwide shared similar themes and spiritual insights. He sometimes spoke of a "monomyth," such as that of the quest of a hero, as if all humanity was basically watching the same psychic movie.

One problem with that approach is that it selectively picks from many diverse myths and imposes a general interpretation on widely diverse traditions with widely different systems of meaning.

He had a knack for catchy phrases such as this one:

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Sounds good but doesn't hold up too well. Myths are enduring stories repeated over time, whereas dreams are physiological events, most of which are not remembered or retold. Myths provide a world of meaning for those who accept them, whereas most dreams are mental static that have little influence on daily life (although we arguably should pay more attention to them than we do).

The problem with overgeneralizing about myths is that in doing so one creates a more or less artificial construct that loses a lot of particularity. As one of El Cabrero's teachers used to say, you can't unscramble an egg. Instead of lumping all myths together into some gigantic stew, it might be more interesting to look at different traditions in their own terms.

THE SURGE IS WORKING? You decide.

THE TREE ARMY. Here's Bill McKibben on the relevance of New Deal era programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps today.

COAL AND/OR HEALTH. A new study by a WVU researcher finds that residents of the state's coalfields are more likely than other West Virginians to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney disease.

SOME DAYS YOU EAT THE BEAR... Here's Dean Baker on the credit crisis and corporate bailouts.

THE WIRE. Here's a critical view of El Cabrero's favorite TV show that talks about all the positive things in Baltimore and other cities that the show ignores.
Point well taken, but can somebody tell the folks at HBO to get that season 5 DVD out soon?

SPIDERS AND SNAKES. New research is studying the question of whether the common fear of snakes and spiders is an evolutionary inheritance or something learned.

LOOK TO THE ANT, THOU SLUGGARD! They invented farming 50 million years ago when we were just a twinkle in a primate's eye.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

UNIVERSAL DREAMS

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately is myth and what it means. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

One of the most popular psychological theories of myth is that of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961). Once a close associate of Freud who was designated as the "crown prince" of psychoanalysis, Jung broke with Freud's theory of the centrality of libido or the sex drive as the major force of human motivation (see discussion of Freud's view of myth yesterday).

While Freud concentrated on the personal unconscious, Jung believed that some aspects of psychic life had an "impersonal" or objective quality that cannot be derived from an individuals past experiences. He believed that this pointed to the existence of a collective unconscious shared by all people. (He also at times dabbled in the notion of a national unconscious for different ethnic groups, which damaged his reputation and brought on accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer.)

The collective unconscious contained certain primordial images or archetypes, an idea he derived from

the repeated observation that, for instance, the myths and fairy-tales of world literature contain definite motifs which crop up everywhere. We meet these same motifs in the fantasies, dreams, deliria, and delusions of individuals living today. These typical images and associations are what I call archetypal ideas.

The archetype was

an irrepresentable, unconscious, pre-existent form that seems to be part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time.

Jung believed that the similarities between various myths are the result of the influence of the collective unconscious. Myths therefore originate in the psyche and allow people to experience the unconscious. He believed that the decline in the centrality of myth in the modern age contributed to the psychological problems of many people:

Among the so-called neurotics of our day there are a good many who in other ages would not have been neurotic--that is, divided against themselves. If they had lived in a period and in a milieu in which man was still linked by myth with the world of the ancestors, and thus with nature truly experienced and not merely seen from the outside, they would have been spared this division within themselves.

While still enjoying great popularity, Jung's ideas are miles away from the drift of modern scientific psychology. Likewise, many scholars of mythology shy away from grand theories which not only over-generalize but also pass over the uniqueness of different mythological traditions.

BOGEYMAN TIME? Here's Jacob Hacker on "socialized medicine."

THE SHADOW SIDE OF BANKING and the need for greater regulation thereof is the subject of Paul Krugman's latest column.

IS THE NEW DEAL RELEVANT TODAY? Uhhh...yes.

AN OLD ZEN KOAN ASKS "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" This one might.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MYTH-TAKES

The theme at Goat Rope lately is myths and what they mean. You will also find links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on the week's earlier posts.

As discussed previously, myths are the Big Stories that convey deep meanings.

One interesting aspect of mythology is that most cultures don't recognize their own myths as myths. Rather, they are seen as stories that convey how things really are.

On this fifth anniversary of the Bush administration's unnecessary war in Iraq, I've been thinking about the myth used to justify it. It's a very old myth, one that theologian Walter Wink has called "the myth of redemptive violence," which underlies and tries to justify every system of domination. The myth, expressed in Babylonian mythology in the story of Marduk, who overcomes and kills Tiamat and creates the world from her body, involves the overcoming of primordial forces of chaos by an act of violence that establishes order.

Thus violence is seen as part of the natural order of things, the savior god that makes social life possible and which demands obedience.

According to Wink,

This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is the dominant religion in our society today...

It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods. The common people exist to perpetuate the advantage that the gods have conferred upon the king, the aristocracy, and the priesthood. Religion exists to legitimate power and privilege. Life is combat. Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth. Ours is neither a perfect nor a perfectible world; it is a theater of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes to the strong. Peace through war; security through strength; these are the core convictions that arise from this ancient historical religion, and they form the solid bedrock on which the Domination System is founded in every society.

This myth was powerfully invoked by this administration in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify the invasion of a country which had nothing to do with the attacks and the results have been disastrous for the country and the world.

THE MYTH OF REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE IN ACTION in Iraq is the theme of this review.

MORE ON THE CREDIT/HOUSING MELTDOWN can be found here.

MASSEY ENERGY was cited in an incident related to the death of a coal miner in Kanawha County.

BE NOT ANXIOUS. It's often easier said than done, as this book review notes.

URGENT ANCIENT HOBBIT UPDATE here.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A BOOK LIKE NO OTHER

The theme at Goat Rope lately is Dante's Divine Comedy. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries. You will also find links and comments about current events.

The Divine Comedy is one of a kind. In addition to telling the story of Dante's pilgrimage (and ours), it's also a kind of summary and totalization of what was widely known and believed in medieval Europe. It's a book that contains references to many other books.

The fancy word for that is "intertextuality." (Try whipping that one out at the fire station sometime, but don't blame me if you get beat up.) One example of that from American literature is the first line of Melville's Moby-Dick: "Call me Ishmael," which refers readers back to the book of Genesis. Here are some of the books "contained" in the Comedy:

*Nature. In the ancient and medieval world, nature was widely seen as God's book, which we could read if we had wisdom and grace. Dante gives a tour not just of the afterlife but of the entire physical universe as it was believed to be.

*The Bible. Y'all saw that one coming. Characters and events from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New figure prominently in it and some have speaking roles.

*The classics. Dante's guide through 2/3rds of his journey is the ancient Roman poet Virgil, author of the epic poem The Aeneid. That classic also refers to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and a host of Greek and Roman myths.

*Philosophy and theology, especially the works of Aristotle, whom Dante calls "master of all who know," and St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians.

*St. Augustine. The bishop of Hippo in Carthage (now Tunisia) was a huge influence on the medieval church. Dante's book especially refers to his Confessions.

Can you imagine someone trying to encompass so much in a book today? Me neither. But it works. You don't need to know all those texts to read the Comedy--just get one with a good set of footnotes. And don't feel bad about that: Every reader from the late middle ages on needed footnotes to get through it.

A SEA CHANGE? Here's a review of recent books on the American religious scene by E.J. Dionne and Jim Wallis by way of In These Times.

ON A RELATED NOTE, here's sociologist Alan Wolfe on the (possibly moderate) future of world religion.

TWO ON THE ECONOMY. It's beginning to look a lot like stagflation. And here's another one on the credit crunch.

"PHILANTHROPY" CONTINUED. Here's more on BB&T's promotion of Ayn Rand.

DEFINING TORTURE. Would this qualify?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE GEOMETRY OF EMOTION

Image of woman teaching geometry courtesy of wikipedia.

Welcome to the fourth installment of Spinoza Week at Goat Rope. Aside from the usual links and comments about current events, the theme this week is the life and work of that great 17th century philosopher. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

As mentioned before, Spinoza developed his pantheistc and deterministic views of the universe at length in his magnum opus The Ethics. In his view, all the universe is in God and in a sense is God. His God is not humanlike in any way and all things follow from the necessity of his nature.

There's no free will to be found anywhere in this system, including ourselves and our emotions, which are only a tiny part of the whole.

As he wrote at the beginning of Part III,

Most who have written on the emotions and on the manner of human life, seem to have dealt not with natural things which follow the universal laws of nature, but with things which are outside the sphere of nature: they seem to have conceived man in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the order of nature, and that he has absolute power over his actions, and is not determined by anything else than himself.

He wasn't buying it. Why should be be any different than anything else?

...an infant thinks that it freely seeks milk, an angry child thinks that it freely desires vengeance, or a timid child thinks it freely chooses flight

when in fact all are driven by causes and passions of which they are not fully aware.

He treats of human emotions the same way he does everything else: like propositions in a geometry book:

...I shall regard human actions and appetites exactly as if I were dealing with lines, planes, and bodies.

The weird thing is that he does a pretty good job of it. He has come up with some amazingly succinct definitions of common human emotions and passions, breaking them down to their most basic level. Here are a few examples :

LOVE "is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause"

HATE is "pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause."

REPENTANCE "is pain accompanied by the idea of oneself as a cause"

SELF-CONTENTMENT "is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause."

HOPE "is an inconstant pleasure arisen from the idea of a thing past or future, the outcome of which we still doubt to some extent."

FEAR "is an inconstant pain arisen from the idea of something past or future of whose outcome we doubt somewhat."

COMPASSION "is love in so far as it affects a man so that he rejoices at the happiness of another and is saddened at the harm he suffers."

PRIDE "is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love."

And so on.

