One year on, 82 years on...

I've been reading Isherwood, and made a note to myself to copy out the section below.  Then, coincidentally, today's the one year anniversary, marked somehow or other, of Occupy Wall Street, and the helicopters were buzzing all about my office window.  So how could I not paste this here?  PP 48 of the New Directions copy of the Berlin Diary half of Isherwood's Berlin Stories:

We all three went to the balcony of Clive’s room.  Sure enough, the street below was full of people.  They were burying Hermann Muller.  Ranks of pale steadfast clerks, government officials, trade union secretaries - the whole drab weary pageant of Prussian Social Democracy - trudged past under their banners towards the silhouetted arches of the Brandenburger Tor, from which the black streamers stirred slowly in an evening breeze.

"Say, who was this guy, anyway?” asked Clive, looking down.  “I guess he must have been a big swell?”  

“God knows,” Sally answered, yawning.  “Look, Clive darling, isn’t it a marvellous sunset?”  

She was quite right.  We had nothing to do with those Germans down there, marching, or with the dead man in the coffin, or with the words on the banners.  In a few days, I thought, we shall have forfeited all kinship with the ninety-nine per cent. of the population of the world, with the men and women who earn their living, who insure their lives, who are anxious about the future of their children.  Perhaps in the Middle Ages people felt like this, when they believed themselves to have sold their souls to the Devil.  It was a curious, exhilarating, not unpleasant sensation: but all the same, I felt slightly scared.  Yes, I said to myself, I’ve done it now.  I am lost.

Amsterdam / Stew sync delayed realization

We returned from Amsterdam Thursday late afternoon, and Friday we aired ourselves out on 5th.  Sitting outside a cafe a livery car stopped for a light, and looking out the back window was Stew.  Wasn't until this morning that I remembered Stew's Amsterdam connection: Passing Strange. 

PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 100
October 25, 2011

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

PURPOSE OF 1969 NUCLEAR ALERT REMAINS A MYSTERY

For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose.  Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

Previous historical scholarship has inferred from selected declassified documents that the alert was somehow intended to communicate a firm resolve to end the Vietnam War by whatever means necessary.  (See "Nixon's Nuclear Ploy" by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, National Security Archive, December 23, 2002; and "The Madman Nuclear Alert" by Scott D. Sagan and Jeremi Suri, International Security, Spring 2003.)

But based on the classified record, that interpretation remains unproven and uncertain, according to the gripping new State Department FRUS volume on "National Security Policy" (pdf).

"The documentary record offers no definitive explanation as to why U.S. forces went on this alert, also known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Readiness Test," the editors of the FRUS volume said (Document 59).

"There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia" along the lines that previous historians have suggested.

The second proposed explanation is "that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute."  Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.

Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert-- before, during and after the event.

"It is difficult to measure the success of this operation," wrote JCS Chairman General Earle G. Wheeler to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird on November 6, 1969, "since... the objectives of the test are unknown."

"It seems prudent if maximum benefit is to be gained from an operation of this type that at least you and I and the senior commanders are informed of the objectives and goals," General Wheeler suggested (Document 92).

In the end, the secret U.S. military alert -- one of only a few such cases involving U.S. nuclear forces -- had little discernable impact.  "There has been no reflection of acute concern by the Soviets...," the CIA reported in an October 27, 1969 memorandum included in the FRUS volume (Document 89).  "There has been no reflection of the US military alert posture in Soviet or Chinese news media or diplomatic activity."

Of the small White House group that directed the secret 1969 alert, perhaps only Henry Kissinger remains alive and active.  He did not mention the alert in his memoirs, the FRUS editors noted, except perhaps in an oblique statement that the United States "raised our profile somewhat to make clear that we were not indifferent" to Soviet threats against Chinese facilities.

Normal

Am reading Don DeLillo's Point Omega, sitting in a car in the visitor's parking lot at the Maine State Prison (long story, short version) and I read:
"They were as normal as people could be and still be normal, she said. A little more normal, they might be dangerous."
Roger, that.
Sent via thingy

The other dough (D'oh!)

Homeland Security Newswire  posted an article today entitled D'oh! TSA Posts Airport Screening Procedures Online.  But that article has been, apparently, taken down.  Jeepers.

Sixty Symbols

Sixty Symbols: Videos about the symbols of physics and astronomy. U of Nottingham.

We got to see Oliver not hallucinate

The TED video of Oliver Sacks that I had over on the right side? We got to see him deliver a lecture on the same subj., expanded, at the NYPL Live doo on Monday. Great fun. How many people will each of us see in our lives who glow in quite this way?

Great Family Wine & Bottling Company

I've had the image on the left for quite a while - picked it up one day while browsing at Library of Congress, thinking I might use it on a wine label. This morning I was looking through files, saw it again, and focused for the first time on the address. Well, there must be a Union Street in every town. Or anyway, every town in the old industrial North. Still, I wondered: could it be Union Street in Brooklyn? My Union street?

Wella, wella, wella, plugged in '"Great Family Wine" & Bottling' to the goog, and where did it take me to but the fine library at Duke, where they have both the front and back of the card. Brought a tear to my eye. Been to the spot many a time. Happens, too, to be only a few doors from the childhood home of the mighty mighty Jimmy G., who cooks the world's best puttanesca for our yearly new-wine party (and where Jimmy G's own dad made his own home made wine.)

he say he makin' no promises...

and that is likely a good thing, as he ain't very good at keepin' 'em...
Mine doppelganger jehosaphat prayer appears to be resurrecting that odiferous, dust laden and cobwebbed old corpus of el chango tonto out here on the left coast, will wonders never cease. He make mention there of the work of a certain Clayton Call, Famous Rock and Roll Photographer (that few people have ever heard of...) and ju ju got to agree, katz und kitteez, check that site out...

Yet her article is a farrago

I have loved the word farrago since 1976 or so. Can't get enough of it. You just don't see or hear it around all that often.

Julian Sanchez uses it in an article, Perils of pop philosophy, the first section of which I understand almost none of. He even explains why I don't understand it:

Someone reading about an important finding in biology or physics understands full well that what they’re getting is the upshot of a complicated process of math-laden theorizing and experiment someone else has done. Summarizing a philosophical argument, by contrast, basically looks like doing philosophy.

Right on. And the rest of the article is a pretty good description of the cloud I live under that keeps me from posting anything that makes believe it's factual, other than what I had for dinner, where, and what I drank that made me pooku-pooki.

via /.

Yes, I ate the marshmellow, but I lived to tell the tale

I had heard about these studies, but to hear and see this video presentation by Joachim de Posada is a joy.

And, I have a story of my own to tell, which I remember whenever these kinds of issues come up (see video). I was spending a summer on campus, and it was hot. A philosophy nerd who was also there had a cantaloupe. I offered to trade an LP I had for the cantaloupe, which he though was absurd and kind of primitive and (immediate gratification and all that). We made the trade, and I was very happy. And the the philosophy guy never really took it in that I didn't like the LP.

as timely a list as you will ever see...

by way of the estimable m. woods & his wood s lot, courtesy of Salon
(once you get past that ad blip thingie),
The 13 people who made torture possible

Secrecy

Like I said, Simon suggested Keefe's Chatter, and Chatter has suggested Steven Aftergood. His blog, Secrecy News, is here.

Of course, some people do go both ways

(Scarecrow always said it best.)

NYT profile of Christopher Buckley by Sheryl Gay Stoleberg.
Andrew Sullivan pointing to Steven Waldman writing about Obama's social conservatism (no free love).

(Buckley's post on his leaving National Review. "[T]he only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.")

Yo, Krugster!

When I heard the news this morning that Paul Krugman won the Nobel for economics, I actually forgot that we don't really know the Krugster personally.  He doesn't live on the block or make wine with us or even come to family weddings.  But I reacted like something wonderful happened to a friend.  (That dispite his support for Hillary.)  

Begorrah. Ballyjamesduff

I don't know that I have the strength to relay what led to what, but trust me that there's been talk this morning of greased pigs on the block, and also of the vice presidential debate, and B has tried to get me to believe in a Miss America pageant once broken up by a tiarra wearing pig.  Well, along the line of fact checking (and I do not yet have verification of this event, and if you do, PLEASE SHARE IT), I've come across this wiki page on Ballyjamesduff, the first paragraph of which must once have been published as a surrealist novel. 

The secret war inside my lower bracket

Is there any trend over the course of the Bush presidency for which this graph would not suffice?

I've been whacking back and forth between Bob Woodward's The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008, and Todd Downs' Bicycle Maintenance and Repair.  Both will make it to my required reading list for the imaginary boy or girl.  I tend to read Bicycle Maintenance, which  I picked up because I had an annoying creak in my bottom bracket, at night in bed so as not to cause nightmares.  The crankarm bolts turned out to be way loose, and I've tightened them now, thank you, hows your mom, but there's still a little creak and I'm wondering if I waited too long to deal with this and whether the bottom bracket now needs an overhaul.  I don't have the tools to do the overhaul, and I can barely read a chapter of Woodward's book every morning without screaming.

United for Peace & Justice says the police are being abusive outside the RNC

Flashback. Flashforward. Email this morning from UFP&J saying:

We are sending you this message because the situation in St. Paul is very grave and we're concerned that the real story is not being told by the mainstream media.

Over the past few days, the heavily armed and extremely large police presence in St. Paul has intimidated, harrassed and provoked people; and, in a number of instances, the police have escalated situations when they used excessive force...

We are very concerned about what this all means about the right to protest, the right to assemble, and the right to have one's dissenting voice heard. We are worried about what it means about the growing militarization of our nation and the ongoing assault on the Constitution...

We urge you to call the Mayor of St. Paul right now...

Mayor Chris Coleman: 651-266-8510

And call your local media outlets to demand that they tell the real story of what's happening in St. Paul this week.

There's more. I didn't see it on their site, but it's likely there.

Four years ago we marched here in river city against the RNC. We were with the Ukes group. The main march was pretty mellow until it started approaching the Garden. The closer it got, the more tense and intense, and there was a palpable sense of violence in the air and on the ground, on both sides of the barricades. I remember wanting to get away from there as quickly as we could.

back from something slightly resembling a vacation...

some pleasant hours spent in the Santa Cruz & Monterey environs, but me back at chez juju now. Ourowndarnedself caught a couple of very interesting interviews on the tube that we recommend to thee, hope you have opportunity to view them both, perhaps choosing to seek out the books mentioned in the interviews.

First, from Charlie Rose, an interview with Philip Gourevitch alongside one viewed only minutes ago whilst watching Bill Moyers Journal,
an interview with Andrew J. Bacevich.
Via Tom Dispatch, this extra added bonus, penned by Andrew J. Bacevich, Is Perpetual War Our Future.

ten years ago...

yourstruly first became familiar with ms. james during the Mood Indigo years, we even exchanged notes oncet upon a time, and methinks the subject of the notes was March Madness related (ms. james was a hoopster herowndarnedself during her college years) -- ANYWAY...
happy 10 year anniversary Ms. James!
think back to where you were on this day 10-years ago and where you are in your life now. Are you any different? Do you have any regrets? If you got a do over, would you make the same choices?
damn, feelin' a decided lack of courage in revisiting that time in mine own life 10 years previous...