President Obama Lays Out New Policy On National Security; Limiting Drone Strikes & Closing Gitmo

American Values

President Obama at NDU: NYRB’s Cole writes about the May 23rd speech: “These were the words
of a president with his eye on the long term, on his legacy, and on America’s fundamental values—apparently willing to look beyond the politics of the moment. The question before us now is whether the nation, too,
can rise above those politics in order to make the project of restoring peace a reality.”

Photo Credit: Carolyn Kaster; AP

Source: AP

An article (“Long Road To Peace”), by David Cole, in The New York Review of Books says that President Barack Obama is trying to move the United States away from its decades-long war on terror and toward a way of peace and adherence to its Constitution; this includes limiting the use of drone strikes and closing Guantánamo.

Both will be hard to deploy, using the language of the military, in a nation, and more important a Congress, divided. Yet, it starts with an idea, and this is a good one from the Executive Office.

Cole writes about the speech Obama made at National Defense University (NDU) on Thursday:

After four years of failing to make much progress toward closing Guantánamo, while increasingly relying on a drone war whose legality has often been questioned, Obama might have chosen to speak more cautiously in his NDU speech. Instead, he went much further, outlining a way out of this “perpetual war,” saying that “our democracy demands it.” Whether he can make good on this promise will very likely define his legacy. If he succeeds in doing so, the Nobel Peace Prize committee will be seen not as naïve, but as remarkably prescient, in its awarding of the Peace Prize to Obama in 2009.

The key to resuming a state of peace, Obama argued, lies in acknowledging our limitations. As he put it, “Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society…. We must be humble in our expectations.” Humility has never come easily to the United States or its presidents. But that humility is the foundation of peace.

Even as he defended his controversial use of drones to kill by remote control, Obama laid out a vision for countering terrorism in the future in which the use of force is truly a last resort. He stressed the importance of alternative tools, including law enforcement, intelligence-gathering, diplomacy, foreign aid, and more generally, working to alleviate the underlying grievances that drive human beings to kill innocent people for political ends. He explained that al-Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the verge of being decimated, and that the Authorization to Use Military Force, passed by Congress after 9/11 and directed at al-Qaeda, should accordingly be refined and ultimately repealed.

He specifically rejected expanding the president’s power to use military force against unspecified new terrorist groups. And he acknowledged that preventing all terrorist attacks is simply not possible, and that we must learn to live with risk—a truth that all security experts profoundly understand, but that most politicians are deathly afraid of conceding in public, for fear that they will be seen as weak.

I especially like President Obama’s use of the word humble, a rarity among politicians; this does not imply weakness but an intellectual understanding of limitations, including for the world’s dominant military power as to the benefits of relying too much on force. The U.S.’s perpetual war, a legacy of the previous Bush administration, has to end, and the sooner the better. A nation that is continually at war is a nation that is far from peace.

There are other ways, and that Obama is considering them now is a breath of fresh air in a atmosphere poisoned by harsh rhetoric and toxic demagoguery. You could almost see Obama in his struggle on what to do, listening to advice from various trusted sources, weighing all options, and then and only then arriving at a decision. It’an intellectual awakening. I wish Obama all the success that he deserves in this initiative, not bold by normal rational human understanding, but bold among members of Congress.

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You can read the rest of the article at {NYRB]

Expect A Very Active Hurricane Season In 2013, U.S. Meteorologists Say

Weather Reports

Filming Nature: NatGeo writes: “A television crew struggles through the high winds and storm surge caused by Hurricane Rita in 2005.”

Photo Credit: Mike Theiss/Corbis

Source: NatGeo

An article, by Willie Drye, in National Geographic says that the United States and eastern Canada can expect an active hurricane season this year. 

Meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expect that unusually warm water and other factors will produce as many as six major hurricanes during a busy 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, they announced today. "There are no mitigating factors that could suppress hurricane activity," said Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead hurricane forecaster, in a conference call with reporters. "It will be active or very active."

Bell noted that water temperatures in the Atlantic are eight-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit above normal for this time of year. "That might not sound like much, but it's quite a bit," he said. (Read "Weather Gone Wild" in National Geographic magazine.) Hurricanes draw their fierce power from warm water, and can intensify when there are no upper-level winds—known as wind shear—to disrupt their momentum.

