Jonathan Schell’s remembrance of former Defense Secretary Robert Strange McNamara begins with the story of Schell’s meeting with McNamara in 1967, at which he, then a young reporter for The New Yorker, briefed the secretary on what he had seen American forces doing in Vietnam. Schell would not hear from McNamara after that meeting, but declassified documents would subsequently reveal that the secretary had responded to it by attempting to discredit Schell’s story and block its publication. Schell mentions McNamara’s subsequent contrition for his Vietnam policies, stressing that the remorse he suffered was quite trivial compared with the what the people of Vietnam suffered during the war McNamara did so much to design. Still, Schell points out, McNamara was unique among high-level US policymakers of recent decades in publicly admitting error. The piece ends with Schell’s line “If there is a statue made of McNamara, as there probably will not be, let it show him weeping. It was the best of him.”
The Nation, 3 August 2009
Posted by acilius on July 16, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/16/the-nation-3-august-2009/
Knowledge is its own reward
In Consultation, by Joseph Schippers
Dostoevsky sometimes had his intellectual characters ask each other if they would rather be clever and miserable or stupid and happy. If they claimed they would rather be stupid and happy, he had them jeer at each other. “You’d have me believe that you could be like the simplest peasant woman, believe everything she believes, if it meant happiness?” Evidently he thought that clever people needed cleverness more than they needed happiness.
It seems that Dostoevsky would have been at home among rhesus monkeys. Ed Yong reports on an experiment in which rhesus monkeys were offered varying amounts of water and the opportunity to know how much water they were about to be offered. The monkeys showed an interest in knowing how much water they were about to be offered that had no connection with the water itself.
Posted by acilius on July 15, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/15/knowledge-is-its-own-reward/
An abuse of power?
He's still getting people worked up
Andreas Willi, professor of Greek at Oxford, takes issue with a letter addressed to the US president that has lately been gathering signatures from American classical scholars. Willi’s article can be seen in pdf form here.
WHOSE IS MACEDONIA, WHOSE IS ALEXANDER?
On 18 May 2009, 200 Classical scholars from around the world sent an open letter to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. This unusual action, and the contents of the letter, raise issues which may not have been considered by all those who have endorsed it, but which deserve consideration. In order to put the discussion that follows into context, it may be useful first to quote the body of the letter itself. [[1]]
***
Dear President Obama,
We, the undersigned scholars of Graeco-Roman antiquity, respectfully request that you intervene to clean up some of the historical debris left in southeast Europe by the previous U.S. administration.
Posted by acilius on July 15, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/15/an-abuse-of-power/
Red State Update
Thanks to “Kate L,” a frequent commenter on Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, for pointing us to this video:
Posted by acilius on July 10, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/10/red-state-update/
Banana Furniture
Posted by acilius on July 10, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/10/banana-furniture/
One of my friends knows someone who was in a horrible accident in Wyoming. His name is Jerad Hammock (not sure about the spelling) . He slipped on a rock and fell into a river. They have not found him yet so they do not know his condition. I am praying that he is found and that he is alive. Please join me if you wish.
Here is a beautiful song by Victoria Vox for Jerad and his family and friends.
Posted by believer1 on July 9, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/09/3424/
The USA and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan
The 16-30 June issue of Counterpunch carries a brief article by Andrew Cockburn about US government backing for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. In view of the concerns top American officials have expressed about the possibility that Pakistani nukes might fall into the hands of Bin Ladenite extremists, and of the fact that Dr. A. Q. Khan sold Pakistani nuclear material on an international black market, it is sobering to learn of the extent to which Washington has been involved in the development of Pakistan’s arsenal. When CIA analyst Richard Barlow tried to blow the whistle on the US government’s complicity in helping Pakistan acquire nuclear weapons in the 1980s, his career was ruined. Even the Khan affair doesn’t seem to have changed the CIA’s attitude; indeed, Khan’s shipping manager was a CIA agent. The article lists an impressive array of malefactors involved in the business of promoting Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. Some of them, such as an unnamed group of “Israeli arms merchants,” are accustomed to bad press; others, such as the Dalai Lama, usually get friendlier publicity.
Posted by acilius on July 8, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/08/the-usa-and-pakistans-nuclear-arsenal/
Don’t we all know how she feels?
Thanks to haha.nu:
Posted by acilius on July 8, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/08/dont-we-all-know-how-she-feels/
Warbots
wired.com
Posted by CMStewart on July 8, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/08/warbots/
An unlikely speculation about Mr O
The BBC’s outgoing North America editor, Justin Webb, writes:
The other fascinating development in recent days has been the end – or not – of the Obamas’ search for a church.
I have suggested it before but let me lay it on the line here in black and white: THE MAN IS A QUAKER. He may not yet know it but that is where his search should end. There is a lovely Meeting House somewhere around Dupont Circle as well so he could get there easily.
I think the meetinghouse Webb is referring to is the one on Florida Avenue, which was originally built so that Herbert Hoover, the first Quaker to occupy the US presidency, would have a grand place to worship.
Elsewhere, Webb identifies himself as “the product of a Quaker school so am incapable of lying.” So I suppose he must be in earnest, though I can’t seem to find why he thinks that Mr O is a Quaker. Perhaps it has something to do with his ethnic background. The country with the largest number of the world’s Quakers is Kenya, B. H. Obama, Senior’s homeland; though virtually all of them are members of the Luhya tribe of western Kenya, not the Luo tribe from which the elder Mr O sprang. Despite the similarity in the names “Luo” and “Luhya,” the two peoples are quite unrelated. So I doubt that would be it.
Posted by acilius on July 7, 2009
https://losthunderlads.com/2009/07/07/an-unlikely-speculation-about-mr-o/
Who writes this?
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 