When God wore a swastika

Review of: "A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days When God Wore a Swastika", by Alfons Heck

Another week, another memoir of war, full of interesting lessons. Alfons Heck writes a rueful, dramatic, and deeply moving account of his fervent career as a member and officer of the Hitler Youth. This book has some personal significance, as my father was only a year younger than Heck, likewise a devoted member of HJ, and, one would have to frankly say, perhaps never completely deprogrammed. Heck notes that his quotes and dialog derive from his own much later memory, not from any notes he preserved. Nevertheless, he produces a gripping and detailed memoir that has also been made into two documentaries.

Where to begin? The atmosphere of the book brought back innumerable echos that faintly rang through my own childhood. For instance, I had forgotten the discourse of insult and beratement that characterized parent-child relations in this culture. Children were/are routinely called dumb idiots, pigs, etc. Schoolmasters were expected to regularly beat their charges. Perhaps this was a step up in intimacy from the rigid formality and absolute obedience that characterized the German family of the nineteenth century ... I don't know. What effect would this have on a culture? Surely some temperaments thrive- which worship power and happily dish out what they have taken in- but others are dulled, even crushed, and never heard from in the larger culture. Tiger mother's methods are not novel.

A conversation with his aunt, as the Americans draw near to his hometown of Wittlich near the Rhine, is emblematic. Heck is 16 at the moment, and Führer of his county-sized HJ organization:

Aunt: "God, I can't wait for the Amis to put an end to this."

"You mean you are actually waiting for them to conquer us?"

"Well, what do you think? The handwriting was on the wall a year ago. You crazy fanatics didn't have to ruin our beautiful country, don't you know that, Du verdammter Idiot?"

"I had no idea you were that scared, Aunt Tilly. Why didn't you tell me?"

"What for? Has any German hero ever given a handful of Scheisse for what we women think? You are afraid to be scared, isn't that so?"

Heck is extremely well-suited to this culture and these times. He does consistently well in school, and has a talent for languages. He lusts after status, and revels in power. The highest status in the HJ is the air arm, which flies gliders for training- extremely exciting for youths of this age. So he quietly discards the plans he and his grandmother shared for him to become a priest

"I didn't mention it to my grandmother, of course, but I was determined to volunteer for the Luftwaffe as a professional soldier. Since I had to serve anyway as long as the war lasted, there was no need to tell her until afterwards. The priesthood was out forever. My love for flying and my lust for girls overpowered my fondness for the church."

Later on, as the war turned sour, the nation's attention switched from training pilots to constructing defensive barriers. At age 15 in 1944, Heck commands a couple hundred boys digging an anti-tank ditch on the frontier within Luxemburg.

"I soon became used to the fact that I alone was responsible for my Gefolgschaft. The feeling of power was sweet. Villagers doffed their caps when I passed them (although some crossed to the other side of the street when they saw me.)

...

It was astonishing how fast young boys matured under the pressure and unrelenting duty. Most of them acted like hardened men. Many had already lost a father or brother in battle and they were inured to the possibility of death. I had lost any apprehension about my ability to command effectively. Secretly, I enjoyed the power I wielded."

---

If I could strike off an a tangent, an interesting aspect of the German educational system is/was its much stronger class basis than we see in the US. Students are tracked from an early age. They take the critical test at about age ten, for entry into the Gymnasium.

"That was the essential step on the ladder to higher education, and only about six percent of elementary school children made it, often because the rest could not pay tuition.

...

The majority of German school children went to the Volksschule, the elementary school, for eight years, and then entered an apprenticeship in their desired trade. During the three year apprenticeship they were required to attend the Berufschule, the trade school, two days a week to learn the theoretic aspects of their trade. It was and remains an excellent system."

On the one hand, this dispenses with the egalitarian aspects of the US secondary educational system, reserving the college preparatory track to only elite students, some of whom are filtered by ability to pay, enforcing a life-long, even hereditary, class structure. On the other hand, Germany takes its trade education very seriously, turning out machinists, carpenters, wine-makers, brewers, ... the full spectrum of craftspeople ... of the highest quality, who are in turn respected, well paid, and the foundation of Germany's export prowess. This aspect is one we might do well to emulate by treating our trade schools as important institutions, and treating students who don't go to college with higher respect.

If I may indulge in yet another tangent, while Heck is busy running the HJ camp that builds defensive tank ditches in Luxemburg, a couple of SS soldiers come to the village with three partisans in tow, freshly caught. While Heck is having a cigarette, the three are shot against a garden wall, making Heck feel rather ill. Such summary execution was common on both sides, and apparently consistent with the Geneva conventions, which apply only to non-combatants and uniformed combatants. Spies, insurgents, and sabateurs were dealt with summarily.

I am no expert in the Geneva conventions and the laws of war. But it seems, in our current situation in Afghanistan, somewhat misguided and ineffective to be capturing non-uniformed insurgents with the intention of processing them through some kind of civilian legal procedure, or imprisoning them as prisoners of an endless insurgency. As a practical matter, these prisoners are routinely released by the Karzai administration, making a mockery of our military efforts that are so extremely strenuous.

And as a legal matter, they seem to deserve nothing other than to be executed immediately. They do not wear uniforms, they are not part of regular militaries, and their sponsors are not Geneva convention signatories. All this depends, of course, on having the intelligence to know who is who, which is certainly difficult. But as far as I am aware, we very rarely learn more by extended incarceration, (nor by torture), so rapid battlefield justice seems to be both a justified and practical approach to insurgents who routinely take cover under burkhas, in medical ambulances, and as civilian villagers. If this policy encourages them to wear uniforms, that would be progress.

Incidentally, what does the Koran / sharia law say about the crime of haribah ... making war against the people? Mohammed didn't seem to pussyfoot around the issue.

"The punishments of those who wage war against Allah and His Prophet and strive to spread disorder in the land are to execute them in an exemplary way or to crucify them or to amputate their hands and feet from opposite sides or to banish them from the land."

Obviously, such a policy carries enormous risks, both in Afghan civilian relations and to military discipline on our side. Who wants to run firing squads? Who is fully confident about separating civilian villagers from Taliban fighters? Such a policy would be very difficult to implement cleanly and without descending into ethical catastrophe. Is martyrdom even a disincentive to the Taliban? Do Afghan civilians recognize the seriousness which the insurgency poses and the consequent right that their armed forces and ISAF partners have to root it out with prejudice, as it were? It is difficult to say, especially when their own president seems to put Pashtun solidarity with his Taliban brothers over government effectiveness and sovereignty.

---

Getting back to our story, of course the heart of the book is the electric hold that Hitler had on these youth, and on much of the nation. At the tender age of ten, Heck was able to attend one of the famed Nuremberg rallies. They were held in Nuremberg for its architectural setting, which preserved the Teutonic / gothic glories of the middle ages, and for its many historical associations- as a seat of the Holy Roman empire and former commercial hub. The theme was power- a celebration of nationalism, a social display of mutual devotion, a drunkenness on the liquor of e pluribus unum.

"Its fervor can be compared fairly to that of a gigantic revival meeting but without the repentence for one's sins. Quite the contrary: it was a jubilant Teutonic renaissance with the unmistakable message that Germany had regained her rightful place among the great powers of the world.

'You, my youth', he screamed hoarsely, 'never forget that one day you will rule the world!' ... We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that borderd on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: 'Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!' From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul."

There is no other way to describe this psychological process than religious. The Nazis used every lever in the communal and spiritual playbook- mystical symbols, frequent processions and festivities, invocations of sacred mantras "Volk, Blut, Boden", carefully calibrated carrots and sticks, a murky theology of nationalism, racism and Wagnerian romanticism, and mortal enemies to be vanquished (Jews and Communists). It was a new religion, though Heck happily served at the same time as a Catholic alterboy, and considered himself a good Catholic throughout. Certainly his priests didn't have problems with the HJ or other issues with Naziism. They seemed more concerned, in the confessional, about masturbation.

To my eyes, the essential problem here is not the object of the religious fervor, whether a political leader, a nation, a prosperity gospel preacher, a fetishized book of holy myth, or a carefully super-naturalized god-figure. The problem is human susceptibilty to these psychological manipulations in any form. That humans yearn for transcendence, yearn for a duty and significance "beyond themselves", and are willing to subjugate themselves to such fervent depths/heights ... it is all, simply, horrifying.

It is these emotions and methods that lead to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and modern Islamic fundamentalism. They lead countless otherwise sane people all across the world to think that they have some special truth about reality that others must share or they are going to hell. And even need to be nudged in that direction prematurely. They led to the Thirty year's war and countless others. They lead our current political system into a wilderness at the ignorant piping of Glenn Beck and the rest of the FOX "news team" that spouts cheap religiosity and self-righteousness. It can just as well lead to McCarthyite or Communist hells as to Christian or Nazi ones.

While still working on his anti-tank ditch, Heck is summoned to a meeting where Albert Speer and Hitler himself appear, to give special pep talks. The war is, of course, already lost, but Heck remains completely faithful.

"He spoke no longer than five minutes, and what he said was meant for us, the Hitler Youth. We, after all, were his purest creation, unencumbered by the ballast of a non-Nazi past, only beholden to him. His voice, low and hoarse at the beginning, increased in volume when he mentioned the coming battles. 'Never since the Napoleonic wars has an enemy devastated our country,' he shouted, 'and we shall decimate this enemy also at the very gates to the Fatherland. This is where we are going to turn the tide and split the American-British alliance once and for all.

...

'You are from the Moselland, my boy. I know I can depend on you.'

'Jawohl, mein Führer,' I whispered. I wiped my eyes when I walked down the steps. Nothing, I knew, would ever equal this day."

The object of these methods can be bad or good, but how can we tell if they reduce us to unthinking acolytes? It is what Orwell was so appalled by ... the loss of our critical faculties.

A sophisticated Catholic might say in reply "... but of course ... we had this figured out many centuries ago. Do you intend to rewrite human nature? Your boy Alfons Heck would rather have two gods than none. Since people must have their religions and must behave like sheep, why not give them something harmless to believe in, like a non-existent god? Otherwise, who knows who or what can take up their allegiance, like that evil Martin Luther!" There is, sadly, some truth in this, and we who agitate against belief in god do carry the burden of unintended psychological consequences, expressed in those who, for all their sanity and good intentions, still yearn to give themselves up to something inexpressably greater.

• Meanwhile, another reminiscence, on the religious cult of Ayn Rand.
• And there is another Catholic in good standing, in Zimbabwe.
• In Afghanistan, religious fanuttery keeps on giving.
• And who's burning more Korans?
• Why we have a criminogenic atmosphere in the US.
• Some barriers to civic engagement.
• The White House offers a breakdown tool to see where your tax dollars go.
• Bill Mitchell quote of the week, quoting Dean Baker:

"Whenever I have raised this point in conversations with economists, they invariably think that I am joking. When I convince them that I am serious, they think the idea of holding economists responsible for the quality of their work to the point of actually jeopardising their careers is outrageously cruel and unfair.

The reality is that tens of millions of people across the globe have seen their lives wrecked because these economists did not know what they were doing – or worse, had doubts but chose the safer route of groupthink. It is outrageous that ordinary workers who were doing their jobs can end up unemployed, while the economists whose mistakes led to their unemployment can count on job security."

Ode to grunts

Review of Bing Wests's "The Wrong War", on Afghanistan.

First off, the book's title is incorrect. West never claims that Afghanistan is, on the whole, the wrong war, as the case has been made that, say, Iraq was the wrong war. After a blizzard of gripes, complaints, and second-guessing, he wants us to finish the war successfully, not turn tail and leave the Afghans (and Pakistanis, and Al Qaeda-ists from who knows where ...) to their own devices.

But West's analysis of the war takes a distinct back seat to his breathless narration of heroism at arms by America's (and Britain's) finest fighting forces. Most of the book derives from a few embedding trips he took, to Kunar province in the Northeast, and to Helmand province in the South of Afghanistan. The story is similar- that the marines in the field (with grudging mention of other services, as long as they are infantry "grunts") inevitably carry the day if they have a clear mission, resources, and are given free reign to kill the enemy.

His story-telling is detailed and gripping, taking the reader through several intense firefights. His grunts are noble, no-nonsense, exquisitely sensitive to each other and to the locals, as ready to smell a rat among the lying villagers as to give their last drop of water to a needy comrade or administer medical aid to a local child. And, reluctantly, they "drink lots of tea" with the elders, feeling out their sympathies and seeking reciprocity ... aid and public projects in return for intelligence and political support. But typically, that reciprocity never comes. The US is left fighting alone against a murky enemy, with the sullen villagers either looking dumbly on, or helping their Taliban frenemies from the shadows.

His strategic point is that the COIN (counter-insurgency) policy that puts treating regular Afghans well over killing the enemy has failed. The people of Afghanistan are .. take your pick ... too jaded, too greedy, too traumatized, too distrustful of the US, too disorganized ... to respond to our "hearts and minds" blandishments. They know that the Taliban aren't going away, while the infidel US surely is going away, eventually. This doesn't mean that we should disregard or brutalize Afghan civilians, only that we can't expect to win by ministering to them directly.

In Iraq, the rural tribes swung decisively towards the Western coalition and away from the insurgency at some point (when the US Marines proved we were serious, or when we paid them off ...). In Afghanistan, there is no similar movement away from the Taliban, especially in the remote rural areas that provide the Taliban such vast territory and effective staging areas. Not to mention their sanctuary across the border, which has been so carefully tended by our allies, the Pakistanis. Quite the opposite- the coalition has continued to cede territory to the Taliban, under the guise of dismantling indefensible outposts.

The Afghan people follow power and know power- they smell which way the wind blows. And if we prove ourselves weak-willed in our attempt to please them, rather than strong willed in ridding them of the Taliban, (which is more our enemy than theirs, at least in many Afghan's eyes), then they would be fools to side with us prematurely, especially when the West is introducing so many unsettling, unIslamic, and corrupting new ideas and practices.

West's solution is to man up- both ourselves by focussing relentlessly on the enemy, and the Afghans, by beefing up the Afghan armed forces, which according to West perform decently well when under direct US supervision. A few more years of advising and support, and they should be well on their way to keeping the country in decent shape, given political support. Unfortunately, West skims over the hard work of figuring out how to get from here to there.

"This war will be decided by grit."

The Afghan army and police are riddled with corruption, poor pay, and incompetence. So we have to supplement West's advice with some more particulars. The basic issue is- who is in charge? Is the corrupt and ineffective Hamid Karzai in charge? If so, we are doomed, since his government is the source of our long-drawn out (ten years, so far) exercise in futility. He demands that we not kill any civilians while we desperately fight his war for him, while at the same time not lifting a finger to recruit effective administrators, police, and army leaders. Graft and corruption rule the day, leaving the Afghan people little hope whoever wins this war. For an effective army, a great deal of stable-cleaning would be needed, as well as rational promotion system. The army may need to be bigger, but quality is far, far more important than quantity.

Unfortunately, the days of staging coups to get rid of inconvenient leaders (see Vietnam) are (thankfully) over, so something more sophisticated needs to be devised. What I would propose would be our very own public Afghan anticorruption campaign. The US in Afghanistan knows where the bodies are buried, as documented by Dexter Filkins in a recent New Yorker piece. So why don't the Afghan people know what we know? The reason is that we are behaving like a battered wife, trying to keep the family secrets and prop up the confidence of an abusive spouse who can't and won't ever change. If Karzai wants us to fight for his hide, (and he certainly does), then he will have to take some heat in the form of transparency about what is going on in his government, broadcast loud and proud across Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the expectations of the Afghan people are so low at this point that it is hard to see what could generate the kind of outrage that would be needed to get Karzai to, say, resign- the ultimate goal of such a campaign. Even the complete dissolution of Afghanistan's largest bank, after blatant control fraud by Karzai's brother and friends, doesn't seem to have generated much outrage. Something more sinister, perhaps like Karzai looking askance at a koran ... something is sure to turn up. For example, Karzai keeps releasing the most serious criminals from Kabul's jails. Where is the outrage? The US should sponsor a thorough, if perhaps indirect, media campaign to hold the government accountable for this elemental lapse in governance.

Then a better person like the recent challenger Abdulla Abdulla might take office instead. Karzai chose a first vice president more disliked than himself (the Tajik commander Mohammad Qasim Fahim) seemingly insuring against this turn of events, not to mention assassination, etc. So it would be a rather long slog in the information warfare space to get to an Afghan government that serves the interests of its own people, not to mention ours as well. But we need to develop some sticks to improve the government of Afghanistan. We desperately need it to not just exist, but to be functional.

Afghans are evidently capable of outstanding bravery and heroic feats of logistics and strategy. Why the official government can not avail itself of this kind of spirit is the fundamental question of the day. If continues to fail, as the South Vietnamese government failed 40 years ago in a mire of corruption, then nothing we can do can make up the difference.

• The Taliban pattern of intimidation.
• We need to find something better to do with old age.
• Financiers threaten anarchy, claim religious exemption from fathomability.
• Who are the real parasites?
• What do you have against God?
• Court upholds taxpayer funding of religious schools.
• Germany über alles, when it comes to inflation in the Euro.
• Will Iceland commit economic seppuku for the EU?

"The EU has given Iceland bad advice: “Pay the Icesave debts, guarantee the bad bank loans, it really won’t cost too much. It will be fairly easy for your government to take it on.” One now can see that this is the same bad advice given to Ireland, Greece and other countries. “Fairly easy” is a euphemism for decades of economic shrinkage and emigration."

• Bill Mitchell quote of the week:

"It was such a lark. Capitalists found that they could sustain sales and receive an additional bonus in the form of interest payments – while also suppressing real wage growth. Households, enticed by lower interest rates and the relentless marketing strategies of the financial sector, embarked on a credit binge.

The increasing share of real output (income) pocketed by capital became the gambling chips for a rapidly expanding and deregulated financial sector. Governments claimed this would create wealth for all. And for a while, nominal wealth did grow—though its distribution did not become fairer. However, greed got the better of the bankers, as they pushed increasingly riskier debt onto people who were clearly susceptible to default. This was the origin of the sub-prime housing crisis of 2007–08.

...

Yesterday the US Federal Reserve were forced by the courts to finally release which banks etc received benefits from the US government. It is a fancy list of the high flyers who said they could self-regulate and produce optimal outcomes. They were supported by the same economists who now are claiming deficits are bad and the government should engage in fiscal austerity. Hypocrites, liars and parasites – the lot of them."

Human evolution- drifting, not sweeping

Our genomes indicate relatively few genetic sweeps in the last 100,000 years.

Despite the lack of a medical revolution from our knowledge of the human genome, as yet, other fields are being revolutionized, including the study of human evolution. The ability to compare complete genomes from people of different lineages generates vast amounts of digital comparative data that can transform pre-history into history of a sort.

Humans are virtually clones, compared to most other organisms which have far greater genetic variation. Our genetic variation is small due to the very small population sizes we seem to have had for much of our evolutionary history, (perhaps even due to severe bottlenecks), leading to the genetic Eve/Adam reconstruction of single ancestors dating to maybe 250,000 years ago.

Since that time our genetic variation has been increasing apace, with most modern-day variation residing in Africa and much less outside, due to the later migration of small populations out of Africa, perhaps 50,000 to 90,000 years ago, combined with very limited interbreeding with resident homo cousins like the Neanderthals.

This variation (caused by mutation, then reduced by selection and drift) is the mother lode- it tells us which populations are more related to others, it generates the traits that differ between populations and between individuals, and it carries traces of the selective process itself, which is the focus of the current paper.

Imagine a strongly beneficial mutation arising that, say, provides complete protection against some disease like the plague. This mutation resides on, say, chromosome 8. After an epidemic of plague, all members of the (now reduced) population have this new mutation- the others have been killed off. (In the parlance, this mutation has now been "fixed" because there are no competing alleles at its locus.) This means also that all members of the population share the same chromosome 8 in its entirety. This has been a selective sweep, carrying along whatever other variation resided on that copy of chromosome 8 that had the disease-protecting variant, good or bad. This kind thing can bring along and expose recessive traits like the royal haemophilia, and it dramatically reduces genetic variation of this chromosome in the population, which can be tracked for tens of thousands of years.

On the other hand, imagine another trait with less dramatic effects. Perhaps which slightly reduces the severity of psoriasis in those who have condition that due to other factors in the genetic background. This trait may be beneficial in a few situations, but will never sweep itself or its neighbors to predominance or completion in the population. It will drift along, gradually rising in percentage within the population (if it has no untoward side effects, which would be rare, given the networked nature of the genome, actually). The key point is that the slowness of this process allows recombination to have its say.

Recombination happens on every chromosome in every generation, swapping parts of its arms between those inherited from each parent. Roughly speaking, the location of such swaps is random and at least one happens on every chromosome per generation, so very gradually over time, each gene variant in a population becomes neighbors with variants of nearby genes other than those it was born with. After roughly 200,000 years for humans, this mixing should be essentially complete and the variant tends to be no more associated with than the neighboring variants it was born with than one would expect by chance.

Crossover recombination, which happens on each chromosome, at least once per generation, mixing up the genetic variants on chromosomes throughout the population.

That process is what this paper was interested in- figuring out whether there were any islands of unusually low variation that bespeak selective sweeps by highly beneficial gene variants over the last few hundred thousand years in humans. The authors hail from something called the "1000 genomes project", though they only have 179 genomes to their name in this paper, claiming that is enough to start sifting through the available variation. They consider three sub-populations: Yoruba of Africa (YRI), European (CEU), and Asian (CHB+JPT). The goal was to find whether over the time since these populations split, (roughly 100,000 years for YRI vs the other two, and 23,000 years for CEU vs CHB+JPT), any gene variants went from low percentage to become fixed (i.e 100%) in only one lineage.

Unfortunately, most of the more statistical data presented in this paper is stunningly hard to interpret and present. I also doubt that it means as much as they make it out to mean. But I will take a stab with one emblematic graph. Skip the next paragraph if you are in a hurry!

For this graph, the authors have isolated all exons of the human genome and conceptually centered them at the X-axis midline. Then across the local region, (X-axis in centimorgans, a unit of genetic distance), they graph on the Y-axis the diversity of the populations they have sampled. This tends to be lower in highly conserved areas like exons and higher in outlying areas. This diversity is normalized to (divided by) the difference between the canonical human genome and the sequence of rhesus monkey, which should in principle cancel out the variations due to conservation of protein-coding genes and other typically conserved elements.  Note that the diversity of the African population samples (green) is substantially higher than that of the European (orange) or Asian (purple) population samples. The authors argue that the central troughs are signs of specific directional selection that has affected the human linage differentially from the normal maintenance or purifying selection that would have been in common between the human and rhesus genomes. The main result is that the troughs they see are very narrow- signs that this directional selection dragged along very little of the surrounding genomes, where diversity remained high. Which is to say- genetic sweeps were very uncommon, on average.

The main result, aside from the sorts of somewhat dubious graphs shown above, was that there are very few fixed differences between their sampled populations- only four fixed amino acids in the entire genome that differ between the African and European population samples. For comparison, there are about 40,000 human-specific fixed amino acid changes between chimpanzees and humans (split for 5 million years), of which 10 to 20% are estimated to be selectively significant. So one would have expected to see 800 fixed changes in the 50,000 to 100,000 years since the African/European split.

Unfortunately, the authors focus on amino acid changes, (apparently out of convenience), totally missing the more important and frequent loci of evolutionary change in regulatory regions. They are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, really, and don't have or offer a good idea how big the whole iceberg is. Additionally, a small amount of genetic flow between populations, as might have been transmitted through the bordering regions of North Africa and Arabia, could have severely reduced the fixation of variants that had otherwise become established in their respective geographic regions.

Nevertheless, this illustrates the overall tiny level of genetic difference among contemporary human populations. It also implies that whatever evolution and differentiation was going on in the protein-coding regions they focus on, it was almost entirely confined to slowly jiggering the frequencies of alleles present in a population rather than rapid revolutionary replacements of an old gene variant with a shiny new gene variant. Even with the limited genetic variation that humans posess, significant phenotypic variation is evidently possible with virtually no population-level 100% differences. This undoubtedly reflects complex traits influenced by many genes whose interrelations make change both slow and genetically hard to track.

"An important implication is that in the search for targets of human adaptation, a change in focus is warranted. To date, selection scans have relied almost entirely on the sweep model, either explicitly (by considering strict neutrality as the null hypothesis and a classic sweep as the alternative) or implicitly (by ranking regions by a statistic thought to be sensitive to classic sweeps and focusing the tails of the empirical distribution). It appears that few adaptations in humans took the form that these approaches are designed to detect, such that low-hanging fruits accessible by existing approaches may be largely depleted."

So, human evolution seems to have slowed down in recent times, at least with regard to sweeps by strongly beneficial variants. I would guess that this is due to our rapidly increasing population sizes over this time, which tends to preserve variation and forestall fixation, at least on a short-term basis. It may also be a testament to our frolicsome tendency to interbreed widely, preserving variation in the face of wars, famines, diseases, genocides, and calamities generally.

• Republicans are seeking even less regulation over the financial industry, in service to crony capitalism.
• Ditto from Krugman ... on mortgage fraud and other criminal activities. 
• Victimization narratives know no bounds, really.
• Fascinating analysis of self control, anarchy, religion, and conservatism.
• Guess who is on the wrong side in Africa?
• More on financial fraud:

"Indeed, accounting control fraud is finance's “weapon of choice” in much of the developed world because it is the superior solution to the tradeoff between the risk of being sanctioned for looting and the rewards from looting. Even the most powerful bank CEO faces a grave risk of being imprisoned if he sticks his hand in the till and steals $10,000. If, instead, he uses accounting control fraud to loot the bank of $50 million he has an excellent chance of never even being prosecuted."

• How's that trickle-down economics doing?
• Cello quartet? Yes!
• Bill Mitchell quote of the week:

"It doesn’t take too much to know that if a nation sacrifices millions of dollars of potential income per day because it keeps millions of its citizens unemployed that it is not using its resources optimally. When you do the sums there is no greater inefficiency than mass unemployment."

Plato is unreal

Abstract ideas are our creations, however much we want to make them into absolutes and deities.

"Platonism describes idea as prior to matter and identifies the person with the soul. Many Platonic notions secured a permanent place in Latin Christianity." - Wiki

As a non-philosopher, it may be slightly presumptuous to dismiss the founding philosopher. But something really needs to be said. Plato and his school were obsessed by the abstract- by forms and ideas. The idea(!) is that abstractions are real-er than real, since we need ideas to make sense of sensations. They paid homage to the soul as the ideal figment of man, and to idealized forms of the universe as the shape or expression of god. Christianity, formed out of the meeting of Greek philosophy and Jewish theology, lapped all this up, treating Plato as a church father who led the way towards making the metaphysical and the supernatural into respectable intellectual topics. But Plato was wrong.

Who makes forms? Nature doesn't. Nature can (sometimes) be described using formal mathematics. We can abbreviate its vast clockwork using abstract ideas. But they are only helpmeets and makeshifts to make up for our paltry cognitive capacities. They are our creations, confined to our minds and writings. We discover them in the sense of developing those ideas the most efficiently describe large collections of phenomena. But we don't discover them in the sense of going to Antarctica to discover new equations. They are found in our heads, and there they remain.

It is frankly bizarre that people could get so carried away with the power of abstract thought, (their own or that of others), that they project these powers onto the universe at large, characterizing it as a giant computer, or as a "thought" of a deity. And go far as to deprecate the very reality they are faced with, regarding it as less real than the true realities that are hidden behind in the shadowy realms of mathematics, celestial spheres, simplifying concepts, and the rest.

What does this amount to? It is the oldest form of thought in the book- magical thinking, which sees hidden forces, agents, spirits in all the vexing phenomena of our world. This is not to say that phenomena can't be analyzed ... where would we be without germ theory, geology, or Newtonian physics to make sense of the bewildering chaos around us? But never have we come face to face with what we most desired and feared- that vengeful deity or merely conscious being that, to be frank, sprang entirely from our own imagination.

Plato cleaned this up in his image as forms rather than gods, but the same process was at work- the projection of human capabilities and motivations on the canvas of reality. So, isn't the quest of physicists for a grand unified theory of everything an indication that he was on the right track? Wouldn't the ultimate reduction of physical reality into, say, an enormous Lie group, or a tiny string, vindicate the Platonic position? No it wouldn't, because such an abstraction, enormous as its explanatory power would be for us, wouldn't change the reality before us.

Biology has taught us the dangers of casual projection in place of detailed empirical engagement when dealing with bizarre, even alien, technologies. How much more inscrutable is the fabric of the universe? Whatever its cause and nature, it would be madness to assume that it follows the outlines of psychological projections which have been consistent over millennia, persistently invoking a thinking, emotional, sentient, powerful, intelligent, and caring, etc... being.

If forms were really the real reality, then we should be able to stretch reality into new shapes by altering those forms. Admittedly, this is the ultimate magical thinking, but it follows directly from the Platonic argument (as well as all the related theologies of prayer, intercession, etc.). If, on the other hand, the forms we use to describe reality are mere desiterata of our mental mechanics while reality exists outside them, not caused by form or embodying form, but capable (sometimes) of being represented through forms and formalisms... then the empirical reality is what we get, adamantly resistant to formal manipulation.

And what is the cause of this reality that we can abstractly understand by our formalisms? Is it something / someone which thinks, and whose thoughts actually conjure reality in elegant mathematical relations? This again is a projection from our mode of understanding onto the world. Biology has taught us the dangers of casual projection in place of detailed empirical engagement when dealing with bizarre, even alien, technologies. How much more inscrutable is the fabric of the universe? We simply have no idea what its ultimate cause is or was. While we can be thankful that it exists, there is no reason to think that there is anything cognizant at its core, let alone cognizant of us, much as we may wish to please it and understand it.

• A historian goes viral on the GOP.
• Notes on age discrimination.
• Extreme rhetoric, irresponsible politics, and concealed weaponry- precursors to political breakdown.
• GE- Not only pays no taxes, but gets money back from the IRS. A study in corruption.

"The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion."

... "... have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009."

• Disaster theology, Japan edition.
• Bill Mitchell quote of the week, courtesy of Joseph Stiglitz:

"The fact that countries with central banks that were not independent performed so much better than some of those that were—partly because the latter were “cognitively captured” by the financial markets that they were supposed to regulate—should perhaps lead to rethinking of doctrines concerning central bank independence."

Memory on my mind

Memory storage in the brain happens simultaneously in the hippocampus and cortex.

Despite the continuing hold that supernaturalism, soul-ism, and related theistic sentiments have over much of the population, to those scientists working on the mind and consciousness, its physical nature is obvious and underpins a rich program of research.

One key to consciousness, of course, is memory, which, along with direct sensation, emotion, and whatever else bubbles up from unconscious processes, make up its contents. Sensations as well are now understood not as mechanical readings of outside input, but as template-filling exercises strongly structured by our prior experience and expectations- i.e., our memories. And emotions are increasingly characterized to have complex hormonal and anatomical sources within the brain, also strongly tied to memories, many of which are themselves unconscious.

For instance, in the paper under review this week, rats learn about what is good to eat or not by smelling the breath of another rat who has just eaten that food. Give one rat some tasty, aromatic cinnamon, and its housemates rapidly learn about it as well, and remember that goodness (if that is what the first rat thought about it) for the rest of their lives. We are all each other's taste testers, apparently!

Memory formation is currently theorized to begin in the hippocampus as short-term storage, before being deposited in the cortex for long-term storage. This model arose from studies of humans and other animals with lesions indicating that if the hippocampus is absent or disconnected, no memories form at all, while if its connections to the cortex are severed, no long-term memories are formed, though prior long-term memories are retained and short-term memories form briefly (weeks to months) as well. Some forms of immediate short term, or working, memory (like recalling phone numbers and word lists) escape this effect and are not dependent on the hippocampus at all.

The transfer mechanism between the hippocampus and the cortex is currently believed to involve sleep and dreaming, where memories are replayed, perhaps in substantially speeded-up form, reinforcing their connections and salience in the cortex.

"Replay of encoding-related activity during phases of sleep has emerged as a core mechanism for driving the structural changes within the hippocampal-cortical neuronal networks."

And what is the ultimate physical engram of memory? This is thought to be the neuronal synapse, whose structure is plastic over long and short time spans, and whose structure / connection is reinforced by electrical activity in the basic Hebbian learning hypothesis. This current paper also engages in some molecular wizardry to manipulate synaptic structural change and thence either enhance or cancel memory formation in rats.

The interesting finding in this paper is that cortical involvement is key for this type of memory in rats from the very start, not just after some weeks of residence in the hippocampus, as the prior theory had it. To figure this out the experimenters used a somewhat shocking technique of injecting the respective areas of the rat's brains with an inhibitor of synaptic transmission (CNQX) for various windows of time. So, if they blocked the hippocampus at the start of the 30-day period, no memory of the food smell occurred at the end. Conversely, if they blocked the frontal cortex in the second half of the 30-day period, the memory was reduced by half. Some key experiments are diagrammed below:

Direct brain injection of a synaptic transmission inhibitor (red) vs control fluid (gray) into the orbital frontal cortex at the time of learning (day 0) eliminates long-term memory (30 days) of the social food interaction (this time with cumin), but not the short-term memory (7 days).

Double learning test, where one inhibitor injection eliminates memory of the taste learned simultaneous with drug, but not the one learned a week beforehand.

What they found was that blocking nerve transmission in the frontal cortex during the early time (days 0 to 12) also dropped memory formation by half at the end of 30 days. They claim from this that the hippocampal-first model of memory formation may be incomplete, and perhaps nascent cortical memory is laid down at the very start, during or after the original experience, but requires reinforcement over the ensuing weeks from the hippocampus to become a long-term memory.

"This finding identifies early cortical tagging as a potentially critical process reponsible for the progressive embedding of enduring memories within cortical networks."

The experimenters supported their theories on the cellular and molecular levels by mapping synaptic morphology and numbers, intracellular golgi complex concentrations, and histone modifications in among  neurons otherwise tagged as active in the dissected rat brains, all of which are known to correlate with memory formation. They claim that the single learning trial (of 30 minutes) conducted in each experiment significantly increased measurements of these indexes in their rat's brains. Which perhaps goes to show that these rats, housed in individual plexiglass cages, were leading stultifyingly boring lives otherwise!

In addition, they applied drugs locally into the cortex that are known to alter memory formation at the cellular level, (either inhibiting or activating histone modification enzymes) at selected times; in this case at the same time as the learning session. Memories established by the social food preference learning exercise could be eradicated (or enhanced) by this pharmacological intervention, showing that while the hippocampus is sufficient for memory recall at early times (1 to 2 weeks), memory formation in the cortex depends not only on late events, but early ones as well.

Test of memory enhancement with sodium butyrate (inhibitor of histone deacetylases). Injection into the orbital frontal cortex at the time of learning significantly enhances the same type of memory that the synaptic inhibitor eliminated, thirty days later.

The main message I took from this is that the study of memory is getting remarkably detailed. Theories are becomming more refined, spanning from the behavioral and anatomical to the molecular levels, and are tested with more intricate and bizarre methods. The results are consistent with mechanistic theories of memory storage and retrieval, while being disputed and adjusted in many details as experiments go on. It is amazing, really to see this progress.

One has to ask, however, what goes on in rats getting cortical infusions of a synapse blocking agent? Were they conscious? Were they even alive? Apparently so, but these methods seem rather extreme and prone to a lot of unintended consequences. The methods section of this paper reiterates that the drugs were precisely delivered in quite small amounts. And their location and activity were verified on autopsy by staining the brains for gene expression patterns characteristic of neural and synapse activity.

In the end, a great deal remains unknown. Assuming that the Hebbian model is basically correct, how are the network engrams (i.e. memories) called up at will? Does any associating thought or sensation lead the brain to re-animate the stored memory, injecting into the stream of active thoughts? Does calling it up automatically reinforce it, or does something else have to happen, like new cognitive or emotional associations? What is the form of sleep/dream replay that reinforces memory between the hippocampus and the cortex? And of course, how do memories relate to consciousness- do they "enter" it, or do they constitute it?

• Basic brain anatomy video.
• Nuclear disaster, or climate disaster?
• We need a Tobin tax, and not just on currency speculation.
• Are scientists ready to take over the mantle of spirituality in the West?
• Bill Mitchell ... Writes a fine piece in the Nation.

"Under the gold standard governments had to borrow to spend more than their tax revenue. But since 1971 that necessity has lapsed. Now governments issue debt to match their deficits only as a result of pressure placed on them by neoliberals to restrict their spending. Conservatives know that rising public debt can be politically manipulated and demonized, and they do this to put a brake on government spending. But there is no operational necessity to issue debt in a fiat monetary system. Interestingly, conservatives are schizoid on the question of public debt: public borrowing provides corporate welfare in the form of risk-free income flows to the rich because it allows them to safely park funds in bonds during uncertain times and provides a risk-free benchmark on which to price other, riskier financial products."

You can't take it with you

A modest proposal: tax estates at 100%

It always strikes me as funny how Republicans cry on about freedom, the opportunity society, and everyone pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and getting only what they work for & deserve. But when it comes to their own children, no expense or trust fund is spared. The principle of individualism takes a back seat to a distinctly socialistic distribution of wealth without regard to merit or virtue, the criterion of blood trumping all others.

While this is without question instinctive and in accordance with the most hallowed aristocratic traditions, it hardly accords with the professed ideology of the right, which celebrates the self made, the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the up-from-poverty Horatio Alger stories. Leaving aside the typically dubious methods of acquiring such nouveaux riches, the vieux riche are rather the opposite- unemployed, coddled, Paris Hilton ... need we say more? The best that can be said by way of justification is that they share some of the genes of the originating generation, if one sets store by that kind of inheritance. Or that they faintly echo the dreams of their progenitors, who, despite being dead and gone, deserve our continuing gratitude.

So in order to supply all the character-building and innovation-encouraging opportunities heretofore denied to children of the rich, I'd propose that all children start life out of the same gate, provided with all the opportunities we can collectively and fairly give them, along with the healthy need to take advantage of them. Each would make his and her own way in the world. In short, each would have to work.

We could begin to provide this opportunity by making the estate tax 100%, eliminating the corrupting influence of inherited wealth. Such a tax should net upwards of $200 billion per year. Perhaps not quite the vast sums we need to fund the whole government, but a definite boost to programs needed to provide all children the opportunities and education needed to have a proper start in life. Gifts and other forms of intergenerational transfer would likewise be prohibited over nominal levels, to make the playing field of life as fair as possible. While I am at it, elementary and secondary schooling would become similarly egalitarian, with private schools either eliminated or opened to all students without financial restriction.

The last century has seen a truly remarkable sea change in the opportunity structure of higher education in the US and Europe. Academic and personal merit has gained substantial ascendance over breeding and money. Trust fund students still get inordinate attention, but financial aid has enabled high achievers from all backgrounds to get excellent educations in the finest schools, with meritocratic standards like standardized test scores opening many doors to the unpropertied and un-networked.

A no-inheritance revolution would extend this opportunity-generating process, making our society fairer, more focused on the many public goods involved in providing opportunity to the young, and better able to nurture and benefit from everyone's talents. It would also make us less susceptible to the kind of entrenched power that flows from old money- from the creeping re-establishment of aristocracy, if you will. The New World should lead the way in repudiating this inherited vestige of Europe- one of its very worst traditions.

Indeed, a thousand years hence, this may be one of those things that people look back at in sage disappointment, as we do at slavery in ancient Rome. That we prideful "moderns" still adhered to the old rules of blood inheritance, ate the carcases of dead animals, and burned fossilized carbon till we choked on it.

Would inequality remain? Huge amounts would indeed remain, from social and professional networks to more or less enriching home environments and genetic endowments. The advantages of the advantaged would still be incalculable. But perhaps without unearned and undeserved wealth to look forward to, all children would on average have a brighter future, and children of wealth could embody those values their class so prizes, of self-reliance, ambition, and hard work.

• A plan for progressive taxation.
• How rich can someone get? And what is the point?
• How one aspect of privatization screwed up the mortgage industry and fleeced the public.
• Afghans are in negotiation with this?

"Over the past several years, the Taliban have savagely attacked tribal leaders who oppose Taliban rule in the tribal areas and the greater northwest [of Pakistan]. Tribal opposition has been violently attacked and defeated in Peshawar, Dir, Arakzai, Khyber, and Swat. Suicide bombers have struck at tribal meetings held at mosques, schools, hotels, and homes."

• Pakistan is on fire ... and Islam as the fuel.

"The religious fanaticism behind our assassinations is a tinder-box poised to explode across Pakistan," -Zardari 

• Skidelsky on Ricardo, Osborne, and austerity.
• GOP knows no bounds in meanness towards the poor and unfortunate. The rich are the only ones you can trust with money, after all!
• Bill Mitchell quotes of the week:

"In relation to today’s blog we should understand that government deficits are the norm and they generally never pay back their debt (overall).

...

These economists essentially lead sad professional lives. They bunker down in their offices and doodle away with mathematical models that are largely banal representations of some obscure untested assumptions about human behaviour and motivation which the other social science disciplines and relevant research show to be inapplicable."

And:

"The only “pressing policy question” relating to “fiscal space” is that there are millions of people unemployment who could be engaged productively generating income and feeling better about themselves.

Unfortunately, that is not the “hotly debated topic” and that is because economists like this lot have a completely warped sense of priorities and a mistaken understanding of how the monetary system actually operates."

Socialism - Si!

We live in a socialist country and have for a long time.

One of the many scarewords of the right is "socialism". Obama is a socialist, Nancy Pelosi is socialist, Government reform of health care is socialism, except for Medicare, which is OK. However what we should really be worried about is totalitarianism, not socialism. The banks didn't mind a bit of socialism over the last few years, nor does the miltary get dinged for its entirely socialistic structure and practices. No, the danger is the health of our political system, which the right has done far more to damage in recent decades than anyone else.

The "socialism" debate is really about more or fewer public goods. Socialism is all about public goods provided on the basis of citizenship or other merits like educational potential. In contrast, Laissez faire is all about private goods sold to those willing and able to pay... the highest bidder. There is no question that laissez faire is a great way to distribute many goods- those that are exclusive, privately enjoyed and consumed, with no further socially redeeming qualities. Like toothpaste.

The right-ward view, most thoughtfully expounded by Friedrich Hayek, maintains that private goods are the most important, and every attempt to provide goods in non-laissez faire fashion ultimately fails because "government is the problem" ... it is inefficient, sclerotic, corrupted, etc. Corporations could never exhibit such blemishes. Corporations are always cleansed and policed by Darwinian competition, while the state's ultimate regulation, by its voters, appears to these thinkers to be untrustworthy and ineffective- fundamentally less effective than the discipline of the market.

Such proponents grit their teeth and accept the necessity of a bare minimum of public goods- police, military, maybe a legal system. But they are deeply suspicious of every good that could conceivably be furnished in private fashion. A gold-based currency is only one of the most signal and bizarre examples. There are many others- oil companies should be private, as should postal services, power companies, educational institutions at all levels, drug testing, and pensions, to name a few.

The US has, however, never taking this view terribly seriously, and painstakingly raised itself out of bare laissez faire conditions by establishing public schools, a social security system, public research institutions, public roads, regulatory bodies, and countless other public goods. The question is not whether we might become socialists, but how much socialism we decide to practice.

Herewith, a few more of the great American public goods:

• The Panama Canal
• WWII (our side)
• The space program
• The Louisiana purchase
• Public broadcasting
• Rural electrification
• The internet
• Hoover Dam
• Railroad surveys and land grants
• Social Security
• The abolition of slavery
• National Parks
• Public elementary and secondary education
• Public colleges and universities

The fact is that public, common goods are the very foundation of our greatness in commercial, not to mention other, spheres. There is no question that US worker productivty, which all sides recognize as the fountain of future prosperity, depends in very large measure on public goods devised or supplied by the government- education, roads, legal structures, the internet, academic research, military security, sound money, ... the list is endless. Even an economic safety net is essential to maintain individual social and work potential, according to some!

To take a concrete example, the inefficient redundancy of the US cell phone industry is traceable to the ideological abdication of rational regulation and public provision. Due to a laissez faire approach to cell phone infrastructure, we now have four or more providers building totally independent national networks on conflicting technical standards, each with poor coverage.

We could have had a common carrier policy where single technical standards were used, common tower systems were installed, by the government directly or by a publicly regulated consortium like electric or other utilities, and different companies allowed to sell service in whatever form they wished. This would have created advantageous competition on an optimal technical and infrastructure basis (upgraded as needed, on a national scale).

Similarly, the TV cable and landline phone industries still labor under monopolistic and overly privatized structures due to the inability (for ideological reasons) of our government to grapple with the common goods and network aspects of these industries. Now we are slipping behind countries with more vigorous governments, mostly in Asia, more willing to provide public goods.

Health care is a similar problem, where purely private markets are simply defective and unworkable- for insurance, for treatment, and for larger social objectives. Obamacare, as the right likes to call it, is not only an important increment to public goods for US citizens, but is going to do more to reduce long-term deficits than any amount of token budget-cutting of parks and PBS by the Republican House.

Now, one asks.. what is the role of safety net, income support and similar redistribution schemes in this conception of government? Aren't they the opposite of proper government infrastructure provision? Well, it depends how you look at it. If happy, secure, and educated workers/citizens are the goal of a prosperous society, then such provisions certainly are part of the infrastructure picture- social, not physical. If cowed, cheap, and deskilled workers are the goal, then they are not. It is our choice.

Such social supports are broadly enabling in several ways. First, in giving workers some security that they and their parents are not going to be discarded at the end of their working lives, they enable somewhat more worker mobility and flexibility- a large advantage in an ever-changing economy. By providing income during economic downturns, they provide the automatic stabilizers needed to counteract the business cycle and prevent the kind of long-term unemployment we are looking at right now.

And insofar as they combine with progressive taxation, they also counteract the socially corrosive ratchet of the rich getting richer, which is inevitable in the laissez faire system and happens increasingly the more laissez it is, up to the limit of feudalistic serfdom + aristocracy. There is simply no way that total laissez faire ends up constructing a remotely egalitarian society. Socialism is required.

As an aside, it is notable that state and local taxation systems in the US are broadly and strikingly regressive, averaging twice the taxation relative to income on the bottom 20% as on the top 1%. Not a single state has a truly progressive system. Thus the Federal role needs to be that much more progressive to accomplish these social goals.

At the same time, Hayek had an important point, which is that key motors of private enterprise- the ability to address private needs by capitalizing on novel ideas, founding and growing companies, and meeting freely expressed demand in a stable, impartial legal system- that is all critical to both economic prosperity and personal liberty. But the key point is that markets are only part of the picture- they are by themselves inefficient and not broadly beneficial. They need a vast array of public goods to reach their potential, and beyond markets, we as citizens and humans need yet more public goods to reach our full human potential.

So government is not the problem. It is a solution, very often the only solution, to many of our most important problems.

Here is another public good to possibly add to the list above:

• A solution to global warming

The biggest challenge of our time is a clear public goods challenge- that of climate change. The long-term harms of CO2 acrue to everyone worldwide, while the present benefits acrue to whoever has the wherewithal to purchase and use fossil fuels (much of which many, like our roads, are themselves public goods). Rational policy would price these harms into our use now, making it gradually prohibitive versus all the private motivations that would lead us down the garden path to an unacceptable future.

One can liken this crisis to that of the US civil war, so ably covered by the historian's series in the New York Times. The civil war was a crisis of greed, in a nation of greed. The South knew that the future was not on its side, neither morally, economically, nor technologically. The slave trade had ended completely. Territories were increasingly resistant to the idea of expanding slavery. Southerners were living in the past- a Roman past, if one wants to be specific, more flagrantly inegalitarian and cruel than even the feudal model of medieval Europe. Out of sheer greed, the leading figures of the South thought it wise to shut their borders, maintain the peculiar institution, and hope that they could continue their barbaric ways, selling cotton to a world that had otherwise turned its back on slavery.

With global warming, we know what needs to be done. We know the stakes. We know that we won't have fossil fuel forever in any case. Yet we (the US political system, and the right in particular) keep our heads in the sand, hoping that it will all blow over somehow.

Well, it won't, and while the earth is heating up, animals are going extinct, and the weather gets worse, we are dithering, as the US did in the decades leading up to the Civil War, extending compromises against fate, engaging in morally dubious alliances to preserve this peculiarly addicting institution. For this too is at base a moral question- whether we leave a world hopelessly compromised and diminished from how we found it. The earthworms won't care. It is our human posterity that will care, and curse us for our profligacy.

• Tom Tomorrow, on punishing success.
• Meanwhile, what is going on in Wisconsin? It used to be such a nice state.
• Whence labor and progressive politics, without unions?
• Orwell wouldn't be so proud.
• Some more coverage on income inequality.
• The mind-boggling scale of the foreclosure crisis.
• Curiouser and curiouser, in the Catholic church.
• Are the Saudis next?
• Platitude of the day outdoes himself.
• Some good clues in Afghanistan.
• Bill Mitchell quote of the week:

"My profession is a total disgrace and our arrogance leaves us blind to reality. The latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics reinforces how far removed from reality my profession is. They think the most pressing problem in the US at the moment is the deficit and the public debt and downplay the importance of the entrenched unemployment. When pressed to explain this crazy set of priorities they invent a fantastic (as in fantasy) narrative about the dangers of deficits (which are?) and emphasise that unemployment is largely a voluntary choice by the individuals involved. The academic members of the profession teach their students this nonsense. They talk about the virtues of efficiency but ignore the huge losses that arise from unemployment.

...

The problem is that it is the likes of these characters who were incapable of seeing the worst recession in 80 years that was looming up before them but who are now lecturing us from behind the desks of their secure jobs that the deficit is the number one problem."

Ambassador from the Taliban

Review of "My life with the Taliban" by Abdul Salam (Mullah) Zaeef

Ever wonder what it's like on the other side of the news? What it's like to be a mullah? What it's like to help found the Taliban? What it's like to win a civil war? What it's like to be an ambassador? What it's like to be invaded by the US? What it's like to be taken prisoner by the US and rot in Guantanamo? If so, this is your book.

Deciding on today's title was quite difficult. Zaeef's book is so full of rich and ironic themes that many titles suggested themselves. I will pepper in some of the alternates as I go along.

Abdul Salam Zaeef grew up in rural areas in southern Afghanistan around Kandahar, attending madrassas, (thus becomming a talib, then a mullah), joining the Mujahideen against the Soviets, briefly running a mosque (thus becomming an Imam), helping to found the Taliban movement that took over most of Afghanistan, and rising to become its ambassador to Pakistan. After the US invasion, he was imprisoned and eventually shipped to Guantanamo for years of imprisonment, finally ending up as a private citizen in Kabul (under close supervision) in his early forties, writing his memoirs.

His story is well and briskly- occasionally movingly- told. Orphaned at a young age by his parent's deaths from illness, (his father was a minor Imam), then at age seven ripped from his younger sister by her arranged marriage, inspired at age fifteen to join the mujahideen and partipate in Afghanistan's brutal wars, and later shockingly abused by the US, he has plenty to be bitter about. The hold of a victimization narrative couldn't be stronger. The US is always killing women and children, while the Taliban is always seeking peace and friendly accord. [Studies in narcissism, Taliban division].

In Jungian terms, he seems quite unfamiliar with his own shadow side, which embodies the inevitable opposite of our positive qualities. Each of us has an individual shadow side, which we tend to project onto others rather than own up to ourselves. Cultures, too, take on communal shadow sides. The work of psychotherapy, in this school, is partly to bring the shadow to consciousness so that the individual can withdraw the shadow projections and start dealing with reality in more constructive ways, than simply to hate and trample on some object of projection- the scapegoat. So I would suggest that Afghanistan undertake a few decades of mass Jungian analysis(!). [Shadow over Afghanistan].

In fairness, principal policy makers in the US were hardly more reflective, as exemplified by the recent memoirs of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, both out to generally dreadful reviews. I would bet that, for an adventurous book club, the Rumsfeld memoir would make an intriguing pairing with Zaeef's!

But there is also love- specifically Zaeef's love of study, love of Islam, and love of his comrades in the great war against the Soviets. [We happy few, we Taliban]

"May God be praised! What a brotherhood we had among the mujahedeen! We weren't concerned with the world or with our lives; our intentions were pure and every one of us was ready to die as a martyr. When I look back on the love and respect that we had for each other, it sometimes seems like a dream."

Indeed, he recalls some earlier childhood preparation:

"We led our armies into fierce battles, slaying our enemies to defend our kingdoms. We ruled our land just like ministers and kings, at times demanding tax for the right of passage, or negotiating deals and truces. I think this is what all children do around the world."

I don't recall doing this, personally. At any rate, he also proclaims love of the Afghan people, and even includes a sugary plea to the US for better understanding in his preface and again at the end, accompanied by some other good advice.

"The world should realize how bad the situation for Afghans is, and how oppressed they are. People should be kind and compassionate to them."

His love of Afghanistan manifests in the crucial pivot of the book, in 1994, when the demobilized taliban faction of mujahideen around Kandahar, (one of many factions), with Zaeef in the lead, decide to take matters in their own hands against the local warlordism and banditry. They elect Mullah Omar as their leader, and set up a political network of mullahs that ousts each minor bandit in turn, gathering popular support and eventually taking complete charge of the area, including Kandahar. If the story ended here, (summary), it wouldn't have been such a bad turn of events. Zaeef doesn't say much about it, but the Taliban went on to fight a brutal war for the rest of the country, ousting the nascent regime of Massoud and Rabbani in Kabul (with the help of 20,000 Pakistani soldiers and floods of Saudi money).

The unasked question is- why? Why fight for the whole of Afghanistan, taking so much foreign support, committing massacres, and terrorizing the population? What was the big difference with the Northern alliance, headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Massoud? Why did the Taliban suddenly  become so bloodthirsty? Both sides were Muslim. Both were Afghan. Both had had plenty of war and suffering. The answer is they had fundamentally different views of Afghanistan's future- theocratic or democratic:

To take a quote from Shah Massoud:

"The Taliban say: 'Come and accept the post of prime minister and be with us', and they would keep the highest office in the country, the presidentship. But for what price?! The difference between us concerns mainly our way of thinking about the very principles of the society and the state. We can not accept their conditions of compromise, or else we would have to give up the principles of modern democracy. We are fundamentally against the system called 'the Emirate of Afghanistan.'" ... "There should be an Afghanistan where every Afghan finds himself or herself happy. And I think that can only be assured by democracy based on consensus."

Massoud was a committed democrat, and had progressive ideas about running Afghanistan, which were just coming to fruition after the civil war he fought from his position as defense minister in Kabul, against a variety of Islamists and other former mujahideen. Note also how Massoud mentions women as part of the democratic polity, something Zaeef never does. Zaeef hated him, as he describes upon hearing the announcement of a post-commnist government:

"Why did he appoint Massoud? Why would he take a decision like that? I knew [president] Mr Mujaddidi was a jihadi leader, who himself had fought against the Russians and the Communists. He had suffered and sacrificed in the name of God. Why would he now do something that would cause even more suffering? What was in his heart? In a split-second my happiness left me, my eyes turned red form the tears that came pouring down my cheeks and my cry turned into a scream."

Why indeed? I can only speculate, since Zaeef doesn't reveal his motivations (and may not know them, really). Massoud had certainly suffered and fought no less than the other mujahideen. Indeed, his northern region of operations was on the Soviet border. Perhaps it was simple tribalism, with Zaeef as a Pashtun shocked to hear of Tajiks (Massoud and Rabbani) running things. [Blood is thicker than religion]

But I think religion was actually more important. Zaeef seems to have had his heart set on the new government being a theocracy rather than a pluralist/democratic government that seemed to be excluding Islamist elements. His mujahideen faction in the war was the taliban- students from madrassas, mullahs, and others who chose an Islamist organization over the many other tribal and party-based mujahideen groups. A big part of their anti-communist motivation reacted to the Communist's aggressive modernization, in terms of women's rights, expropriation of large landholders, de-emphasis of religion, and the like. Clearly Zaeef was not alone, since the country promptly fell back into civil war, mostly due to the exclusion of, and brutality by, another Islamist group, the Hezbi Islami, or HIG.

Perhaps even more significant, Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani were Sufis, and there are few internecine hatreds so bitter as that between fundamentalist Sunnis and Sufis, who turn many of the violent and retrograde facets of Islam on their head. Sufis are accommodators, modernizers, and mystics. They are the anti-fundamentalists.

It is a sad story. We all operate from a position of great compassion for the people of Aghanistan and recognition of their right of self-determination. We can accept that Afghan revolutionaries and freedom fighters deserve high respect. They are Afghan. They sacrificed everything to free their country from the Soviets. They come from the people whom they seek to govern. Who are we from the West in comparison, when it comes to running Afghanistan?

But then one views the fruits of their efforts in self-government. The warlord period after victory over the Soviets was a Darwinian bloodbath. The Taliban's own rule, however effective in imposing brutal control, was a nightmare of a different sort. And finally, the Taliban's current efforts are once again singularly brutal and horrifying as they use mafia tactics to re-impose their rule over the poor people of Afghanistan. Has the cultural implant from the West over the last decade been enough to guide Afghanistan to a better future once we leave in a few years? It is very difficult to say.

But let us return to Zaeef's story. Mullah Omar gave him several ministerial posts in the new Taliban government (styled an emirate, under Omar as the Emir, I believe), culminating with the post of ambassador to Pakistan, easily Afghanistan's most important foreign mission, and eventually its only contact with the outside world. [Diplomat, mullah, patriot]. Zaeef characterizes Pakistan well, as the two-faced nation:

"Pakistan, which plays a key role in Asia, is so famous for treachery that it is said they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head so they can speak everybody's language; they use everybody, deceive everybody. They deceive the Arabs under the guise of Islamic nuclear power, saying that they are defending Islam and Islamic countries. They milk America and Europe in the alliance against terrorism, and they have been deceiving Pakistani and other Muslims around the world in the name of the Kashmiri jihad. But behind the curtain, they have been betraying everyone."

"The wolf and the sheep may drink water from the same stream, but since the start of the jihad, the ISI extended its roots deep into Afghanistan, like a cancer puts down roots in the human body; every ruler of Afghanistan complained about it, but none could get rid of it."

It is fascinating to hear about Zaeef's time as Ambassador, trying to ride the raging bull of the Taliban's international relations. He was a perfect person for the role, completely committed, yet soft-spoken and highly insightful when convenient. One of the greatest difficulties arrives in the form of a fatwa that damns and encourages the assassination of any Muslim who fights against the Taliban (as Musharraf and Pakistan were doing at the behest of the US). [Fatwa of the damned]. In the end, after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is ushered off the stage, Zaeef was, for good measure, personally betrayed by the Pakistanis, who imprisoned and handed him over to the US. [US respects diplomatic immunity. Not!].

This part of his story is deeply troubling, indeed mortifying, to read as a US citizen. We've all heard about the horrors of the US's foreign prisons as well as Guantanamo. The stupidity of treating people in bestial fashion, of expecting them to break under torture, of driving them insane, not to mention the moral depravity ... there is no sufficient way to characterize it, other than to recount it in detail, as Zaeef does for us here. [US respects human rights. Not!].

"Each brother who spent time in Camp Five [Guantanamo] looked like a skeleton when he was released; it was painful to look at their thin bodies. When Abu Haris returned from the camp, I did not recognize him; there was no resemblance between the man who had been taken away and the body that was returned. I was so scared by his appearance that sometimes I would even dream of him and wake up screaming. May almighty Allah release all Muslim brothers in good health and save them from the hands of the pagans and cruel people."

Not only have we made countless enemies in the Islamic world through this despicable behavior, we have hardly gained any information that we couldn't have through perfectly cordial conversations (this book, indeed, is a testament to Zaeef's willingness to talk!). And we have subverted our own legal system and standing in the international system, rendering Guantanamo's imates more hardened, more difficult to repatriate, and impossible to prosecute in any rational way.

Now Zaeef is back in Kabul, essentially under government watch and quietly twiddling his thumbs. But he has also apparently resumed his role as interlocutor for the Taliban, being whisked to Britain recently to confer with their foreign office.

For regular Afghans, the Taliban are unwelcome, as is the current fully corrupt Karzai government, as is the contest between the US and both of the above. What should we do? Zaeef's prescription is to go with the Taliban, which represents traditional and Islamic values from his vantage as a Kandahari and fundamentalist Mullah:

"Americans should know that they are no longer thought of as a people of freedom and democracy. They have sown the seeds of hatred throughout the world. Under their new banner they have declared a war on terrorism and terrorists, but the very term 'terrorist' is of their own making. The jihad against them will never stop as long as America doesn't take steps to correct its mistakes"

"Secondly, eliminating the word 'jihad' from the curriculum of the schools and some other subjects is extremely worrying. Jihad is a central concept within Islam, and understanding it is an obligation of every single Muslim."

"It is astonishing that after eight years, with tens of thousands of troops, warplanes and equipment, and a vast national army, facing down some estimated ten thousand insurgents, leaving some two-thirds of the country unstable, that foreign governments still believe that brute force is a solution to the crisis. And still they send more troops. The current conflict is a political conflict and as such cannot be solved by the gun."

"How much longer will foreigners who fail to understand Afghanistan and its culture make decisions for the Afghan nation? How much longer will the Afghan people wait and endure? Only God knows. One again, I pray for peace. Once again I pray for Afghanistan, my home."

One can easily draw out the many contradictions at work here. Zaeef prays for peace, but believes in jihad (real jihad, not some namby pamby Sufi spiritual jihad). He believes arms can not solve the political problems of Afghanistan, but apparently hasn't communicated this insight to his brethren in Pakistan.

This kind of self-blindness makes our common goal of preventing civil war and anarchy in Afghanistan extremely difficult. Perhaps mass psychotherapy won't be possible. Perhaps the Pashtun code and Islamic religion are both fundamentally violent. Perhaps the Afghan government is impossibly corrupt. Perhaps Pakistan is a relentlessly meddlesome and deceitful neighbor. Perhaps democracy doesn't map effectively onto the tribal and hierarchical social structure of traditional Afghanistan, which restricts the effective franchise only to the upper (male) tier of landholders/power brokers. (A bit like colonial America, come to think of it). It isn't going to be easy or pretty getting out of Afghanistan, but the surge of democratic sentiment sweeping the Muslim world has to make one hopeful.

• An interview with Abdul Zaeef.
• Sample of news conference in Pakistan, as ambassador and in denial.
• Some recent Talib propaganda.
• Someone else's review of this same book- taking a rather dim view, really.
• Complete rot at the top in Afghanistan.
• So Karzai hates us, naturally, and bumbles along.
• Hitchens flays the "human rights community".
• We are talking to the Taliban.
• Appreciating the dark side of our archetypal narratives.
• Historians sort of agree with Mullah Zaeef.
• A little history of Libya.
• USA is number... er ... 31.
• Non-islamic terrorism ... yawn ...
• Lincoln puts his foot down.
• Screw the workers!

"Recall that in recent years, we've witnessed two separate debates over two types of taxpayer-subsidized laborers. First, we saw a brief argument over how much taxpayer money should pay government-sponsored bankers on Wall Street. Now, we're having a more prolonged discussion about how much taxpayer money should pay public employees in our schools, police departments, fire departments and infrastructure agencies."

• Bill Mitchell quote of the week:

"The IMF helped cause the crisis. It has no credibility in lecturing us on what we should do to resolve it. Its notions of fiscal sustainability are based on meaningless financial ratios. It talks about being worried about jobs and poverty but then forces agreements on nations which unambiguously cause a loss of jobs and increasing poverty."