NOAA forecasters predict that 13 to 20 named tropical storms with winds of at least 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour) will form between June 1 and November 30. Seven to 11 of those could evolve into hurricanes with winds of at least 74 miles per hour (119 kilometers per hour). And three to six of those hurricanes could intensify into major storms with winds exceeding 110 miles per hour (177 kilometers per hour), NOAA officials said. An average hurricane season sees about 12 named storms and six hurricanes, with only one or two becoming major storms.

This is not good news, since hurricanes by their very nature are destructive forces. That we can now better prepare for such storms is good news, but we can’t prevent such storms from either taking place or from causing widespread damage.  Well, we can mitigate some damage by boarding up windows and reinforcing weak structures. The cohort that continues to deny the anthropological effects of climate change will still not be convinced of the argument’s merits. But then gain, no rational argument or fact will do that.

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You can read the rest of the article at [NatGeo]

The Profane History Of Swearing

Language Matters

Common Profanities: Leith writes: “Melissa Mohr's title, then, is more than just an attention-grabber: the history of swearing is one of a movement back and forth between the holy and the shit. At different times in the history of the west, the primary taboo has been to do either with God, or with the functions of the human body.”

Photo Credit & Source: The Guardian

An article, by Sam Leith,  in The Guardian, reviews a book on swearing, the use of vernacular and “street language” in everyday conversation. In Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, Melissa Mohr gives us some historical background on how the use of non-sacred language is in many ways a voice of dissent against authoritarianism and conformity

Leith writes:

Swearing doesn't just mean what we now understand by "dirty words". It is entwined, in social and linguistic history, with the other sort of swearing: vows and oaths. Consider for a moment the origins of almost any word we have for bad language – "profanity", "curses", "oaths" and "swearing" itself .

Melissa Mohr's title, then, is more than just an attention-grabber: the history of swearing is one of a movement back and forth between the holy and the shit. At different times in the history of the west, the primary taboo has been to do either with God, or with the functions of the human body. (The latter, though, does subdivide in a meaningful way between the sexual and the excremental. Really, this book should have been called "Holy Fucking Shit".)

Though Mohr is mainly interested in English, she is generous in roping in examples from outside it. A helpful and interesting chapter on ancient Roman filth does much to sketch the background, too. How do we know what was obscene in a dead language? By literary genre, essentially: if it was written on the toilet wall but didn't appear in satire, it was likely to be properly rude. English has a "Big Six": "cunt", "fuck", "cock", "arse", "shit" and "piss" (though Mohr plausibly suggests that "nigger" should now be in there). The Romans had a "Big 10": cunnus (cunt), futuo (fuck),mentula (cock), verpa (erect or circumcised cock), landica (clitoris), culus(arse), pedico (bugger), caco (shit), fello (fellate) and irrumo (er, mouth-rape).

So the Romans, like us, had a primary relationship between the body and the idea of obscenity – though their sexual schema was a little different, with shame attaching, above all, to sexual passivity. Sexual obscenity also, to complicate things, had a sacramental function – as witness the fruity ways of the god Priapus. Some of that shit was holy.

Some people abhor swearing or the use of any vernacular, whether written or spoken; my wife is one of those individuals; as are many women today. Perhaps it has to do with a heightened sense of religious morality; or perhaps it has to do with a fear of words. Profanity in itself is an act of dissent from religious authority. It’s somewhat ironic or amusing that many of the swear words in Quebec among the French-Canadians centre on the Catholic church and its rituals. (Some common examples include osti: host; tabarnac: tabernacle; maudit: damn; brûle en enfer: burn in hell, and it various permutations and combinations.)

Some people think that use of profanities marks the end of civilization; that its continued use reflects loose morals. Historical evidence says otherwise, as swearing has a long uninterrupted period of use. Censorship or self-censorship will never work for the reason that people like and enjoy using profanities. Swearing, in my estimation, has its place in society; and most people, if pressed, would admit they swear or would like to.

Even so, the use of profanities in personal attacks has no place in society and serves no purpose. More so, swearing too often soon loses it appeal. A well-timed use of a profanity can have the appropriate and intended ameliorating effect of releasing negative emotions and thoughts.

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You can read the rest of the article at [Guardian]