I’m on a bit of a history jag right now, and just finished reading the excellent “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by J. W. Loewen. The book is fascinating not only for the facts, insight and interpretation it gives to American history, but in its sociological analysis of how history is taught in America. It’s simultaneously a significant work of scholarship and a fascinating and fun read. Good enough that I had to write the author to tell him about my American history experience. I think my observations might be entertaining or edifying for others, so I’ll go ahead and post it here:

I just finished reading “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, and I wanted to write you and tell you it had a powerful impact on me. My wife is a sekondar teacher here in Switzerland, and history and social-studies are among the subjects she teaches. Although American history plays a lesser role in her lessons, and her teaching doesn’t seem to suffer from the same failings that the American curriculum does, I’m giving the book to her next, as I’m pretty sure she will find it fascinating and inspiring.

You might be interested in my experience with American high school. I went to a Canadian school grades 1-11, and then attended an American high school (in Sarasota, Fl) for the last year. There I had to take American History and American Government classes to satisfy the graduation requirements.

While some of the problems you address in your text were present in my earlier education (in grade 9 my social studies class was taught by the phys-ed coach), in grades 10 and 11 I had a fantastic social studies teacher (Mr Huff). We spent months discussing Indian culture and government, particularly the Iroquois. We staged a mock trial of Louis Real. His tests were always of the same form: He would take a particular issue from Canadian history, demand that we form an opinion on that issue, and then back that opinion with facts. We were graded on how many relevant facts we could bring to bear on our opinion.

Then I arrived in Sarasota. My history teacher there was named Mr. Bassett, a sextagenarian with died, brylcreamed hair. I think he was striving for a Southern Ronald Reagan look. The first thing I balked at was when Mr. Bassett proudly declared that Columbus had to convince the King and Queen that the world was round. I was shocked at the coverage of the Indians. I often tried to initiate discussion, as up until that point I had found history and social studies fascinating.

Some of the highlights:

- When we got the point of the constitutional convention, Bassett proudly explained to us that “I believe that there is nothing truly new under the sun. Everything has been done before. But on that day the founders creating something truly new, something that had never been seen before: a democratic government founded by the people, for the people and of the people”. At that point I said “well, what about the Iroquois? They had a democracy”. Bassett explained to me that this was the first time “a Nation” was a democracy. I recall learning that the Iroquois were called the “Iroquois Nation” in my history books, but Bassett wasn’t interested in discussion and just thundered on.

- It was election year (Bush Sr. vs Dukakis), and one day Bassett came in talking about an interview he’d seen on TV where the primary candidates had talked about what their favorite foods were. He looked down his nose at the black half the class and made a funny comment about how naturally J. Jackson’s favorite food was chicken. Now, in the town I grew up in there were no black people, and I was actually completely unaware of the “blacks like chicken” stereotype. It wasn’t until years later that I got what had been going on, and I got really pissed off.

- We learned what made a slave owner a good slave owner, and what made one a bad slave owner. A couple years later I was watching a black protester discuss how much having to answer that question on a test pissed him off, and I thought “holy shit yeah, that would piss me off too”, but at the time it never even occurred to me.

- After reading some of the inspiring quotes by Thomas Jefferson, I went to the library and looked up his writings. As I was scanning through, I found some stuff he’d written about black people and I was completely flabbergasted. Old TJ was a wonderful writer, and he came up with some extremely eloquent prose to point out how blacks were inferior because of the coarseness of their features etc. So I brought the book in to class with me, wanting to discuss the disconnect between what we were learning about T.J. and what I was reading by T.J. I read the offending passage out loud, at which point he asked me if I was a white supremacist.

Eventually of course I started to just sleep in class and write out the answers to the test questions by rote. Bassett gave me a B on the first test, so I went around and collected all the tests of students who got A’s. I laid them on his desk and demanded that he either explain to me how the other tests were superior to mine, or to give me an A as well. After I threatened to take the matter to the principal, he eventually capitulated.

Months later, I was working on a paper for English class (It was called “Is the CIA a Fascist Force?” — hey I was 17, but in my defense I started out by carefully defining what I meant by fascism, and then investigating if the CIA acted in a manner which pursued goals which could be characterized as fascist by the definition given. I lost my research material, and asked Bassett if I had perhaps left it in his classroom. He replied in the negative. I was pretty sure I had left it there, so I came to class early the next morning and rifled his desk –
sure enough I found it in one of his desk drawers. I took it back, and neither one of us ever mentioned it again.

Well, that’s all I got. Thanks for writing an excellent book. You can be sure I’ll try to share the reading experience with everyone I can. I’ll also be sure to pick up some of your other stuff.

Categories: political
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I’m really sad about what’s happened to, and with, Helen Thomas. Helen has had a long career of poking holes in the white house propaganda (in every administration since Kennedy). But she made the mistake of speaking honestly about Israel:

Any comments on israel?
Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember these people are occupied, and it’s their land. It’s not Germany or Poland.
So where should they go?
They go home.
Where is their home?
Germany. Poland and America…. and everywhere else.

Here’s the full interview:

The rabbi who interviewed here had this to say about her response (from here).

“I was very surprised when Thomas told me that not only was she opposed to the two-state solution, but that she thought that the Jews should leave Israel and return to the final solution, more or less,”

Now Helen’s conclusions regarding Israel are pretty radical, and in my mind unrealistic, but they are a far cry from being hate speech, and it’s really stretching it to characterize her words as meaning jews should “return to the final solution, more or less”. If Helen has said “they should go back to their countries of origin”, which would be equivalent, it would have made for much better press. This just shows us that Helen’s not as quick witted and careful as she used to be, not that she’s a nazi sympathiser.

Making her comment that “they should go home to German, Palestine, the United States…” into a comment supporting ethnic cleansing is dishonest, and stops us from asking important questions. Questions like: Well, what if we, as an international community, decide Israel was a bad idea? It’s true, they are occupying land that belonged to someone else, they have taken land through invasion and are engaging in starvation and ghetoization tactics. What if we dismantled Israel, and made reparations to the Palestinians, restoring their land? Well, the next step would be to return all of the land that the Nazis seized from Jewish citizens. Then we would have to restore the land that allies, like the soviet union, seized from German citizens. This would be applying a certain kind of historic justice, at the cost of screwing over perfectly innocent people living on the occupied land (in Israel and Europe). I think it’s a bad decision as I think the net harm would be greater than the net good.

The Isreali’s, particularly the right wing, claim that they are the original inhabitants of Israel, and are returning to their proper homeland, in a contract in the bible. Joe Biden has echoed these sentiments while condemning Thomas. So both the Israelis and Joe Biden seem to be advocating returning dispossessed people their lands, regardless of how long ago these people were dispossessed. But if we apply this standard honestly, we must return the United States and Canada back to the remaining American Indians. We should certainly make restorations to African Americans, for the hundreds of years we enslaved, killed and beat their ancestors. What’s the statute of limitations on displacement, genocide, and human enslavement?

Stephen Colbert later interviewed the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and asked why Israel wouldn’t allow an international investigation into flotilla event. The Israeli ambassador shrewdly replied that it was for the same reason that the U.S. won’t allow international investigations and international courts to try American war criminals or American human rights violators. Well, that was the most honest statement that came out of the whole drama It’s also a telling revelation of the harm that our own lack of international ethics causes us in international negotiations.

I’m far from an expert on middle east issues, but I’m also far from being an expert on American or S. African Apartheid — I still know they are wrong. Perhaps a two-state solution is the answer, perhaps there exists a better solution, I don’t really have an opinion. Where I do have a an opinion is on very obvious human rights violations and illegal occupations.

Categories: Uncategorized
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Theft is newspeak for copyright violation, along with the other newspeak vocabulary “intellectual property”. It’s a very deliberate propaganda aimed at framing the discussion of copyright by mapping it onto a vocabulary which unconsciously prejudices our thinking, by bringing our cultural value of private property into play.

This framing, this point of view is completely and demonstrably incorrect. That fact that this propaganda is so successful has devastating effects on our culture, which will take years to properly understand. But the propaganda is highly successful, primarily because the dominant means for cultural dissemination (film, music, television) are controlled by large corporations. This structure is very effective at censoring and biasing the discussion.

That’s why the following video is fantastic. We need popular media which disseminates the truth: copying is not theft.

Categories: Uncategorized
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Check out this “debate” between MPP’s Aaron Smith, and some chick called Calvina Fay:

Although I’m happy to see the issue being addressed (more or less) seriously in the mainstream media, I’m irritated by the inherent bias in the forum:

• “street signs” at lower screen read:
  • “Golden state going to pot?
  • “Stoner stimuls for the states?
• Off the cuff remarks biasing the forum:
• “What if everyone walks around stoned all the time?
• CNBC correspondent asking if the LA correspondents eyes are glazed.
• L.A. correspondant: “you’d be high to think this is a slam dunk”

And let us not forget the inherent bias of the mechanics of the forum. Two people are given a few short minutes to present their point of view. The brevity of the allowed statements gives the dishonest representative of the dishonest status-quo an advantage, since all of here statement are familiar falsehoods, and thus ring true to the uneducated ear. The MPP debater has to focus on disassembling what lies he has time to deal with in the time allotted. So let’s take a look at the prohibitionists talking points:

” Legalizing it isn’t going to solve our drug problem, nor our economic problems. In fact it will make it worse.”There’s nothing new here of course, and there’s nothing true here either. While legalizing marijuanna certainly won’t solve our economic problems, it will create a new revenue stream and eliminate a harmful, wasteful, useless, cruel and racist expense: the incarceration and prosecution of marijuana users. It will reduce law enforcement costs, and free up funds and resources to fight real crimes. So it will mitigate our economic problems. Thus it’s a positive step in the right direction. The statement that legalisation will “make it worse” is just a fabrication to prevent us from looking at the sheer dumb-headed falseness of her statement.

Alcohol and tobacco have more social costs than they provide taxation income”But then what about the fact that Alcohol and tobacco have more social costs than they provide taxation taxation? This may very well be true. But we don’t criminalize Alcohol or tobacco production, despite the fact they are distinctly more harmful than cannabis. Why not? Primarily because we have learned from our mistakes. We attempted to apply cannabis style prohibition to alcohol back in the twenties, and it was a complete disaster. Not only did we lose the income from taxation of the substances, but their use increased, and the social harms exploded . Not only did we continue to see normal array of problems associated with alcohol abuse, but we added widespread crime and corruption into the mix. The parallels to the situation with cannabis are quite close. What’s different is the intrinsic harm caused by cannabis, which is much less than the intrinsic harm done by alchol use.

Legalisation will lead to more users. This is pure conjecture. The number she spits out (30%) is pulled out of hers, or someone else’s ass, with no basis in experiment to justify it. The data that does exists indicates that drug use either remains the same, or in many cases decreases with legalisation. Holland has lower cannabis use amongst its citizens than any of its neighbouring countries. Why? Well one Dutch official believes it’s because they “have succeeded in making cannabis boring”. This isn’t just an outlier. We have had similar results with alcohol prohibition, and Portugal has had similar results by decriminalizing all drug consumption. So the evidence suggests that prohibition not only doesn’t work, it has the opposite of the desired effect.

Marijuana is not harmless, it’s the number one drug that kids are in treatment for. This one actually makes me fucking angry. This is completely true, because Marijuana is the number one drug for which kids are being forced into involuntary “drug treatment”. One friend of mine was forced into one of these programs in his teenage years because he had smoked a few joints and got caught. They promptly put him on a series of pharmaceuticals. Brilliant. It’s the usual case that the most harmful consequence of cannabis consumption is getting caught. Now certainly marijuana is not harmless. Excessive use can rob your motivation. Excessive smoking can lead to bronchitis. All these effects can easily be cured by laying off for a couple of weeks. Cannabis is among the least habit forming drugs, and is associated with no withdrawal symptoms. So sure, excessive marijuanna use is harmful, just like excessive sugar or fast food consumption is harmful. Don’t overdo things. But criminalization of something radically safer than alcohol is just plain criminal.

We’d still have a black market for children, just like with alcohol and tobacco. The old “think of the children” ploy. It’s another complete line of bullshit. If you are worried about your children, or someone else’s children, you should be for the legalization of cannabis. Why? Well, the rate at which kids try cannabis under prohibition is high. By far the worst consequences of smoking cannabis result from its prohibition. If you get caught it can ruin your career, education and future. Why would you want to put your kids at that kind of risk, all because of a prohibition policy which has no benefit. ONDC polls indicate that high school age kids find it easier to get pot than to get alcohol. Under alcohol prohibition, an eight year old could walk into a bar and get a drink, no problem. Experience shows that regulation (like alcohol and tobacco) is more effective at keeping kids off drugs than prohibition (like cannabis and our failed attempts at alcohol prohibition). So the real question here is, are you stubbornly going to hold to prohibition, or are you interested in results? If you are interested in actually protecting your kids, support legalisation.

In closing, I just want to comment on the old trope “legalisation would be sending the wrong message to kids”. This statement is stupid in so many ways. Consider for example the Dutch experience (“we have succeeded in making cannabis boring”). Consider the kid who learns all the DARE propaganda, but sees healthy happy productive members of their peer group and society using and enjoying cannabis, and in fact coming off better than those using legal drugs. What message is that kid getting? Let me tell you: They are learning that the government lies, and that the laws are bullshit. Do you really want to teach your kid disrespect for the law?

Categories: Drug War
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I found out about this from the mpp blog. Apparently a federally-funded drug task force called “West Sound Narcotics Enforcement Team (WestNet)” raided a medical-marijuanna club seized about 200 signatures, for a ballot initiative for marijuanna legalization.

The same group apparently raided another provider’s home. In the process of which, they handcuffed the family’s 14 year old son for two hours, and put a gun to his head”. They even confiscated $80 dollars form the 9-year-old daughter’s wallet in an attempt to prove that the dispensary was illegally profiting from pot sales.

lt’s hard not to get incensed over this kind of bullshit. What happened to the poor family makes a good story, and is easy to get riled up about, but the seizing of ballot initiative signatures is even worse. Drug laws would have changed 30 years ago, if it weren’t for the successful chilling-effect laid down by the destructive drug-laws and prohibition culture. This kind of thing is designed to frighten people, which in turn chills the efforts to obtain honest information about drugs and drug policies, and to have a real democracy, in which policy is informed by public knowledge, and public action.

The actions of WestNet violate Obama’s instructions to leave medical marijuanna providers be. Their actions represent the most despicable consequences and actions of the prohibition complex. In addition to legislative reform, we need culpability for bad cops. At the very least, WestNet should lose its federal funding as a result of these actions. I hope that you’ll join me in asking the ONDCP to take action against WestNet, to make an example of them, and let the rest of the overzealous, badly behaved, so-called “law-enforcement” officers.

Here is the text of the email I have sent them.  Please feel free to copy and paste:

I recently read about a federally-funded task force called “West Sound Narcotics Enforcement Team (WestNet)”.

Apparently WestNet hasn’t gotten the memo that medical marijuanna providers are to be allowed to function within the domains of state laws. Worse, they have taken it on themselves to influence policy decisions by hampering legitimate political activism. I refer here to their seizing of petitition signatures as “evidence” (see http://blog.mpp.org/prohibition/reports-task-force-seizes-marijuana-petition-signatures-handcuffs-14-year-old/05242010/)

This same group, in another raid of another medical marijuanna provider, ransacked a licensed provider’s home, handcuffed their 14 year old son and PUT A GUN TO HIS HEAD. The further seized “as evidence” the contents of the 9 year old daughters mickey-mouse wallet.

Is this despicable behavior the intended use of federal funding being provided to this task force? I (and I am not alone) am sick and tired of hearing about this kind of brain-dead Gestapo tactics being used. Let alone being used against people who are trying to provide medicine to sick people.

It’s time that Police who show such bad judgement start facing some repercussions for their actions. I ask that you rescind the federal funding for WestNet. They are not using the money well.

Tags: chilling effect,drugs,free speach,politics
Categories: Drug War
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I wish Malcolm X had a holiday, or had some streets named after him. Some years ago, a group called the “Guerilla theatre of the absurd” at Reed College printed up stickers, the size and color of street signs, saying “Malcolm X dr.”, and pasted them on all street signs of some particularly wealthy street in Portland. In essence, they did a citizen renaming of a street.

Now, a study of American history shows that the teaching and preservation of American history is grossly, horribly mangled and abused in order to maintain fealty to a kind of unifying fairy tale. As part of this process, I think Malcolm X is being forgotten, and I find that tragic.

So I’d like to propose a new holiday: From now on, let Feb. 21 be Malcolm X day! How do we celebrate Malcolm X day? We print bumper stickers, the same size, shape and color of street signs in our city, and we do a citizen of renaming of a street, or a part of a street, whatever we can pull off. We do this every year, in every city where we can find some brave soul to join the movement. When do we stop? When they rename a street in your town after Brother Malcolm. After that we can celebrate by getting out and having a parade down Malcolm X drive or Blvd.

So what do you think? We have 9 months to prepare. Start your planning. Post pictures of your civic improvements on the web!

Categories: Uncategorized
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Leaders are overvalued in our culture.  American history tends to paint social change as happening as a result of the actions of a few great leaders, as opposed to occurring  despite the nations leadership, and due to the agitation of large numbers of affected people.  So while I don’t wish to devalue the work that, say, MLK did, I don’t think the civil rights movement of the sixties was thanks to him.  Rather, MLK was successful because he had so many dedicated, hard working followers, most of whom history will forget.

Now look at the following video.  It makes the case clearly, brilliantly and light heartedly.  A small act of sainthood.  Bravo!

Categories: Uncategorized
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J3D provides a box constructor Box(float xdim, float ydim, float zdim, Appearance ap).

The documentation states:

public Box(float xdim,
           float ydim,
           float zdim,
           Appearance ap)

Constructs a box of a given dimension and appearance. Normals are generated by default, texture coordinates are not.

Parameters:

xdim – X-dimension size.

ydim – Y-dimension size.

zdim – Z-dimension size.

ap – Appearance

This is an error.  xdim, ydim, zdim are actually  one-half the x,y, and z dimension sizes.

Categories: Java
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So, the weather is fantastic here in Switzerland, and I finally got motivated enough to bike into work.  It’s no small commitment, I have a 28 km ride, which includes climbing the Albis Pass.  Okay, it’s a pretty small pass, but my bike only has two front chain rings, so it’s actually a pretty tough hall, especially after a few weeks of slacking on the training.

My poor condition probably explains why I was feeling tired and easily distracted as I had to navigate the tricky traffic & trams around Bahnhoff Enge.  I was in the narrow space between traffic and a tram line, when I realized that I had gotten way too close to a tram island (basically a curb in the middle of the road).  I rubbed against it, and didn’t handle it well, and totally wiped out.  Below you see the result:

my biking injury

The worst thing is now I have to go and buy a new pair of leg warmers.  Well, okay that’s probably not the worst thing, but it does suck.

What I found surprising is how many of my colleagues suggested that I go to the doctor.  I did get the first aid kit from the hallway and clean and disinfect it myself.  Really, what more would a doctor do?    I wonder how much of my doctor reluctance comes from not having had health insurance for so long while living in the states?  Go team Obama on that one.

Categories: Life athletic
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The New York Times has a lengthy article entitled “A Supersized Custody Battle Over Marvel Superheroes”, discussing an ongoing legal battle over copyrights regarding character created by Jack Kirby between 1958 and 1963.  It is useful to analyse such reporting, to see how consent is manufactured for policies which benefit the power-elite (read large corporations), and harm the public, in this case the public domain.

First, a brief history lesson which needs repeating, as the vast majority of America has never even heard of the public domain, and has no understanding of how copyright law differs from property law, which differences defines how copyright violation differs from theft.  Copyright is (intended to be) a short term abridgement of human rights, specifically the right to free speech, in an effort to encourage and reward creative works.  They provide the creator of a work with a temporary monopoly on the spread of his or her ideas.   The main players behind the creation of copyright and patent law in the United States were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who clearly had mixed feelings on the subject.  The fundamental idea was that through creation of this temporary (state enforced) monopoly, congress could “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”.  A useful brief history can be found here.  Once this temporary copyright expired, the intellectual work would return to the public domain.  The original period of copyright length in the U.S. was 14 years, and the author had the right to extend the copyright for an additional 14  (Details of the historical development of copyright law can be found here).  The feeling was that this was an appropriate length of time to allow a creator the opportunity to benefit from his or her creation with an acceptable abridgement of human liberty.  In other words, copyright is a tradeoff between reward for the creator (incentive) and civil liberty, particularly to provide an incentive for publication and distribution.

As costs and times for distribution and publication decrease, the cost function for this tradeoff change, implying that copyright lengths should decrease.  In the last century copyright and publication has become dominated by an oligarchy of powerful corporations, primarily the members of the RIAA and MPAA, with Disney being a major villain.  These corporations have  championed a series of extension to copyright, each time adding a small fixed amount to the existing copyright lengths,  so that copyrights can now be extended to the life of the author + 70 years.  There is no reason to expect that these corporations will allow their increasingly valuable copyright portfolios to expire, so as waves of valuable intellectual property stand to enter the public domain (where they belong), we can expect the armies of lobbyists to swarm Congress’ halls once again.

So what does all this have to do with manufacturing consent?  In the NYT article, the article never mentions the concept of public domain.  It never discusses the fact that Kirby’s creations, now at 50 years of age, should have entered the public domain 32 years ago (under the original terms of copyright law).  There is consideration of the harm done by such copyright litigation which has no redeeming social value.  Jack Kirby, 16 years dead, is not going to be rewarded by this lawsuit, nor will the current process encourage any kind of creative work, beyond creative legal wrangling.  The underlying message of the article seems to be “look, thanks to the efforts of this lawyer and our wonderful copyright system, this guys heirs are gong to be getting a payday!  Isn’t the American copyright system grand?”  Rather than the message we should all be reading, which is “Look, this legal vampire is trying to make a lot of money of this copyright vampire.  The copyright vampire deserves to suffer, since without it’s machinations these works would be in the public domain and contributing to our culture.  But the legal vampire isn’t contributing anything to our culture either, and giving money to Kirby’s heirs isn’t doing anything for anyone either, other than using the legal system as a kind of lottery”.  The real lesson to be learned here is the following:  We need copyright reform.  We need copyrights to be shorter, and we need them to remain in the hands of the creator, not in the hands of some parasitic corporate behemoth.

Categories: political, Uncategorized
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