ShrinkWrapped

August and EMPs

As of tomorrow, I will be on blogging haitus.  Ever since Sigmund Freud established the precedent, Psychoanalysts have taken part or all of August off.  I will be taking some time off from work in August but in order to conform to Psychoanalytic tradition, I will take the entire month off from blogging.

I will try to catch up on my mail and all the comments to my blog that I have been unable to read, and also plpan to do some reading (of books!)

During the next month I will also be looking for evidence that might help to answer several important questions:

1)  What does Barack Obama actually believe in besides his own inevitability and the necessity of our country electing him in order to undo all sorts of harmful historical events?

2) Will Israel or the United States do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons?

As a corollary to #2, today Newsmax (not a non-partisan source, though the reporter, Kenneth Timmerman, has a reputation for reliability) has a very disturbing story available discussing moves that the Iranian regime has done which portend an EMP attack on the United States.  This is the ultimate asymmetric attack and the stuff of nightmares:

U.S. Intel: Iran Plans Nuclear Strike on U.S.

Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.

“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”

Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

The commission examined the Iranian tests “and without too much effort connected the dots,” even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so, Graham said.

The FDA is Trying to Kill You

Last week I did a careful cognitive evaluation on a 59 year old woman who I had been following in the clinic for the last two years.  She initially came to treatment in a severe depression which had led to her being unable to work or function in her usual day to day activities.  Her depressive symptoms included decreased concentration and attention which were reflected in diminished memory among other problems.  Her depression responded well to medication and psychotherapy and within 6 months she was back at work.  A month ago she had come in and complained of the return of problems with her memory, in the absence of any signs of depression, and I scheduled her for the re-evaluation. 

It is not at all unusual for 59 year olds to complain of memory problems.  The Neurologists have even come up with a name for the condition of decreased memory that accompanies aging: the Benign Forgetfulness of Aging.  Those of us who are experiencing such forgetfulness do not usually think of it as benign but compared to the accelerated loss of memory that accompanies dementia, the BFA is relatively innocuous.  We have also developed prosthetic memories (Google and other search engines) which ameliorate the benign forms of memory dysfunctional.

Ms. A was a highly competent woman who essentially held her extended family together.  She had always worked and despite some significant health problems managed her household and a fairly responsible job.

Unfortunately for Ms. A, her cognitive exam was quite troubling.  Beyond the usual issues of forgetting where she left her keys, Ms. A also would occasionally forget where she was and what she was doing there.  Forgetting an item you went to the store for is annoying, forgetting how to shop in the local market is alarming.  She was unable to do calculations and only remembered 1 out of 3 objects at five minutes.  There were a number of other findings that supported my conclusion that her memory deficits were real and most likely reflected an early dementia, most likely Alzheimer's Disease.

I referred Ms. A to Neurology for further work up, including a CT scan, and treatment but unfortunately the treatment options for AD are of minimal value and, for most people, do not appear to slow the progression of the illness in any appreciable way.

I described Ms. A because, fortuitously, Glenn Reynolds linked to a very encouraging report last night from the UK on a new treatment for Alzheimer's.  While Glenn Reynolds pointed out the good news, the article also implied of much of what has become wrong with the over-bureaucratization of the Medical field:

The Youth Vote and Hubert Humphrey

In 1968, the counter-culture was flush with fervor, passion, and glamor.  The youth of America were going to stop a war, end inequality, and bring peace, love, and happiness to all.  The embodiment of the pacifist, anti-war position was Eugene McCarthy.  He mounted such a successful challenge to Lyndon Johnson that Johnson decided not to seek re-election.  Hubert Humphrey, a good man and a long time figure of great stature among liberal politicians (who had become invisible as LBJ's VP*) eventually took the Democratic nomination. 

Prior to his stint as LBJ's VP, Hubert Humphrey was known as an impassioned liberal who pressed a legislative agenda based on progressive ideas.  His one failing as a nominee was that he could not bring himself to completely break with the policies of LBJ.  He supported the war in Vietnam and tried to hedge by explaining how he would end the war and bring the troops back home.  This did not appeal to the sensibilities of the anti-war absolutists, who wanted the United States out of Vietnam as quickly as possible, whatever the consequences. 

(Of note, most of the anti-war protesters were naive young people who did not understand the rationale for a Southeast Asian war and did not want to fight and die for such a distant cause.  Unfortunately many of the leaders of the anti-war groups were covertly anti-American and wanted nothing less than an American defeat.)