The heart and paradox of The Ethics is the idea that by understanding the nature of the universe and of human emotions, we can gain a degree of freedom.

About which more tomorrow.



MORE ON THE CREDIT MELTDOWN from Business Week. Factoids: only 31% of American consumers pay off credit card debt each month, while 61$ don't and only 7% do without cards. Mean household credit card balance is around $7,000 (although I've seen higher figures).

R-E-S-P-E-C-T and how the US can regain it after the disastrous Bush years is the subject of this item from Alternet.

A 20,000 YEAR LAYOVER. Here's an interesting item on the latest scientific evidence about the peopling of America.

LESSONS FROM KILLER WHALES. Here's a review of what an animal trainer learned that works at home as well.

ARACOMA CASE. A worker from Massey Energy's Aracoma Mine has received immunity from federal prosecutors in exchange for testimony.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Caption: A Black History celebration in Logan, WV.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.--Langston Hughes

February is a month when Black History is celebrated. This is thanks largely to the labors of the great African American scholar, educator and activist Carter G. Woodson, who lived from 1875 to 1950. Woodson had significant ties to El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, as will be discussed later this week.

Woodson believed that this was an appropriate month since it contains the birthdays of the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave in 1817 in Maryland. As such, he wasn't sure of the exact date of his birth, but celebrated it on the 14th. Feb. 9 is also the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

The history of African Americans is an amazing story of struggle, survival, resistance and progress. One odd thing about it is how many times the predominantly white state of West Virginia shows up in it. Like Forrest Gump, it keeps popping up in the most interesting places.

That will be the theme here this week. Check back for more.

BRING EM HOME. Some states are considering legislation that would bring National Guard units back from Iraq.

SOUND ADVICE. As the number of unemployed Americans increases, this NY Times editorial calls for extending unemployment benefits.

WILLIAM BLAKE INTERLUDE. Here's an analysis of Blakes classic poem "London." If you search this blog, you'll find several Blake posts.

KILLER CREDIT is the subject of this In These Times article.

NAP--AND REMEMBER. It's science.

STATE TAX AND BUDGET DILEMMAS are the subject of this Gazette-Mail op-ed by yours truly.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHICH WAY USA?

Caption: This man has been squeezed out of the middle class.

El Cabrero is winding up the week of New Year by highlighting some important books published in 2007. If this is your first visit, please click on previous posts.

Today's selection is Paul Krugman's The Conscience of A Liberal. Krugman is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton but is best known for his columns in the New York Times. An earlier book of his, The Great Unraveling, is also worth a look.

(Come to think of it, this is probably also true of his earlier works, but I haven't read them. Yet.)

Conscience is a very readable guide to where we've come from, where we are, and where we might go as a nation in terms of economic policy and shared prosperity. Krugman looks first at the post-Civil War Gilded Age, with huge disparities of wealth and little, no safety net for working people, and disenfranchisement of millions of Americans.

This system was challenged by populists and progressives and was only overcome through the struggles of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and post-World War II policies which helped create the American middle class.

He calls this period, which lasted from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s as "the Great Compression." Taxes were high on the wealthy, some big businesses were regulated, pro-union policies were in effect, and government programs protected incomes, safety, education, and home ownership--and the country prospered as never before.

Things have obviously changed, due largely to the rise of what he calls "movement conservatism" (and what Jonathan Chait calls "crackpot economics"):

The American I grew up in was a relatively equal middle-class society. Over the past generation, however, the country has returned to Gilded Age levels of inequality.

Krugman offers a number of market and "aftermarket" policy measures to reverse this trend and builds a strong case for the "health care imperative"--the need to create a universal system of care. He notes that a weird reversal has occurred in our current political climate:

One of the seeming paradoxes of America in the early twenty-first century is that those of us who call themselves liberal are, in an important sense, conservative, while those who call themselves conservative are for the most part deeply radical. Liberals want to restore the middle-class society I grew up in; those who call themselves conservative want to take us back to the Gilded Age, undoing a century of history. Liberals defend long-standing institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call themselves conservative want to privatize or undermine those institutions. Liberals want to honor our democratic principles and the rule of law; those who call themselves conservative want the president to have dictatorial powers and have applauded the Bush administration as it imprisons people without charges and subjects them to torture.

There's a lot of history, ideas, and information here. I'd recommend checking it out. As Maude Lebowski said in that classic of American cinematography, "He's a good man--and thorough."

ANOTHER ROADBLOCK to a fresh war with Iran may have emerged. The U.S. military reports that Iran is no longer supplying training or materials to militants in Iraq.

MORAL VALUES DEPARTMENT. By way of the Washington Post, here are a series of questions religion professor R. Gustav Niebuhr would ask candidates.

UNKIND. Here's the Bush administration's latest smackdown of efforts to expand health care.

DEBT. El Cabrero has recently been trying to make sense of the massive debt/credit goat rope that is tripping up the nation. Here's a new blog by six academics on these issues: Credit Slips.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED