The Balkan Yankee

From the article published by Ars Technica, the U.S. has created “a nationwide network of ‘fusion centers’—low-profile, highly secure sites where federal and state officials with top secret clearance meet in order to collect, analyze, and redistribute information on ‘all hazards, all threats.’ ” following 9/11 Commission Report recommendations on increasing cooperation between various agencies….

But now moving through the Virginia state legislature is considering passing a bill that opponents suspect the federal government is pushing the state to adopt “which will render all of the Virginia Fusion Center’s databases and records exempt from FOIA requests. The bill also proposes to make Fusion Center employees exempt from subpoena in civil actions related to ‘criminal intelligence information,’ and it would grant to call-in tipsters immunity to defamation and invasion of privacy claims. “

The really terrible thing about this is the potential for colonial era style “witch hunts” this system encourages by giving cover and immunity to disgruntled or revenge seeking members of the community.

One question I have about the Fusion Center system as it is in place now, is will this or has it already had an impact on California’s (or other state’s) Medical Marijuana Programs? It would be almost irresistible for the FEDs to use local police in disingenuous investigations aimed at sacking patients and providers… ESPECIALLY if they were free from scrutiny under the FOIA.

“I know the pundits, and I know what they say: The math doesn’t work out,” Huckabee said Saturday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. “Well, I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles. And I still believe in those, too.”

Any statistically quantifiable support for this nut-job is troubling indeed.

Cavuto asks Ron Paul the question three times and Dr. Paul nails it:

(paraphrased) C: Are you going to give back a contribution you received from a white supremacist?

(paraphrased) P: The reason I’m getting donations is because people believe in my message, not the other way around. Why would I give money back to someone who I think is going to use it amorally? My message is freedom, liberty, etc which lots of people agree with…

The question this makes me ask is why do most political candidates feel pressure to return money from donors with questionable views? The answer is that most candidates do not have a message that is shaped by their own convictions. There message is shaped by lobbyist groups, money, and which way the wind is blowing. Ron Paul sounds honest and rational speaking to Cavuto, and what he seems to miss that the moral question should have nothing to do with who gives you money, because in the hands of a moral person that would not have an impact on their policies or decisions.

Another gem from Adam Curtis in an interview with Errol Morris in 2005:

I believe that historical analogies are always wrong. This a long discussion, but, to me, the most dangerous thing about Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich is not the fact that Munich happened and it led to further Nazi aggression and so on and so forth, but that the example of Munich has been used to support thousands upon thousands of bad policies and inappropriate decisions. LeMay called JFK’s recommendation for a “quarantine” (that is, a blockade) in the Cuban Missile Crisis “worse than Munich”. Would nuclear war have been a better alternative? But nuclear war was averted by Kennedy’s policies. And thirty years later the Soviet Union collapsed without the need for nuclear war. Was LeMay right? I don’t think so. But again, the example of Munich was invoked to justify the invasion of Iraq. Appeasing Saddam, appeasing Hitler. The use of the Munich analogy does not clarify, it obscures. History is like the weather. Themes do repeat themselves, but never in the same way. And analogies became rhetorical flourishes and sad ex post facto justifications rather than explanations. In the end, they explain nothing.

Writer and Producer Adam Curtis in an interview with Errol Morris in 2005:

I’m very suspicious of this idea of a balanced version of history, All history is a construction – often by the powerful. What I do is construct an imaginative interpretation of history to make people look again at what they think they know. I like to ask people, “Have you thought of this?” Like zooming up in a helicopter and looking at the ground, looking at the world in a new way. Because I think that so much of this interpretation of events is a deadening repetition agreed upon by certain people, a sort of collectivity of news reports. And often it’s completely wrong. But somehow, they all agree on it. People criticized my film by saying things like, “Why aren’t you balanced? What aren’t you putting in the other views?” And my response was, “What if the other view is wrong?” That’s the real problem of the balanced view - what’s called ‘perceived wisdom.’ What if perceived wisdom’s wrong? What if – when you go and look at the evidence for sleeper cells in America – there doesn’t appear to be anything there? You know, that’s the difficult area. And so it becomes up to you to judge whether to go against perceived wisdom or not.

This is just one thought captured in a long and interesting discussion. Both of these film-makers are fascinating people. I love Curtis’s philosophy of looking at History as the unintended consequences of ideas. That’s an idea which resonates powerfully in The Century of the Self as well as The Power of Nightmares which is the subject of this interview.