What happened in Chicago during the Democratic convention was instructive.  The disappointment felt by the young idealists at the nomination of Humphrey became transmuted into rage and the battles on the streets of Chicago ensued.  The Youth Vote never materialized in the fall.  The young handled their disillusionment by withdrawing from the political process and Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon.  Although Hubert Humphrey had been one of the strongest advocates of liberal policies, ie, he was a true progressive in all areas except in his tepid support of the war,  he was scorned as a war monger and considered to be indistinguishable from Richard Nixon by the youth voters. 

Young people tend to be idealists.  They lack the experiences of disappointment that leaven the desire for Utopian solutions that is ubiquitous in late adolescence and early adulthood.  One of the key developmental tasks of late adolescence is to resolve and surrender the powerful regressive wishes to return to a fantasied safer, more encapsulated world where there are no threats and no frustrations.  Such fantasies always lie at the heart of Utopian wishes; the young adult must learn to accept that people and the world are imperfect and are unlikely to ever become perfect.  Without such an emotional development, young people are particularly prone to become invested in charismatic politicians, who promise all and eschew compromise.  It is no surprise that college students have traditionally been among the greatest supporters of those who prove to be totalitarians.  (Consider the support among the young for such "great" liberators and leaders as Hitler, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Che, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and a long list of other tyrants.)

In a post this morning, Siggy links to an article which questions the wisdom of relying on and idealizing the "Youth Vote."

An Unexceptional Interview, Frightening Because it is so Mundane

Yesterday MEMRI TV posted a clip of Egyptian Muslim Preacher 'Amr Khaled from May 10, discussing the impending European Islamic majority.  As has become sadly typical of this kind of Islamic thought, 'Amr Khaled first claims that Europeans are ignorant of the Prophet and then exhibits the usual denial and projection we have come to associate with Islamist thinking:

Within 20 Years Muslims Will become the Majority in Europe; Enemies of Islam Want to Drive 30 Million Muslims out of Europe

Khaled: The Muslims keep having children, while the Europeans don't. This means that within 20 years, the Muslims will be a majority, which may have an exceptional influence on the decision-making. This makes other groups very angry, and they consider this to be very dangerous. These are the enemies of Islam, as we know full well. But the peoples of the West know nothing about the Muslims. Statistics show that 70% do not know who the Prophet of the Muslims is. The fact that Muhammad is the Prophet of the Muslims is not known to many people in the West. That's just one example.

I suspect most Europeans know quite well who the Prophet of the Muslims is, but may take issue with Khaled's conclusion that the growing European enmity to Islam arises merely from the fact of Islam's procreative vigor rather than Islam's specific characteristics that are antithetical to European concepts of freedom.  Khaled alludes to this in the next section of the interview:

Interviewer: So you are making a very important claim – that there are intentional and premeditated provocations in order to drive the Muslims out of their current home – Europe.

Khaled: Yes. When the offensive cartoons first appeared, it was strange to see that the button they press [to provoke] the Muslims – the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, which are sacred to them – is the same button that is sacred to the West – freedom of speech. What is sacred in the West – freedom of speech – is their equivalent of the Koran... That is what they hold sacred. The West is attacking what the Muslims hold sacred by means of what the West itself holds sacred.

Note that Khaled implies the incompatibility of Islam and the West in this statement.  At the same time those Muslims who commit atrocities are merely making mistakes, mistakes which the Europeans seize upon as pretexts for their campaign against Islam:

Richard Cory's America

In 1966 Simon and Garfunkel adapted Edward Arlington Robinson's Richard Cory to music and recorded it for their Sounds of Silence album.  That was my first introduction to the enigma of Richard Cory:

He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch,
And they were grateful for his patronage and thanked him very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.

Arlington's version was no more informative:

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town, 
  We people on the pavement looked at him: 
He was a gentleman from sole to crown, 
  Clean favored, and imperially slim. 
 
And he was always quietly arrayed,
  And he was always human when he talked; 
But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 
  "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked. 
 
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, 
  And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything 
  To make us wish that we were in his place. 
 
So on we worked, and waited for the light, 
  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; 
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

The question of why someone who apparently had everything that people desire, "power, wealth and style", would commit suicide animates much Psychiatric work.

The poem came to mind when I was reading Dick Meyer's piece at NPR, Apocalypse News? which concerned the pervasive unhappiness of Americans in the face of our incredible wealth and comfort:

Though most all of the objective conditions of American life have improved since the 1960s, Americans have a sustained crankiness.

Barack Obama, Intellectualization, and Action

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter 6 (1865).

There has been much made in the right leaning blogosphere about Barack Obama's "flip flops" as he has moved to the center once having secured the nomination of the Democratic party.  On the left side of the blogosphere, as well as in the MSM, this has most often been ignored, though the extent and import of his contradictions has begun to make an impact on some of the MSM.  There is a good reason, beyond partisan politics, that so many on the left have no problem with Obama's flexibility on issues, even on issues of principle and ideology. 

Barack Obama is self-identified, and certainly seen by his followers, as an intellectual.  His brilliance elevates him above the mundane.  Most politicians need to attend to the most prosaic of their constituents concerns (Al D'Amato, a very conservative former Senator from very liberal New York was known as "Senator Pothole") but Senator Obama soared on lofty wings of rhetoric far above the field and what elevated and propelled Barack Obama, and elevates and propels him now, is his facility with words. 

Intellectuals earn the disdain of the hoi polloi honestly.  They value words much more than they value deeds. 

[This is, of course, a generalization and there are, of course, exceptions.  For example, left wing intellectuals have always idealized those who put their ideology into practice.  Revolutionary violence has been traditionally admired by those intellectuals who are not willing to actually risk anything more than paper in their support of "the revolution."  The romance of revolutionary violence can live on long after the revolution has descended into political murder and totalitarian reactionary power; see Che Guevara.]

In the past the over-valuing of words compared to actions could be understood to exist within certain reasonably clear constraints. 

Reason to Believe

If I listened long enough to you
Id find a way to believe that its all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe.

Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart

While reading about the attack by the Taliban on US forces in Afghanistan during which 9 American servicemen lost their lives, Rod Stewart's Reason to Believe, a song that was popular over 30 years ago, came into my mind.  The song was about love betrayed and I was hearing it while reading accounts of the desperate battle of our men under attack by an overwhelming force at a lonely outpost near the Pakistani border. 

Through a chain of internal associations I recognized that the song captured my feelings of betrayal at how the battle was depicted but even more strongly a powerful reason to believe in our troops.  First, the betrayal, from the New York Times:

Taliban Breached NATO Base in Deadly Clash

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.

The attackers were driven back in a pitched four-hour battle, and they appeared to suffer scores of dead and wounded of their own, but the toll they inflicted was sobering. The base and a nearby observation post were held by just 45 American troops and 25 Afghan soldiers, two senior allied officials said, asking for anonymity while an investigation was under way.

With nine Americans dead and at least 15 injured, that means that one in five of the American defenders was killed and nearly half the remainder were wounded. Four Afghan soldiers were also wounded.

American and Afghan forces started building the makeshift base just last week, and its defenses were not fully in place, one of the senior allied officials said. In some places, troops were using their vehicles as barriers against insurgents.

The militants apparently detected the vulnerability and moved quickly to exploit it in a predawn assault in which they attacked from two directions, American officials said.

It was the first time insurgents had partly breached any of the three dozen outposts that American and Afghan forces operate jointly across the country, according to a Western official who insisted on anonymity in providing details of the operation.

There was nothing obviously noxious about the story, yet I could not shake the feeling of betrayal.  I understand that I do not like how the New York Times presents their news but there was something troubling about the story even taking their bias into account.  When I read Bill Roggio's account of the battle, the feeling crystallized.  The New York Times report was a betrayal of the worst kind.

Concerns About Obama

Barack Obama remains the heavy favorite to become our next President on the Intrade Prediction Market.  If he wins, most of us should hope that he will be a successful and wise President.  He has many gifts, including Presidential stature and a stunning ability to give a scripted speech.  He also hints at some significant liabilities, including poorly conceived remarks in unscripted situations and an off-hand arrogance of which he appears unaware.  At the same time, and despite the length of the election cycle, it is exceedingly difficult to know exactly what he stands for and what, if any, core beliefs he holds beyond his own fitness and rightness for the Presidency. 

One certainty is that he will want to have a second term and this will constrain some of his policies.  For example, there is little chance he will insist on a 16 month withdrawal from Iraq once he understands the logistics and strategic interests involved.  If he insists on retreat, he would be setting himself u p for blame if Iraq falls into chaos and that would severely compromise a second term.

Since it is hard to discern his policies, beyond traditional left/liberal policies, and events will determine the course of his Presidency, the primary area of concern with Obama must be his character and here we are left with some uncomfortable questions.

First off, an important caveat that must be included, is that we can never know what kind of President a man will become until he is President.  Most especially, we cannot know how a President will fare under intense pressure until he has been in that situation.  Like him or hate him, there was no evidence prior to 9/11 that George W. Bush had the interest or wherewithal to go all-in to change the culture of the Middle East.  Whether he was successful will still take time and history to determine but his willingness to risk his Presidency doing something he thought was in the best interest of the country cannot be questioned.  There is simply no way to know if John McCain will rise to the occasion in the Presidency or fall short, but we do know he has withstood incredible pressures, shown himself to be resourceful, and been willing to risk defeat for his principles.  With Barack Obama, we can be confident in none of these important points.

On the surface Barack Obama seems to be a particularly attractive version of the typical Chicago machine politician.  The Chicago system is inherently more corrupt than most political systems, but the fact that he succeeded in such a system suggests he is a smart and ruthless politician, traits that are not necessarily incompatible with a successful Presidency (and some would claim they are traits that are necessary for a successful Presidency.)  We also know that Barack Obama has left very little in the way of a paper trail; he has written two books and both have to do with himself.  We do not know if his writing reflects an unseemly preoccupation with his own inner workings or a modest awareness that he has not yet been ready to opine intelligently about other important issues. 

Much has been made of Obama's arrogance,

Globalization's Paradoxes

Discussions of the benefits and costs of globalization tend to focus on the most parochial.  Politicians pander to the fears of anxious voters and promise to stop exporting jobs overseas and protect domestic markets from the dangers of lower priced imports.  They do not tend to offer any details about how they will accomplish such legerdemain, but when pressed either step back from the brink or set forward policies that, if enacted, would likely lead to the 1930s redux. 

There are much broader risks and benefits of globalization that get left out of these domestic political debates.  In his article yesterday, Tom Barnett points out some of the unmistakable benefits of globalization:

Globalizations means fewer wars, less death

Two new reports about our world reiterate the overwhelmingly positive impact of globalization upon our planet, making it more peaceful and more just.

The "Human Security Brief 2007," compiled by Canada's Simon Fraser University, details the continuing overall decline in global conflict that began with globalization's rapid expansion around the planet in recent years, to include the complete absence of classic state-on-state war since 2003.

As a result, total deaths from conflicts are now lower than the world has ever seen. For anyone looking for a "new world order" after the Cold War, this is it: far fewer wars and much less death from them.

Better yet, when Iraq's bloody civil war is factored out of the equation, deaths from terrorism have declined globally since 9/11 by roughly 40 percent.

Hold Bush-Cheney accountable for botching the occupation and unleashing that violence, but make no mistake, while the sectarian strife briefly fueled al Qaeda's "cause celebre," toppling Saddam did not trigger an upsurge in global terrorism. That long war hasn't made the world more dangerous in the long run.

...

But all of these positive trends constitute mere ripples before the tsunami of structural change globalization now fosters in the emergence of a "world middle class" of unprecedented size and proportion. Most estimates of today's global middle class peg it at a bit more than one-quarter of the world's population. But as investment firm Goldman Sachs argues in a paper entitled, "The Expanding Middle," globalization should add two billion new consumers to that category over the next two decades, essentially doubling the global share.

This is the essential link: regional conflicts had to be progressively eradicated to allow for globalization to expand and take deep root. The cause-and-effect dynamic that we begin to recognize on a global scale mirrors the Bush administration's success in Iraq with the improved counterinsurgency approach.

Tom Barnett is extremely optimistic that facilitating globalization will continue to lead inexorably to a safer, more secure world.

Yet the essential paradox is that globalization weakens the state system upon which the current international stability rests, and as states weaken, and weaker states fail, the risk of a spectacular event, or countervailing trends, derailing globalization increases.

Difficulties in Discussing Race and Genetics

Despite Barack Obama's candidacy and his desire for a national discussion about race, race remains a key third rail of American politics.  Anyone, of any ethnic background who discusses race in ways that do not conform to the prevailing PC wisdom is almost instantly accused of racism, which is a conversation stopper.  The difficulties of discussing race in America are exemplified in an open letter, Ten Commandments' of race and genetics issued, in this week's Genome Biology:

1. All races are created equal

2. An Argentinian and an Australian are more likely to have differences in their DNA than two Argentinians

3. A person's history isn't written only in his or her genes

4: Members of the same race may have different underlying genetics

5. Both nature and nurture play important parts in our behaviors and abilities

6. Researchers should be careful about using racial groups when designing experiments

7. Medicine should focus on the individual, not the race

8. The study of genetics requires cooperation between experts in many different fields

9. Oversimplified science feeds popular misconceptions

10. Genetics 101 should include a history of racism

I do not know how accurate No. 2 is, but it seems to me that 3-10 are perfectly reasonable, though exactly what is taught in "a history of racism" might be important to consider.  In other words, is a history of racism only to include white racism, or will it include the traditional racism and other-hate promulgated at times by the Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, etc.  Racism, a subset of other-hatred, has been ubiquitous in human history.  It might be more worthwhile to offer a history of attempts to combat racism, but that is unlikely to be what the authors of the note intended.

Be that as it may, it seems that the most problematic is No. 1; what do the authors mean when they say that all races are created equal (notwithstanding the subtext of No. 2 that the entire concept is questionable)?  In their letter, they expand upon each of their points.  Here is No.1: