You’ll remember that sometime back we had a lesson in polling and statistics. At that time I said,

This is just an idle Sunday musing. There’s nothing much happening on the political scene, right? Yeah, I know, but I’m not going there. Too many people have had too much fun with that situation already.

No, I’m thinking about inconsistency. Specifically, I’m thinking about inconsistency in politics. This isn’t about politicians, it’s about the public, it’s about you and me. Inconsistency in political philosophy leads to rationalization on a grand scale.

I didn’t come up with this myself. There was a piece on NPR about trying to find a name for people who are inconsistent in their political thinking. Some examples would be: environmentalists who drive SUVs, so-called ‘pro-lifers’ who believe in the death penalty, gay Republicans, Clintonian Democrats. Well, you get the drift. Frankly, I can’t remember all the various monikers that the NPR folks came up with because I immediately came up with what I think is the perfect name: Hypocrats. (more…)

What can you say when people, who are obviously intelligent, do truly stupid things? The easy thing to say is that they’re mad, insane; but that isn’t the answer. Life is far more complicated than that.

Let’s go back in time, over 30 years ago. No one ever accused Richard Nixon of being stupid; yet he did what seemed to be an incredibly stupid thing: he did not destroy the secret audio tapes he had made of his conversations in the White House. At the time amateur psychologists of every stripe tried to understand this truly bizarre behaviour. Why would you hold on to the “bloody knife”? Without the tapes it would have been John Dean’s word against Nixon, H.R. (Bob) Haldemann and John Ehrlichman. Most people did not believe that Dean had a photographic memory. Then a Mr. Butterfield came before the committee and admitted a system of taping had been put in place and used by Nixon. Much sturm und drang followed with the Supreme Court finally ordering that the tapes be turned over. (more…)

Somehow the world has become even darker since we last met. I’ve been wandering through the corridors of the house of mirrors we call life. Today I’ve been studying this painting by Peter Bruegel from the der Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. When I took the photo, I had one of those moments that happen every once in a while in a person’s life.

I was gobsmacked that I was actually looking at the painting. As I had been the first time I stood in front of a Van Gogh, ‘The Tower of Babel’ was not something I thought that I’d ever see outside of a book. Standing there in der Kunst, I was able to stand in front of it and study it for as long as I wanted. This is a luxury that most people will never experience. When I was younger, I thought that most other people had the opportunity to see these wonderful things. It wasn’t until I actually stood in front of a masterpiece that I realized that really very few people could do what I was doing. I was determined to never let a moment like that ever pass me by. (more…)

Well, well, well, Francis Fukuyama is sorry. Professor Fukuyama had thrown his lot in the neo-cons in the lead up to the Iraq War. Now 3 years later, he is admitting that he, and they, were wrong. “By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at,” Fukuyama now admits.

Unlike Ken (“It’ll be a cakewalk”) Adelman or Richard (“They’ll greet us with flowers”) Perle, Francis Fukuyama has finally given up the neo-con dream of world domination. (more…)

I took this picture so many years ago that I can’t remember too much about it. We had run across a group of buildings that all had these trompe l’oeil murals. This one is my favourite because it’s almost Montmartre. In preparing it for this post, I realised that I could crop the top and bottom and it would look like no more than a bad copy of a Utrillo, but then the point would be lost.

Trompe l’oeil has always fascinated me. There must be that willing suspension of disbelief as one stands in front of the fakery. That’s what makes it fun. What if you could just walk into and down that street? Would that be the ultimate extension of Existentialism? It’s tempting, to walk into another dimension and out of the so-called real world.

Yes, the reality of it becomes all too real when your head hits the wall. But, what if you could walk right in? Of course, everyday we are faced with this very dilemma: real politik is an exercise in existentialism. (more…)

There are many things that are just ‘human.’ We all need to love. We all need to hope that there’s a tomorrow. We all need to laugh. We all have times when tears are all we have to express ourselves. And yet for all those things that we have in common; our cultures create chasms between otherwise amiable human beings.

Sometimes it’s a hegemonic encounter. As Masami Teraoka demonstrated in his series of drawings about the effects of American culture on Japanese culture; it can be more than jarring. It can distort or even destroy an ancient culture.

Then, there is the other problem of emigration. The newly arrived immigrant can find it hard to maintain those things that defined his/her culture. Often this becomes so difficult that assimilation is the preferred option. Then, the old culture becomes an artefact. Like a song that you can’t quite remember the lyrics to, it fades in and out of the assimilated person’s consciousness. After a generation or two, the old song is often lost. (more…)

Recently, Dick Cheney has given two speeches where he complained about the criticism the administration has been receiving for the “flawed” (read: false) intelligence that was presented as true in the lead up to the war in Iraq. He has said that lawmakers have made the, “most dishonest and reprehensible charges,” and that these are, “cynical and pernicious falsehoods.’

Shall we look at the charges and the way in which the rebut is being presented by Bush, Cheney, et al? First of all, as we now know from some excellent investigative reporting in the Los Angeles Times, the administration was warned that the intelligence that they were using to promote the case for war was faulty at best. The source of this intelligence, named “Curveball” by German Intelligence (was there ever a more appropriate moniker?), was not regarded as reliable. The Germans were shocked to see Curveball’s lies in Bush’s State of the Union speech and repeated in Colin Powell’s presentation before the U.N.

Second, we can now see that those who spoke the truth to power (e.g. Paul O’Neil, Richard Clark) found their personal and professional reputations trashed. The administration sought to relegate them to the dustbin of history. But, they (and others like them) are rising, like Lazarus, from the “dead.” Their words ring true and the Administration are having to put on their backup shoes and distort some more. Of course it won’t work, but, God love ‘em, they’re trying. Dick and W are slicker than deer guts on a gate post, and about as appealing. (more…)

All right! I’ve had it. CNN has finally totally blown it! Aaron Brown was the last best newsman they had. He is bright. He has a sense of humour. He has a sense of outrage when it’s appropriate. He is just the best.

CNN started out being called the ‘Chicken Noodle Network.’ No one took them seriously until a certain tinhorn dictator named Sadaam, who had more than enough oil, invaded the next country and tried to take their oil too.

We all watched the fits and starts of CNN. Remember the bureau chief in Tel Aviv? He was the one who, when the scud missile landed near the bureau said, “Yeah, it’s here at the corner of Golda Meir Boulevard and Moshe Dayan Way.” You could just hear the Iraqis:” Hey, Mahmood, crank that thing over about 5 degrees, we barely missed. (more…)

We used to live in the hills. When you live in the hills, you know the rules of the road like the back of your hand. You know what I mean. When you park, bank your wheels. Put on the emergency brake. Keep your car in gear: preferably reverse. If you have a dodgy battery, always park going downhill so you can pop the clutch to get the engine started.

It’s all fairly easy and really logical. One of the most important things to remember is that the person coming up the hill has the right of way. Makes sense when you think about it really. If you’re coming up the hill and you have to stop, you lose momentum. This is especially true if you have a manual transmission. (more…)